News

April 1, 2009 

By Ben Leach

The Oyster Creek Generating Station in Lacey Township, Ocean County, is expected to receive a license to operate for another 20 years by next Thursday.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 3-1 at a Wednesday hearing to reject arguments from a coalition of citizens groups that the nuclear plant is unsafe to operate beyond 2009.

As far as the NRC is concerned, the hearing process is over and it will move forward with issuing a renewed license, said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the NRC.

 PARIS – The French government offered for the first time Tuesday to compensate victims of nuclear tests in Algeria and the South Pacific, bowing to decades of pressure by people sickened by radiation — and seeking to soothe France's conscience. "It's time for our country to be at peace with itself, at peace thanks to a system of compensation and reparations," French Defense Minister Herve Morin said in presenting a draft law on the payouts.

 Friday, Mar. 27, 2009

Three Mile Island at 30: Nuclear Power's Pitfalls

By Michael Grunwald

If the Three Mile Island atomic reactor near Harrisburg hadn't melted down 30 years ago this Saturday...well, there probably would have been an accident somewhere else. The entire U.S. nuclear industry was melting down in the 1970s, irradiated by spectacular cost overruns, interminable delays and public outrage. Forbes later called its collapse "the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale."

Thirty years ago today, Temple resident Robert M. Dreibelbis Sr., a Met-Ed executive, was plunged into uncharted territory by the worst nuclear accident the U.S. had ever known.

By Jason Brudereck

Reading Eagle

Nearly four hours into the accident, Bob Dreibelbis was getting ready to leave his Temple home for work like any other day.

Then the phone rang.

Robert M. Dreibelbis Sr., purchasing manager for the electric utility Met-Ed, answered and found himself speaking to a Met-Ed engineering supervisor whose responsibilities included Three Mile Island.

It was 7:45 a.m. March 28, 1979, when the engineering supervisor called to tell Dreibelbis he had to quickly procure a helicopter to fly two men from the nuclear plant on an island three miles down river from Harrisburg because they had been exposed to radiation.

By Ad Crable, Lancater New Era 

The irony is that 30 years after the most infamous U.S. accident since the splitting of the atom, there is talk of a nuclear-power revival, driven by greenhouse-gas concerns.

A separate reality is that three decades after the iconic partial-meltdown at Three Mile Island, the nuclear plant's surviving Unit 1 reactor is almost assured of soon receiving government permission to continue operating through 2034.

Is that a good thing?

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will conduct an informational open house on Tuesday, March 31, regarding the agency’s annual assessment of safety performance for the Beaver Valley nuclear power plant.

The open house, which will take place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Shippingport Community and Municipal Center, 164 State Road 3016 in Shippingport (Beaver County), Pa., will provide members of the public with an opportunity to learn first-hand from NRC staff members about performance at the plant during 2008. Unlike the standard meeting format, the setting will allow citizens to discuss plant-related topics on a one-on-one basis with NRC inspectors assigned to the plant and their NRC Region I supervisor.