Iran Agrees to Inspectors' Visit, Meeting This Month

Iran agreed to allow international inspectors to visit its new nuclear fuel plant within the next two weeks and will meet with negotiators for the U.S. and other leading United Nations powers later this month, European Union Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana said. At a news conference following the first day of talks between UN powers and Iran in more than a year, Solana said Iran was offered a freeze in economic sanctions in exchange for a freeze in uranium enrichment activity, and didn't offer a complete response to the plan. The U.S. was represented in the discussion with Iran's nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, by Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns, a State Department spokesman, Robert Wood, told reporters outside Geneva where the talks took place. Jalili said he saw room for "new cooperation" following the talks and agreement was reached for more "positive" talks. He said Iran needed another fuel enrichment plant and all its nuclear work is being carried out in coordination with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. At the same time, U.S. and Iranian negotiators met one-on- one near Geneva, where they are attending talks on the nuclear program, the State Department said. Wood said he hadn't any further details on the U.S.-Iranian meeting.’

Iran Agrees to Send Enriched Uranium to Russia

Iran agreed on Thursday in talks with the United States and other major powers to open its newly revealed uranium enrichment plant near Qum to international inspection in the next two weeks and to send most of its openly declared enriched uranium to Russia to be turned into fuel for a small reactor that produces medical isotopes, senior American and other Western officials said. Iran's agreement in principle to export most of its enriched uranium for processing - if it happens - would represent a major accomplishment for the West, reducing Iran's ability to make a nuclear weapon quickly and buying more time for negotiations to bear fruit. If Iran has secret stockpiles of enriched uranium, however, the accomplishment would be hollow, a senior American official conceded. The officials described the long day of talks here with Iran, the first such discussions in which the United States has participated fully, as a modest success on a long and complicated road. Iran had at least finally engaged with the big powers on its nuclear program after more than a year and had agreed to some tangible, confidence-building steps before another meeting with the same participants before the end of this month.’

Preparations for Japan's first use of MOX

’The loading of mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel into the third reactor of the Genkai nuclear power plant in Japan is set to begin on 3 October, ahead of the first ever use of the fuel in the country. Pending final approval from the governor of Saga Prefecture the unit could start generating electricity using MOX fuel by as early as mid-November, marking a milestone in the country's nuclear fuel cycle and the entry into the next stage of a plan laid down in the 1950s. About 5% of the content of MOX fuel is plutonium recovered from nuclear fuel already used in power-generating reactors. Recycling the material in this way increases the energy it produces by 12%, while if unfissioned uranium is also recovered and reused the figure increases to 22%. The process also allows the separation of the most highly radioactive fission products, meaning the volume of the most dangerous waste is reduced by over 60%. Later steps are planned to include fast neutron reactors to use more plutonium and generate more fissionable fuel with nuclear power providing over 40% of electricity. Kyodo News reported that it will take five days to load the fuel into the reactor during a periodic inspection.’

Brunswick nuclear reactors' ongoing shutdown prompts the NRC to investigate

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has sent a special inspection team to assess an equipment malfunction that forced officials to shut down the Brunswick Nuclear Plant near Southport. The plant's two nuclear reactors were shut down Sept. 20 and remained down as of Monday afternoon, NRC spokesman Roger Hannah said. The Progress Energy plant had to shut down its two reactors after one of its four emergency diesel generators shut down and would not start again. The inspection team will be at the plant near Southport for the next week or so inspecting and assessing circumstances associated with the malfunction, Hannah said. The plant's technical specifications require it to shut down if it cannot find and fix the diesel generator problem within seven days, Hannah said.’

EDF, E.ON to Swap Power Assets in France and Germany

Electricite de France SA, Europe's biggest generator, and E.ON AG, Germany's largest utility, agreed to swap assets to cut debt and meet antitrust regulations. E.ON will get the 35 percent it doesn't own in French energy supplier SNET and rights to 800 megawatts of nuclear output, in return for giving up 1,215 megawatts of atomic and coal-fired generation in Germany. Each side of the deal may be worth as much as 1.5 billion euros ($2.2 billion), according to Christian Kleindienst, a credit analyst at UniCredit SpA. The two utilities are seeking to sell more than 15 billion euros of assets to pay down debt accrued by snapping up rivals. E.ON wants to settle a probe by the European Commission into whether it thwarted competition at home while the French state is forcing former electricity monopoly EDF to sell more nuclear energy to rivals.’

US support for PBMR intensifies Areva, Westinghouse contest

’The announcement by the US government that it would support South African efforts to research the pebble-bed modular reactor (PBMR) nuclear technology is also a signal that the country is taking a more direct interest in South Africa's conventional nuclear endeavours. More specifically, this interest relates to the role of Westinghouse (the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, nuclear vendor, owned by Toshiba, of Japan) within what could be a multibillion-dollar, multisite, multidecade South African nuclear build programme. Until relatively recently, it appeared that French nuclear vendor Areva had something of an edge over Westinghouse, in the event that South Africa formally resurrected its pressurised water reactor (PWR) programme - the project, which has not formally resumed, was initially pursued by Eskom alone, but is now a joint government/Eskom programme, owing to the State utility's funding stresses. The ace up Areva's sleeve has not only been a strongly supportive government, but also its close relationship with French utility EDF. In fact, EDF, the largest operator of nuclear facilities in the world with 58 reactors in France, has officially identified South Africa as one of five countries (outside its home market) where it hopes to deploy its new- generation 'EPR' reactor by 2020 - the others being China, the US, the UK and Italy.’

Regulators Giving Update On Missing SC Uranium

Regulators are giving an update on their investigation at a nuclear fuel plant in South Carolina where uranium pellets went missing. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday is presenting results of an inspection at the Westinghouse Electric Co. plant near Columbia. The company told regulators in May it could not find a small container of low-enriched uranium pellets. Westinghouse's 550,000-square-foot plant near the Congaree River makes fuel rods for nuclear power stations across the country and employs more than 1,000 workers. NRC officials say they haven't found any evidence that the uranium ever left the site or that the public was ever at risk. A final report on the inspection should be available in several weeks.’

The dirtiest, most dangerous, and most expensive source of energy

’Nuclear energy is neither cheap nor clean, but the most powerful people on earth have always tended to portray it as such. In the post-WWII era the publicity blurb was needed to overlay the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki associated with the technology and to justify the immense expense of public funds for the construction of reactors also used for enrichment of radioactive minerals to weapons grade material. Having established that the deposit of nuclear waste in salt mines or in basaltic rock was unsatisfactory, the EU's Euratom agency together with the US and Japan developed a technology for vitrifying the waste and sinking it under the seabed. After US$120 M were spent on that project it was overtaken by the Chernobyl nuclear accident and enthusiasm for it waned. According to Italian investigators, the technology was acquired by an Italian engineer, Roberto Comerio who proceeded to tout it around the world ending up with a clientele of around 45 countries desirous of ridding themselves of radioactive waste. It remains unclear whether the Maltese registered Comerio Industries or the BVI registered, Oceanic Disposal Management Inc, both owned by Comerio, ever combined to build and utilise the system as intended but it is now clear that Comerio's enterprise utilised the Calabrian Ndrangheta to sink ships loaded with toxic and radioactive waste in the Mediterranean and in Third World Countries such as Somalia, Kenya and Sierra Leone. The discovery of one of these ships off the Italian coast on 12 September 2009 is likely to lead to the unravelling of one of the world's worst nuclear scandals. The risk of contamination of vast areas on sea and land is bad enough. However the deposit of such materials in unguarded locations around the globe, open up nightmarish vistas of nuclear terrorism utilising such waste to create a dirty bomb.’