Baltimore Sun: Analysts: No French deal, no new CEG generation
Jeffries & Co. published a report today saying that a rejection by the Public Service Commission of Electricite de France's proposal to buy half of Constellation Energy Group's nuclear energy business would prevent CEG from building new generators. CEG owns Baltimore Gas and Electric. Some highlights: If the JV [joint venture] were not approved, the balance sheet of Constellation and BG&E will not support new investment. Instead, the companies will need to use surplus cash to pay down debt.

Bloomberg: Italy to Start Work on New Nuclear Power Site by 2013
9 (Bloomberg) -- Italy will start work on its first new nuclear plant by 2013 after the Senate today approved a return to generation after a 22-year ban, Industry Minister Claudio Scajola said. The government wants to broaden its mix of energy sources, including coal and renewables, Scajola said at a conference in Rome today. Nuclear power may eventually account for 25 percent of national energy production, he added. ‘A majority of Italians understand that in order to have lower energy costs, we need nuclear power,’ Scajola said. ‘A number of local authorities have told me they’re available to have sites on their territory.’

Time: Nuclear Power Debate Reignites in Germany
Greenpeace protest in front of the German nuclear power plant Krümmel in Geesthacht, northern Germany which caused a major power outage in Hamburg. Traffic lights suddenly went black in Hamburg, Germany's biggest port, on Saturday afternoon after a nearby nuclear reactor called Krümmel shut down when a transformer short-circuited. Although nobody was hurt and the lights were back on by nightfall, the accident has reignited the debate over nuclear power in Europe's most vehemently anti-nuclear country. But as Germany gears up for federal elections in September, a generational shift in attitude could mean that opposition to nuclear power isn't the vote winner it once was. "I didn't organize the incident, it was the nuclear industry that said something like this couldn't happen," said Germany's Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Monday. Now Gabriel is calling for the government to mothball Germany's eight oldest nuclear plants right away, accusing Chancellor Angela Merkel's nuclear energy policies of being "irresponsible" and "potentially dangerous.

Nature: Adieu to nuclear recycling
President Barack Obama should be applauded for his decision to scrap commercial reprocessing. This week, US President Barack Obama has been grabbing headlines with his efforts to revitalize the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty - a US/Russian agreement to reduce the nuclear arsenals of both nations. Such efforts will be applauded worldwide, but another decision by the Obama administration deserves equal acclaim. On 29 June, the president quietly cancelled a lengthy environmental review that was the first step in allowing the resumption of commercial nuclear reprocessing in the United States. Nuclear reprocessing chemically separates uranium and plutonium from spent nuclear fuel so that it can be reused in specialized reactors. The same technique can be used to purify material for nuclear weapons, and it is partly for that reason that the United States decided to halt reprocessing in the 1970s.

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Verifying North Korea's Nuclear Programme: Technical Options And Policy Choices
This paper considers the challenges and policy choices associated with verifying a North Korean declaration about its past nuclear activities. In terms of the plutonium programme, there are two key choices facing policy makers. First, in light of North Korea’s reported statement that its October 2006 test involved only 2 kg of plutonium, is the IAEA’s standard definition of a significant quantity appropriate? Second, using open source information, this paper argues that the uncertainty in the material unaccounted for, σ(MUF), will be between 5 and 10 kg, depending on the degree of cooperation afforded by North Korea. In order to ensure that verification produces a conclusive answer, the magnitude of σ(MUF) will necessitate some combination of decreasing the detection probability and increasing the false alarm rate from their standard IAEA values, or adopting entirely different criteria against which to assess North Korean compliance. The paper also includes a discussion of the process for verifying the absence or existence of a clandestine uranium enrichment programme by formulating it as a Bayesian inference problem. This framework, together with an analysis of the politics of inspections at undeclared locations suggests that, unless detailed intelligence pinpointing the location of a clandestine centrifuge facility is available, inspection rights at undeclared facilities may be of limited utility.