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The Department of Energy will consider the Hanford nuclear reservation as one of seven possible sites for long-term storage of the nation's elemental mercury, said a notice Thursday in the Federal Register. The nation could have 8,300 to 11,000 tons of mercury from private sources that would be eligible for storage over 40 years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. DOE is looking for storage sites after the Mercury Export Ban Act of 2008 prohibited the export of mercury beginning in 2013 and required the agency to have facilities ready to manage and store mercury generated in the United States. It is a new responsibility for the DOE Office of Environmental Management, which is responsible for work at Hanford.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander said he's all in favor of banning exports of mercury to help the environment, but not if it means shipping thousands of tons of the toxic metal to Oak Ridge and storing it here forever. The Y-12 nuclear weapons plant already houses about 1,200 tons of mercury, left over from the plant's Cold War work on the hydrogen bomb, and Alexander said that's enough.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu could remove Grand Junction from the list of potential mercury-storage sites and he should do just that, Colorado's senators and a congressman said. "We believe there is abundant evidence to characterize this proposal as unreasonable and respectfully urge that you eliminate from further review the alternative for storing mercury in Mesa County," the Colorado officials said. Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet and U.S. Rep. John Salazar, all Democrats, sent the letter on Thursday. DOWNLOAD THE LETTER.

Earlier this month, a shipment off-site of seven barrels of tritium- and mercury-contaminated oil put the Savannah River Site on a fast track to remove legacy mixed waste originally scheduled for disposition in 2053. "Not only is it radioactive for its tritium content, it is hazardous for mercury, which can make treatment of this waste challenging," said Jacob Nims, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) project engineer. "We had plans to let all of it decay to be able to ship it off-site in the future." Decaying would have taken 10 to 50 years. Instead, funding from the Recovery Act accelerated the project as part of the cleanup that will reduce the footprint of the Site by 67 percent. In essence, the removal of the mixed waste frees space in N Area, allowing for the consolidation of the remaining waste from a total of 30,000 square feet of space to a smaller 3,600-square-foot facility in E Area. "The plan is to ship all we can from N Area and move only what is necessary into E Area to allow maximum space for all future generated waste," Nims said.

Earlier this month, a shipment off-site of seven barrels of tritium- and mercury-contaminated oil put the Savannah River Site on a fast track to remove legacy mixed waste originally scheduled for disposition in 2053. "Not only is it radioactive for its tritium content, it is hazardous for mercury, which can make treatment of this waste challenging," said Jacob Nims, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) project engineer. "We had plans to let all of it decay to be able to ship it off-site in the future." Decaying would have taken 10 to 50 years. Instead, funding from the Recovery Act accelerated the project as part of the cleanup that will reduce the footprint of the Site by 67 percent. In essence, the removal of the mixed waste frees space in N Area, allowing for the consolidation of the remaining waste from a total of 30,000 square feet of space to a smaller 3,600-square-foot facility in E Area. "The plan is to ship all we can from N Area and move only what is necessary into E Area to allow maximum space for all future generated waste," Nims said.

Mercury-laden waste pushes shutdown date to Nov. 30 OAK RIDGE - The last waste to be burned at the federal government's 20-year-old toxic waste incinerator is apparently proving to be some of the most difficult. The Department of Energy and its environmental manager have again delayed the permanent closure of the Oak Ridge incinerator, citing the need for more time to process mercury-laden

Mercury-laden waste pushes shutdown date to Nov. 30 OAK RIDGE - The last waste to be burned at the federal government's 20-year-old toxic waste incinerator is apparently proving to be some of the most difficult. The Department of Energy and its environmental manager have again delayed the permanent closure of the Oak Ridge incinerator, citing the need for more time to process mercury-laden

There's no legal problem here, officials with the U.S. Department of Energy say. Storing mercury at a federal site south of Whitewater won't violate the terms of an agreement the DOE signed with Mesa County more than a decade ago, a top official with the agency said. Well, that's a relief, at least to federal officials eager to find a permanent disposal site for thousands of tons of mercury. But it's not very reassuring to Mesa County residents who believed they had a commitment from the DOE years ago to keep the site near Whitewater free of additional hazardous wastes. That desert disposal site, originally known as Cheney Reservoir, was created to store millions of tons of low-level radioactive waste in the form of mill tailings from uranium milling that occurred in Grand Junction in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s.

