Nukes Will Be Part of Senate Energy Bill, Boxer Says

The Republican-led push for more nuclear power might be paying some dividends: The Senate is ready to make nuclear power part of the energy and climate bill. Barbara Boxer, the chairwoman of the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works, said today "there will be a nuclear title in the bill," reports our colleague Siobhan Hughes at Dow Jones Newswires. While nuclear power may not be the make-or-break issue for the Senate bill-the health care debate probably takes that honor-it is a crucial part of attracting Republican support for new energy measures. Whether it's enough is still anybody's guess.

Arab states race for nuclear power

Amid the gathering storm over Iran's controversial nuclear ambitions, the race is on among Arab states to build nuclear power plants of their own, opening up immense trade opportunities for the industrialized world as well as the specter of proliferation. The United States, Britain, France and Russia are competing for contracts in the nuclear energy bonanza that is emerging in the Middle East as Arab states seek to generate more power to feed their growing economies and to build desalination plants, a vital element in development plans as water resources shrink. Saudi Arabia's minister of water and electricity, Abdullah bin Andul-Rahman al-Hussein, told the kingdom's al-Watan newspaper in late August that Riyadh was working on plans for its first nuclear plant. Saudi Arabia and the neighboring United Arab Emirates signed preliminary agreements with the United States for nuclear technology in 2008.

EDF workers end strike at Bugey nuclear plant-union

Workers at EDF's 3,600-megawatt Bugey plant voted on Tuesday to end a strike that started on Aug. 28 over salaries, a CGT union official said on Wednesday. Workers at the 900-MW nuclear reactor 4 went on strike that day when EDF stopped the reactor for refuelling and maintenance, slowing works at the plant. Workers also cut around 30 percent of capacity output last week at Bugey's reactor 5 and 60 percent at reactor 2 on Tuesday. Workers were on Wednesday bringing back the capacity they had cut on reactors 5 and 2 and restarted maintenance work at the reactor 4. "Workers voted to end the strike at yesterday's general meeting," the official at Bugey in southeastern France told Reuters. "This doesn't mean that we are ending the movement but that we decide when to start and when to end actions to avoid strikes dying out of their own accord," the unionist said.

Iran Delivers Nuclear Proposals to World Powers

Iran's foreign minister has handed over a new package of proposals related to its controversial nuclear program to representatives of six world powers. Witnesses say Manouchehr Mottaki submitted the proposals at a ceremony Wednesday at Iran's Foreign Ministry. Details of the proposals are not known. But Mottaki said Tuesday he hopes the package will spur a new round of nuclear talks. Germany and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain - are considering imposing additional sanctions against Iran if it does not cooperate on its nuclear program. Meanwhile, a U.S. official says Iran is "moving closer" to being able to build an atomic bomb.

Depleted decency

I am outraged to find from a Honolulu Weekly article ("Chain reaction," 8/26) that the military has lied about the presence of Depleted Uranium (DU) and Depleted Uranium Oxide (DUO) in Hawai'i for many years. Equally outrageous, is the fact that the military cannot account for thousands of pounds of "lost" DU throughout the Islands. The military must be held accountable for its alleged intentional and/or potential criminally negligent behavior related to DU and DUO. The possibility that my children and grandchildren, who have been raised and born on the Islands, may have DUO in their lungs, skin and bloodstream, is extremely upsetting to me and my wife. Officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency must act, both as regulators and as human beings, to hold the military accountable for their alleged duplicitous, negligent and potentially criminal behavior. Such behavior cannot stand without immediate governmental response in a democratic and civilized nation.

GE Hitachi advances new nuclear reactor design

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy said on Wednesday it has submitted the revised design documents for its Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. GE Hitachi said the submission marks a milestone in the company's effort to move forward with the 1,520-megawatt design which two U.S. utilities have selected to use for two new nuclear plants, some of the first reactors proposed after a three-decade lapse in U.S. nuclear expansion. Two other U.S. utilities dropped the ESBWR design fearing that the time needed to obtain NRC certification would slow their efforts to pursue construction of new reactors.

U.S. to Review Iranian Proposal Aimed at Spurring Nuclear Talks

The U.S. will review an Iranian proposal to resume stalled talks on the Islamic republic's disputed nuclear program, Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said yesterday in New York. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki presented the document in Tehran yesterday to diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and Switzerland. Switzerland accepted the proposals on behalf of the U.S., which doesn't have diplomatic relations with Iran. Aliasghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the UN's nuclear agency, said in Vienna yesterday the proposal includes compromises on security, economic and nuclear issues. "We hope that we can organize a new round of negotiations within the framework of the new package," Iran's state-owned Press TV news agency cited Mottaki as saying two days ago. "We hope that what is contained in that response is a serious and substantive and constructive reply" to proposals made previously by the six nations, Rice said.

Nuclear revelations contaminate German election campaign

Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel says new data proves that former chancellor Helmut Kohl's government tampered with a report to play down the risks of a nuclear waste storage site. Gabriel, a Social Democrat, on Wednesday spoke of a "downright scandal" and said that new "records proved" that Christian Democratic (CDU) politicians had in the 1980s manipulated assessments over the suitability of the Gorleben salt mine in Lower Saxony as a permanent storage site for nuclear waste. The politician said that under the administration of long-term CDU Chancellor Helmut Kohl Germany's research ministry demanded in a 1983 letter that the federal agency responsible for the findings on Gorleben alter them.