ECA Update: October 26, 2011
Published: Wed, 10/26/11
BRC to hold public meeting on December 2 to present revised subcommittee reports
Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future October 25, 2011 The BRC will hold a full commission meeting on December 2, 2011.
The purpose of this meeting is to present the revised reports of the three subcommittees to the full Commission for deliberation.
The subcommittee co-chairs will discuss changes that have been made to their subcommittee report, and the Commissioners will engage in a public discussion of the proposed changes. Time will be reserved for public comment at the close of the day.
Minneapolis BRC meeting conference call information and agenda Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future Octobe 21, 2005
Information for Conference Phone Line for Blue Ribbon Commission/Council of State Governments-Midwestern Office Conference Meeting Minneapolis, MN October 28, 8:00 am-5:00 pm
Central Standard Time
Note: BRC has arranged to provide (one-way) call-in service for the October 28th meeting in Minneapolis. Due to the meeting format there are two call-in sessions--one for the morning
presentations, one for the public comments and meeting wrap-up in the afternoon. We hope this helps those who cannot participate in person.
The call in number is: 1- 866-906-7447
Morning Session
(8:00 am -noon, Central Standard Time)
The Participant code for the morning session is: 9606405
Afternoon Session
(3:15 -5:00 pm, Central Standard Time)
The Participant code for the afternoon session is: 1490647
An activist group has filed another lawsuit aimed at forcing the suspension of work on a new plutonium facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Associated Press reported on Friday (see GSN, Oct. 14).
The Los Alamos Study Group contends that the laboratory has not weighed less expensive plans as mandated under the National Environmental Policy Act. A federal court previously threw out another challenge to the laboratory by the organization (see GSN, May 25).
The Energy Department has quietly dismantled the last of its enormous B-53 nuclear bombs. Workers at a nuclear management plant just north of Amarillo, Texas, separated some 300 pounds of high explosive from the uranium that surrounds it inside the bomb.
It's a complex procedure. On Tuesday, Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told NPR's All Things Considered that working on the B-53 was like doing surgery on a small sedan.
The US Department of Energy either ignored or distorted information crucial to a lawsuit pending against it over the department's continued collection of a 1 mil nuclear waste fee from nuclear utility customers, even though the department dismantled its spent fuel program last year, state and industry officials told a US appeals court last week.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, representing state electric utility commissions, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and 15 nuclear utilities sued the department in March to force it to suspend collection of the waste fee.
After a Quake, 2 Yardsticks for Nuclear Inspectors Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times Green Blog October 21, 2011 Once the dust had settled after the Aug. 23 earthquake centered in Mineral, Va., the tweet-length description of the problem at the North Anna nuclear plant was that the ground motion was bigger than what the reactors were designed to deal with, which is highly unusual.
But in more than 100,000 hours of inspections, only cosmetic damage has been found, engineers say.
The quake's severity had mostly been judged by a regulatory standard for a quake's ground motion known as "safe shutdown earthquake," and the shaking in one direction on Aug. 23 exceeded that level.
But at a two-hour briefing of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday, commission members, staff engineers and executives of the plant owner, Dominion, discussed whether a different yardstick -- the total amount of energy the quake delivered -- was more relevant.
Radiation doses from an accident at Savannah River Site could be 2.4 times higher than previous models have shown, according to experts who found flaws in data used to calculate such impacts.
The site's contractor, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, asked two atmospheric dispersion modeling specialists and a National Weather Service meteorologist to evaluate the methods used at SRS to determine the extent and severity of radioactive material that could be spread from an earthquake, explosion or other disaster.
Frank Munger: Delay nuke cleanup for 50 years? Frank Munger, Atomic City Underground October 19, 2011 So many needs and not so many dollars.
That's a dilemma facing many folks today in this economy. It's also the crux of discussions between the U.S. Department of Energy and environmental regulators as they try to establish -- or re-establish -- schedules for completing the cleanup projects in Oak Ridge.
Oral history records 'lessons learned' in Yucca Mountain fight Steve Tetreault, Las Vegas Review-Journal October 24, 2011 WASHINGTON -- With the Yucca Mountain program seeming to grow smaller in Nevada's rearview mirror, veterans of the nuclear waste wars are compiling oral histories to preserve recollections of the long and controversial repository battle with the federal government.
One such "lessons learned" venture has gone live in Eureka County. It contains transcripts and video of interviews with two dozen residents, local and state officials, consultants and activists.
A Department of Energy documentary about Hanford now is available online.
The Area: A Journey through the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is posted at youtube.com/hanfordsite.
When recent college graduate Cameron Salony came to work at Hanford, he created a video as he learned about the nuclear reservation.
The 28-minute film includes interviews with former and current workers, regulators and Hanford managers and a tour of historic B Reactor.
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