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For more than 20 years, the government's plan to dispose of highly radioactive spent fuel piling up at U.S. nuclear power reactors has been to haul it to Yucca Mountain and entomb it in a maze of tunnels. But this year, more than a decade before the first shipment was ever expected to arrive at the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and years before a license could have been approved for the project, the Obama administration halted funding, saying the Nevada site was "not an option." That prompted a group of university experts on nuclear waste policy to explore another plan. That plan, they hope, will chart the course for a soon-to-be-chosen Department of Energy blue ribbon panel to follow as it sets out to develop a new national nuclear waste strategy.

Bulgaria's PM, Boyko Borisov, is going to talk to his German counterpart, Angela Merkel, about the potential decision of RWE to withdraw from the Belene Nuclear Plant project. This was announced by Borisov himself on Wednesday. The German media have recently published unconfirmed information about RWE's withdrawal from the project for the second Bulgarian nuclear power plant, and Borisov's statement might be construed as a confirmation of those reports, Bulgarian analysts have remarked. In December 2008, the German energy giant RWE and the Bulgarian National Electric Company NEK sealed their partnership in which RWE was chosen to acquire 49% of the Belene NPP in exchange for a capital payment of EUR 1,275 B, a premium of EUR 550 M for NEK, and a loan of EUR 300 M for the purchase of equipment and other expenditures. According to the German media, RWE is pulling out of the Belene project because of the rising costs of the NPP construction, and because of the intentions of Merkel's new government to revive the nuclear energy in Germany.

Bulgaria's PM, Boyko Borisov, is going to talk to his German counterpart, Angela Merkel, about the potential decision of RWE to withdraw from the Belene Nuclear Plant project. This was announced by Borisov himself on Wednesday. The German media have recently published unconfirmed information about RWE's withdrawal from the project for the second Bulgarian nuclear power plant, and Borisov's statement might be construed as a confirmation of those reports, Bulgarian analysts have remarked. In December 2008, the German energy giant RWE and the Bulgarian National Electric Company NEK sealed their partnership in which RWE was chosen to acquire 49% of the Belene NPP in exchange for a capital payment of EUR 1,275 B, a premium of EUR 550 M for NEK, and a loan of EUR 300 M for the purchase of equipment and other expenditures. According to the German media, RWE is pulling out of the Belene project because of the rising costs of the NPP construction, and because of the intentions of Merkel's new government to revive the nuclear energy in Germany.

"Mistrust of the media has surged among the people of Fukushima Prefecture. In part this is due to reports filed by mainstream journalists who are unwilling to visit the area near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. But above all it is the result of contradictory reportsreleased by the media, TEPCO and the government. On the one hand, many local officials and residents in Fukushima insist that the situation is safe and that the media, in fanning unwarranted fears, are damaging the economy of the region.By contrast, many freelance journalists in Tokyo report that the central government is downplaying the fact that radiation leakage has been massive and that the threat to public health has been woefully underestimated. While the government long hewed to its original definition of a 20 kilometer exclusion zone, following the April 12 announcement that the Fukushima radiation severity level has been raised from a level 5 event (as with Three Mile Island) to a level 7 event (as with Chernobyl), the government also extended the radiation exclusion zone from 20 kilometers to at least five communities in the 30-50 kilometer range."

Around 1000 people joined a protest march on Saturday to demand government action on toxic waste sunk by the mafia in boats off the southern Italian coast, media reports said. "The state must consider this task a priority by allocating funding and supporting the magistrates' inquiry, and monitoring polluted sites and cleaning them up," said the president of the environmental organisation Legambiente, Vittorio Cogliati Dezza, quoted by Italian media. The demonstrators marched through the town of Amantea holding banners reading "No to the Calabria dustbin."

Around 1000 people joined a protest march on Saturday to demand government action on toxic waste sunk by the mafia in boats off the southern Italian coast, media reports said. "The state must consider this task a priority by allocating funding and supporting the magistrates' inquiry, and monitoring polluted sites and cleaning them up," said the president of the environmental organisation Legambiente, Vittorio Cogliati Dezza, quoted by Italian media. The demonstrators marched through the town of Amantea holding banners reading "No to the Calabria dustbin."

