Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Companies supplying components for the nuclear power industry are located throughout the United States, including a number in Maryland. These manufacturing firms have developed businesses providing components and equipment required for the maintenance and upkeep of the 104 operating reactors in the U.S. Unfortunately for them, the domestic market is expanding at a very low rate. Currently in the U.S., ground has been broken for five new reactors. These supplying firms would benefit if allowed to participate in the growing international market.

Companies supplying components for the nuclear power industry are located throughout the United States, including a number in Maryland. These manufacturing firms have developed businesses providing components and equipment required for the maintenance and upkeep of the 104 operating reactors in the U.S. Unfortunately for them, the domestic market is expanding at a very low rate. Currently in the U.S., ground has been broken for five new reactors. These supplying firms would benefit if allowed to participate in the growing international market.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has renewed the operating license of the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant for another 20 years. The power plant is operated by Exelon Generation Co. and is just across the Pennsylvania border from Cardiff. Its license approval comes after the plant received high marks for safety in its annual assessment by federal regulators earlier this year. "They operated in a manner that protected the health and public safety" of the people living near the plant last year, Mohamed Shanbaky, an official with the NRC, told residents attending the plant's annual safety inspection meeting in March.

The Baltimore Sun's front page on July 22, 1959, carried the news accompanied by a six-column photo: The world's first nuclear-powered cargo ship had been launched at Camden, N.J. The christening of the $47 million N/S Savannah was bigger than news about legislation to extend the GI Bill of Rights, bigger than a Cape Canaveral rocket launch, bigger, even, than a federal court ruling to allow the steamy novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover" to be...

WASHINGTON -- On the Internet, people can check on airline or train schedules, shop for Christmas gifts and gather images of everything from tropical fish to nude models. And, beginning in January, they can help make safety rules for nuclear power plants.The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has created what might be the first "virtual hearing room" on the World Wide Web. Baptized "RuleNet," the Web site is being promoted as an electronic forum in which the commission can gather comment and ideas nationwide from electric utilities, reactor manufacturers, safety groups, and anyone else who wants to weigh in.At first, it would be used to help the NRC write rules, but it could later be expanded to get comment on a rule that had already been drafted by the staff.

Tucked behind a ruined grain elevator at a pier along an industrial stretch of Baltimore's waterfront lies a still-gleaming white vessel that was once one of the nation's proudest maritime achievements — the only nuclear cargo and passenger ship ever built in the United States. She's the N.S. Savannah, a floating time capsule from the mid-20th century that has made Baltimore her retirement home. For a few brief years during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations she was a nautical superstar, touring the world as an ambassador for the peaceful use of nuclear energy and playing host to royalty.

A federal environmental review has found no reason not to permit construction of a third Calvert Cliffs nuclear power reactor in southern Maryland, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced Friday. The final environmental impact statement by the NRC and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Baltimore District recommends issuance of a construction and operating permit to Unistar to build a 1,500 megawatt pressurized water reactor near Lusby in Calvert County. Other regulatory hurdles remain.

A reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant has resumed operations after a planned refueling outage, owner Constellation Energy Nuclear Group announced Tuesday. In February, one reactor shut down after an electrical malfunction caused by melting snow on a leaky roof, triggering the other to shut down as well, a Constellation spokesman said at the time. One reactor returned to service March 1 after confirming there were no safety issues, but the second reactor was scheduled to be shut down for refueling.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors have found improvements in the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant's operations, safety and maintenance, an NRC official said yesterday.Larry Nicholson, the NRC's senior resident inspector at the power plant in Lusby, said a 15-month-long evaluation found improved written procedures, management and waste handling since last year.Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s twin-reactor plant, which has been on the NRC's "Watch List" for troubled plants since December 1988, was rated as having superior security.

