Platts - Monday, April 05, 2004 http://www.platts.com ------------ DOE under secretary to resign April 18 Washington (Platts)--2Apr2004 DOE Under Secretary Robert Card will resign effective April 18, the department announced today. In a DOE press release, Card cited "pressing family issues" as the reason for his resignation. He said he has no specific job plans now and "will have initiated no contacts with any company regarding long-term employment until after his final day" at DOE, according to the release. Card was sworn in as under secretary in June 2001. As under secretary, Card's responsibilities include DOE's nuclear energy program, the cleanup of its nuclear defense sites, and its civilian nuclear waste program. Earlier this month, DOE denied a London newspaper's report that Card was interested in heading the U.K.'s new Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Also today, DOE announced Beverly Cook's resignation, effective April 16, as assistant secretary for Environment, Safety & Health. Cook said she was resigning to be closer to family members in the Southwest, a DOE release said. Cook was sworn in as assistant secretary in February 2002. ------------ GAO: Paducah cleanup to exceed $7-billion Washington (Platts)--2Apr2004 It could take DOE 82 years and more than $7-billion to remediate the Paducah uranium enrichment site in Kentucky, according to a General Accounting Office (GAO) report released yesterday. DOE has projected that the cleanup will take until 2019 and cost about $1.6-billion to complete-- that's nine years and roughly $300-million more than its earlier estimates. However, GAO said the projection doesn't include the cost of other DOE site activities after the plant ceases operations, including plant decommissioning and decontamination, and long-term environmental monitoring. "DOE estimates these activities will cost almost $5-billion and bring DOE's total costs at the site, including the $823-million already spent, to over $7-billion through 2070 (in 2002 dollars)," GAO reported. The department began cleanup work at Paducah in 1988. The report, "Nuclear Waste Cleanup: DOE Has Made Some Progress in Cleaning Up the Paducah Site, but Challenges Remain" (GAO-04-457), is on the GAO Web site (http://www.gao.gov). ------------ British Energy misses full-year UK nuke output target by 0.54TWh London (Platts)--2Apr2004 British Energy's UK nuclear power plant portfolio failed to hit its revised full- year output target of 65.5TWh, the company said Friday. Output for the twelve months to Mar 31 was 64.96TWh compared with output of 63.76TWh the previous year, it said. BE's failure to hit the revised target was the result of unplanned outages at several stations which resulted in losses in excess of the remaining allowance, it said. BE's Hinkley Point B plant in southwest England encountered several problems including the shutdown of a generator transformer which required inspection and repair, resulting in a total loss of 0.5TWh. Hinkley Point has since returned to service, BE said. At the Dungeness plant on the south coast of England, the internal failure of a feed heater caused damage to pumps which had to be taken out of service for repair, resulting in a loss of 0.2TWh. The Dungeness reactor is expected to return to service shortly pending completion of the repairs and refuelling. ------------ Palisades sets Consumers Energy production record Washington (Platts)--1Apr2004 Palisades set a record for continuous production by a Consumers Energy generation plant, the company announced today. Last night, the 845- MW PWR broke the Consumers record of 345 days, set in April 2002 by the J.R. Whiting coal plant. Big Rock Point held the previous Consumers record for a nuclear plant, with a mark of 343 days in July 1977. Palisades' previous record was 337 days, Consumers said. ------------ Dounreay's decommissioning schedule shortened London (Platts)--1Apr2004 Dounreay's 60-year decommissioning schedule has been compressed 15 years, from 2062 to 2047, site director Norman Harrison said today. When U.K. Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) produced its initial 4-billion-pound (U.S.$7.4-billion currently) remediation plan in 2000 covering the former fast reactor site in Scotland, it envisioned cleanup completed in half the previously forecast time. The acceleration news came as the UKAEA began shifting to being a cleanup contractor for the new Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which assumes responsibility for UKAEA's sites next year. The site has three shutdown reactors and a range of fuel cycle facilities. Harrison said a new management structure is in place at Dounreay, designed "to sharpen the focus" on delivering the tightened cleanup plan. Some 300 volumes covering Dounreay site work over the next two years have just been submitted to the government, he said. A summary of the two-year work plan will shortly be available at (http://www.ukaea.org.uk/reports/sites.htm). ------------