Group items tagged

For applications that have been received by the NRC, you may select a site name to view the NRC's website for the specific COL application. Websites for the remainder of the applications will be created when they are received.

The Yeelirrie uranium project in Western Australia has been reactivated after BHP Billiton applied to the federal government to commence a new process of environmental approval. Yeelirrie is about 420 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie and close to the Goldfields gas pipeline. The deposit was discovered by Western Mining (WMC) in 1972 and found to extend over an area of 9 km x 1.5 km, is up to seven metres thick and has an average depth of about seven metres of overburden. Old published figures show some 52,000 tonnes of uranium oxide at 0.15% average grade, and considerable metallurgical work was done before a new federal Labor government killed the project in 1983. The uranium mineralisation is carnotite (hydrated potassium uranium vanadium oxide).

The Ohio Department of Health not only believes a childhood cancer cluster exists in the vicinity of Clyde, Ohio, it now believes it extends to a wider geographical area. A map released to the media yesterday by Robert Indian, chief of the state health department's comprehensive cancer control program, shows the agency's study area has been expanded west into Fremont. It follows the Sandusky River north to Lake Erie's Sandusky Bay, and goes south into Seneca County.

The Ohio Department of Health not only believes a childhood cancer cluster exists in the vicinity of Clyde, Ohio, it now believes it extends to a wider geographical area. A map released to the media yesterday by Robert Indian, chief of the state health department's comprehensive cancer control program, shows the agency's study area has been expanded west into Fremont. It follows the Sandusky River north to Lake Erie's Sandusky Bay, and goes south into Seneca County.

"The latest Defense Department nuclear road map, released this week, reflects President Obama's repeated declaration that the United States will not build new nuclear warheads or conduct underground nuclear tests. But Pentagon officials have since made clear that the policy contains loopholes. Using language hammered out to satisfy senior Defense Department officials who are looking ahead 30 years, the Nuclear Posture Review allows for new nuclear components to be deployed in older warheads if that is necessary to make them safer and more reliable and if the president and Congress approve, according to Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "

Government plans to fast-track major projects pose a real threat to their action plan on global warming (UK's nuclear future is mapped out as race to tackle climate change hots up, 10 November). Reports on the government's national policy statements have predictably focussed on the controversial issue of new nuclear reactors, but a fundamental flaw in the proposals, which has gone largely unreported, threatens to undermine UK targets for tackling climate change. Under the Climate Change Act, the UK has been set legally binding "carbon budgets", setting limits on how much carbon the UK can emit, over five-year budget periods, for the next 15 years. Some of the projects covered by the national policy statements, such as new coal and gas-fired power stations, are likely to have a significant impact on UK emissions - but bizarrely the effect that these developments would have on UK carbon budgets is missing from the proposals, and this issue won't be considered by the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC).

Government plans to fast-track major projects pose a real threat to their action plan on global warming (UK's nuclear future is mapped out as race to tackle climate change hots up, 10 November). Reports on the government's national policy statements have predictably focussed on the controversial issue of new nuclear reactors, but a fundamental flaw in the proposals, which has gone largely unreported, threatens to undermine UK targets for tackling climate change. Under the Climate Change Act, the UK has been set legally binding "carbon budgets", setting limits on how much carbon the UK can emit, over five-year budget periods, for the next 15 years. Some of the projects covered by the national policy statements, such as new coal and gas-fired power stations, are likely to have a significant impact on UK emissions - but bizarrely the effect that these developments would have on UK carbon budgets is missing from the proposals, and this issue won't be considered by the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC).

This map visualises crowd-sourced geiger counter readings from across Japan. Click on the circles to get more information on the readings in each area. These readings are aggregated by Pachube here. Measurements are represented in units of microsieverts per hour ( µSv / h). Original readings used the unit nGy/h and I take the approximation 1 Gy = 1 Sv. (See the Wikipedia entry on Sieverts)

"Some people in one Labrador community that could benefit from uranium mining are calling on the Inuit Nunatsiavut government of northern Labrador to end its three-year ban on uranium mining now. They say that since the ban was narrowly approved in 2008 the community has gone from boom town to ghost town. At the peak of exploration, the drone of helicopters and float planes continued from dawn to dusk. "All we can hear now is the wind and the songbirds," said Glen Sheppard, a member of the Nunatsiavut Assembly representing Postville. "If it weren't for the number of homes around, you'd think you're at your [summer] cabin." Sheppard said that since the moratorium almost half the town's residents have become unemployed and that 75 per cent of the people in the community want the moratorium lifted early."

