Platts - Monday, August 21, 2006 http://www.platts.com ------------ DOE Yucca Mountain correction action program must improve: DOE IG Washington (Platts)--18Aug2006 The US Department of Energy's correction action program for Yucca Mountain needs to be improved, DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman said in a report Friday. According to the report, the CAP is "not effectively managing and resolving conditions adverse to quality" at Yucca Mountain, the site of DOE's planned repository for civilian and defense nuclear waste. The report faulted the timeliness and thoroughness of DOE's corrective actions and continued weaknesses in the CAP "could ultimately delay issuance of the license to begin construction and operation of the repository," it said. DOE should ensure managers are held accountable for the quality of the CAP and should conduct effectiveness reviews to validate corrective actions, the report said. DOE management is responding to the recommendations, the report said. The report is available on DOE's web site at www.ig.doe.gov/igreports.htm#cal2006. ------------ SoCal Ed says tritium beneath San Onofre plant no risk to public San Francisco (Platts)--18Aug2006 Southern California Edison Friday said the tritium found in the groundwater beneath its San Onofre-1 nuclear power plant does not represent a health hazard to either plant employees or local residents. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday said SoCal Ed had begun investigating the source of tritium, which was discovered during reactor decommissioning. According to the NRC, the utility determined that water samples had tritium levels of 50,000 to 330,000 picocuries per liter. The agency said the levels were within acceptable ranges. SoCal Ed said Friday that the groundwater beneath the plant is not a source of drinking water for the facility or nearby communities. Wells, located approximately two miles from the plant, have been tested for radionuclides and found to meet all Environmental Protection Agency standards for drinking water, said the utility. ------------ NRC expecting applications for up to 27 new units Washington (Platts)--18Aug2006 NRC is currently expecting 19 construction permit-operating license, or COL, applications for up to 27 new nuclear units, the agency told key congressional leaders in its latest quarterly report, released August 18. The industry's interest in new plant licensing activities, and particularly the large number of combined COL applications expected to be filed starting next year, has continued to swell. NRC's updated chart shows that about a dozen projects are being considered for construction on greenfield sites. License renewals also has kept the agency busy. NRC said it has renewed the licenses for five more units since early May. ------------ APS to 'contest' Arizona regulatory staff finding on rate hike Washington (Platts)--18Aug2006 Arizona Public Service Friday said it will fight an Arizona Corporation Commission staff recommendation that the agency disallow roughly $17.4 million of a requested $45 million temporary rate increase the utility said it needs to cover additional costs following a series of outages at the Palo Verde nuclear station in 2005. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, APS said ACC staff filed a report Thursday that concluded that four of the 11 Palo Verde outages last year were "avoidable." Of those, the costs associated with three resulted in the recommended disallowance, the utility said. APS also said the staff report found that three of the outages were the result of "faulty or defective vendor supplied equipment," and concluded that "APS' actions were not imprudent in connection with these outages." The report, however, recommended that APS "evaluate the degree to which it has sought appropriate legal or other remedies," in connection with the outages. In addition, the staff report said additional investigation will "be needed to determine the cause of and responsibility for" the Palo Verde-1 outage associated with vibrations in one of the plant's shutdown cooling lines, APS said. The utility said the staff also recommended that the ACC establish minimum nuclear performance standards for Palo Verde, with associated penalties if the standards are not met, require APS to provide semi-annual operational reports to the commission and require APS to establish programs to manage and evaluate certain Palo Verde plant equipment. APS said it "disagrees with and plans to contest" the recommended disallowance, adding that under ACC regulations, prudent investments are "those which under ordinary circumstances would be deemed reasonable and not dishonest or obviously wasteful." The utility said it believes the expenses were "prudently incurred and therefore recoverable." The three-unit 4,996-MW Palo Verde facility is jointly owned by APS, Salt River Project, Southern California Edison, El Paso Electric, Public Service Company of New Mexico, Southern California Public Power Authority and the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power. APS, which holds the largest share at 29.1%, also operates the facility. ------------ Bruce Power takes initial step to explore new nuclear Toronto (Platts)--17Aug2006 Bruce Power has applied to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, or CNSC, for a license to prepare a site for the possible construction of new reactors, the company said August 17. If the license is granted by the CNSC, an environmental review could begin and could take up to three years to complete. A decision on new construction is still a few years away, the company said. The sprawling 2,300-acre Bruce property has six operating reactors at the Bruce A and B stations. Two more units are being refurbished, and there is sufficient property to construct another multi-unit generating station. In January 2004, Bruce Power announced it would consider potentially building new reactors. ------------ In surprise to uranium market, DOE to sell 700 mt uranium Washington (Platts)--17Aug2006 DOE surprised the uranium market August 14 by issuing a notice that it wanted to sell 700 metric tons uranium as uranium hexafluoride (about 1.8 million pounds U3O8 equivalent) in seven separate lots of 100 mt each. The current price of UF6 is about $135 per kgU, according to Ux Consulting. DOE wants to see proposals to buy the uranium by August 28. It says it will award sales agreements by August 31. DOE is selling the uranium to pay for the cleanup of government uranium contaminated by technetium-99. The contamination makes the uranium unusable for fuel in commercial nuclear reactors in the US. The fiscal 2006 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act authorized DOE to sell uranium to pay for the cleanup of contaminated uranium. The cleanup work is being done for DOE by USEC Inc. at facilities located at Portsmouth, Ohio. What surprised some market analysts was the amount of material DOE was offering for sale this time. Earlier this year, DOE sold 200 mtU as UF6 to Canadian uranium producer Cameco at a price of $119/kgU (NuclearFuel, 24 April, 15.) And there had been an expectation in the market that DOE would sell no more than 400 mtU before September 30, when its FY-06 ends. DOE is unsure whether Congress will allow the department to sell uranium in FY-07. If such legislation does pass, then DOE said it will have more flexibility to spread out delivery of the seven lots over seven months. If DOE can't sell uranium in FY-07, then a buyer or buyers would have to take delivery of all 700 mtU by September 29. ------------ Bruce Power applies to possibly build new nuclear reactor Washington (Platts)--17Aug2006 Bruce Power Thursday said it had filed an application with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to prepare a site for the potential construction of new reactors at its Bruce County facility. The Tiverton, Ontario-based company said the filing marks the next phase of a study that began in January 2004, when it announced it would consider the feasibility of restarting Bruce A Units 1 and 2, refurbishing its four Bruce B reactors when needed, and potentially building Canada's first new reactors in a generation. "We have done a lot of analysis work over the last two years, but to better define our options we now have to embark upon a more formal evaluation process," Duncan Hawthorne, Bruce Power president and CEO said in a statement. The company said any application to build new reactors would be subject to review under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and it expects that an environmental assessment could take up to three years to complete. Having filed its initial site license application, Bruce Power said it would await further direction from the NSC on the next steps in the regulatory process. Canada's only private nuclear generating company, Bruce Power currently operates six units and is in the process of restarting two more at its 2,300-acre site, which is already the source of more than 20% of Ontario's electricity. The company, however, said that all four Bruce B units and one at Bruce A will need to be refurbished or replaced between 2015 and 2020. The five units have a combined capacity of nearly 4,000 MW. Bruce Power said it would conduct an extensive environmental assessment and business case analysis to help it determine whether it makes economic sense to refurbish its existing units when required, replace them with new reactors or augment their output by building a third generating station at the site. The company also said it will consider the potential safety, environmental, social and commercial impacts of several reactor designs. Currently, all of Bruce Power's reactors are Canadian-designed CANDU units. ------------