Limerick Nuclear Power Plant emits so much dangerous air pollution (in addition to radiation) that it's considered a major air pollution source under the Clean Air Act. So much for advertisements claiming nuclear power is safe, clean energy. Not only is nuclear power a threat to water quality and quantity, Limerick Nuclear Power Plant's Title V permit shows it's a major air polluter. November 14, 2008 there was a notice in the Mercury for a Limerick Nuclear Plant Title V permit renewal. This permit requires major air pollution sources to list all their air pollution sources. Since that time we received and reviewed the permit. We were shocked at not only what was in the permit, but also what was incredibly left out of the permit. The loopholes are unprotective and unacceptable. Almost anything goes. Radiation, the signature toxic at a nuclear plant, was excluded even though radiation emissions are regulated by EPA and reported by Exelon to NRC.

An inquest is to be opened into the deaths of two Manchester University academics who died of pancreatic cancer after working for years in the building where Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics, conducted his experiments. The Manchester coroner, Nigel Meadows, has acted after hearing from the families of the two academics that their deaths may be linked to deposits of nuclear materials still contaminating the building in which the pioneering scientist worked, now known as the Rutherford Building. These materials include polonium, which killed Alexander Litvinenko, as well as radon and mercury.

An inquest is to be opened into the deaths of two Manchester University academics who died of pancreatic cancer after working for years in the building where Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics, conducted his experiments. The Manchester coroner, Nigel Meadows, has acted after hearing from the families of the two academics that their deaths may be linked to deposits of nuclear materials still contaminating the building in which the pioneering scientist worked, now known as the Rutherford Building. These materials include polonium, which killed Alexander Litvinenko, as well as radon and mercury.

Still dealing with the fallout of being a repository for contaminated sand from Kuwait, Idaho is reportedly slated to be the dumping ground for literal fallout: radioactive remnants from a World War II-era Navy shipyard, according to a San Francisco alternative newsweekly. "Currently, the Navy is proposing to excavate soil from IR-07 and IR-18, including known mercury and methane spots, and ship it to dumps in Idaho and Utah," said the San Francisco Bay Guardian, in a July 16 story.

RADIATION levels have forced the ABC to abandon its planned Brisbane home, just 18 months after it evacuated another site due to a cancer cluster. ABC managing director Mark Scott broke the news to shocked staff. But the decision is expected to prompt a legal battle with the site's current owners, Watpac, who say the national broadcaster cannot pull out of its $15.438 million contract for the Newstead property.

OAK RIDGE - Thousands of truckloads of hazardous garbage have already been hauled from the site, and the heavy-duty demolition work hasn't even started. Workers will begin taking down the walls of K-25 in October, but preparations - such as removing asbestos, mercury and PCBs - have been under way for a long time.

BRATTLEBORO - The recent spate of advertisements promoting the electric power generated at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant as "clean and green" doesn't tell the true story, said two Native Americans whose native lands are severely affected by the nuclear power industry. Lorraine Rekmans, of the Northern Ojibwa people from Elliot Lake, Ontario, and Ian Zabarte, from Mercury, Nev., secretary of state of the Western Shoshone National Council, spoke in Brattleboro Monday night, their last stop in a weeklong visit to Vermont organized by the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance and Citizens Awareness Network.

A CONVOY of trucks transported nuclear waste from the Lucas Heights reactor to Port Kembla early on Monday morning. As usual, the operation took place in secrecy and under heavy security. It was the ninth shipment of used or spent nuclear fuel to leave Lucas Heights for overseas storage facilities since 1963. Normally, the shipment leaves through Port Botany but because of construction work at that location, went to Port Kembla on this occasion. The Illawarra Mercury reported that port sources had told of workers ``holding their breath'' as the small ship rolled towards the jetty as the first of eight containers was loaded.