"Local opposition to the proposed nuclear waste repository was strong. A public hearing at the Asheville Civic Center April 4, 1986 lasted nine hours. This "Free Vacation Map" shows some of the creativity the opposition brought to bear. Lee also possesses a vinyl recording of a song written about the proposed nuclear waste repository, "There's a Glow in the Smokies Tonight.""

"Deep in an abandoned German salt mine, barrels of nuclear waste lie in a jumbled heap-untouched since the 1970s, when this picture was taken. Since the 1960s the Asse II chambers in Lower Saxony (map) have served as storage sites for more than a hundred thousand barrels of low- to medium-level nuclear waste. Low-level waste isn't considered dangerous to handle, but medium-level waste may need shielding before disposal-such as encasing reactor components in concrete-according to the World Nuclear Association, which promotes nuclear energy. In 2008 reports emerged that water leaking from Asse II since the 1980s is radioactive."

" Levels of radioactive tritium remain high in a number of monitoring wells at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey, according to new state data. The Oyster Creek nuclear plant looms near its discharge canal in Lacey (file photo by Peter Ackerman) Through late April, the highest tritium level - nearly 50 times government limits - was in a well in the Cohansey aquifer beneath the plant. The Cohansey is used for drinking water beyond Oyster Creek property lines. A different well in the shallower Cape May aquifer beneath Oyster Creek had a tritium level that was about 45 times above government limits. The state Department of Environmental Protection has posted a map of well locations."

"How can the United States establish one or more disposal sites for high level nuclear waste in a way that is technically, politically and socially acceptable? State Rep. John Heaton, D-Carlsbad, told a federal blue-ribbon panel last week that the relationship between Carlsbad and the U.S. Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is the road map showing how to achieve that goal. Heaton, along with Lokesh Chaturvedi, former deputy director of the Environmental Evaluation Group, and Don Hancock, from the Southwest Research Center, were in Washington last week to present testimony before the Disposal Subcommittee of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. The topic was WIPP, a low-level nuclear waste repository located about 27 miles east of Carlsbad, and why it has achieved great success."

The possible use of force against Iran is a good case in point. Its costs would likely be high and its consequences are difficult to map out fully. Yet, the consequences of allowing the current Iranian regime to acquire nuclear weapons are so dire that the U.S. may well have no choice but to launch military operations designed to destroy the Iranian nuclear infrastructure. Figuring out when this decision has to be faced would be a very difficult task, especially given the inherent intelligence uncertainties and the past intelligence failures associated with the predictions of the particulars of the late Saddam Hussein's weapons programs.

As political candidates wrangle over how to map out Vermont's future electricity supply, the heads of the state's utilities are moving ahead with their own plans. A long list of contingencies, however, including the election, has complicated power source negotiations. Regulators and lawmakers, for example, haven't yet determined whether Vermont Yankee will continue to operate after its license expires in 2012, and utility contracts with Hydro-Quebec will start expiring in 2015.

White Plains, NY - The latest version of the Indian Point Emergency Planning Guide is being mailed out starting this week to Westchester residents and businesses within the ten-mile Emergency Planning Zone around the nuclear power plants. The booklet includes an updated map that lists evacuation routes, reception centers, bus routes and critical information about school relocation.

Who: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) What: DOE license application seeking authorization to construct a geologic repository When: June 3, 2008 (application submitted) Where: Yucca Mountain site in Nye County, Nevada (see map showing Location of Yucca Mountain)

It's hard to find Nevada residents who still think Yucca Mountain is the biggest issue in the state, but this election year might just put it back on the map. After all, Sen. John McCain is solidly behind the proposed nuclear waste dump, even though he sometimes wears an environmentalist hat and at other times a fiscal conservative hat. Yucca Mountain could be a huge environmental disaster -- and it's already cost enough billions of dollars to actually deserve the honor of federal government boondoggle.

If claims by Iran that it's building 3,000 more centrifuges to enrich nuclear fuel are true, then the Bush administration and Congress face a more serious challenge than we first thought. Even assuming that Iran intends to use nuclear energy solely for peaceful purposes - and there are very good reasons to doubt Iran's stated intentions - the dangers posed by unsupervised, weapons-grade material in the hands of a regime that has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map" are unacceptable.

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - About a dozen anti-nuclear demonstrators Friday took to the streets of downtown Baltimore City to counteract Gov. Martin O'Malley's endorsement of the construction of a third nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland. "There are cheaper, safer alternatives," said Stephen Soifer, spokesman for the Chesapeake Safe Energy Coalition, which includes the Sierra Club and seven other environmental and anti-nuclear groups.