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When it planned the Callaway nuclear plant in the mid-1970s, Union Electric Co. had a straightforward, if wishful, strategy for managing the still-radioactive used fuel: Cool it in water for a few years, then haul it away for reprocessing or permanent storage.

But the permanent solution never materialized, as the federal government failed on its promise to build a geologic repository. Almost 27 years later, the tens of thousands of uranium-filled fuel rods removed from Callaway’s reactor core are still steeping in the same 40-foot-deep stainless steel-lined pool

Pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Inc. said Friday it entered into two accelerated share repurchase deals with Morgan Stanley for a total of about $1.7 billion.

The north St. Louis County-based company said it will receive about 29.4 million shares initially. It then will be required to deliver shares of its stock or the cash value to Morgan Stanley or will receive more shares from Morgan Stanley, depending on the daily volume-weighted average prices per share of the stock after a valuation period.

The accelerated stock repurchases are expected to end in the fourth quarter. Shares will be bought pursuant to a share repurchase program previously announced by Express Scripts.

Shares of Express Scripts fell 60 cents to $58.93 in morning trading Friday.

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BEIJING

The chief executive of United Technologies Corp. said Tuesday that rising commodity prices and supply chain disruptions in Japan are causing some concerns, but orders are rising and the weak dollar is boosting the conglomerate’s exports.

Louis Chenevert, CEO of the parent company of Sikorsky Aircraft, Otis elevator and other businesses, said at an investor analyst conference Tuesday that higher gas prices and inflation worries will likely crimp consumer spending. It’s also expected to affect subsidiary Carrier’s air conditioning sales and airline customers of aviation subsidiaries Pratt & Whitney and Hamilton Sundstrand.

However, he said the problems, which include supply interruptions in Japan following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, are “well manageable within the UTC scope.”

He also said the weaker dollar “will have some benefits,” because they make the company’s goods cheaper abroad.

About 60 percent of United Technologies’ $54.3 billion in revenue last year was from sales outside the United States.

Chenevert said the Hartford-based company also benefits from continued strength in orders “across the board.” He singled out gains at Carrier, which has benefited from its improving transport refrigeration business and restructuring by United Technologies.

“The bottom line is that Carrier is very well positioned to capitalize on market recovery and growth,” Chenevert said.

United Technologies raised its 2011 profit guidance last month to between $5.25 and $5.40 per share from $5.20 to $5.35 per share. Chenevert backed the guidance, saying he’s “highly confident” in the outlook.

Chenevert said sales in emerging markets in Brazil, China, India and Russia accounted for 20 percent of total sales, the first time sales from those markets outpaced military sales, which accounted for 18 percent of total revenue.

In China, he said the fastest growth is in central and western provinces. At Otis, 20 percent of new equipment sales in China were from central and western provinces six years ago, Chenevert said. That’s expected to jump to 40 percent in the next two years, he said.

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Japan will maintain atomic power as a major part of its energy policy despite the country’s ongoing nuclear crisis at tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, a top official said Sunday.

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku also said the government has no plans to shut down any more functioning nuclear reactors other than three at the Hamaoka power plant in central Japan. The plant was asked Friday to halt the units until a seawall is built and backup systems are improved at Hamaoka.

“Our energy policy is to stick to nuclear power,” Sengoku said on a weekly talk show on public broadcaster NHK.

He said Hamaoka was an exception and that the government’s closure request Friday did not mean a departure from its nuclear-reliant policy.

Chubu Electric Power Co., which runs the three Hamaoka reactors, postponed its decision Saturday on the government’s shutdown request.

The main concern is that shutting down the reactors would likely worsen power shortages expected this summer.

Nuclear energy provides more than one-third of Japan’s electricity. Since the March 11 disasters, buildings have reduced lighting, stores have trimmed service hours and subway operators have shut air conditioning to join a nationwide conservation effort.

The government has been reviewing the safety of the country’s 54 atomic reactors since a March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in the north. The disaster left more than 25,000 people dead or missing on the northeast coast and triggered the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.

The Hamaoka plant, which is about 125 miles (200 kilometers) west of Tokyo, in an area where a major quake is expected within decades, has been a major concern for years.

However, Sengoku said there is “no need to worry” about other plants in the country. “Scientifically, that’s our conclusion at the moment,” he said.

Chubu Electric executives failed to reach a decision Saturday over the shutdown request and will meet again after the weekend, company official Mikio Inomata said. After the meeting, company chairman Toshio Mita left for Qatar to negotiate on liquefied natural gas supplies.

At issue is how to make up for the power shortages that would result from the shutdown of the three reactors. Inomata said they account for more than 10 percent of the company’s power supply.

Chubu Electric has estimated maximum output of about 30 million kilowatts this summer with the three Hamaoka reactors running, with estimated demand of about 26 million kilowatts.

“It would be tight,” Inomata said, adding that officials are discussing the possibility of boosting output from gas, oil and coal-fueled power plants and purchasing power from other utility companies payday loans.

The Hamaoka plant is a key power provider in central Japan, including nearby Aichi, home of Toyota Motor Corp.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Friday that the closure request was for the “people’s safety.”

