US: death threats to anti-nuclear activist.
(September 26, 1997) Bill Smith, executive director of Fish Unlimited, a conservation group on Shelter Island, has been threatened by a union worker of the Brookhaven national laboratory. Smith said he had received more threats, but he was not sure if they were from the same person. Other regional anti nuclear activists say it is very common to receive threats. The worker was arrested on September 11 and was released after receiving a summons.
Brookhaven has been under close scrutiny since last year, when lab officials acknowledged that radioactive tritium had leaked from a High Flux Beam Reactor pool. The reactor has since been closed (see WISE NC 473.4688: More on Brookhaven).
AP, 12 September 1997 and personal e-mail
Victory in Sweden. People from the area of Mala, in northern Sweden, have rejected plans by the Swedish nuclear fuel and waste management company, SKB to further investigate the idea of building an underground repository for spent nuclear fuel in the region. Results from a referendum held on September 21, showed 55% of residents opposed the plans. SKB expressed `regret' on the outcome, but seemed optimistic that their efforts were gradually gaining favour with the public, citing that in 1995 a similar vote in the Storuman region resulted in a 71% vote against similar work. We'll see!
Uranium Institute Newsbriefing 38
Catastrophic health conditions near Semipalatinsk. A report published recently by the Kazakh official gazette said that 500,000 people covering four generations had been exposed to radioactivity due to Russian nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. In villages around the site where 50,000 people still live, the barbed wire fence which prevented people from entering the site has been dismantled even though radioactivity is still strong in some spots. In this region close to China and Mongolia, health authorities continue to report many victims among those who were present during the atmospheric tests. According to the Kazakh environmental group, Nevada-Semipalatinsk, in 1990, 204 people in every 1,000 suffered from some form of cancer. The figure was 157 in 1980. According to a survey conducted by the Semipalatinsk convalescent home for children, 70% to 80% of the people living near the former test site now have a defective immune system. In certain districts of Semey region -- the new name given to Semipalatinsk -- life expectancy is no more than 48 years.
Between 1949 and 1989 when the site was closed down, some 460 nuclear bombs exploded at Semipalatinsk, of which 116 were atmospheric explosions.
AFP, 15 September 1997
US: Millstone-3 safety analysis incomplete. The chairman of the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, John Garrick, doubts whether the safety analysis of the Millstone-3 reactor has been undertaken in a good way. According to him, more systems of the plant have to be investigated before the reactor can restart. There has been no complete risk assessment for the unit that will restart in some weeks. The NRC temporarily shut down Millstone-1 since 1995, and units 2 and 3 since early 1996 due to violations of the license.
Nucleonics Week, 4 September 1997
Switzerland: Mühleberg continues operation while emergency cooling breaks down.Switzerland: one of three emergency back-up generators at the Mühleberg nuclear facility has suffered a complete breakdown. As a result, the reactor's emergency cooling system, designed to go into operation in the event of a rapid shutdown, is no longer fully functional. Despite the failure, the nuclear reactor is said to remain in operation. The plant's operators and the authorities are trying to cover up the incident. For reasons of security, Greenpeace demands that Mühleberg be closed down immediately. As one of the world's oldest boiling water reactors, Mühleberg's emergency power supply, even in the best of conditions, is minimal by today's standards. More recent boiling water reactors generally have between six and nine emergency generators and their emergency cooling system remains fully functional even if one or two generators fail. Meuhleberg has only three emergency generators. Instead of ordering the immediate shutdown of the damaged nuclear plant, HSK (Swiss federal regulatory authority for nuclear facilities) has given the Mühleberg operators fully 10 days time to repair the emergency power system, while the power plant continues to operate at "normal" capacity!
Greenpeace press release, 11 September 1997