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Childhood cancer survivors treated with total body or abdominal radiation may have an increased risk of diabetes, according to a report in the August 10/24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. This correlation does not appear to be related to patients' body mass index or physical inactivity.

"When the U.S. Government began testing nuclear weapons between July 1945 and November 1962, about the only things test officials were sure of was that the bombs made big explosions and intriguing mushroom clouds. Since then, scientists and doctors have identified the deadly effects of radiation poisoning. Representatives from the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program (RESEP) offer an educational lecture forum at 9 a.m. Thursday at Sharlot Hall Museum Library and Archives, 115 S. McCormick St., in Prescott. "Commonly known as the 'Downwinder Program,' RESEP helps individuals who live, or lived, in areas where U.S. nuclear weapons testing occurred," Sharlot Hall archivist Scott Anderson wrote in a press release. "The RESEP website lists Arizona as a high impact state." The Health Resources and Services Administration, which is an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, oversees the radiation exposure program. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Program offers compensation payments from $50,000 to $100,000 for specific cancers and chronic diseases that may have resulted from radiation exposure. Sharlot Hall Museum Archives is one of the statewide locations where residents can search for proof of residency during the testing periods in order to file a claim for compensation."

The Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes has donated 90 cubic feet of primary documents to the Archives and Special Collections at SUNY Fredonia. The materials, pertaining to the West Valley Nuclear Demonstration Project, have been collected and maintained over the last four decades by the Coalition, an activist group of primarily Cattaraugus and Erie County citizens. Currently headed by Judith Einach of Buffalo and Joanne Hameister of East Aurora, the Coalition has documented the activities at the West Valley site since it opened in the early 1960s in the Town of Ashford in Cattaraugus County, roughly about 30 miles south of Buffalo. "This collection is the most complete documented history available anywhere about nuclear reprocessing and storage," said Randy Gadikian, director of library services at SUNY Fredonia. "It documents the successes, failures and risks that are entailed in operating such a project, and for the first time, this information is available for public review."

But what was to be the Government message to the British population in the event of a nuclear apocalypse was not exactly Churchillian: don't forget to turn off the gas and please do not flush the toilet. The chilling BBC script for an announcement to be broadcast if the country came under nuclear attack in the early 1970s has been released from files in the National Archives in Kew, west London.

This is an archive of the NRC's webcast video meetings. They start in November of 2007 to date.

More than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents could be declassified as the federal government responds to President Barack Obama's order to rethink the way it protects the nation's secrets. Among the changes announced Tuesday by Obama is a requirement that every record be released eventually and that federal agencies review how and why they mark documents classified or deny the release of historical records. A National Declassification Center at the National Archives will be established to assist them and help clear a backlog of the Cold War records by Dec. 31, 2013. Obama also reversed a decision by President George W. Bush that had allowed the intelligence community to block the release of a specific document, even if an interagency panel decided the information wouldn't harm national security.

More than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents could be declassified as the federal government responds to President Barack Obama's order to rethink the way it protects the nation's secrets. Among the changes announced Tuesday by Obama is a requirement that every record be released eventually and that federal agencies review how and why they mark documents classified or deny the release of historical records. A National Declassification Center at the National Archives will be established to assist them and help clear a backlog of the Cold War records by Dec. 31, 2013. Obama also reversed a decision by President George W. Bush that had allowed the intelligence community to block the release of a specific document, even if an interagency panel decided the information wouldn't harm national security.

Despite decades of denials by Washington and Tokyo, US officials believe they enjoyed a secret pact to transport nuclear weapons through Japan, newly declassified documents showed. The disclosure came after Japan's left-leaning government ended more than half a century of conservative rule and launched a probe into thousands of files to settle longstanding suspicions of a hush-hush pact. Any evidence of an agreement would trigger charges of hypocricy as Japan is the only nation to have suffered nuclear attack and has campaigned for the worldwide abolition of the ultra-destructive weapons. The National Security Archive at George Washington University released documents Tuesday showing US officials believed they had an understanding with Japan when the allies signed a new security treaty in 1960.

