Platts - Tuesday, March 29, 2005 http://www.platts.com ------------ Germany to invest $73-mil in nuclear waste facility in 2005 Freiburg (Platts)--29Mar2005 Germany's federal environment ministry has earmarked Eur56-mil ($73-mil) this year to start decommissioning at the Morsleben nuclear waste storage facility, in eastern Germany, the country's nuclear protection agency (BfS) said Tuesday. Final decommissioning of the facility, which has not received any waste since 1998, is scheduled to start in 2009 and is expected to take about 15 years. In 2000, Germany invested Eur20-mil in decommissioning work at the unit. German nuclear power plants operate intermediate storage facilities on site, and waste fuel rods are transported to reprocessing units in France and the United Kingdom. Intermediate storage facilities can store 80-170 castors, or about 1,000-2,000 tons of waste. This story was originally published in Platts European Power Alert http://www.europeanpoweralert.platts.com ------------ Nevada tells court to throw out DOE rail route Washington (Platts)--28Mar2005 DOE'S decision selecting a 319-mile route within Nevada for a new railroad line to the repository planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev. should be thrown out because the underlying environmental review was "fundamentally flawed and legally defective," Nevada asserted in a brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. March 24. Nevada, which last September challenged DOE's record of decision on the route selection, argued that DOE's final environmental impact statement on the selection was inadequate and that DOE usurped the Surface Transportation Board's "exclusive jurisdiction over common carrier rail projects." ------------ Alliant's Duane Arnold plant down to 16% capacity, US NRC says Washington (Platts)--28Mar2005 The Duane Arnold nuclear generating plant is operating at 16% capacity, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday in its reactor status report. The 583-MW unit was at 84% on Friday. The plant is scheduled to enter a refueling outage soon, according to the consultant that is managing the sale of the plant for its three owners -- Alliant Energy subsidiary Interstate Power & Light, Central Iowa Power Cooperative and Corn Belt Power Cooperative. The owners are seeking potential bidders on the plant and hope to receive bids by mid-June, Concentric Energy Advisors noted earlier this month. The Duane Arnold plant, located in Palo, Iowa, is slated to gain 15 MW in April through an uprate during a refueling outage, Concentric said. This story was originally published in Platts Natural Gas Alert http://www.naturalgasalert.platts.com ------------