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"As Ukraine comemmorates the victims who perished on the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster on Monday, people around the world protest against the dangers of nuclear power. Addressing the psychological and social effects of the Chernobyl disaster and securing the site are still key priorities, experts say. A man lights a candle and lays flowers in front of memorial for Chernobyl victims in Slavutich, 200 kilometers north of capital Kiev on Monday. Ukraine paid homage on Monday to the victims of the Chernobyl disaster while still struggling with the legacy of the world's worst nuclear disaster 24 years ago. Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych said the victims should be remembered forever and promised to find financial resources for expanding social security for the people affected by the Chernobyl disaster."

"he government of Japan has issued an official order to telecommunications companies and web masters to censor reports which contradict the state media reports that the Fukushima nuclear radiation disaster is over. Japan Government Officially Censors Truth About Fukushima Nuclear Radiation Disaster Japan Government Officially Censors Truth About Fukushima Nuclear Radiation Disaster The supposedly free democratic nation of Japan, which supposedly values and promotes freedom of speech, has officially issued orders to telecommunication companies and webmasters to remove content from websites that counter the official government position that the disaster is over and there is no more threat from the radiation."

"The Disaster Hazard Mitigation Project for the Kyrgyz Republic aims to: (a) minimize the exposure of humans, livestock, and riverine flora and fauna to radionuclides associated with abandoned uranium mine tailings and waste rock dumps in the Mailuu-Suu area; (b) improve the effectiveness of emergency management and response by national and sub-national authorities and local communities to disaster situations; and (c) reduce the loss of life and property in key landslide areas of the country. There are three project components. Component 1, Uranium Mining Wastes Isolation and Protection, finances interventions in the Mailuu-Suu area to increase the condition of abandoned uranium tailings and waste dumps, and decrease the instability of large landslide areas. Component 2, Disaster Preparedness and Monitoring, (1) carries out a program of capacity building to improve the national system for disaster management, preparedness and response that can be administered effectively by national and sub-national authorities, as well as local communities; (2) establishes real-time monitoring and warning systems at about major landslides areas to detect and warn against active landslide movements and establish seismic stations and sensors to detect and warn against seismic events in key hazard areas; and establish a comprehensive monitoring system in Mailuu-Suu. Component 3 supports project management."

Year 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the day that changed the fate of millions of people around the world. On April 26, 1986 the Chernobyl disaster occurred. Bellona, 10/11-2010 We want people to remember once again the immense danger that nuclear power plants contain. We want all the people in the world to remember the Chernobyl disaster. There are still people that have never heard of it but need to know. We invite you to join the international action "Chernobyl-25". We offer people around the world to share the memory of the Chernobyl disaster on the day of the disaster.

"The lesson from Deepwater Horizon isn't that oil is bad and nuclear is good, says Mark Gimein in Slate, it's that, despite our best efforts, accidents happen Slate's Mark Gimein says the BP oil disaster demonstrates why we need to end our pursuit of nuclear power. On first glance, the BP oil spill seems like a good reason to push for more nuclear power, says Mark Gimein at Slate's The Big Money. Nuclear doesn't pollute the air, and it certainly doesn't "turn our beaches black." But, when you look deeper, the real lesson from the BP disaster is that "things go wrong, in unexpected ways, at unexpected times, to catastrophic effect," no matter how many levels of "failsafe" mechanisms we install. Which is why this disaster is a compelling argument against nuclear power. Imagine if Deepwater Horizon had been a nuclear reactor. Here, an excerpt:"

"The worst man-made disaster in history took place at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine almost 25 years ago. It has inspired one of Russia's top screenwriter-directors to make a film based on the story. Yahoo StumbleUpon Google Live Technorati del.icio.us Digg Reddit Mixx Propeller "On Saturday", Aleksandr Mindadze's tragic exploration of the nuclear disaster, will go back to the events of 1986, when the notorious Number Four reactor suffered an unstoppable chain reaction."

"Bruce Power is seeking a licence from the Nuclear Safety Commission to transport 1760 tonnes of radioactive steel through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway, passing Cornwall Ontario, on its way overseas. If this plan is approved the 16 used steam generators are going to be shipped to Sweden going through both Canadian and American waters. The transportation of radioactive materials through Canadian waters has some citizens and politicians concerned. Mike Bradley (the Mayor of Sarnia) and Elizabeth May (leader of the Green Party) are both critical of the plan. If the shipment is approved it would set a precedent for transporting radioactive materials through the Great Lakes, and it could create a rubber stamp for these kinds of shipments in the future without public notice or approval. Although a disaster is unlikely, according to environmentalists, a disaster could be truly devastating. The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River represent 20% of the worlds fresh drinking water, drinking water for more than 40 million people. Supporters of Nuclear Energy claim that even if there was a disaster, the damage would be minimal."

