Platts - Thursday, July 20, 2006 http://www.platts.com ------------ BNG wants Cumbria to be "Silicon Valley" of the nuclear industry London (Platts)--20Jul2006 British Nuclear Group's commercial operations director Steve Morgan said July 19. In the past couple of years, the Sellafield site in Cumbria County has increased the number of contracts put out to competition from 18% to roughly 79%, he said. Now BNG Sellafield sees the potential for the Sellafield area to become "a nuclear enterprise zone" as competition continues to heat up, he told the UK nuclear industry's "Managing Nuclear Liabilities" conference at the University of Manchester. The new initiative would be known as the Sellafield International Nuclear Industrial Center, he said. "We'd like to have it become the clearing house for business opportunities" including forming partnerships and obtaining financing and equity , he said. For more news, request a free trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/ or subscribe now at http://www.platts.com/infostore/product_info.php?cPath=22_41&products_id=67 ------------ Nuclear waste chief asks Congress to remove repository roadblocks Washington (Platts)--19Jul2006 If the US Energy Department is to meet its 2017 deadline to open the Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel repository, then it will need to be unfettered by lawsuits and assured of adequate funding, the agency's new top nuclear waste official said Wednesday. Congress must pass legislation removing obstacles to the facility's opening and annual spending bills that substantially meet administration requests, Ward Sproat, DOE's director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said. On a conference call in advance of a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday on the Nevada repository, Sproat said: "The only people I can hold accountable are the Department of Energy people and organization...Congress can hold us accountable, but I can't reverse that." Meeting the deadline is "very much dependent on Congress enacting legislation," he added. DOE has sent Congress a proposal that would set aside land for the repository, give DOE access to water at the site and direct revenues from the Nuclear Waste Fund to the Yucca Mountain Project. The energy committee's chairman, Joe Barton, Republican-Texas, said Tuesday there was "a reasonable chance" the House would pass a "fix Yucca" bill during a lame duck session later in 2006. The Senate, however, has no immediate plans to do so. Sproat said the department plans to "meet or beat" its June 30, 2008, schedule for sending an application for a license to build the repository to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But he said that factors beyond DOE's control could push back the 2017 schedule, which he called the "best achievable." The project has been dogged by repeated lawsuits by the state of Nevada and environmental groups and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat-Nevada, who each year has prevented DOE from getting the money it says it needs to do its repository work. Sproat said the US government would rack up $7 billion in liabilities to utilities--associated with the failure to meet contractual obligations to take the waste--if the repository is not opened up in 2017 and lawsuits are not settled before that. Plaintiffs in the lawsuits seeking damage have put DOE's potential liability at closer to $50 billion. Sproat also said a plan offered by Senator Pete Domenici, Republican-New Mexico, the Senate Energy Committee chairman and the chairman of the energy appropriations subcommittee, to open up several centralized interim storage sites would not be easy to carry out. Domenici proposed the plan as part of the fiscal 2007 spending bill. Sproat said licensing and building storage facilities at already licensed reactors takes about five years. "To go with a greenfield site, that isn't already licensed, the licensing process is going to be a lot longer and to do that at multiple sites, I'm not going to say that it can't be done, but its going to be a challenge," he added. ---Dan Whitten, daniel_whitten@platts.com For more news, request a free trial to Platts Inside Energy at http://insideenergy.platts.com or subscribe now at http://www.platts.com/infostore/product_info.php?cPath=23_33&products_id=61 ------------ DOE plans to reach 2008 target for repository license application Washington (Platts)--19Jul2006 DOE plans to "meet or beat" a June 30, 2008 target date for the submittal of a repository license application to NRC, DOE waste program director Edward Sproat said July 19 during a teleconference call with reporters. Sproat was scheduled to present the department's new repository schedule at a House subcommittee later in the day. During the call, he said that DOE's ability to begin repository operations at Yucca Mountain, Nevada by March 31, 2017 was dependent on Congress passing the department's nuclear waste bill and on the absence of lawsuits and other stumbling blocks that could stall the program's momentum. Sproat said he also would work toward reining in the federal government's growing liability after DOE failed to begin disposing of utility spent fuel by a 1998 contract date. He cited settlement agreements with utilities and consensus building on Capitol Hill as two potential ways to reduce that liability. DOE has forecast the federal government's outstanding liability at $7 billion if a repository were to begin repository operations in 2017, he said. ------------ Cogemea Pierrelatte must keep enrichment level under 1%: ASN London (Platts)--19Jul2006 France's nuclear safety authority has ordered Cogema Pierrelatte to take urgent measures to keep the uranium-235 