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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 22, 2003)
Stu< oLh ^ Student Counseling etp£in Tuesday, April 22, 2003 SCI|TEC THE BATTALIO Are you a good listener? Do you want to help others? fyduKteeM TtucUd.. .A(l mafiu tuelcme/ Brochure & application - Room 104 of Henderson Hall. For more information call Susan Vavra at 845-4470 ext. 133 or visit www.scs.tamu.edu/emergency/volunteer.asp Reactor leak found in South Texa Boric acid leakage not as severe as 2002 Ohio bread UNIVERSITY SPORTS & FAMILY MEDICINE Christopher W. Miars, D.O. Board Certified in Family Practice Certificate of Added Qualifications in Sports Medicine Subspecialized in sports medicine in addition to traditional family medicine Family Medicine Services • General Medicine • Annual Physicals • Dermatology • Gynecology • Pediatrics • Minor Office Procedures • Minor Emergencies • Office and Hospital care • Same day appointments Sports Medicine Services • Pre-participation Physicals • Sports Injuries • Joint Pain • Therapeutic Injections • Exercise Prescription • Osteopathic Manipulation • Structural Evaluations • Gait Analysis • Management of medical conditions related to sports The Physicians Centre • 3201 University Dr. E. #440 • Bryan,TX 77802 Office: (979) 776-2800 • Fax (979) 776-2805 Ag Class of 1994 By Mark Babineck THE ASSOCIATED PRESS JOB FAIR Can you afford not to attend the Brazos Valley Chambers of Commerce, Brazos Valley Workforce Centers, KBTX- TV & Texas A&M sponsored Part-Time/Full-Time Job Fair featuring entry-level to professional job openings? Hear Ye! Hear Ye! I Calling All Job Seekers! Saturday, April 26, 9:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. Reed Arena Texas A&M University For more information, Contact: Bryan College Station Chamber of Commerce 979-260-5200 Brazos Valley Workforce Center 1-800-386-7200 979-776-7444 HOUSTON — The unusual leak discovered beneath a reactor at the South Texas Project nuclear plant, while a cause for concern, is nothing on the scale of a similar problem being treated at an Ohio reactor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday. “There’s a huge difference in perspective here” between the South Texas leak, which caused a boric acid accumula tion smaller than an aspirin tablet’s worth of boric acid residue from cooling water, and an accumulation discovered last summer at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant west of Cleveland. “The Davis-Besse problem was with boric acid leakage on top of the reactor head,” said Victor Dricks, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Arlington, Texas. “It was a massive amount of boric acid crystal.” Dricks said employees used shovels and crowbars to remove the residue. “It was that bad, and because it sat on top of the reac tor vessel it had eaten a foot- ball-sized hole in top of the reactor head,” Dricks said. The seepage discovered April 12 at the South Texas Project near Wadsworth, about 70 miles south west of Houston, is different because it occurred on the outside of two instrument guide tubes where they enter the bottom of one of two reactors there. Test results indicate the residue came from reactor coolant fluid, plant officials said, which would be unique for the 69 U.S. nuclear plants like South Texas and Davis-Besse that used pres surized water reactors. “We just haven’t seen this before. Bottom temperatures are (about 40 degrees) cooler than they are at the top,” Dricks said, adding that stress corro sion cracking — if that were the cause — typically occurs at higher temperatures. Dricks added that inspectors found the problem at South Texas while following an inspection order related to the Davis-Besse problem during a routine shut- Coolant fluid leaked at nuclear facllit (To) 25 mi 0 25 km TEXAS South Texas Project nuclear facility Test results on residue founc inside a reactor containmenl building at the South Texas Project nuclear facility indicate it came from reactor coolantk OKLA. 1 N.M. Ba; Wadsworth, Gulf of Mexico TEXAS Austin . 0 250-<iij/ Matueonla Bu\ 0 250 km SOURCES: Associated Press; ESRI down of the Unit 1 reactor, which went online in August 1988. Plant manager Ed Halpin said the leak was not fast-growing and the guide tubes in question are not integral to the reactor’s operation. The facility and the agency, which has onsite inspectors at all 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States, had a tele phone conference call last week in which South Texas officials laid out their analysis. “We were impressed with the response they’ve taken with the problem,” Dricks said. “They committed to J closely with us.” South Texas must confers the commission before embaii on any repair plan, and thep) has pledged not to restart is everything appears fixed, The plant's other unit con ues to operate at full power! plant’s two reactors combi# produce more than 2j megawatts of electricity. The plant supplies powa customers from Houston Austin and San Antonio Corpus Christi. Junior Justin F No. NEWS IN BRIEF White House cybersecurity adviser Schmidt resigns WASHINGTON (AP) - White House cybersecurity adviser Howard Schmidt announced his resignation Monday, the second official to leave the security post in three months. Schmidt was the former chief of securi ty at Microsoft Corp. before taking the post in February. He succeeded Richard Clarke, who had spent 11 years in the White House across three administra tions, and was the president's countert error coordinator at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The White House confirmed Monday that Schmidt would leave at the end of the month to pursue other pending pri vate sector opportunities. When Clarke announced his resignation, he also warned of future attacks on the Internet. "As long as we have vulnerabili ties in cyberspace, and as long as America has enemies, we are at risk of the two coming together to severely damage our great country," he wrote. Tea may provide immune system benefits, study finds (AP) — A new study finds that tea boosts the body's defenses against infection and contains a substance that might be turned into a drug to protect against disease, researchers say. Coffee does not havetlf same effect, they say. A component in tea was found in laboia- tory experiments to prime the immune^ tern to attack invading bacteria, viruses and fungi, according to a study in tlie Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences released Monday. A second experiment, using human volun teers, showed that immune system I cells from tea drinkers responded five times faster to germs than did the blood cells of coffee drinkers. Dr. Jack F. Bukowski, a researcher a! Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School, said tlie results of their tests gave clear proof tha! five cups of tea a day sharpened tlif body's disease defenses. By Pt THE B Today at tie for softl the Lone St, mence as t A&M softb; No. 4 Texas the Longh College Stat an Aggie avenge a 1-0 Longhorns this month. The Aggi 12) will sc Longhorn te I eight of its College Station Utilities & the ^ A College Station Parks Department proudly present the ^ + sent the ^ + .uA* poo i Leon Russell w/ Bobby Hall Gary R Nunn w/Randy Rogers Marshall Tucker w/Tracy Conover SATURDAY, MAY 1 0 SATURDAY, MAY 1 7 SATURDAY, MAY 31 Rodney Foster w/Bonnie Bishop Earl Thomas Conley w/Diamondback, TX Killer Bees w/l-Tex SATURDAY, JUNE 7 SATURDAY, JUNE 14 SATURDAY, JUNE 21 Duck Soup llrout Fishing in America 1 w/Terri Hendrix Malford Milligan and Friends SATURDAY, JUNE 28 SATURDAY, JULY 12 SATURDAY, JULY 19 Indian Jazz Group w/The Big Apple Trio Hanna's Reef Big Otis 1 1 Wolf Pen Creek Amphitheater College Station, TX Br Bring your picnic baskets, chairs, coolers, BYOB. (No glass containers or pets, please.) For more information, call: (979) 764-3486 www.ci.college-station.tx.us m Water is Life Power is Progress Service is Pride (ojurerorey ppismmsJl Community Owned pARks & RECREAriON CoIIeqe Station tk Cf EQUICOM AD10 BROADCASTING KORA • KTAM • KXCS • KZTR