Despite decades of denials by Washington and Tokyo, US officials believe they enjoyed a secret pact to transport nuclear weapons through Japan, newly declassified documents showed. The disclosure came after Japan's left-leaning government ended more than half a century of conservative rule and launched a probe into thousands of files to settle longstanding suspicions of a hush-hush pact. Any evidence of an agreement would trigger charges of hypocricy as Japan is the only nation to have suffered nuclear attack and has campaigned for the worldwide abolition of the ultra-destructive weapons. The National Security Archive at George Washington University released documents Tuesday showing US officials believed they had an understanding with Japan when the allies signed a new security treaty in 1960.

For decades, the authorities have denied that nuclear weapons were present in Japan; yet it allowed United States to stockpile and transport them on Japanese soil. The credibility of the Liberal Democratic Party, now in the opposition, sinks further. Tokyo - The people of Japan was deceived for decades, this according to declassified documents that are only now coming to light about secret deals between Washington and Tokyo with regards to the presence of nuclear weapons on Japanese soil. Since 1960, the government led by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has repeatedly denied that nuclear weapons were ever present in Japan or that any agreement existed to that effect. In mid-October, the National Security Archives in Washington released declassified telegrams, background papers and top-secret minutes regarding US nuclear weapons policy in Okinawa and, more broadly, Japan between the 1950s and 1972. Information about secret deals comes from this source, but it is neither the only nor the main one.

For decades, the authorities have denied that nuclear weapons were present in Japan; yet it allowed United States to stockpile and transport them on Japanese soil. The credibility of the Liberal Democratic Party, now in the opposition, sinks further. Tokyo - The people of Japan was deceived for decades, this according to declassified documents that are only now coming to light about secret deals between Washington and Tokyo with regards to the presence of nuclear weapons on Japanese soil. Since 1960, the government led by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has repeatedly denied that nuclear weapons were ever present in Japan or that any agreement existed to that effect. In mid-October, the National Security Archives in Washington released declassified telegrams, background papers and top-secret minutes regarding US nuclear weapons policy in Okinawa and, more broadly, Japan between the 1950s and 1972. Information about secret deals comes from this source, but it is neither the only nor the main one.

"The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) announces that, at the request of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), the date of the one-day public hearing to consider AECL's application for the restart of the National Research Universal (NRU) Reactor is being rescheduled. The hearing was initially scheduled to take place on June 28, 2010. Date: July 5, 2010 Place: CNSC Public Hearing Room 14th floor, 280 Slater Street Ottawa, Ontario Time: as set by the agenda published prior to the hearing date The public hearing will be webcasted live on the Internet via the CNSC Web site and archived for a period of 90 days. The public was invited to submit comments on AECL's request until June 23, 2010. This time limit is not being extended. All submissions are available to the public upon request to the Secretariat."

"The United States studied a plan for a nuclear strike on North Korea in 1969 but advisers to then-president Richard Nixon concluded it was best to remain calm, declassified documents showed Wednesday. The documents, obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, foreshadow present-day US frustration on how to handle Pyongyang following its nuclear tests and the sinking of a South Korean ship. In 1969, North Korea shot down a US spy aircraft over the Sea of Japan (East Sea), killing the 31 personnel on board."

"Powertech USA Inc. is embarking on a path of destruction from which there is no return. The company plans to start in situ leach mining in South Dakota's Custer and Fall River counties that will puncture through four aquifers on the Great Plains and endanger a fragile geologic system. As a result of ISL mining planned at the Dewey-Burdock site - 12 miles northwest of Edgemont - we on the Plains must face the threat of groundwater contamination for generations, while the corporate leaders reside far away in their homelands of Canada and France. This new corporation has no history of accountability in adhering to environmental laws or in the clean-up of a mined-out area. There are thousands of reports by mining corporations that document problems trying to contain uranium-laden water at mine sites, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Web site."

"A Nuclear Regulatory Commission legal panel is hearing arguments in Las Vegas about whether the federal Energy Department can withdraw its application to build a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada. Local officials say a decision by the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board and Construction Authorization Board will be pivotal to the fate of the Yucca Mountain project. A public hearing was expected to take all day Thursday at an NRC hearing facility near McCarran International Airport. The panel of administrative judges are also considering which petitioners can be admitted as parties in licensing proceedings, and how millions of documents generated during more than 25 years of study could be archived, maintained and preserved."