Vice President Dick Cheney told the FBI he had no idea who leaked to the news media that Valerie Plame, wife of a Bush administration critic, worked for the CIA. An FBI summary of Cheney's interview from 2004 reflects that the vice president had deep concern about Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador in Africa who said the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI in the probe of who leaked Plame's identity to the news media. At the end of Libby's trial, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said that "there is a cloud over the vice president" in the leaking of Plame's identity.

Vice President Dick Cheney told the FBI he had no idea who leaked to the news media that Valerie Plame, wife of a Bush administration critic, worked for the CIA. An FBI summary of Cheney's interview from 2004 reflects that the vice president had deep concern about Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador in Africa who said the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI in the probe of who leaked Plame's identity to the news media. At the end of Libby's trial, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said that "there is a cloud over the vice president" in the leaking of Plame's identity.

Chernobyl exploded and Three Mile Island missed by a whisker. They both killed people. But thirty years after the Pennsylvania melt-down, a Soviet-style Iron Curtain has formed between the corporate media and the alternatives, with nuclear power at its center. The Soviets denied for days that the Chernobyl accident had happened at all. America's parallel corporate media says "no one died at TMI."

"Survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings met a wall of indifference from ordinary Americans and the U.S. media after traveling to New York to lobby a major U.N. nuclear nonproliferation conference for an end to nuclear weapons. About 2,000 Japanese, including 100 hibakusha from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, took part in demonstrations before the opening of the 26-day Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty review conference on May 3. But the campaigners said there was little interest in their calls for an immediate ban on nuclear weapons, from either ordinary Americans or the U.S. media. "

Alarmist predictions that the long-term health effects of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan will be worse than those following Chernobyl in 1986 are likely to aggravate harmful psychological effects of the incident. That was the warning heard at an international conference on radiation research in Warsaw, Poland, this week. One report, in UK newspaper The Independent, quoted a scientist who predicted more than a million would die, and that the prolonged release of radioactivity from Fukushima would make health effects worse than those from the sudden release experienced at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine. "We've got to stop these sorts of reports coming out, because they are really upsetting the Japanese population," says Gerry Thomas at Imperial College London, who is attending the meeting. "The media has a hell of a lot of responsibility here, because the worst post-Chernobyl effects were the psychological consequences and this shouldn't happen again."

Brazil is to build a further four nuclear power plants in addition to finishing the halted Angra III plant, local media said Tuesday. Two plants will be built in the northeast and the other two will be built in the southeast, where three Angra plants are already located, local media said, adding that the four plants are expected to begin operating by 2014.

Sammy Hayes could barely hold back tears when she spoke of her late husband, a former employee at Los Alamos National Laboratories. "When you watch somebody you love die, you want to take somebody out and wring their neck because you know in your heart they were exposed to stuff that causes three separate cancers," she said. Hayes appealed to the national Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health on Thursday at the Doubletree Hotel, in regards to her husband's death in 2005 of cancer-related complications. Claimants from Los Alamos National Laboratories appealed for work-related injury compensation from the federal government, seeking reparations after allegedly being exposed to radioactive materials and other hazardous substances.

About three years ago, the U.S. Enrichment Corp. in Piketon contracted with Honeywell to set up a team of skilled professionals to assist with the American Centrifuge process. There is a large worldwide market for fuel grade uranium, and the demand is expected to increase as new nuclear plants come on line. It was anticipated that the Department of Energy would give USEC a $2 billion loan guarantee, so it could secure private financing to continue the program. Our politicians indicated they were in favor the loan guarantee. Then, last month, DOE decided it would put off the loan guarantee for six months. This caused the skilled team of more than 100 people at Honeywell to lose their jobs. All this was bad enough, but then the media indicated our government had given a $2 billion loan to General Electric (this was not a guarantee, but an actual loan). Then the media announced our government has encouraged a $2 billion loan guarantee to Brazil's Petrobras oil company, so it can drill for oil off that coast.

