The man had just spent five hours in Lake Huron after a boating accident, and wanted to call for help. (October 19, 2001) The response of Canada's nuclear industry to a possible terrorist threat was put into question when a man entered Bruce nuclear power plant undetected on 2 October. email from Bellona Foundation, 17 October 2001 Minatom has voiced its concern that the Kursk may be scrapped at the expense of other laid up submarines. Otherwise the Russian submarine decommissioning budget of the Ministry for Nuclear Energy (Minatom) will be used. The operation will cost around US$60 million and money is being collected by the Kursk Foundation. The reactor itself will be cut out, sealed off and tugged to the Sayda Bay where 30 reactor sections of dismantled submarines are already stored. Next spring, the submarine will be brought to the Nerpa shipyard at the Kola Peninsula where the nuclear fuel will be removed. It was transported to the Roslyakovo shipyard, 5 kilometers from Murmansk where the 24 cruise missiles will be taken out. (October 19, 2001) The sunken Russian nuclear powered submarine Kursk was raised on 8 October from the seabed of the Barents Sea. If the test results are positive a further referendum would be needed to determine whether or not a license should be granted for the waste burial itself. The approval must be ratified by a public referendum, which will not take place before 2002. The test gallery will be used to determine the suitability of the site for waste disposal. The site has been proposed as a low- and intermediate level waste repository site. (October 19, 2001) The Swiss canton of Nidwalden has approved an application for building an underground test laboratory in a rock formation at Wellenberg. Switzerland: go ahead for underground laboratory. Financial Times, 11 October 2001 AFP, 9 October 2001 Electrabel press release, 1 October 2001 Nuclear power currently supplies over half of Belgium's electricity (54.1% in August 2001). A bill stating that the country's 7 reactors will not be allowed to operate beyond their design lifetime of 40 years should become law before December 2002. (October 19, 2001) The Belgian government confirmed that it will introduce legislation to phase out the country's use of nuclear energy. Platts Nuclear News Flashes, 8 October 2001 The report said that although the backlog of licensing requests had been reduced, the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation does not have an established process to ensure that staff complete all the steps and can support their decisions with documentation. (October 19, 2001) An audit by the NRC Office of Inspector General concluded that NRC staffers do not always have the documentation to back up licensing decisions. NIRS press release, 12 October 2001 web site Reuters, 15 October 2001 It seems, therefore, that the industry is still being allowed to profit from the crisis. Following criticism from the Nuclear Information and Resource Service and others that information necessary for public participation in licensing proceedings was being withheld from the public, parts of the web site were reinstated on 17 October - but not the plant status reports. However, the first consequence was a rise in wholesale electricity prices because of the uncertainty arising from the lack of plant status reports. (October 19, 2001) The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) shut down its web site on 11 October, one month after the 11 September attacks, supposedly to avoid terrorists gaining access to sensitive information.
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