Nuclear Power & Radiation

Plans for one of the first new nuclear power reactors in decades -- a third unit at Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, were put on hold by Constellation Energy. The Energy Department said the project is so risky that Constellation must pay high fees if it wants the U.S. taxpayers to guarantee construction loans. But those subsidies were not high enough for Constellation. The demise of its poster child raised questions about the so-called "nuclear renaissance."

"The Department of Energy and Washington State Department of Ecology have reached agreement on a consent decree that sets new court-enforced deadlines for emptying Hanford tanks of radioactive waste and treating the waste."

"The federal loan guarantee program and other aid for new nuclear plants may not be enough to induce Constellation Energy to build a third reactor at its Calvert Cliffs site, 40 miles south of Washington, the company’s president and chief executive said on Thursday."

"A Massachusetts Institute of Technology task force report called yesterday for the United States to create a few centralized storage sites for spent nuclear reactor fuel in the next decades, while researching new reactor designs that could reduce the challenges of permanent geological burial of nuclear wastes."

"The New Mexico Environmental Law Center today appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a lower court decision that allows uranium mining in the Four Corners region of New Mexico. The appeal claims the mine would contaminate drinking water used by some 15,000 Navajo people."

"A plan to ship 16 steam generators on the Detroit River and Great Lakes has sparked an international outcry. What alarms residents on the U.S. and Canadian sides of the waterways is the material inside the generators -- nuclear waste."

"Iran is steadily stockpiling enriched uranium, even in the face of toughened international sanctions, according to a U.N. inspection report that raises new concerns about the ability to monitor parts of the Islamic nation's nuclear program that could be used to make a bomb."

"Exelon, the nuclear giant that recently backed away from building new nuclear plants, is moving into wind."

In the debate over how to meet the nation's 'clean energy' goals, the nuclear industry seems to be winning.

"The Tennessee Valley Authority has lost nearly $50 million in power generation from its biggest nuclear plant because the Tennessee River in Alabama is too hot."