WASHINGTON - Nuclear reactor operators have been ordered to check reactor vessels after the discovery that acid in cooling water had eaten a hole nearly all the way through the 6-inch-thick lid of a reactor at a plant in Ohio. The corrosion left only a stainless-steel liner less than a half-inch thick to hold in cooling water under more than 2,200 pounds of pressure. At the Ohio plant, Davis-Besse, near Toledo, the stainless steel was bent by the pressure and would have broken if corrosion had continued, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Tucked behind a ruined grain elevator at a pier along an industrial stretch of Baltimore's waterfront lies a still-gleaming white vessel that was once one of the nation's proudest maritime achievements — the only nuclear cargo and passenger ship ever built in the United States. She's the N.S. Savannah, a floating time capsule from the mid-20th century that has made Baltimore her retirement home. For a few brief years during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations she was a nautical superstar, touring the world as an ambassador for the peaceful use of nuclear energy and playing host to royalty.

A federal environmental review has found no reason not to permit construction of a third Calvert Cliffs nuclear power reactor in southern Maryland, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced Friday. The final environmental impact statement by the NRC and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Baltimore District recommends issuance of a construction and operating permit to Unistar to build a 1,500 megawatt pressurized water reactor near Lusby in Calvert County. Other regulatory hurdles remain.

A reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant has resumed operations after a planned refueling outage, owner Constellation Energy Nuclear Group announced Tuesday. In February, one reactor shut down after an electrical malfunction caused by melting snow on a leaky roof, triggering the other to shut down as well, a Constellation spokesman said at the time. One reactor returned to service March 1 after confirming there were no safety issues, but the second reactor was scheduled to be shut down for refueling.

Joseph Cunniffe sees the proposed third nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs as a huge opportunity for his Sykesville-based firm GSE Systems, which develops simulation and training systems for the power-generation industry. So did more than 100 companies that gathered Thursday in Baltimore for an event drawing suppliers and vendors looking to do business with Areva, the world's largest reactor maker, which is designing and building the proposed third unit with construction company Bechtel.

Constellation Energy Group's pending $4.5 billion deal to sell half of its nuclear power business to France's largest utility is one step closer to completion. The New York State Public Service Commission approved the acquisition Tuesday, saying that "no potential for harm exists" regarding market power or other negative effects for New York ratepayers. Besides Calvert Cliffs in Lusby, Constellation also owns Nine Mile Point Nuclear Unit I and II in Oswego, N.Y., and R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in Ontario, N.Y. The approval by New York energy regulators is the latest regulatory hurdle the Baltimore company has cleared since agreeing to the deal with Electricite de France.

Buffett group, CEG submit filings Baltimore's Constellation Energy Group and Warren Buffett's MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. have submitted regulatory filings with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Communications Commission related to Constellation's $4.7 billion sale to MidAmerican, the two companies announced yesterday. The deal requires shareholder as well as federal and state regulatory approval. The joint application with the NRC seeks the federal agency's consent to transfer control of licenses to MidAmerican for Constellation's Calvert Cliffs plant; Calvert Cliffs Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation Facility; Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station; and R.E. Ginna nuclear plant.

The federal government has agreed to remove radioactive soil by June from county-owned property on New Ordnance Road that once was part of an Army depot, provided the county removes several dilapidated buildings first.County officials said yesterday they might be amenable to removing the nine old warehouses if that will speed cleanup of the property. But if the cost is too high, the deal could be off."We're going to go out and look at the buildings and once we determine the cost, we'll get back to the federal government," said Michael Leahy, the county's land-use coordinator.

Glasnost came to Howard County with the visit of the Soviet Union's No. 1 firefighter to two county fire stations as part of a tour to learn Western ideas on combating radioactive fires and accidents.Lt. Gen. Anatoly K. Mikeev, chief of fire protection in the Soviet Union, concluded his two-week tour in Howard County after having visited a nuclear plant in Tennessee and having met with National Fire Protection Association members in Boston.He said he was impressed by U.S. technology but encouraged by his own country's system.