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Nuclear weapons and nuclear power have greatly influenced history from 1945 to the present. This digital library provides an annotated bibliography of over 2,000 books, articles, films, CDs, and websites about a broad range of nuclear issues.

In this third segment of my review of William Tucker's outstanding book Terrestrial Energy, I consider Tucker's assessment of available opportunities to solve the nuclear waste problem by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. Recycling Opportunities If U.S. nuclear power plants were to resume reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, as is done in France and other nations, only 2 to 3 percent of the material now scheduled to be stored at the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository would have to be stored there, and the whole nuclear waste problem would disappear. After reprocessing, the total unusable portion of three full years of nuclear power production can be stored indefinitely in a dry cask about four times the size of a telephone booth.

The Salt Lake City-based journalist was working on a manuscript for a nonfiction book about the nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site and the downwinders who attribute various health problems to those tests. During the research she told an actress about her own personal battle against thyroid cancer. It is one of the diseases eligible for compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 for people who lived in certain geographic areas during the Cold War-era above ground testing. Dickson's sister, Ann, also passed away from complications of lupus. Some downwinders and doctors believe there may be a connection between the testing and autoimmune diseases like lupus but there is no proof.

Depleted uranium is a fascinating topic of study. Turn over any facet of the subject and what scurries out from underneath into the light of day are lies and subterfuge, distortions of truth and scientific fraud. To attain a panoramic vision of the guile that impregnates the subject of depleted uranium, one needs to recognize that, by its very nature, everything about DU can be nothing other than duplicitous. Disingenuousness is an inherent property of DU, as intrinsic to it as its density or specific activity. This is not because of what DU is or what it does, but because of what it points to.

Does it matter-in military, political, or economic terms-how much the United States has spent, and continues to spend, to develop and sustain its nuclear arsenal? Many observers would say no. The Cold War is long over, the United States won without having to use its nuclear weapons, they argue, so whatever the cost was, it was "worth it." But for those interested in accountability and reexamining history in light of new evidence, what the United States spent on nuclear weapons along with the justifications for that spending can shed light on the pace and scale of the U.S. effort and offer important lessons for the United States and for other countries that have or seek to have nuclear weapons. This issue brief, based on the 1998 book Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940, examines how and why key decisions were made, what factors influenced those decisions, and whether alternatives were considered.[1]

Nearly 300 of the world's top experts from 21 countries in dealing with subterranean nuclear waste issues are meeting this week at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick. They are sharing science and trying to better understand how to deal with the legacy of radioactive materials. The Migration '09 conference has booked the convention center all week. That means the Kennewick Public Facilities District Board of Directors must hold its monthly meeting Thursday across the parking lot at the Toyota Center. "This is the most important conference (in the world) relating to the science behind the solutions," said Thomas Fanghanel, a researcher from Germany who is chairman of the conference.

The issues surrounding oil production from the tar sands and nuclear power plants being proposed in Alberta are integrally woven together, says journalist Andrew Nikiforuk. The Calgary-based business journalist was in Grande Prairie Thursday to give a presentation at the Golden Age Centre based on his latest book, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of the Continent. Sponsored by the National Farmers Union, it followed similar presentations in Dawson Creek, sponsored by the Peace River Organic Producers Association, and in Peace River, which was sponsored by the Peace River Environmental Society. The issues surrounding the tar sands and the nuclear power proposals weave together, said to Nikiforuk, as he believes one is motivating the other. Nikiforuk opened by stating the tar sands have changed Alberta forever.

Recently, President Obama announced his intention to rid the world of nuclear weapons. This is a very worthy goal. Almost daily, we hear about the threat of nuclear proliferation. But little is said about the tens of thousands of US workers who are suffering and dying prematurely due to toxic exposure to radiation, heavy metals and other poisons they received while working in nuclear facilities making or cleaning up after these weapons. Over half a million people worked during the Cold War and WWII to build atomic bombs. 165,000 of them or their survivors have filed claims with the US Government- Department of Labor. Only 1 in 4 have been compensated. * Book of Hearts's diary :: :: * Last month, the PBS show Exposé ran a segment available here (sorry, can't embed it). It was a follow-up to a super investigative series by Laura Frank, published by the now defunct Rocky Mountain News back in July, 2008. There is a lot of info, so I will summarize as much as possible.

On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station reactor number 4 exploded at 1:24 a.m. "Tons of radioactive dust was" unleashed "into the air…transported by winds, [and] it contaminated both hemispheres of our planet, settling wherever it rained. The emissions of radioactivity lasted [short-term] for 10 days."(1) On 29 April, "fatal levels of radioactivity were recorded…in Poland, Austria, Romania, Finland, and Sweden."(2) The day after (30 April), it hit Switzerland and Italy. By 2 May, it reached France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Great Britain, and Greece. The next day, Israel, Kuwait, and Turkey were contaminated. Then, over the next few days, "radioactive substances" were recorded in Japan (3 May), China (4 May), India (5 May), and the US and Canada (6 May). The radioactive spew from this explosion was "200 times greater than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima."(3) Not one person was safe from this catastrophic nuclear explosion; and "65-million people were contaminated...more than 400,000 people were forced to evacuate the area [around Chernobyl], losing their homes, possessions and jobs, as well as their economic, social, and family ties."(4) The long-term and hidden costs of radioactive contamination have never been adequately reported by mainstream news. According to the authors (including the distinguished Dr. Rosalie Bertell) of a new book, "Chernobyl: The Hidden Legacy" "[i]t will take millennia to recover…[before an area] as large as Italy, will return to normal radioactive levels in about 100,000 years time."(5)

