"What usually comes to mind when one hears about radiation is nuclear energy or anything that is radioactive. But few realize that radiation has numerous benefits, and agriculture is one of the areas that largely gain from it.
The Philippine Nuclear Research Institute (PNRI) of the Department of Science and Technology which is the sole agency of the government that advances and regulates the safe and peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology in the country, identifies agriculture and natural resources as among its priority areas.
Researchers from PNRI have been developing improved crop varieties through mutation, a non-conventional method of plant breeding which uses mutational agents (mutagens) such as radiation or chemicals e.g. ethyl methyl sulfonate (EMS)"
For decades, the IAEA and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have spearheaded the development and application of nuclear techniques in food and agriculture, teaming up to contribute to the world´s goals for food security in valuable ways. Today the successful "Atoms for Food" partnership stands in the balance.
"Fukushima shiitake cesium spikes
Kyodo
FUKUSHIMA - Radioactive cesium exceeding the designated limit has been detected in shiitake grown in greenhouses at a farm in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, the prefectural government said.
The prefecture said Saturday it has asked the city of Soma and dealers to stop shipment of the mushrooms, and a local agricultural cooperative has begun recalling them after they were found to contain 850 becquerels of cesium per kilogram, exceeding the 500-becquerel limit set by the state.
The farm in question has grown the mushrooms on beds made of a mixture of wood chips and nutrients, and the wood chips used in them are suspected to have been contaminated with the radioactive substance, according to the local government. The mushroom beds were sold by the Soma agricultural cooperative.
The farm has shipped 1,070 100-gram packages of shiitake since Oct. 24, and they are believed to have been sold at nine supermarkets in the prefecture from Tuesday. No other shiitake produced by the farm have entered the market, it said."
As the global population expands, demand for water for agriculture and personal use will increase dramatically, but there could be a solution that will produce clean drinking water and help reduce carbon emissions as well. That process is nuclear desalination.
Many areas of the world are suffering from a water crisis - and it's not just arid, developing countries that are suffering. The Western US is particularly vulnerable and its water crisis is getting more severe by the day.
As the global population expands, demand for water for agriculture and personal use will increase dramatically, but there could be a solution that will produce clean drinking water and help reduce carbon emissions as well. That process is nuclear desalination.
Many areas of the world are suffering from a water crisis - and it's not just arid, developing countries that are suffering. The Western US is particularly vulnerable and its water crisis is getting more severe by the day.
Montrose County commissioners met in secret and had already made up their minds before approving a special use permit for a uranium mill in the Paradox Valley, a lawsuit filed in Montrose County District Court alleges.
The suit, filed by the Telluride-based environment organization Sheep Mountain Alliance, also accuses the commissioners of inadequately weighing the air and water quality impacts of an industrial milling operation in a valley zoned for agriculture.
Paradox Valley
Paradox Valley
The county attorney had not yet seen the suit and therefore couldn't comment on its merits, according to the Telluride Daily Planet, but a representative of the company proposing the Piñon Ridge Mill, Energy Fuels of Ontario, Canada, said he expected such a delaying tactic.
Montrose County commissioners met in secret and had already made up their minds before approving a special use permit for a uranium mill in the Paradox Valley, a lawsuit filed in Montrose County District Court alleges.
The suit, filed by the Telluride-based environment organization Sheep Mountain Alliance, also accuses the commissioners of inadequately weighing the air and water quality impacts of an industrial milling operation in a valley zoned for agriculture.
Paradox Valley
Paradox Valley
The county attorney had not yet seen the suit and therefore couldn't comment on its merits, according to the Telluride Daily Planet, but a representative of the company proposing the Piñon Ridge Mill, Energy Fuels of Ontario, Canada, said he expected such a delaying tactic.
"An Idaho company is moving closer in its effort to build a nuclear power plant in Payette County.