The UN atomic watchdog said Thursday it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapons programme in Iran. The International Atomic Energy Agency rejected a US media report which claimed its experts believed Tehran had the ability to make a nuclear bomb and was on the way to developing a missile system able to carry an atomic warhead. "With respect to a recent media report, the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapon programme in Iran," a statement said.

There's still nowhere to put that toxic waste Nuclear electricity is affordable and emission free People opposed to nuclear energy applications point to the high initial price tag of enormous nuclear generating facilities that can … read more provide enough reliable electricity for several million people; they often overlook the resulting low cost per unit of power when spread over that large market. There are 104 nuclear plants operating in the US today. Many of us who are old enough to remember the controversies surrounding their construction can remember how many times we were told that nuclear power plants are frighteningly expensive and that they always cost more than predicted. We even remember that electrical power prices often increased immediately after the plants went into operation due to the effect of adding those big, expensive plants into the utility rate base. What many people who consider "news" media to be their only information sources rarely understand, however, is that the 104 plants currently operating provide the US with 20% of its electric power at an average production cost of about 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour. They also do not understand that after a few decades of operation and revenue production, the initial mortgages on those plants are largely paid off. The best information of all, which is not really "news" and does not get regularly published on the front page, is that the plants still have at least 20 years of life remaining during which they can produce emission free, low cost power. The companies that own the plants and their stock holders understand the economics pretty well; that is why 18 applications for 25 new plants have been turned into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission already with more in the pipeline. All of the used fuel - what some people call waste - is being carefully stored in a tiny corner of the existing sites, just waiting to be recycled into new fuel. It still contains 95% of its initial potential energy, but

There's still nowhere to put that toxic waste Nuclear electricity is affordable and emission free People opposed to nuclear energy applications point to the high initial price tag of enormous nuclear generating facilities that can … read more provide enough reliable electricity for several million people; they often overlook the resulting low cost per unit of power when spread over that large market. There are 104 nuclear plants operating in the US today. Many of us who are old enough to remember the controversies surrounding their construction can remember how many times we were told that nuclear power plants are frighteningly expensive and that they always cost more than predicted. We even remember that electrical power prices often increased immediately after the plants went into operation due to the effect of adding those big, expensive plants into the utility rate base. What many people who consider "news" media to be their only information sources rarely understand, however, is that the 104 plants currently operating provide the US with 20% of its electric power at an average production cost of about 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour. They also do not understand that after a few decades of operation and revenue production, the initial mortgages on those plants are largely paid off. The best information of all, which is not really "news" and does not get regularly published on the front page, is that the plants still have at least 20 years of life remaining during which they can produce emission free, low cost power. The companies that own the plants and their stock holders understand the economics pretty well; that is why 18 applications for 25 new plants have been turned into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission already with more in the pipeline. All of the used fuel - what some people call waste - is being carefully stored in a tiny corner of the existing sites, just waiting to be recycled into new fuel. It still contains 95% of its initial potential energy, but

The Nuclear Industry Embraces Junk Science [Henry Payne] Global warming makes strange bedfellows. Thirty years ago, the U.S. nuclear industry was a victim of junk science. Media and green fear-mongering in the wake of Three Mile Island led Americans to believe nuclear energy was unsafe, could cause a "China syndrome," and even a nuclear holocaust (a cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Herblock of the Washington Post in 1979 showed a mushroom cloud emerging from a TMI cooling tower). As a result, nuclear energy was shunned and not a single power plant has been built in the U.S. since. But now, as the same media and green fear-mongers attempt to destroy the coal industry for causing global warming, killer hurricanes, and coastal flooding, the nuclear industry has jumped aboard the junk-science bandwagon.