He noted that experts estimate there is a 90 percent chance that a quake with a magnitude of 8.0 or higher will strike the region within 30 years.

“That makes Hamaoka an exceptional case,” Kan told reporters Sunday, saying the plant is the only one subject to closure for a tsunami resistance upgrade. Kan also urged Chubu executives “to understand.”

Residents of Shizuoka prefecture, where Hamaoka is located, have long demanded a shutdown of the plant’s reactors. About 79,800 people live within a 6-mile (10-kilometer) radius of the complex.

Since the March 11 disasters, Chubu Electric has drawn up safety measures that include building a 40-foot-high (12-meter-high) seawall nearly a mile (1.5 kilometers) long over the next two to three years, company officials said. Chubu also promised to install additional emergency backup generators and other equipment and improve the water tightness of the reactor buildings.

The Hamaoka plant lacks a concrete sea barrier now. Sand hills between the ocean and the plant are about 32 to 50 feet (10 to 15 meters) high, deemed enough to defend against a tsunami around 26 feet (8 meters) high, officials said. The operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co., has said the tsunami that wrecked critical power and cooling systems there was at least 46 feet (14 meters) high.

On Sunday, the government approved TEPCO’s plan to allow workers return to Fukushima Dai-ichi’s No. 1 reactor building to install a new cooling system after leaving its main door open overnight for ventilation, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the Nuclear Industry and Safety Agency.

Radioactivity inside the building has fallen to levels deemed safe for people wearing protective suits to enter, Nishiyama said. Workers rapidly installed air filtering equipment in there Thursday _ their first entry since shortly after the tsunami.

“We judge the environment has improved to one that allows people to enter and work,” Nishiyama said.

Workers later Sunday removed air-filtering ducts and machines, leaving holes on the wall unplugged and the door open until Monday morning, when air monitoring staff are to enter for a final check, TEPCO said.

TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said some air may escape through the entrance but that radioactivity is too low to cause health risks.

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St. Louis and Missouri haven’t always been on the same page when it comes to economic strategy, but at least now the state and its largest metro area should be reading from the same playbook.

Gov. Jay Nixon’s strategic economic plan, unveiled Monday, is remarkably similar to the five-year plan that the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association announced last year. Both documents emphasize work force development and entrepreneurship, and they target roughly the same industries for growth.

The similarities shouldn’t be surprising. Both the RCGA and the state hired Market Street Services, an Atlanta consulting firm, to write the plans. As a result, RCGA President Richard Fleming says, “there’s a very strong alignment and a very clear focus going forward.”

That’s good, because officials in Jefferson City often seem to forget that metro St. Louis accounts for 45 percent of the state’s economy. A 92-page plan that prominently targets key St. Louis industries like aerospace and health care should be a good teaching tool for rural legislators.

The state’s plan, like all such efforts, is long on superlatives. We don’t just want to export more, we want a “best in class foreign trade initiative.” There’s also a bit of wishful thinking, such as the idea that Missouri could “one day” persuade Kansas and Illinois to stop recruiting companies across the state line.

What sets this document apart from past efforts, though, is its depth of detail. A 156-page supplement on seven targeted industry clusters, for example, explores the work force needs of advanced manufacturing companies and the many research assets the state has in biosciences.

And while the overall tone is upbeat, the study’s authors aren’t afraid to criticize. They say the Missouri Partnership, a state-funded marketing entity, produces too many printed materials while its website doesn’t rank very highly in search-engine results payday loans.

The plan’s eight strategic initiatives are supplemented with 28 action items, including a few that will require legislative approval. An overhaul of state tax-credit programs, an angel investor tax credit, and a science and technology innovation fund are among the plan’s recommendations that were already being debated in the Legislature.

With a little more than a month left in this year’s legislative session, the plan could be seen as an attempt to win support for Nixon’s economic agenda. In a conference call, Nixon mentioned several times that he wants the Legislature to approve his proposal for more job-training funds, but he said the plan also covers many items that don’t need legislative approval.

Some of the recommendations are already being implemented. The Missouri Partnership, for example, is already adapting its marketing materials as a result of the report, said John Fougere, a spokesman for the Department of Economic Development.

Other recommendations will take years to implement but, if the plan is carried out, it will mark a big change in Missouri’s approach to attracting jobs and investment. Instead of relying mostly on smokestack-chasing and real estate-oriented incentives, the state will be encouraging college graduates to stay here and helping small businesses grow. It will also be aiding entrepreneurs who start businesses and opening new export offices to promote Missouri products in places like South America.

If Missouri follows its new blueprint, the state also will have to do business in partnership with its largest metropolitan area. That may be the most refreshing change of all.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living ….

“Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.”

Kingdom Holding Co., the investment company headed by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, and Bahrain’s Batelco Group launched a joint bid Sunday for telecom Zain’s Saudi operations.

The two suitors didn’t say how much they were offering for the 25 percent stake, which they previously had pursued separately. Those earlier offers were unsuccessful.