A NUCLEAR disaster in Ireland would kill up to 350 people, an assessment warned in 1978 as plans were discussed for a Co. Wexford plant. A decade before the Chernobyl disaster devastated parts of the Ukraine, the Irish assessment estimated the number of deaths that could result from a major nuclear accident here, according to State papers released last week under the 30-year rule.

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred on April 26th, 1986 when reactor number four at the Chernobyl electric power facility in the Ukraine had a chemical explosion. Human error combined with the poor construction and design of the facility caused the chemical explosions and fires that released a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere. Thirty-five people who attempted to put out the fires at Chernobyl died shortly after the accident of radiation poisoning. However, the immediate evacuation of about 116,000 people from areas surrounding the reactor reduce the general population from exposure to high levels of radiation. A United Nations report determined that a total of 57 people died as a direct result of the radiation from the disaster. Additionally, the UN study predicted that over several years up to 4000 additional deaths could result from radiation exposure from Chernobyl. However, the latest UN report suggest that these numbers may have been overestimated. Additionally, the IAEA reports that there has been no solid evidence of any additional deaths related to the Chernobyl disaster.

Jason Kish's November 21 letter misses the point I made about Potassium Iodide (KI) pills. I wasn't referring to the effectiveness of KI pills protecting the thyroid gland from a concentration of radioactive iodine released in a nuclear plant disaster. The myth I referred to is the false assumption made by many that KI pills are the magic protector in the event of an accident or terrorist attack at Limerick Nuclear Plant, when in reality, KI pills would only protect one gland from one radionuclide. That inaccurate assumption is made because when handing out KI pills, the public is not provided with full disclosure of all the radionuclides that would be released in a nuclear disaster, for which KI pills will not protect us. It's time to tell the whole truth .

Jason Kish's November 21 letter misses the point I made about Potassium Iodide (KI) pills. I wasn't referring to the effectiveness of KI pills protecting the thyroid gland from a concentration of radioactive iodine released in a nuclear plant disaster. The myth I referred to is the false assumption made by many that KI pills are the magic protector in the event of an accident or terrorist attack at Limerick Nuclear Plant, when in reality, KI pills would only protect one gland from one radionuclide. That inaccurate assumption is made because when handing out KI pills, the public is not provided with full disclosure of all the radionuclides that would be released in a nuclear disaster, for which KI pills will not protect us. It's time to tell the whole truth .

The 11 March 2011 9.0 magnitude earthquake off Japan's northeast coast set off a series of cascading events which resulted in the deaths of more than 20,500 people along with an ongoing nuclear crisis. The crisis epitomized what disaster scholars call a compounded or complex disaster. The quake itself caused few direct casualties - fewer than 5 percent of the deaths due to this disaster are attributed to collapsed buildings - but triggered a devastating tsunami which overtopped seawalls, washed away entire villages, swept people and cars out to sea, and damaged the back-up cooling systems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power complex. Of the six reactors on site, the quake's arrival automatically shut down the three which were operational. With diesel generators and batteries offline, the residual heat in the reactors raised the temperature to more than 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, melting down the zircaloy fuel rods. The fuel pellets, free from their sheaths, fell to the floor of the steel containment vessels where they may have burned holes through the thick steel plating. Nuclear authorities in Japan eventually classified the radiation release from the Fukushima nuclear complex as a level 7 nuclear crisis on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), placing the event in the same category as the 26 April 1986 Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine.

Do we so easily forget the nuclear plant disaster at Chernobyl and the Three Mile Island accident, that we are ready to re-license Vermont Yankee in the face of its continuing accidents and problems? Why do we think we're immune from disaster? The only real control we have over Vermont Yankee is shutting it down in 2012. We have no control over where the spent fuel is stored. Do you remember when the mountains of north-central Vermont were considered as a nuclear storage site? We didn't want the stuff in our back yard, so how can we imagine other people - especially poor, rural, indigenous people - want it in theirs?

