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t's a hot issue in Utah, and its final outcome may be decided in Washington. On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted a bill through that would block any import of foreign nuclear waste into the United States. Support for the measure was largely by Democrats, with only four House Republicans voting "yea." The bill will likely face a more difficult battle in the Senate. If passed, it would thwart waste treatment company Energy Solutions' plans to import 20,000 tons of Italian nuclear waste and bury some of it (about 1600 tons, according to the company) in Utah's soil.

t's a hot issue in Utah, and its final outcome may be decided in Washington. On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted a bill through that would block any import of foreign nuclear waste into the United States. Support for the measure was largely by Democrats, with only four House Republicans voting "yea." The bill will likely face a more difficult battle in the Senate. If passed, it would thwart waste treatment company Energy Solutions' plans to import 20,000 tons of Italian nuclear waste and bury some of it (about 1600 tons, according to the company) in Utah's soil.

"A blinding flash of light followed by a cloud of complete darkness. A city in shambles. A face peeks out from beneath heavy wooden beams, eyes dart left and right, trapped as fires begin to consume everything. These memories of the atomic bomb decimating Hiroshima haunt Takashi Teramoto. Sixty-five years later, he recounts the story to about 40 Mill Pond students and their parents during a live video conference organized by sixth-grade teacher, Rebecca Kline and the Executive Director of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, Steve Leeper. While it was early in the morning in Hiroshima when the live video conference took place, it was 7:30 p.m. for the audience in the Mill Pond auditorium. The live image of Teramoto, who survived the bombing of Hiroshima and his interpreter, Elizabeth Baldwin, were projected on a large screen while pictures were displayed in am accompanying slideshow. This video conference was organized as part of a campaign by the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation to abolish all nuclear weapons in the world. Leeper explained that they are not doing this campaign to attack America or complain about what happened. Their concern is preventing mass destruction by nuclear weapons from ever happening again. "

"Heart imaging procedures can deliver a significant amount of radiation to patients, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday, urging patients and doctors to weigh the risks against the benefits. They said nearly one in 10 adults under the age of 64 had a heart procedure involving radiation over a three-year period in five major healthcare markets. "For many patients in the United States, there is a substantial cumulative radiation exposure from cardiac procedures," said Dr. Jersey Chen of Yale University School of Medicine, whose study appears in the Journal of the American College of Radiology."

"Some links on this page are to documents in our Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS), and others are to documents in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). ADAMS documents are provided in either PDF or Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). To obtain free viewers for displaying these formats, see our Plugins, Viewers, and Other Tools page. If you have questions about search techniques or problems with viewing or printing documents from ADAMS, please contact the Public Document Room staff. Date: Wednesday, June 23 and Thursday, June 24, 2010 Location: NRC Headquarters Two White Flint Auditorium"

"A man died Monday as he was working under water at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, N.Y., officials said. The unidentified diver was doing working on a wall that separates the Hudson River from a discharge canal when he stopped responding to communication checks, according to Entergy Nuclear, which owns the Indian Point Energy Center. A canal channels water back to the river after being used to cool a reactor or make steam. "The gentleman was doing some maintenance work under water, and when a co-worker up above asked him a question and he did not respond, he was pulled up immediately," said Jerry Nappi, a spokesman for the Indian Point plant."

"Canada's nuclear watchdog is fast-tracking a request for a hearing to consider reopening the country's aging medical isotope-producing reactor. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. made a request Friday for a formal hearing in hopes of restarting medical isotope production at the Ontario plant by mid-summer. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has not yet scheduled a hearing, which is expected to take one day, but it said the date would be announced quickly and normal hearing rules will be tossed aside to deal with what it calls a priority case. "

There are some serious new safety concerns surrounding the Prarie Island nuclear power plant. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission notified the plant last week that if nearby water pipes broke and flooded the plant, important safety equipment could fail. Those pipes carry non-radioactive cooling water out of the plant to the Mississippi. Experts for Xcel Energy say they have already fixed the problem. But city officials say this should be a warning to the state that Red Wing is underfunded to deal with the possibility of a major catastrophe."

An old glass jar inside a beaten up old safe at the bottom of a waste pit may seem an unlikely place to find a pivotal piece of 20th century history. But that's just where the first batch of weapons-grade plutonium ever made has been found - abandoned at the world's oldest nuclear processing site. See a gallery of images of the find and where it came from The potentially dangerous find was made at Hanford, Washington State, the site of a nuclear reservation, established in 1943 to support the US's pioneering nuclear weapons program. Hanford made the plutonium-239 for Trinity, the first ever nuclear weapon test, on 16 July 1945. Just three-and-a-half weeks later, more Hanford plutonium was used in the nuclear strike on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.

It's been a grim month for Nuclear Power, always a contentious issue for greens, power from the atom has taken two steps back as South African utility Eskom announce plans to cancel their tendering process for new nuclear plant in South Africa. It comes a week after revelations from the French economic publication Les Echos reveal that French campaign group "Sortir du nucléaire" have accused EdF of lying during a public consultation exercise which was the prelude to the decision to build a new nuclear plant at Flamanville in France.

With President-elect Barack Obama signaling that energy issues should be at the core of any economic stimulus package, the resurgent U.S. nuclear industry-like so many others-is pushing to make sure it's well represented. Industry representatives and lobbyists are asking lawmakers to use the economic stimulus package, estimated to be in the range of $700 billion to $800 billion, to help revive the country's long-dormant nuclear manufacturing sector, as well as to train workers for jobs within the industry, which is now precariously poised for an expansion. In recent years, more than two dozen applications for new reactors have been filed with federal regulators, after a 30-year drought in which no nuclear reactors were approved.

