Beijing approves French nuclear reactors
‘China has given final approval for the construction of a nuclear power plant with two powerful French-built reactors in southern Guangdong province, French power operator EDF announced yesterday. China's State Council, or cabinet, said last week that construction of the Taishan plant, which will have third-generation European Pressurised Reactors (EPR) from French nuclear group Areva, could go ahead, EDF said in a statement. "Everything is now ready at the site for the pouring of the first concrete," it said in its Asia-Pacific newsletter. The groundbreaking ceremony had been expected over the summer but was pushed back, with Areva citing bad weather and administrative hiccups.’

New nuclear for Sellafield
‘New reactors look likely near Sellafield after a large potential site for a power plant was purchased by Iberdrola, GdF-Suez and Scottish & Southern. Up to 3.6 GWe of nuclear capacity is planned. The trio has secured a 190 hectare plot of land to the north of the UK's main fuel-cycle centre, Sellafield, for £70 million ($114 million) according to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which sold the land. The sale came after an offer of a 250 hectare zone earmarked for divestment in the rapidly-developing UK new build market. NDA spokesman Bill Hamilton told World Nuclear News that the consortium would have the opportunity to "cherry pick" precisely the site it wants from the 190 hectares and return the remainder to the NDA. Anything returned could be combined with the unsold 60 hectares for a new sale in future: "This is not the end of the story for new nuclear at Sellafield." The purchase of the land marks a big step forward for the consortium, which said it is planning to begin construction of up to 3.6 GWe of new capacity at the site in 2015. "The consortium will also complete the preparation of a plan for maximising the contribution of UK-based suppliers and UK-based employees to the new development at Sellafield," it announced.’

China's Hu lauds North Korea, sidesteps nuclear dispute
‘BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao told a senior North Korean official on Wednesday that ties between the two nations have reached a new level of goodwill, avoiding direct mention of the North's nuclear dispute in his public praise. Hu lauded relations between the two communist neighbors while meeting Choe Thae-bok, a visiting senior official in the North's ruling Workers' Party, the China News Service said. Choe is considered a confidante of Kim Jong-il, the country's reclusive top leader. Kim gave an extravagant welcome to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao when he visited the North in early October to mark 60 years of official ties. Hu said the year of anniversary celebrations had "further deepened traditional friendship and expanded mutually beneficial cooperation, raising neighborly friendship between China and North Korea to a new level," said the report. Reports of the meeting from the official China News Service and state television, however, did not directly mention the North's disputed nuclear weapons program, which has drawn sanctions from the United Nations backed by China.’

Iran's response to atomic deal today
‘Iran's envoy to the UN nuclear watchdog agency will present Tehran's position on a draft nuclear fuel deal in Vienna today, a semi-official Iranian news agency reported yesterday. Mehr news agency said ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh would personally give Iran's response to Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), on the UN-drafted proposal for Iran to send most of its enriched uranium abroad. A diplomat close to the IAEA said the UN experts who arrived in Iran early on Sunday to inspect the new enrichment site about 160km south of Tehran also would return to Vienna today. Neither the IAEA nor Iranian officials have made any comments about the inspections of the new site, and it is not clear when and if the findings will be made public. Echoing a report by Iranian state television on Tuesday, Mehr said Iran would accept the framework of the UN agreement on enrichment but propose changes, a move that could unravel the plan and expose Tehran to the threat of harsher sanctions.’

Stimulus dollars going to accused contractors
‘President Obama and members of Congress told federal agencies earlier this year to avoid awarding funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to contractors with troubled histories of work for the federal government. But that isn't happening at numerous agencies, a Washington Post analysis shows. So far, 33 federal departments and agencies have awarded more than $1.2 billion in stimulus contracts to at least 30 companies that are ranked by one watchdog group as among the most egregious offenders of state and federal laws. On a larger scale, UT-Battelle, a partnership of the University of Tennessee and Battelle Memorial Institute, has been awarded 43 Recovery Act contracts worth more than $331 million by the Department of Energy for work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In every instance, competitive bidding rules were waived, but officials said the contracts were largely extensions of competitively bid work that was already underway at the site. UT-Battelle was cited in 2005 for serious nuclear safety violations at the former Cold War site.’

Los Alamos cleanup crew dodges explosives, radioactive waste
‘Sixty-five years ago, as scientists furtively built the world's first atomic bomb, they disposed of dangerous, toxic waste at this six-acre dump in Los Alamos, N.M. Now, a cleanup crew is gingerly picking through the waste in an attempt to clean it up, a process paid for with $212 million in federal stimulus money. Ken Romero, a machinist at the Jona Manufacturing Company, recently observed a startling reminder of just how dangerous the site remains. "You wonder what's going on," he told the New York Times. "One day we looked across the street and there was a guy in a full-body white suit, and he was just 100 yards away from us." The decontamination team consulted scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who came up with worst-case scenarios regarding the danger of the chemicals at the site, known as Technical Area 21, and then blew up the equivalent amounts of dynamite to test their safety measures. Officials are treating the area with extreme care, as they don't even know exactly what they're going to find under the layers of dirt and gravel. They suspect it may hold a truck that was contaminated in 1945 at the Trinity test site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated.’