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Background: Decades of improper disposal of uranium-mining wastes on the Navajo Nation has resulted in adverse human and ecological health impacts as well as socio-cultural problems. As the Navajo people become increasingly aware of the contamination problems, there is a need to develop a risk-communication strategy to properly inform tribal members of the extent and severity of the health risks. To be most effective, this strategy needs to blend accepted riskcommunication techniques with Navajo perspectives such that the strategy can be used at the community level to inform culturally- and toxicologically-relevant decisions about land and water use as well as mine-waste remediation.

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) -- The construction of the U.K.'s first nuclear power plant in more than 20 years could be delayed as Electricite de France (EPA:EDF) (Paris) called on the government to dramatically increase its support for nuclear power. The French state-owned company wants the U.K. government to offer greater incentives for nuclear power, suggesting that a carbon tax would help. For details, view the entire article by subscribing to Industrial Info's Premium Industry News at http://www.industrialinfo.co.uk/showNews.jsp?newsitemID=147716, or browse other breaking industrial news stories at www.industrialinfo.co.uk. Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy related markets. For more than 26 years, Industrial Info has provided plant and project opportunity databases, market forecasts, high resolution maps, and daily industry news. For more information send inquiries to europe@industrialinfo.co.uk or visit us online at Industrial Info Europe (http://www.industrialinfo.co.uk).

On July 17, 1955, this tiny town, which might otherwise have forever escaped notoriety of any kind, was put on the map for a very historic reason: It became the first place in the "free world" to be powered by "electrical energy developed from the atom." The power was generated by an experimental reactor run by the nearby National Reactor Testing Station, and the flipping of the switch seemed to usher in a new era for the United States and the world: the nuclear era. Over time, the U.S. and other countries grew more and more attracted to the idea of nuclear power as a major alternative to fossil fuel-based power. But by the 1980s and early 1990s, the country had lost its appetite for the fuel source. It was seen as dangerous, too closely related to nuclear weapons, and too productive of nuclear waste, and gradually, the number of working nuclear power plants got smaller and smaller. In many places, in fact, the mere mention of nuclear power will draw a dirty stare.

Spring is in the air down in the beautiful Cotswolds. Bluebells carpet the woods while lambs are agambolling in the lush fields. Sadly I know this only from telephone calls home as I'm on a weekend break in Chernobyl. Only 5,000 visitors a year leave Kiev, the handsome capital of the Ukraine, to take a minibus to the "exclusion zone". This is an area 30km around reactor No 4 of the V I Lenin nuclear power station that blew up on 26 April 1986, covering Europe in a radioactive cloud. I was at school at the time, and I remember newscasters pointing to frightening maps of the Continent showing wind patterns and the advance of "the cloud". Some teachers at school started wearing masks and doom-laden predictions were everywhere in the press.

The Peace River Environmental Society arranged for a series of talks on earthquake risks surrounding the construction of a nuclear power plant near Peace River, one in Fairview at the Legion May 6. The speaker was J.R. (Jack) Century, a petroleum geologist, who suggested that building a nuclear power plant in the Peace country is both unsafe and unnecessary. Century has made a study of seismicity, vibration in the earth's crust, especially as caused by injecting or flooding liquid into and withdrawing liquid from the earth as is done for tarsands and heavy oil recovery where steam is injected to heat heavy oil to make it flow. Century says that underground fractures that help to trap oil and gas underground as well as making it possible to recover them more easily, can be both a blessing and a curse, the latter especially in a limestone structure such as underlies much of the Peace. He believes that injecting into the ground, whether it is steam to recover bitumen or carbon dioxide for storage purposes can alter the "pressure regimen" down below which can lead to increased seismic activity, which in turn could lead to collapses of underground limestone structures and/or possibly catastrophic earthquakes. He pointed to a CBC news story about Japan's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant being damaged by a large earthquake. The damage included fires, water and oil leaks and pipes knocked out of place by the tremors. He implied that the same thing could happen in the Peace. He showed a map of the Peace detailing fault lines and both the original proposed location for the Bruce Power plant at Lac Cardinal and the more recent site are quite close to a fault lines.

