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June 29, 2009

Nuclear News: Canada Reactor design puts safety of nuclear plants into question

Nuclear: Mickey Mouse energy solutionToday's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Globe and Mail: Canada Reactor design puts safety of nuclear plants into question
’Canadian nuclear safety regulators say they have underestimated the seriousness of a design feature at the country's electricity-producing reactors that would cause them to experience dangerous power pulses during a major accident. If reactors are not shut down quickly, their ability to keep radioactivity from escaping would be put to the test, according to an internal commission document. The document says Canada's seven nuclear stations, which all use Candu technology, have a feature known as "positive reactivity feedback," in which their atomic chain reactions automatically speed up if the water pumped into the reactors to cool them leaks, one of the worst accidents possible at a nuclear station. If reactors aren't immediately shut down during this type of incident, positive reactivity leads to a quick snowballing in the pace of nuclear reactions, which in turn could cause potentially damaging overheating. The document was obtained by the anti-nuclear environmental group Greenpeace through a federal Access to Information Act request. Positive reactivity is "the Achilles heel of Candu," said spokesman Shawn-Patrick Stensil, who contended it amounts to a design flaw that puts the safety of the reactors into question.’

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June 17, 2009

Nuclear News: US reactors to be abandoned as decommissioning cost rocket

Nuclear: Mickey Mouse energy solutionToday's big stories from the nuclear industry:

AFP: Funds to shut nuclear plants fall short
’VERNON, Vt. (AP) - The companies that own almost half the nation's nuclear reactors are not setting aside enough money to dismantle them, and many may sit idle for decades and pose safety and security risks as a result, an Associated Press investigation has found. The shortfalls are caused not by fluctuating appetites for nuclear power but by the stock market and other investments, which have suffered huge losses over the past year and devastated the plants' savings, and by the soaring costs of decommissioning. At 19 nuclear plants, owners have won approval to idle reactors for as long as 60 years, presumably enough time to allow investments to recover and eventually pay for dismantling the plants and removing radioactive material. But mothballing nuclear reactors or shutting them down inadequately presents the most severe of risks. Radioactive waste could leak from abandoned plants into ground water or released into the air, and spent nuclear fuel rods could be stolen by terrorists. During the past two years, estimates of dismantling costs have soared by more than $4.6 billion because rising energy and labor costs, while the investment funds that are supposed to pay for shutting plants down have lost $4.4 billion in the battered stock market.’

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June 8, 2009

Nuclear News: IAEA discovers traces of uranium in Syria

Nuclear: Mickey Mouse energy solutionToday's big stories from the nuclear industry:

China View: IAEA discovers traces of uranium in Syria
’CAIRO, June 6 (Xinhua) -- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Friday that it has found traces of processed uranium in a second site in Syrian capital Damascus, Pan-Arab Al-Arabiya TV reported on Saturday. The IAEA is investigating a U.S. intelligence report which claimed that a secret DPRK-designed nuclear reactor that Syria has almost completed for the production of plutonium.’

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