Daniel B. Poneman, who has extensive background in federal service including a stint at the National Security Council, is to be nominated as deputy secretary of the Department of Energy, the White House announced today. Here's the background released by the Dept. of Energy: Since 2001, Daniel B. Poneman has been a Principal of The Scowcroft Group, an international business advisory firm based in Washington, D.C. Prior to that he was a partner in the law firm of Hogan & Hartson. From 1993 through 1996, Poneman served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Nonproliferation and Export Controls at the National Security Council. He joined the NSC staff in 1990 as Director of Defense Policy and Arms Control, after serving as a White House Fellow in the Department of Energy. Poneman has served on several federal commissions and advisory panels, and has authored books on nuclear energy policy and on Argentina. He coauthored Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, which received the 2005 Douglas Dillon Award for Distinguished Writing on American Diplomacy. Poneman received A.B. and J.D. degrees with honors from Harvard, and an M.Litt. in politics from Oxford University. He is an Adjunct Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Aspen Strategy Group

'It was anything but 'a man'," that the 28-year-old Japanese medic Shuntaro Hida saw stumbling towards him on the road from Hiroshima on the morning of August 6 1945. "The strange figure came up to me little by little, unsteady on its feet. It surely seemed like a man form but was wholly naked, bloody and covered with mud. The body was completely swollen. Many pieces of ragged cloth hung down from its bare breast and waist. The hands were held before the breasts with palms turned down. Water dripped from all the tips of the rags. Indeed, it was human skin which I thought was ragged cloth, and the water drops were human blood… I stepped backwards in spite of myself."

Ever since our organization had Gwyneth Cravens as our Edward Teller Dinner Lecturer I cannot separate the notion that saving the world and nuclear energy are inextricably linked. Ms. Cravens wrote a book called "The Power to Save the World: The Truth about Nuclear Energy." I have been passionate about the proper role that nuclear should play in our energy mix for many decades, but now I have a rallying cry that conjures up all the rational bases for wanting to go full bore on nuclear energy as fast as we can.

# Starting as the NRC's historian in June 1979, J. Samuel Walker's career was very much shaped by the TMI accident. # He found false information spread on the accident, which he hoped his book would correct. # Although the industry has improved its safety record, more recent problems prove the accident's lessons must never be forgotten.

"In his provocative new book "Bomb Power" (Penguin Press, 2010) historian Garry Wills argues that the rise of the National Security State and the ongoing expansion of presidential authority, including the spread of government secrecy, are rooted in the development of the atomic bomb in World War II. "At the bottom of it all has been the Bomb," writes Prof. Wills. "All this grew out of the Manhattan Project, out of its product, and even more out of its process. The project's secret work, secretly funded at the behest of the President, was a model for the covert activities and overt authority of the government we now experience.""

"South Africa's expenditure on the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) nuclear technology, as well as on the State-owned enterprises pursuing its development, is set to fall materially over the next three years, the country's 2010 expenditure estimates show. The 846-page '2010 Estimates of National Expenditure' book, which was released together with the National Budget on Wednesday, also indicated that government's contribution to the PBMR would end altogether in 2013. Between 2006/7 and 2009/10, the country allocated R7,2-billion for the development of the PBMR demonstration and fuel plants, while it allocated a further R1,73-billion in 2009/10 for the programme. However, the chapter on 'Public Enterprises' in the expenditure documentation shows that the 'Nuclear Sector', which is code for the PBMR, would receive only R11,4-million over the next three years. For the upcoming fiscal period, some R3,6-million has been set aside, followed by R3,8-million for 2011/12 and R4-million for 2012/13."

"Nearly twenty years ago I co-wrote Nukespeak, a cultural history of the selling of nuclear technology for both peaceful and military purposes. My co-authors and I dedicated the book to George Orwell, whose literary creation of 'newspeak' in the classic novel 1984 illustrated the power to control reality through the adroit manipulation of language. The euphemisms, obfuscations and omissions employed by nuclear boosters throughout both industry and government - what one writer has called the "linguistic cosmetics" used "to avoid communicating uncomfortable or threatening thoughts so that the nuclear industry can control the images and perceptions of nuclear power" - were so clearly reminiscent of Orwellian thought control that the homage seemed, if anything, perhaps a little too obvious."

"Its bid for a $2 billion federal loan guarantee is still pending, but the company trying to build a $3.5 billion uranium-enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio, will get a promised infusion of $45 million from the Department of Energy. The promise to USEC was made in August when the Energy Department turned down the loan-guarantee application, with federal officials saying they didn't think the technology had been proven commercially viable. USEC says the loan guarantee is critical to its ability to build the plant, and the company won a temporary reprieve and the ability to reapply for the loan guarantee at a later date. That reapplication is expected to happen this year. In the meantime, the $45 million will help USEC keep working on the plant's technology, and the company says it will match the federal money with $45 million of its own. The federal cash comes from the Energy Department assuming $45 million worth of depleted uranium "tails" counted on USEC's books as a liability."