In September 2007, Stephen Zunes fell under the spotlight of the mass media following his meeting with the controversial Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York during his third trip to the US to attend the 62nd session of the United Nations General Assembly. Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he serves as the chairman of Middle Eastern Studies program. His articles constantly appear in the major media outlets and news websites including Common Dreams, Tikkun Magazine, National Catholic Reporter, Foreign Policy In Focus, Huffington Post, Open Democracy and AlterNet. Zunes also appears on BBC, PBS, NPR and MSNBC as a Middle Eastern studies expert to present his viewpoints, analyses and commentaries on the outstanding issues of conflict in Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran.

"The Environmental Protection Agency is setting the stage for upcoming negotiations with a strong message to the Department of Energy: Don't let the focus on demolition of old buildings in Oak Ridge stall or deter efforts to reduce pollution in the environment. "EPA is concerned that DOE . . . is placing too much emphasis on building demolition activities in lieu of contaminated environmental media cleanup," EPA's Franklin E. Hill wrote in a Feb. 9 letter to DOE's Oak Ridge office. "Significant levels of contamination in environmental media continue to migrate uncontrolled in groundwater and surface water, and in some cases beyond the boundaries of the ORR (Oak Ridge Reservation). This is viewed as a significant risk and should be addressed earlier than what DOE . . has recently indicated.""

"Oil and gas remain critical sources of power and energy for North African nations. In the medium term, hydrocarbons will remain the predominant sources of energy, whether it is for the OPEC countries of Algeria and Libya or the less-oil-endowed nations of Tunisia and Morocco. But in the longer term, the nuclear option appears interesting to all as oil reserves are depleted and securing new sources of energy is a strategic priority. On the ground, all North African nations have been working somewhat to develop nuclear capabilities for civilian and industrial use. Each country has put in place programs that have been supported or endorsed by a Western super power, notably France, which has obvious economic interest in helping develop such industry. The North Africa Journal Take: * Despite media noise in the region that relay political views instead of depicting the reality, no single North African nation is contemplating the use of the nuclear option for non-civilian purposes. Various media sources and analysts outside of the region have also been raising red flags but we believe their positions are unfounded and without any base, essentially motivated by political reasons"

"Officials say poor welding work and pin-hole leaks are keeping one of the San Onofre's nuclear reactors from returning to service. That's not the only safety issue the plant has recently faced. Plant officials told our media partner The North County Times that the reactor's leak problems have now been repaired. Unfortunately, they have delayed the reactor from returning to service by about three weeks. And in an unrelated incident, a report surfaced this week that plant officials waited more than two weeks before reporting a minor safety issue to federal regulators. "

"A senior parliamentarian in Lithuania has launched an investigation into allegations that stolen parts were installed in the country's only nuclear power plant, the Baltic News Service and other local media reported Tuesday. Rokas Zilinskas, chairman of the Baltic state's parliamentary nuclear energy commission, has asked prosecutors to look into claims that equipment stolen from Russia's Leningrad nuclear power plant was later installed in Lithuania's Ignalina facility. A company called Energetikos Tiekimo Baze allegedly shipped equipment stolen from Russia to Lithuania under false papers in 2003- 2004, media reports claimed. The equipment, described as servo drives used to lower graphite rods into the nuclear reactor, was allegedly later installed at Ingnalina. "If it is found out that the law and order institutions failed to take any (necessary) measures ... this will raise serious doubts as to their competence and ability to safeguard the interests of national security," Zilinskas said in a statement."

" "We, the people must return to our very effective battle that shut down nuclear reactors as an energy source in the 1970s and 1980s. We did it before and we can do it again." - Les Blough In early March, European media outlets picked up a shocking story about nuclear power - a story so horrifying, it seemed as if Halloween had come early this year. This news, in fact, stands to jeopardize the health and safety - the very lives - of Europeans and others throughout the world... including, quite sadly, those living in the US. The mainstream media, long considered the mouthpiece for corporate and government interests, has failed to cover this macabre-yet-real life news. As such, few Americans seem to have any clue about the catastrophic danger now being cooked up from coast to coast - and many points in between. And even though we may not know it yet, Europeans are keenly aware of this clear and undeniable danger. And by danger, we're talking about nothing less than the next Chernobyl-in-the making."