Saturday, August 5, 2006
Three of Sweden’s ten nuclear reactors have been shut down due to safety concerns following an incident last week at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, in which the reactor cooling systems failed. The reactor has since been shut down there. After the incident, the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, SKI asked all the nuclear power plants to demonstrate that the same failure could not happen in them. On Wednesday, two more reactors at Oskarshamn were shut down after the operator said their safety could not be guaranteed.
Last week’s incident at the Forsmark plant was triggered by a short circuit that cut power to the reactor cooling system. Two of the four backup generators also failed to start, but the remaining two worked and were sufficient to meet the plant’s needs. Greenpeace reports that the fault in the backup power systems were traced to new equipment installed in 1993.
The spokesman of the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate Anders Bredfell denied that there was any danger of a meltdown, adding that there was also a backup gas turbine to power the cooling system in an emergency.
However, Lars-Olov Höglund, who was responsible for the nuclear plant Forsmark for many years, said the incident was the most dangerous one since Chernobyl and Three Mile island, and that a meltdown was avoided only by pure luck. His views have however been questioned as he is involved in litigation with the Swedish nuclear industry and is known as an outspoken nuclear critic. Researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology as well as the personnel at the power plant were critical of Höglunds’ view.
Speaking to BBC News, SKI spokesman Anders Bredfell said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was informed of the incident as required and that the incident classes as a ‘2’ in the 0-7 scale used by the IAEA to assess the severity of the incident.
Another reactor in Forsmark and a fifth at Ringhals nuclear power plant have been offline due to planned maintenance work. With five of its ten reactors down, Sweden’s power generation capacity is down by almost a fifth.
The environmental group Greenpeace called on the government to shut down all reactors and probe whether the fault was a generic one. The Green Party has called for an independent investigation of the incident. Sweden is scheduled to retire all its nuclear power plants in the next few decades, as decided by a referendum in 1980.
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September
7
Barry Bonds guilty of obstruction
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Barry Bonds, a United States baseball player, has been found guilty of one count of obstructing justice for giving an evasive answer to a federal grand jury under oath when asked whether he had ever received drugs necessitating a syringe.
The judge declared a mistrial on three other obstruction of justice counts, the three charges that Bonds made false statements when he said to a grand jury in December 2003 that he never knowingly used steroids or human growth hormones given to him by his personal trainer, and that he permitted only doctors to give him injections.
The charge that Bonds was convicted of does not mention steroids.
The conviction comes after a seven year prosecution of Bonds, stemming from the investigation of Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BELCO) begun in 2002. Bonds appeared in an advertisement for BELCO which was reportedly selling designer steroids and other drug paraphernalia to professional athletes. Thirty athletes were called to answer questions before the grand jury. Bonds had been given immunity for his testimony.
“This case is about upholding one of the most fundamental principles in our system of justice—the obligation of every witness to provide truthful and direct testimony in judicial proceedings,” said federal prosecutor Melinda Haag. “In the United States, taking an oath and promising to testify truthfully is a serious matter. We cannot ignore those who choose instead to obstruct justice. We will decide whether to seek a retrial of the defendant on the remaining counts as soon as possible.”