NRC to hold hearing on NC uranium enrichment plant

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission wants to hear the public's views about a North Carolina facility using confidential technology to test whether lasers can be used to enrich uranium.

The Star News of Wilmington reports the public hearing Thursday will talk about the NRC's recent safety evaluation and environmental impact report on the experiment in creation fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

The NRC is reviewing a licensing application for the GE-Hitachi Global Nuclear Fuels facility near Wilmington. Enriching uranium with lasers could create it cheaper to fuel nuclear power plants that generate electricity. Nuclear weapons control advocates fear that allowing companies to use the technology raises concerns it can fall into the wrong hands.

Union Deal Reached in Dispute at Honeywell’s Metropolis Plant

The union representing about 230 workers at a input southern Illinois plant that makes nuclear fuel has reached a tentative three-year deal by means of the company that locked them out more than a year ago in Superman’s adoptive hometown, together sides confirmed Wednesday.

Terms of the deal involving Honeywell’s Metropolis plant be not released, pending a vote by the union’s members after bargainers initial resolve how to transition the workers back totheir jobs at the nation’s only plant so as to begins refining uranium for eventual use in nuclear power plants.

Honeywell said the union has tell the company it will there the tentative contract to the workers for a vote Tuesday. If the deal is accepted, the hourly workers by Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules have to be retrained and re certified before returning, supplanting the replacement workers who contain filled in since shortly after the labor dispute began in June of last year.

Nuclear plant sue Vermont to stay open

Owners of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant filed a federal lawsuit yesterday to avoid state lawmakers from shutting the plant down when its 40-year license expires next year. The Entergy Corp. lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Burlington, Vt., is estimated to force a legal showdown over whether state governments can claim a position in the oversight of nuclear power plants, which are regulated by the federal government. What the courts ultimately make a decision is likely to have significance for some of the nation’s 103 other operating reactors, particularly those in states that have similar concerns about their safety.

If the Supreme Court were to discard Entergy’s suit, other states could be empowered to pass legislation, as Vermont did in 2006, granting lawmakers the authority to agree or deny a plant’s license extension, according to legal scholars. “Despite the fact that Vermont Yankee is significant to the reliability of the New England electric transmission grid, emits virtually no greenhouse gases, and offers more than $100 million in annual economic benefits to the state of Vermont it has been completed clear that state officials are singularly focused on shutting down the plant,’’ said Richard Smith, president of Entergy Wholesale Commodities. “That has left us with no other choice but to seek release in the court system.’’

The move comes just weeks after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted Vermont Yankee approval to function through March 2032 and in the midst of controversy about its age and design. The plant has the same basic design as the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear capability in Japan that has had widespread radiation releases following a massive earthquake and tsunami there last month. The Entergy lawsuits argue in great part that federal, not state, law governs licensing and process of nuclear power plants, as well as radiological safety.

Nuclear expert hold court at Liberty

Two nuclear energy experts who advocate clean sources of energy told a little crowd at Liberty University how atoms are split to make electricity Wednesday, generate a few questions about the safety of that process. No one in the audience of about 30 asked a single question about uranium mining, although a mining expert helped create the presentation and several people in the crowd either support or oppose a plan to mine uranium in Pittsylvania County. Representing an industry-advocate group called Clean Energy America.

Engineers Mark Hollenbeck of South Dakota and Natalie Wood of Louisiana came to Lynchburg on a speaking tour of many Virginia universities, hoping to stimulate talk about the future of nuclear power. A few of the LU students asked about job prediction in the nuclear power industry, and Wood told them each of the nation’s 104 nuclear plants employs dozens of engineers. Hollenbeck, who is employed by Powertech Co., reply a question about nuclear safety that was asked by Del. Scott Garrett, R-Lynchburg, by saying most safety concerns raise in the United States are a “red herring” because power plants are closely watch by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Today’s young people don’t consider the Three Mile Island accident at a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, and neither do several of their parents, Hollenbeck said, so fears caused by it are disappearing. However, no one can see or feel radiation, “so it’s easy to scare people about the things of radiation,” Hollenbeck said. Actually, coal-fired power plants can emit more emission than nuclear plants because coal often contains uranium, he said.