"Israel's nuclear program has been implicated in an investigation conducted in the United States by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), according to a report published on Wednesday by the researchers of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). Dimona nuclear power plant The nuclear power plant in Dimona. Photo by: Archive The investigation began in spring 2010 when the BIS charged Pelogy, a U.S. based company and its Belgian affiliate, with violating U.S. export administration regulations by attempting to export controlled goods to Israel, India, China and South Africa. "

One of the great things about working at the longest-continually published magazine in the U.S. -- born in 1845 -- is thumbing through the archives. Our environment reporter, David Biello, was thumbing through some bound volumes earlier this week, and he came across a gem from our February 1947 issue. The piece, which has no byline, is quite timely, despite being more than 60 years old. It hits two of today's growing crises square on -- energy and the economy -- by suggesting a replacement for silver and gold monetary standards:

It will be announced today that Dr. Steven Chu, Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is President-elect Barack Obama's choice for Secretary of Energy. Dr. Chu shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on laser cooling and trapping of atoms. Prior to becoming director of LBL, he was a professor at Stanford University and also worked at the former Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. For a more complete overview of his work, there is this autobiography or a rapidly-updated Wikipedia entry. Reaching deep into The Oil Drum archives, commenter Step Back pointed to an audio presentation of a talk and interview with Dr. Chu in July 2005 at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, CA.: * Real Audio * MP3 Here is one excerpt:

Britain learned that apartheid South Africa was preparing to test an atomic bomb only after being alerted by the Russians. Previously secret papers released at the National Archives show how James Callaghan, the Labour prime minister, was informed in August 1977 of a secret test site in the Kalahari Desert in a personal letter from Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet president. A Soviet spy satellite had discovered the site at Vastrap, in a remote area south of South Africa's border with Botswana, a week earlier. Two 750-foot shafts had been drilled in preparation for underground explosions. The Americans appear to have possessed similar satellite imagery but failed to inform their closest ally until after the Brezhnev letter.

BRITISH nuclear tests in the 1960s left Maralinga holding a quantity of bomb-grade plutonium, and no ideas what to do with it. For the government of Malcolm Fraser, this represented a series of problems. It wasn't very well guarded, it wasn't especially secret and it wasn't clear the British government would want to take it back. Cabinet papers for 1978 - released by the National Archives of Australia under the 30-year rule - show the government did manage to persuade the British government to take back their leftovers, provided the entire operation was kept top secret.

The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB), an independent judicial arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, will provide a live video stream of the first day of its hearing concerning the NRC's Enforcement Order against former Davis-Besse employee David Geisen. The live video stream is part of an ASLB pilot program examining how information technology can enhance the public's ability to observe the Board's activities. The video stream, which will be archived for 90 days, will be available at this Web site: http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=53643. The video, scheduled to start Dec. 8 shortly before 9:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, will be available in Windows Media and QuickTime formats. The hearing will begin Dec. 8 at 9:30 a.m. and could last the entire week; the commencement of the hearing on subsequent days will be determined during the course of the hearing. The public may observe the proceeding in person, except for any closed sessions, in the ALSB Hearing Facility, Room T-3B45 of the agency's Two White Flint North building, at 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md.

China and leading Western experts are on the alert against possible radiation leaks from the Sichuan earthquake as the main centers for designing, making and storing nuclear arms lie in the shattered earthquake zone.

The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB), an independent judicial arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, will provide a live video stream of its July 30 initial prehearing conference in Scottsboro, Ala., concerning the Tennessee Valley Authority's Combined License application for the Bellefonte site near Scottsboro. The live video stream is part of an ASLB pilot program examining how information technology can enhance the public's ability to observe the Board's activities. The video stream, which will not be archived, will be available at this Web site: http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=50055. The video, scheduled to start shortly before 9 a.m. Central Daylight Time, will be available in Windows Media and QuickTime formats.