Alternate Energy Holdings, Inc. officially filed a rezone application on Tuesday, June 22, asking that 5,000 acres of land near New Plymouth be converted from agriculture to industrial use. In April, Payette County Commissioners unanimously approved a change to their county's comprehensive plan, opening the door for a rezone application.
A slate of hearings are expected to attract opponents and proponents of the plant, which Alternate Energy claims will create 5,000 jobs. Dates have yet to be announced, but check back to Citydesk for updates."
"We have seen the decades of suffering by the Palestinian people at the hands of the apartheid government of Israel and yet little has been said about another unseen problem that lies buried beneath the ground.
Over a long period of time the Israeli Government has secretly been dumping highly radioactive waste from their Dimona Nuclear Facility on Palestinian land. What is ironic is the basis as to why they have dumped their waste at such locations.
Many years ago I started up an environmental action group to safeguard the region I was living in at the time. This would cover all aspects of potential pollution from Gas Turbine Power Stations - Agricultural Pesticides - Air and Water Quality etc."
The current uranium mining/exploration operation in the Bootheel is similar to Chernobyl on two points:
- Both places, the Ukraine and the delta counties of Missouri, have some of the best agricultural soils in the world. The area around Chernobyl never again can be used in humanity's lifespan.
- The Mississippi County area has the potential to end up in the same boat because in situ leaching will cross both the St. Francis and Ozark aquifers, potentially forever contaminating them with uranium as well as other heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and arsenic. Those minerals are also found in Missouri's bedrock limestone. That water is used for irrigation and potentially could spread heavy metals, including uranium, all over the Bootheel.
The German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel turns its attention to the scandal in Germany surrounding the participation of RWE in the construction of NPP Belene. Jurgen Grosmann, the President and CEO of RWE, has received an unusual letter of protest from Bulgarian MPs, which showed the negative effect from the construction of the nuclear power plant on the tourism and agriculture in the region. The reason behind this letter was an answer to the plans of Grosmann to invest EUR 1.5 billion in the construction of NPP Belene.
Der Tagesspiegel explains that some of the members of the supervisory board of the German company have started to have doubts about the investment following a protest action of an environmental organization. Grosmann said that the project could not be renegotiated, which made the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of RWE - Thomas Fischer, try to change the interior regulations of the company. The planned changes would allow the supervisory board to take part in the approval of new investment projects. If such changes are made, there would be a majority, which would vote against the participation of RWE in the NPP Belene project.
Former Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, who served as New Mexico's senator for decades before retiring due to health problems, has landed a new gig. He is now a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) according to a press release from the Washington D.C.-based think tank.
The BPC was created in 2007 by former Sens. Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and George Mitchell. The BPC, according to its About Us page, "was formed to develop and promote solutions that would attract the public support and political momentum to achieve real progress." The BPC currently is focused on five issues: national security, health care, energy, agriculture and transportation.
FactSheet
1. Uranium mining in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota began in the middle of the 1960s. World War II, which ended with the nuclear bomb, introduced the use of nuclear energy for the production of electricity and caused the price of uranium to rise. As the economy of the Midwestern states depends primarily on agriculture, when uranium was discovered in the region, many get-rich-quick schemes were adopted. Not only were large mining companies pushing off the tops of bluffs and buttes, but small individual ranchers were also digging in their pastures for the radioactive metal. Mining occurred on both public and private land, although the Great Sioux Nation still maintains a claim to the area through the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868.
A Decision by the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry to allow a planned new uranium mine in an arid area southwest of Usakos to use large quantities of underground water is being challenged in the High Court.
The case questioning the Ministry's decision to grant water abstraction permits to Valencia Uranium was filed with the High Court on Thursday.
Forty four Tallahassee Area Community property owners are slated as being the first population in the world to live within 500 feet of an active Uranium Mining program. The remainder of the community would be irreversibly, and irretrievably affected by a decision of our county to allow the mining project to move forward. The environment which we chose for our retirement years would be damaged and changed. We stand against the existence of an industrial mining operation in our agricultural/forestry neighborhood.