* Whitehaven News * News Sellafield admits hot tanks error but denies plant was 'hours from disaster' By Alan Irving Last updated 15:54, Wednesday, 15 April 2009 SELLAFIELD'S operators have denied the area was only hours away from a nuclear disaster due to failure in tanks containing highly radioactive liquid. * Title Author Copyright Description David Moore: 'Reassured that all the safety systems kicked in' 1 of 2 Photos Toggle Thumbnails Staff worked against the clock to supply cooling water to four of the 21 tanks, said to hold around 1,000 cubic metres of highly radioactive liquid waste. Details of the alert are given in the latest Sellafield site newsletter which says: "Cooling water was reinstated to the high-heat highly active storage tanks within two hours of the initial loss and to the remainder of the plant within eight hours... this is within the bounds of the plant safety case." But Cumbrian anti-nuclear group Core has made the startling claim that "this is perilously close to the timescale of 10.5 hours catered for in the Sellafield site emergency plan".

"As Japan approaches the six-month anniversary of its worst nuclear disaster, when an unprecedented meltdown occurred in three of the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant's reactors in a combination of natural and manmade calamities, the road to recovery is still long and unclear. In anticipation of the anniversary, the Mainichi looks back over the past six months to outline what has been done, learned, and where Japan currently stands on the issue in this time of crisis. On March 11, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake followed by a series of tsunami waves -- the worst in the history of Japan -- severely damaged the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)-operated Fukushima No. 1 nuclear complex, located along the coast of the towns of Futaba and Okuma in Fukushima Prefecture. As a result of the disaster, all external power sources were lost, causing the supply of cooling water to the plant's No. 1, 2 and 3 reactors to stop. Hydrogen was generated as a result of a chemical reaction between fuel rods and water, leading to hydrogen explosions which badly damaged reactor buildings. The government, which initially estimated the accident level at 4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), later raised the level to 7 -- the highest rank. This matched the level of the Chernobyl catastrophe, which at that stage was the worst nuclear accident in history."

Radiation from Japan rained on Berkeley during recent storms at levels that exceeded drinking water standards by 181 times and has been detected in multiple milk samples, but the U.S. government has still not published any official data on nuclear fallout here from the Fukushima disaster. Dangers from radiation that is wafting over the United States from the Fukushima power plant disaster and falling with rain have been downplayed by government officials and others, who say its impacts are so fleeting and minor as to be negligible.

The scale of the Chernobyl disaster is not exaggerated and even understated," a victims representative and leading nuclear expert told Xinhua in an exclusive interview Wednesday. Alexander Zenchenko, the chairman of the Focal Alliance of Chernobyl Disaster Victims, also said the nuclear power plant catastrophe in Ukraine in 1986 and the current crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan were very different. Zenchenko, who is a famous Ukrainian nuclear chemist and physicist, is in a good position to know. He was rec

"Activists in the Bay Area are marking the 25th Anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster with rallies, speakers, street theater, and educational events. Calling the Ukraine catastrophe "the most significant nuclear reactor failure in the history of nuclear power", anti-nuke enthusiasts say they want the world to remember that April 26, 1986 was the day when one of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded, killing plant employees instantly and leading to a projected increase in cancer deaths in the hundreds of thousands. Tri-Valley CARES, Plutonium-Free Future and other groups concerned about the proliferation of nuclear power sponsored a panel discussion on April 10 in Oakland called "A Quarter Century of Chernobyl". The panel featured Russian women activists with first-hand experience in that nuclear reactor disaster. In Menlo Park, a community demonstration at the busy downtown intersection spilled over to a nearby outdoor cafe where lunchtime patrons became the audience for street theater with an anti-nuke message. "

"While our government is demanding that BP pay up for the oil disaster in the Gulf, it is offering up billions of Americans' hard earned money to another high risk energy player - the wealthy nuclear power industry to build costly new nuclear reactors. Will this be another disaster waiting to happen? Today the utility giant Southern Company agreed to the terms of its portion of the $8.3 billion conditional loan guarantee awarded by the Obama Administration back in February for the proposed two new reactors it wants to build along with its utility partners at Plant Vogtle in Georgia. So now U.S. taxpayers are officially on the hook if the project goes belly up. Which given the nuclear industry's past track record, is a likely scenario. Many of the problems with these nuclear loan guarantees are in the aptly titled report, "

America's twin crises of sky-rocketing energy costs and catastrophic climate change effects shouldn't be a convenient excuse to push nuclear power as a viable replacement for coal, oil and natural gas power-generating plants. The nuclear disaster at the Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 and the near-disaster at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 are reasons enough to strike nuclear power from the list of acceptable non-fossil and carbon energy sources. The nuclear power

The government's nuclear programme will be a financial disaster according to a new report published today. It found UK taxpayers have lost £72 billion over the last 50 years to the country's failing nuclear industry. The report into the nuclear energy industry, published by Friends of the Earth, pours scorn on government claims about the potential of nuclear energy.