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A decision by management of Sweden's Oskarshamn nuclear power plant to have custodial workers stand in as guards has drawn a sharp rebuke from the country's nuclear regulatory authority. For a week in early October, members of a contract cleaning crew stood guard along sections of the plant's perimeter fencing during repairs to the plant's alarm system.

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.

Nuke plant leak leads to indefinite shutdown of Miami reactor Turkey_point One of the two nuclear reactors at Florida Power & Light's Turkey Point plant near Miami has been taken off-line because of a leak, according to the Miami Herald.

Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of French nuclear giant Areva, has been sounding smug recently. The message from the Queen of Nukes in an interview this week was that Areva will be crowned as the exclusive reactor designer for Britain's new generation of nuclear power stations. But perhaps she should be more concerned about her existing customers.

The Taitung County Council rejected a referendum bill yesterday proposed by the co unty government aimed at facilitating the construction of a storage site for low-level solidified radioactive waste in the eastern Taiwanese county. The county government had hoped the bill would be passed into law to pave the way for holding a local referendum on building the nuclear waste storage site.

Remember the feds' controversial plan to store all of the country's spent nuclear fuel deep inside Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert some 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas? Well it looks like that proposed resting place for the country's nuclear waste has apparently been, well, laid to rest. When President Obama unveiled his budget last month, he essentially eliminated funding to prepare the site as the nation's nuke graveyard. The scant funds still to be allotted, according to the Las Vegas Sun, will just be enough to allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)-the body responsible for managing civilian nuke power-to hold planned hearings on licensing the facility's construction.

Greenpeace activists blocked access to the Pickering nuclear station today with a flat bed truck topped by a giant billboard reading "Minister: Don't Nuke Green Energy," as part of a campaign to convince the McGuinty government to replace Pickering nuclear reactors with green energy. "Greenpeace is blocking the Pickering reactor station because Nuclear Energy Minister George Smitherman is blocking green energy in Ontario," said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, a Greenpeace energy campaigner. "The spin around Smitherman's proposed Green Energy Act is cynical greenwashing to hide the fact that his nuclear plans will rob green energy of the funding needed for development."

Sweden's three opposition political parties plan on arriving at government energy talks on Thursday armed with a common position, the parties announced on Monday. We are in agreement that nuclear energy should be phased out and that we should generate surplus electricity through renewable sources," said Green Party spokesperson Peter Eriksson to the TT news agency. But the Social Democrats, the Left Party, and the Green Party have their doubts about the seriousness of the government's invitation to discuss energy policy.

MOSCOW, September 21 (RIA Novosti) - A missile defense system developed jointly by the world's leading powers could eliminate the global threat of nuclear strikes, a former top Russian military official said on Monday. The U.S. last week announced the cancellation of plans to deploy an anti-missile system in central Europe, which had been fiercely contested by Moscow. NATO has since said it is willing to consider a joint missile defense project with Russia. "If we return to the issue of a European missile defense system, which was abandoned a few years ago and included the U.S., we could organize mutual controls, and use the means available to all participants, in order to control the mutual nuclear potential," said Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin, who led the Strategic Missile Forces in 1991-1993. If a global missile defense system was to be built in cooperation with Russia, France, Italy, Israel and Britain, on equal terms, then China would also need to be included, he said.

Forget the industry hype about a nuclear renaissance. Renewable energy is becoming the leading source of new power capacity. Remarkably, it is likely to overtake nuclear as a source of power in the not too distant future. In 2008, nuclear power capacity experienced zero growth, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Meanwhile, solar power capacity grew 62 per cent, while wind capacity rose 29 per cent. While no new nukes went on line, solar and wind added 5,600 megawatts (MW) of capacity and wind added 27,000 MW, the equivalent of about 32 new 1,000-MW nuclear reactors.

Canada announced Friday it would put up 180 million dollars (156 million US) to help prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons, expanding a Russian nukes decommissioning program. "Terrorists are actively seeking weapons of mass destruction and the materials to make them," Cannon said. "The most effective way to prevent this is to tightly control access to weapons-usable materials. "Projects under the Global Partnership Program will significantly reduce the threat that terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction poses to Canadians and to the entire international community," he said. The funding announcement came on the sidelines of a G8 foreign ministers meeting in Trieste, Italy.

The weekend shutdown of Germany's Krümmel nuclear plant has prompted political calls to close the country's oldest nukes over safety concerns The Krümmel nuclear power station near Hamburg was shut down on Saturday after a fault in a transformer, blacking out most traffic lights in the German port city and interrupting the water supply to thousands of homes. Power company Vattenfall said there was no release of radioactivity and no danger to the public as a result of the incident, which occurred just two weeks after the plant was restarted following a two-year shutdown caused by a fire in a transformer.

President Barack Obama's call for a nuclear weapons-free world is welcome, but the huge U.S. defense budget may prove an "insurmountable obstacle" to reaching that goal, former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Thursday. Talk of nuclear disarmament would be "just rhetorical" if other nations were asked to give up nukes while the United States maintains an overwhelming conventional military superiority, Gorbachev said. What's needed, he said, are talks to "demilitarize" world politics.

