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New sirens to include battery back-up power  

LONDONDERRY TOWNSHIP, PA  (Nov.19, 2009)

Exelon Nuclear will begin a project next week to 

replace all 96 emergency sirens in the 10 miles around Three Mile Island Generating Station with sirens that 

include battery back up.  The first phase of the project will have contractors visit and identify certain features 

of each existing siren.   

The initial phase of this project will take approximately 60 days.  Installation of the new sirens will begin in 

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November 5, 2009

Series of cover-ups undermines faith in Exelon

 

By JANET TAURO

The radioactive tritium leak discovered at the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in April, a scant eight days after federal regulators approved Exelon's application to continue operating the nation's oldest nuclear power plant for another 20 years despite a long history of safety issues, is infamous to the concerned residents of the Jersey Shore.

Last week, the public learned that another leak in August spewed tritium at 500 times the allowable levels into the environment.

But what has not been widely publicized is that Oyster Creek officials misrepresented facts to state and federal regulators about prior radioactive leaks between July 2006 and September 2008.

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Hundreds of people and organizations have filed objections.

By Patty Henetz

The Salt Lake Tribune

Oct. 27, 2009

State water officials have decided to schedule a public hearing on a proposal that would transfer water rights amounting to billions of gallons from Kane and San Juan counties to a company that wants to build a nuclear power plant at Green River.

They're going to get an earful.

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Official NRC News Release: 

Oct. 30, 2009

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has cited Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., with four violations concerning improper disposal and transfer of tritium exit signs at its stores throughout the United States and Puerto Rico.

The violations, issued Oct. 28, concerned the improper transfer or disposal of 2,462 signs from Wal-Mart stores in states under NRC jurisdiction between 2000 and 2008, and the improper transfer of an additional 517 signs between various Wal-Mart facilities. The company also failed to appoint an official responsible for complying with regulatory requirements and failed to report broken or damaged signs as required.

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October 25, 2009

 

HARRISBURG - A bill to foster greater use of clean energy in Pennsylvania has become a moving target for environmentalists and industry groups.

The legislation means different things to different people and, therefore, it has engendered considerable debate as interests in Harrisburg attempt to stretch and pull the bill to meet their conception of what an economy run on clean energy should look like.

The bill's overall purpose is to require utility companies to purchase 15 percent of their power from clean and renewable energy sources by 2024. The current requirement, established in 2004, sets a goal of having 8 percent of purchases from alternate energy sources by 2020.

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A watchdog group opposed the license renewal, citing radioactive waste and the costs of dealing with the damaged Unit 2, but decided against a challenge.

Friday, October 23, 2009

 

BY MONICA VON DOBENECK mdobeneck@patriot-news.com

 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved Exelon Corp.'s request for a 20-year extension to Three Mile Island Unit 1's original operating license, which would have expired in 2014.

The renewal was expected. The nuclear power plant is in the process of replacing its steam generators and making other improvements. Its new license expires in 2034.

Three Mile Island Alert, a nuclear watchdog group, questioned the license renewal because of the radioactive waste that nuclear plants produce, the costs of removing fuel from the damaged Unit 2, the amount of water the plant uses and other factors.

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NRC memo:

    Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials in King of Prussia, Pa., have selected Adam Ziedonis as the new resident inspector at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Delta, Pa. 

    He joins NRC Senior Resident Inspector Fred Bower at the two-unit site, which is operated by Exelon Nuclear. 

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New York Times
October 15, 2009

By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON — Anything that hops, burrows, buzzes, crawls or grazes near a nuclear weapons plant may be capable of setting off a Geiger counter. And at the Hanford nuclear reservation, one of the dirtiest of them all, its droppings alone might be enough to trigger alarms.
A government contractor at Hanford, in south-central Washington State, just spent a week mapping radioactive rabbit feces with detectors mounted on a helicopter flying 50 feet over the desert scrub. An onboard computer used GPS technology to record each location so workers could return later to scoop up the droppings for disposal as low-level radioactive waste.
The Hanford site, overseen by the federal Department of Energy, produced roughly two-thirds of the plutonium used in the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, beginning in World War II and ending in the 1980s. Today it is the focus of the nation’s largest environmental cleanup, an effort that has cost tens of billions of dollars and is expected to continue for decades.
Yet the helicopter flights, which covered 13.7 square miles and were paid for with $300,000 in federal stimulus money, took place in an area that had never been used by the bomb makers.

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BY CURTIS MORGAN
cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com
Florida Power & Light will spend millions to assess whether the massive cooling canal system at the Turkey Point nuclear power plant is fueling salt contamination of the aquifer in South Miami-Dade County.
After nearly a year of balking at demands from water managers and county and state environmental regulators, FPL has bowed to expanded monitoring. It's a step the utility agreed to in its quest to complete an ``uprating'' plan intended to coax more power from its two reactors along Biscayne Bay.

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