Kuwait-based Zain has been seeking a buyer for its Saudi division as part of a $12 billion deal for the parent company from Etisalat, a state-run telecom headquartered in Abu Dhabi that has expanded rapidly beyond its home market in the United Arab Emirates.

Zain owns a quarter of the Saudi division that bears its name. Another 45 percent is publicly traded, with the rest held by private shareholders.

Batelco CEO Peter Kaliaropoulos said he is confident a successful joint KHC-Batelco bid will create additional value for his company’s shareholders. He described Batelco’s role as a “technical partner” to KHC in pursuing the deal.

“We value (KHC’s) leadership and we look forward to supporting them through an effective technical and business partnership,” he said no fax payday loan.

Bahrain’s government, which is facing stiff and prolonged opposition from anti-goverenment protesters, owns more than half of Batelco. The company provides telecom services under its name in the island kingdom and Egypt, and owns stakes in five other telecom firms in the Mideast and India.

KHC’s investments include stakes in a number of blue-chip Western companies, including Citigroup Inc. and News Corp.

A Zain spokesman said the company would comment only after its board had met and made a decision on the offer. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with company policy.

The offer is good until Monday morning.

Etisalat launched its bid for Zain in September, but the takeover effort has dragged on longer than it expected.

Zain must dispose of its Saudi stake to satisfy regulators because Etisalat already has a stake in mobile operations in the kingdom.

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European Central Bank Executive Board members Jose Manuel Gonzalez-Paramo and Lorenzo Bini Smaghi signaled they may support raising interest rates next month.

A rate increase in April is “possible but not certain.” Gonzalez-Paramo told reporters in Cape Town today. “Clearly the risks to inflation are on the upside and it is the mission of the ECB to prevent those from materializing, so we are ready.”

Bini Smaghi said in Paris today that a failure to lift borrowing costs in response to faster headline inflation would make the monetary policy stance “more accommodative” and “over time fuel core inflation.”

ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet took investors and economists by surprise yesterday when he said the central bank may raise borrowing costs next month to prevent faster inflation from becoming entrenched. The inflation rate rose to 2.4 percent in February, the third straight month it has breached the ECB’s 2 percent limit.

The central bank’s benchmark interest rate has been at a record low of 1 percent since May 2009. Economists at UniCredit Group, Morgan Stanley, Nomura International and JPMorgan now expect the ECB to boost its main lending rate to 1.75 percent by the end of the year.

Asked whether the central bank is embarking on a series of rate increases, Gonzalez-Paramo said: “we are addressing risks to price stability at this moment. We are not pre-committing to anything more than that.”

Stronger Economy

The ECB yesterday raised its inflation and growth forecasts. Inflation will average 2.3 percent this year, up from a December forecast of 1.8 percent, before slowing to 1.7 percent in 2012, the projections show. The 17-nation euro-area economy will expand 1.7 percent this year and 1.8 percent next, up from previous forecasts of 1.4 percent and 1.7 percent, according to the ECB.

“Sooner or later we need to raise the interest rate if inflationary pressure becomes too high,” ECB council member Nout Wellink said in an interview with a magazine published by the Dutch central bank, which he heads. “That can be done without difficulty when the economy has come onto a reasonable growth path.”

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy led calls for European Union sanctions against Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi as political unrest continued in the North African nation.

Merkel said that Qaddafi’s televised speech yesterday in which he threatened his own people with civil war was “alarming.” Sarkozy said today that France may suspend economic and commercial relations with Libya, according to an e- mailed statement in Paris.

The European Union in Brussels is suspending negotiations with the Libyan government on an EU-Libya Framework Agreement and said the 27-nation bloc “is ready to take further measures.” EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said “those responsible for the brutal aggression and violence against civilians will be held to account.”

Qaddafi has vowed to fight a growing rebellion until his “last drop of blood,” as army units defected and a former aide said his regime may crumble within days. Human Rights Watch says 300 people have already died in the violence.

Sarkozy said he is asking “European partners to rapidly adopt concrete sanctions so that those who are implicated in the violence know that they must bear the consequences of their actions,” according to the statement. “These measures should include the possibility of making people face justice, blocking access to the European Union, and the surveillance of financial movements guaranteed high risk personal loans.”

‘All Avenues’

French government spokesman Francois Baroin called Libya’s unrest “chaos” and told reporters that France is “determined” to see Europe act against Libya’s leader through sanctions and the suspension of all trade.

“If the use of violence doesn’t stop, Germany will call for us to use all avenues of pressure and influence on Libya, including the question of talking about sanctions,” Merkel said.

EU President Herman Van Rompuy called “for an immediate end to the use of force” in Libya. “I have seen horrible crimes that are unacceptable and must not remain without Consequences,” he said.

European countries have started evacuating the 10,000 EU citizens in Libya, Olivier Bailly, an EU spokesman, said in Brussels. France yesterday started repatriating about 750 citizens living in Libya with companies including oil-producer Total SA sending their French employees back home.

Two German Luftwaffe transport planes and a chartered Lufthansa AG jet flew out about 350 Germans and Europeans yesterday, the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin said in a statement. The German government believes that about 250 Germans remain in Libya, according to the statement.

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