We believe that people cannot live inside an active uranium mining area safely; the two functions cannot coexist in the same area, at the same time.
about 4 hectares of agricultural land in Talsa village near Jamshedpur looks jaundiced. The soil has turned light yellow and villagers fear it might have gone barren. On June 17, radioactive waste from a pond of the Uranium Corporation of India Limited (ucil) spilled over and deluged the village pond and well.
WINDHOEK, April 21 (Reuters) - Namibia's High Court has ruled as invalid permits allowing Forsys Metals Corp. (FSY.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) to extract groundwater in the Namib Desert, disrupting the Canadian company's plans to construct a uranium mine.
Forsys announced on Feb. 12 that Namibia's agriculture, water and forestry ministry had granted it permits to drill and extract up to 1,000 cubic litres of water per day for the construction of its Valencia mine.
It said the perm
Chris Hayes had a nice piece not long ago about President Obama's nomination of Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). A long-time employee of Goldman Sachs, Gensler served at the Treasury Department as an assistant secretary during the Clinton years. While there, he "shared the prevailing deregulatory ethos" on derivatives" along with Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and Alan Greenspan (not to mention Phil Gramm), Hayes wrote. "On the biggest issue of commodity futures regulation in the past decade, he was a star player on the team that got it exactly wrong."
The New York Times editorial board found Obama's nomination of Gensler "troubling." Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, who chairs the Agriculture Committee, which has jurisdiction over Gensler's nomination, released a statement saying that he is "concerned about the deregulatory orientation in this nominee's past." And fellow committee member Bernie Sanders issued this terse statement: "It is imperative that we not continue the same mistaken policies that got us into this mess in the first place. I have real concerns."
Local officials and citizens from Goliad County got some encouragement Wednesday in their fight against uranium mining over a south Texas aquifer.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality voted to allow a contested case hearing on an application by Uranium Energy Corporation to mine uranium just north of the historic mission town of Goliad. No uranium mining has occurred before in this agricultural area.
"This has been such a long, long haul and it's not over yet," said local landowner Lu Ann Duderstadt, who lives near the area targeted for uranium mining. "I feel like we have a chance here and we're still going to carry this out until the end."
The Sudanese government announced today that it signed a framework agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on developing a nuclear energy program.
The Sudanese cabinet session headed by President Omer Hassan Al-Bashir was briefed on the details of the agreement from minister of science and technology, Professor Ibrahim Ahmed Omer.
The spokesperson of Sudan's cabinet, Omer Mohammed Saleh said the understanding between the two sides also includes using nuclear technology to improving productivity in agricultural and livestock, enhance infrastructure to treat cancer patients, uncovering drug resistant malaria, new energy sources, a study of groundwater basins and feeding it and the production of medical isotopes.
Even as Australia reiterated its inability to sell uranium, India on Monday signed an agreement on civil nuclear cooperation with
Namibia. "Among agreements that we signed today is the cooperation between us on uranium. I believe that we have the best uranium (in the world)," said Namibian president Hifikepunye Pohamba after discussions with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The pact is an umbrella agreement that includes sale of uranium to India.
An MEA press release issued after signing of the agreement noted the "many opportunities for investment available in Namibia in the uranium, diamond, agriculture, energy, transportation, railways, mining, ICT and SME sectors and resolved to encourage Indian investments in these areas". Namibia's Uranium resources are about 5% of the world's known reserves.
The UN nuclear watchdog said it has airlifted deadly radioactive cobalt materials out of Lebanon to safety in Russia.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement that a plane carrying 36 Cobalt-60 sources -- each one radioactive enough to kill a person within minutes -- arrived in Russia from Lebanon on August 30.
The cobalt materials, which came from an irradiator used for a long-defunct agricultural project, are now securely stored in Russia, the statement said.
"Given the political situation in the Middle East and particularly in Lebanon we saw this source as vulnerable to malicious acts. If it was stolen it could cause a lot of damage to people," said Robin Heard, an IAEA radioactive source specialist who oversaw the mission.
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