Free Republic

After years of dormancy, the U.S. nuclear industry is stirring again, hoping that a friendly White House and Congress will provide the tax dollars it needs for its first expansion in years to build more plants in places like Clinton, Ill. New construction likely is years away, but as part of its speeded-up permit process, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reached an initial conclusion last week that no environmental problems stand in the way of Exelon Corp. adding new reactors at its plant in Clinton, in central Illinois. A day later, President George W. Bush delivered a strong pitch for the...

WASHINGTON Westinghouse Electric was to present a bid to China on Monday for building four large nuclear reactors, backed by a pledge of nearly $5 billion in financial assistance from the U.S. government that Washington hopes will give the company an edge over competitors from France, Germany and other countries. .

China has big plans for nuclear power, hoping to build 27 new reactors at a cost of $1 billion each in order to quadruple capacity by 2020. That should take China to 36,000 megawatts, according to Zhang Huazhu, chairman of the China Atomic Energy Authority. “It is not easy to realize the target of 36,000 megawatts by 2020. It means we should build 27 nuclear power generators each with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts by then,” said Zhang, also vice minister of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. With nine nuclear power generators in operation, China...

A vanity thread. I've been saying the Israelis have been restrained by Washington from taking out the Iranian reactors until 'after the elections.' Now I am willing to call (two) shots: Boris says (a) 25% probability that they will hit the Iranian sites within a week; (b) 90% chance before 2004 comes to an end. Right now I think 50/50 that it will be a joint attack with the U.S. versus going alone. Any other freepers with crystal balls welcome to participate. --Boris

US likely to approve exports of nuclear reactors to China: official The United States' nuclear regulator said Tuesday it is likely to approve the export of US-designed reactors to China soon, giving American companies access to a multi-billion-dollar market. Nils Diaz, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told reporters it was reviewing export licenses for Westinghouse's recently approved "state of the art" AP-1000 reactor. He said he was unaware of any significant objections to exporting the technology to China. "The commission will actually vote on this issue hopefully in the next couple of months," Diaz told a news conference. "The...

The recent announcement of a deal for Israel to acquire thousands of Precision-Guided-Munitions (PGM) went largely unheralded by Elite-Media, who mostly yawned and ho-hummed the sale. One source, the Seattle Post Intelligencer did little more than the intellectually lazy approach, recycling an AP report but the numbers in the report were very telling: 3000 2000-pound laser-guided bombs, 1000 1000-pound laser-guided bombs and 500 500-pound precision-guided bombs. The most important number noted above is the huge number of 2000-pound PGM’s – these are heavy, penetrating munitions needed to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. The PGM’s also have a satellite-targeting option allowing the...

I need help in the wake of the earthquake today. My libby buddies in California are dizzy over the proximity of the quake to the reactor at Diablo Canyon. I was wondering if Freepers had some good suggested book resources on Reactor Design or that plant in particular about its safety elements. More importantly, I'd love to find an expose about how the anti-nuke nuts have prevented safer/stronger/more efficient reactors from being built. I haven't read much on this subject for about 10 years and could use a leg up! There might be some potential converts here!

NEW YORK (AP) -- The United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union on Friday said they are halting construction work on two nuclear reactors in North Korea, which is suspected of secretly developing atomic weapons. All four are members of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) executive board, which has been building the light-water reactors as part of a 1994 deal between the United States and North Korea. The reactors were meant to come online in 2007. The one-year work suspension will begin Dec. 1, KEDO said in a statement read by spokesman Roland Tricot at...

July 15, 2003 North Korea Says It Has Made Fuel for Atom Bombs By DAVID E. SANGER WASHINGTON, July 14 ?North Korean officials told the Bush administration last week that they had finished producing enough plutonium to make a half-dozen nuclear bombs, and that they intended to move ahead quickly to turn the material into weapons, senior American officials said today. The new declaration set off a scramble in American intelligence agencies ? under fire for their assessment of Iraq's nuclear capability ?to determine if the North Korean government of Kim Jong Il was bluffing or had succeeded in producing...

N. Korea informed U.S. that it finished reprocessing spent fuel rods. N. Korea told U.S. on July 8, 2003, that it finished reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods at Yong-byun nuclear facilities in N. Korea, according to the former (S. Korean) legislator Chang Sung-min(MDP) who was told about this from a high-level source in Washington, D.C. on July 12, 2003. He was told that, on July 8, in New York, N. Korea had unofficial working-level meeting with America. At this meeting, N. Korea informed America that the reprocessing of 8,000 spent fuel rods was complete on June 30, 2003, and that...

It seems that the cooperation between Russia and Iran will continue. Moscow will not stop cooperating with Tehran just to please Washington. We recall that this story has been receiving more and more attention after the G-8 summit in the Canadian town of Kananaskis. Russia is allegedly going to receive 20 billion dollars in return to its refusal to cooperate with Iran.

Federal regulators have no set requirements for checking backgrounds of nuclear plant security employees, and the Sept. 11 hijackers could have qualified to work as security guards, according to a report released Monday by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. The report also says most plants could not withstand a plane crash. Markey, a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has been a critic of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for years. After the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon, he demanded that the agency explain its security requirements for plant operators, including employee screening ad...