The American atom bomb known as Fat Man being prepared for dropping on Nagasaki during World War II. Soviet spies gave its design to Moscow and Moscow in turn gave the secrets to Beijing. In time, China entrusted the design information to Pakistan. A.Q. Khan, Pakistan's rogue atomic pioneer, then sold them on the global back market.

Crews at Diablo Canyon Power Plant will start transferring radioactive material into dry casks on June 1. The casks are used to store spent reactor fuel. Eights casks will be filled and stored above-ground in a concrete storage pad. Another eight casks will be loaded in the spring of 2010.

Senator Murray wants $6 to $7 billion included for nuclear waste cleanup projects around the country. That means in a couple of years we could see an extra $2 billion at the Hanford Site. Not only would this be good for the Tri-Cities economy but also for the environment. "We don't yet know what's going to be in the final economic recovery package but I've been working very hard with the Obama administration to try and include somewhere between $6 and $7 billion for environmental management nationwide," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

Terrie Barrie of the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups circulated a Dec. 30 letter she received from Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada regarding the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. As for the earlier request he and other senators made for a comprehensive investigation of the federal program, Reid wrote, "I am pleased to let you know that GAO is giving priority status to our request. In fact, I was recently informed that the investigation is already under way, and I plan to closely monitor its progress." Reid said the findings of that GAO investigation would used for develop reforms of the program in the 111th Congress. He said he and Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico had recently asked NIOSH to establish a new online system to make it easier for claimants to check the status of their applications. "As a result of our persistence, NIOSH set up a special form at the following Web site: http://www2a.cdc.gov/ocas/status.html.

Among the names on the apparent short list for Barack Obama's all-important choice as Secretary of Energy is that of John Bryson, former head of Southern California Edison. As the embodiment of greenwashed corporate piracy and radioactive public bailouts, Bryson's appointment would send a terrible message. Bryson is now being hyped as "an advocate of hybrid cars." No doubt he is reinventing his image. On a personal basis, he may be the finest of individuals.

PETER A. BRADFORD, adjunct professor, Vermont Law School, and former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: * For an even-handed recent overview of most nuclear power issues, see "Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding," a June 2007 report by the Keystone Center, a non-profit organization that brought together a cross section of parties interested in nuclear energy - including environmentalists and consumer advocates, industry representatives and government officials - to create a base of agreed-upon knowledge about the costs, risks and benefits of nuclear power. www.keystone.org/spp/documents/FinalReport_NJFF6_12_2007(1).pdf * For a responsibly skeptical look at nuclear power's rapidly rising costs in comparison to available low carbon alternatives, see "The Nuclear Illusion" by Amory Lovins and Imram Sheikh in the November 2008 Ambio, the Journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. https://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E08-01_AmbioNuclIlusion.pdf The Journal Report * See the complete Energy report. * The Web site of the Nonproliferation Education Center, maintained by WSJ op-ed contributor Henry Sokolski, features an ongoing collection of thoughtful conservative pieces skeptical of nuclear power. http://www.npec-web.org/ * For an excellent short critique of reprocessing and the Bush Administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, see Victor Gilinsky and Alison Macfarlane's Minority Opinion from the National Academy of Science's Review of DoE's Nuclear Research and Development Program, http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11998&page=73 * For an even-handed look at how nuclear construction went astray in the U.S. in the 1970s, the best book remains "Light Water: How the Nuclear Dream Dissolved, Irvin C. Bupp and Jean-Claude Derian. * Another good overview text is Megawatts and Megatons, Richard Garwin and Georges Charpak.

Compounds used in medicine are making their way into the Broome County landfill and into the Susquehanna River. Some -- such as the nuclear medicine used for diagnostic imaging and fighting cancer -- are radioactive, and have set off radiation detectors at the landfill. Wastewater treatment plants aren't specifically designed to treat effluent for such substances. While fish downstream of the Binghamton-Johnson City Joint Sewage Treatment Plant haven't been tested, Bingham-ton University researchers found traces of hormones and drugs -- including antibiotics, estrogen and aspirin products -- in the plant's effluent prior to a new secondary treatment system that went online last year. The area hasn't been tested for drugs since.

n an unexpected finding that could have applications in medicine and elsewhere, UCLA researchers have found that unspooling a simple roll of Scotch tape produces X-rays -- enough to produce clear images of their fingers.

Once despised as the symbol of everything bad the atomic age stood for, it is now rehabilitated and is the symbol of the path to energy independence. It was potentially blamed for everything from mutant reptiles and insects, to melting down into the core of the earth and out again to China, to an explosion that would destroy millions of people, major cities and contaminate vast areas of the planet forever (as in Chernobyl). Now its image has been refinished and it shines as a cheap, safe, reliable source of the electric power we need to become free from our addiction to oil. Yes it's the once never popular but now ever popular nuclear reactor power station. Forget the problem of a Three Mile Island, Nukes are now the solution. Or so says some of the common wisdom being tossed around by candidates of both parties, some scientists, lots of business people (especially those in the nuclear power plant business) and a few other fools who haven't looked past the potential popularity and profits to the long term and deeply disturbing problem of nuclear produced power.

Imagine powering your home with a mini nuclear plant. Imagine that's it's not just a pipe dream. Scientists at Los Alamos in New Mexico say the plants will be on sale within five years. Hyperion Power Generation, based in New Mexico, said it's already taking orders and will start mass production of its Hyperion Power Module within the same time frame.