"President Obama's move to revive nuclear power, with $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees for two reactors in Georgia, has special resonance for those of us who experienced the Three Mile Island nuclear scare. In retrospect, the T-shirts that said "I Survived TMI" were overly dramatic. But at the time it didn't seem that way -- which may be why I'm deeply ambivalent about the second coming of nukes. In March 1979, I was in my 20s, the only woman among five reporters in the cramped Associated Press bureau at the state Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. And I was a newcomer. I had been there just six weeks when the report came in that state troopers had shut down a reactor in Middletown, about 10 miles down the Susquehanna River."

"Another day, another tritium-leak story. Vermont Yankee has dominated the news in recent months, owing to a perfect storm of factors: physical problems at the aging plant; a relicensing deadline; and the Vermont legislature's unique opportunity to vote on the future of the state's only nuclear facility. Why should you care? Because every nuke plant, handled improperly, is a potential Chernobyl. Handled properly, nuke plants are touted as low-cost, low-carbon sources of energy."

While the CPS Energy trials continue alliteratively rolling on regarding who's navigating the newest nuke news now and which wonks were worrying when, we'd be remiss not to remind you that some Texans (Dallas Repub billionaire Harold Simmons, owner of Waste Control Specialists, comes to mind) would like to turn Andrews County, Texas, into the next national radioactive waste dump. In their first meeting since August, the unfunded Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commissioners (rumor has it they raided UT science club study groups for the pimento-cheese finger sandwiches) will open the floor to public comment at 9 am, Thursday.

While the CPS Energy trials continue alliteratively rolling on regarding who's navigating the newest nuke news now and which wonks were worrying when, we'd be remiss not to remind you that some Texans (Dallas Repub billionaire Harold Simmons, owner of Waste Control Specialists, comes to mind) would like to turn Andrews County, Texas, into the next national radioactive waste dump. In their first meeting since August, the unfunded Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commissioners (rumor has it they raided UT science club study groups for the pimento-cheese finger sandwiches) will open the floor to public comment at 9 am, Thursday.

"I know we're all fixated on the fate of President Obama's signature mission, but surely we can agree that his newly announced bid to build more nuclear power plants is worth a thousand words. The politics alone are fascinating. Not that long ago, any Democratic president daring to fly a "More Nukes" banner would have been fried by his own base. Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and the Boss would have plugged in for a protest concert, just as they did for the "No Nukes" show in '79. But Obama's request for $54 billion in federal loan guarantees, and his State of the Union pitch for "a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants," have barely moved the ire meter."

"Is it OK if I talk about something besides health-care reform now? I know we're all fixated on the fate of President Obama's signature mission, but surely we can agree that his newly announced bid to build more nuclear power plants is worth a thousand words. The politics alone are fascinating. Not that long ago, any Democratic president daring to fly a "More Nukes" banner would have been fried by his own base. Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and the Boss would have plugged in for a protest concert, just as they did for the "No Nukes" show in '79. But Obama's request for $54 billion in federal loan guarantees, and his State of the Union pitch for "a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants," have barely moved the ire meter. Some environmentalists are unhappy - for good reason. But this isn't like the old days, when the accident at Three Mile Island sowed public hysteria, and a Jane Fonda film, The China Syndrome, did boffo box office by painting nuclear-industry leaders as reckless plutocrats. Today, most grassroots Democrats believe our first priority should be combating global warming by cutting carbon dioxide emissions, and it just so happens that nuclear plants don't emit that greenhouse gas."

"Though multiple doctors weigh in, an administrator makes final medical decisions on sick nuke worker's claim Imagine being sent to get a second medical opinion about your fatal lung disease from the same doctor you went to the first time. Then imagine having the differences of opinion between multiple doctors about your fatal condition resolved by someone who is not a doctor. It happened to Michael Fellinger, a former worker at the Ames Laboratory whose widow, Bo Fellinger, is struggling to get compensation from a Department of Labor program intended to help those sickened by their work in our nation's nuclear weapons program. Occupational health specialists around the country who work with claimants say they routinely have their opinions trumped by medical consultants with too little expertise and too much authority. They are calling for an independent oversight board to be established, either by congressional legislation or by the Department of Labor itself, to improve the claims process."

"No nukes » Matheson says there is no need for new nuke tests; primary foe, GOP nominee agree. U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson said it would be "a giant step backward" to resume nuclear weapons testing and he will oppose any efforts to move down that road. Matheson was responding to recent comments from two Republican Senate candidates -- Tim Bridgewater and Mike Lee -- who told The Salt Lake Tribune last week that they supported modernization and underground testing of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. The Democratic congressman will get no argument from his primary opponent, Claudia Wright, nor from Republican nominee Morgan Philpot. Both oppose resumption of nuclear weapons testing. "