Southern Co. employs a unique type of active tag to track employees' locations at its training center, as well as teach them how to avoid excessive radiation exposure. May 18, 2009-Southern Co. has completed a pilot testing an RFID-based system to train employees in how to limit their exposure to radiation. The RFID system, provided by Q-Track, feeds a worker's location data to software that then calculates the level of exposure that person would have received in a real-world scenario. It's part of a simulated environment intended to train future employees of the electric utility company's Plant Vogtle nuclear facility-located in Waynesboro, Ga.-how to gauge their exposure. Staff members are instructed to base their radiation exposure on a floor map of the factory that demarks the locations of radiation hot spots, as well as to employ dosimeter readers displaying the cumulative level of radiation encountered.

Neighbors in the Tri-Cities, exposed to radioactive material from the Hanford Nuclear Facility, are one step closer to getting justice. For the past 20 years, the affected neighbors have been in and out of court, trying to get the contractors who ran Hanford to accept responsibility for what happened. On Tuesday, a federal judge asked both sides to lay out a road map to resolve close to 2,000 cases.

Stacey Hamburg remembers the day in the fall of 2007 when she was cruising up Arizona's Route 64 toward the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and saw a helicopter flying low and slow, back and forth just above the tops of pinon trees. "This helicopter was not out tracking antelope, but was scouting for uranium," she told me. Stacey is the conservation organizer for the Sierra Club's Grand Canyon Protection Campaign. There's a Uranium Rush going on and it's threatening one of this country's greatest treasures. In 2003 there were just 10 uranium-mining claims within five miles of the Grand Canyon; now there are 1,100 and thousands more beyond the five-mile mark. I think this map tells the story pretty well.

All numbers are estimates because exact numbers are top secret. * Strategic nuclear warheads are designed to target cities, missile locations and military headquarters as part of a strategic plan.

"Researchers at the National Institute of Geological Sciences (NIGS) in the University of the Philippines have discovered a thrust fault less than 200 meters southwest of the derelict Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP). "It's at the tip of Napot Point," said NIGS professor Alfredo Mahar Francisco Lagmay. "At least from the papers I have been researching on, I have never seen a description of this fault." According to Lagmay, he and his team have been scouting for exposed faults such as this one for the past few months through maps and satellite images."

"There's a potential problem when drilling for gas, other than the possibility of well-water contamination by methane, brine or "fracking" chemicals (Plain Dealer, Sunday). In 1995, a national organization called the State Review of Oil and Natural Gas Environmental Regulations (STRONGER) reviewed state regulations on gas and oil wells. One recommendation it made was that the state should test for naturally occurring radioactive material at oil and gas exploration and production sites. In the 2000 and 2005 reviews, the same recommendation was made. Now, 15 years later, legislation requiring the testing has not even been proposed. Is there a reason to be concerned? Yes. An Environmental Protection Agency map of the radioactive gas radon shows statewide distribution. The gas slowly percolates through soil as a decay product of radium, so the potential for bringing both radon and radium to the surface during drilling exists. Additionally, gas-well borehole "cuttings" are normally buried on-site at completion of the drilling. Do those "cuttings" contain radioactive material, which would continue to expose local residents to radiation after completion of the drilling? When is legislation addressing this potential problem going to be proposed and adopted? "

"The federal government had one place in mind to store the country's most hazardous nuclear waste. It was at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. President Barack Obama recently killed that project, even though the country had spent more than nine billion dollars on it. Shawn Allee found that figure is just the beginning: A map of purchaser fee payment to the Nuclear Waste Fund More about the Nuclear Waste Fund's budget A related article from the Christian Science Monitor"

BankTrack, in cooperation with a number of working partners, today launches www.nuclearbanks.org, a new website mapping the involvement of 45 leading commercial banks in funding nuclear power projects and companies active in the nuclear sector. [1] BankTrack considers nuclear energy a grave danger for people and planet. The renewed interest in nuclear energy also poses a severe obstacle to achieving a sustainable solution to the climate crisis.[2] The website provides information on 867 transactions, involving a total of 124 banks providing finance to over 70 nuclear companies. Between 2000 and 2009, these banks…read more"