In Nicole Krauss' sparse and astonishing novel, Man Walks Into A Room, local cops find a disoriented man wandering along Highway 95 in the desolate Mercury Valley of Nevada. After the officers get him out of the shimmering heat, we learn that the man, Samson, has a brain tumor that has obliterated a large chunk of his memory. He has no recollection of the last 24 years of his life. Samson is able to recover the human and concrete remnants of those lost 24 years. His wife is there, loving and supportive; his home is still his; his job is still available. Nevertheless, his life crumbles. His very identity unravels in the absence of the anchor of a large span of memory. It's terrifying. Parts of the nuclear West, especially those involved in Cold War weapons production, suffer from a similar condition. Take Rocky Flats, for example, which for four decades produced tens of thousands of the pits that detonate atomic bombs. While it was in operation, the industrial complex outside Denver, Colo., was veiled in absolute secrecy. The people who worked there couldn't tell outsiders what they did, and they couldn't even talk to one another about their work.

Radioactive materials that were stored for decades in warehouses in four Lancaster County municipalities have been removed, state officials said Friday. The removal of about 400,000 World War II aircraft instruments containing radium, mercury and other hazardous materials was completed in December, said Ann Breslin of the state Department of Environmental Protection. They had been stored in eight warehouses owned by Marietta-based Strube Inc. in Columbia, Marietta, Maytown and Mount Joy. Strube describes itself on its Web site as "a privately held, multifaceted aircraft instrument sales, overhaul, and repair; manufacturing; and research and development organization." The cost of the cleanup to DEP was about $3.8 million. Breslin, project manager for the cleanup, said the agency will "try to cost-recover" as much as possible based in part on "ability to pay." "It's not our job to put businesses out of business," she said. "We try to work with them."

S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford cited expectations of tougher environmental regulations, rising coal prices and a weak economy Wednesday as he came out against a state-owned utility's plan to build a $1.25 billion coal-fired plant. Sanford said Obama administration rules on mercury emissions and expected caps on carbon dioxide emissions would double the plant's cost. Meanwhile, Sanford said, dire predictions of brownouts during the next decade won't play out because the economy won't grow fast enough to create demand at the heart of arguments for building the plant near Florence. And, Sanford said, coal prices have nearly tripled from projections used to justify the plant.

No matter what we're led to believe, the world's worst polluter is not your cousin who refuses to recycle or that co-worker who drives a gas guzzler or the guy down the block who simply will not try CFL bulbs. "The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined," explains Lucinda Marshall, founder of the Feminist Peace Network. Pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange, solvents, petroleum, lead, mercury, and depleted uranium are among the many deadly substances used by the military. What does this mean for us? To start with, it can help illustrate how to best foment a green revolution. As Derrick Jensen reminds us: "Even if every single person in the United States were to change all their light-bulbs to fluorescent, cut the amount they drive in half, recycle half of their household waste, inflate their tire pressure to increase gas mileage, use low flow shower heads and wash clothes in lower temperature water, adjusts their thermostats two degrees up or down depending on the season, and plant a tree, it would result in a one time, 21% reduction in carbon emissions."

The Department of Energy's long-stated plan to shut down its Oak Ridge incinerator at the end of September has been put on hold -- at least for another month and a half. According to Dennis Hill, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs Co., efforts to burn the remaining inventory of hazardous waste got delayed, in part, because some of the last liquid-waste shipments contained higher-than-expected quantities of mercury. That meant the waste had to be burned at a slower rate to meet the incinerator's emissions requirements, Hill said. "The higher concentration waste is incinerated at lower rates to meet emission limits and, therefore, requires additional time to incinerate," Hill said. "We also are conducting tank rinse and closure activities at the same time.''

A sixth person who worked in a Manchester University building used by Lord Rutherford, and contaminated by radiation and mercury, has died. Professor Tom Whiston, 70, a psychology lecturer, died from cancer at his home in Sussex. He occupied the building where the Nobel Prize winning scientist carried out his experiments on atomic structure using radioactive radon. An independent inquiry into any health risks at the building is under way.

A leaking nuclear-waste storage site in Germany is also contaminated with several toxic substances. The problematic site in the Asse mountain range in northern Germany has been abused for several years by companies eager to get rid of toxic substances, including mercury, lead alloy and arsenic, German news magazine Stern reports. There is nearly 1,100 pounds of the notoriously poisonous metalloid arsenic in the site threatening to contaminate the groundwater.