content of material at the TU5 plant under 1%, which is its licensed level. Keeping the enrichment level under 1% is the only measure for preventing criticality accidents at the plant, which converts reprocessed uranyl nitrate into oxide form. Cogema Pierrelatte (owned by Areva NC) began reconditioning drums containing liquid uranium effluents at the beginning of June, and, according to safety authority ASN, found several drums with the U-235 content exceeding 1%. All the drums at the facility are now being investigated, ASN said. ASN's deputy director general, Michel Bourguignon, in a letter dated July 18, ordered Cogema to send him within a month an action plan for getting the plant into conformance with its license, and to implement the plan within three months of its approval by ASN. The letter is on ASN's web site at www.asn.gouv.fr/data/information/29_2006_med_plte.pdf. For more news, request a free trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/ ------------ DOE announces target date for receiving spent fuel Washington (Platts)--18Jul2006 DOE now says it will begin receiving utility spent fuel in 2017, Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico announced July 18. "This is an ambitious schedule, but it's nice to actually see a schedule," Domenici said in a July 18 press statement. Domenici, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Appropriations subcommittee that controls DOE spending, said the schedule is based, in part, on DOE's submittal of a repository license application to NRC in June 2008 and NRC's docketing that application in September 2008. The DOE waste program has not had a target date for a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada since December 2004, when DOE abandoned a plan to begin operating a repository there in 2010. The 2017 target represents a 19-year delay in DOE disposal operations. DOE waste program director Edward Sproat is expected to explain the new schedule when he testifies at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing July 19. ------------ ITC to retain agreement barring Russian uranium dumping: USEC Washington (Platts)--18Jul2006 USEC, the sole US producer of enriched uranium for nuclear power plants, said the US International Trade Commission on Tuesday ruled that terminating an antidumping suspension agreement that limits imports of Russian uranium products would materially injure the US uranium industry. USEC said the ITC ruled in a 4-1 decision that lifting the 1992 Russian suspension agreement would likely cause material injury to domestic producers that include USEC, ConverDyn, the only US uranium converter, and Power Resources and Crow Butte Resources, the two largest uranium mining companies in the country. The decision complements a May 31 ruling by the US Department of Commerce that found dumping of Russian uranium products would likely recur if the Russian suspension agreement were terminated. ITC and Commerce analyzed the US uranium market as part of a "sunset review" of the Russian suspension agreement conducted every five years, USEC said. "We're pleased that the US government agrees that lifting the agreement that limits Russia uranium imports would undermine the domestic production of enriched uranium and the deployment of new uranium enrichment capacity," USEC President and CEO John Welch said. "Today's International Trade Commission ruling is an important step in maintaining a stable nuclear fuel market, which the United States needs in order to invest in advanced uranium enrichment technologies and build new domestic uranium enrichment facilities that will help fuel this country's nuclear renaissance," Welch added. For more news, request a free trial to Platts Electric Power Daily at http://electricpowerdaily.platts.com or subscribe now at http://www.platts.com/infostore/product_info.php?cPath=2_31&products_id=47 ------------ ITC to retain agreement barring Russian uranium dumping: USEC Washington (Platts)--18Jul2006 USEC, the sole US producer of enriched uranium for nuclear power plants, said the US International Trade Commission on Tuesday ruled that terminating an antidumping suspension agreement that limits imports of Russian uranium products would materially injure the US uranium industry. USEC said the ITC ruled in a 4-1 decision that lifting the 1992 Russian suspension agreement would likely cause material injury to domestic producers that include USEC, ConverDyn, the only US uranium converter, and Power Resources and Crow Butte Resources, the two largest uranium mining companies in the country. The decision complements a May 31 ruling by the US Department of Commerce that found dumping of Russian uranium products would likely recur if the Russian suspension agreement were terminated. ITC and Commerce analyzed the US uranium market as part of a "sunset review" of the Russian suspension agreement conducted every five years, USEC said. "We're pleased that the US government agrees that lifting the agreement that limits Russia uranium imports would undermine the domestic production of enriched uranium and the deployment of new uranium enrichment capacity," USEC President and CEO John Welch said. "Today's International Trade Commission ruling is an important step in maintaining a stable nuclear fuel market, which the United States needs in order to invest in advanced uranium enrichment technologies and build new domestic uranium enrichment facilities that will help fuel this country's nuclear renaissance," Welch added. For more news, request a free trial to Platts Electric Power Daily at http://electricpowerdaily.platts.com or subscribe now at http://www.platts.com/infostore/product_info.php?cPath=2_31&products_id=47 ------------