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"Joliet is pushing the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to more than double the concentration of cancer-causing radium it's allowed to dump onto farmland in the south suburbs, expanding the potential for deadly radon gas in these increasingly urban communities. Radium is a naturally occurring radioactive element abundant in deep-water wells in northern Illinois and throughout the Midwest. Cities such as Joliet that rely on these deep wells spend millions of dollars each year to remove radium from their drinking water. Some communities pay to dump radium in a landfill, but Joliet and others use a cheaper alternative, mixing it with waste material that is sold to farmers as fertilizer. About 21,000 tons of Joliet's radium-enriched fertilizer has been dumped on area farms since 2005 The city is petitioning the state EPA to allow it to dispose of more than twice the level of radium that's currently allowed. If granted, it would be 10 times higher than what was considered safe just five years ago - rekindling concerns about the long-term exposure of concentrated radium on the soil."

Box Elder residents should receive notices within the next week alerting them to the presence of radium, a naturally occurring type of radioactive metal, in one of the city's two water wells, Mayor Al Dial said. Box Elder's notice stems from a violation that occurred this summer, when high levels of radium 226 and radium 228 were detected during a routine test of a new well. The well has since passed another quarterly test, Dial said. After a water system fails a water test, the system is considered in violation of the standards. To bring a water system into compliance takes four quarterly tests with an annual average that is below the standard.

Tests have uncovered radioactive contaminants in an open-air burn pit, already rife with chemical pollutants, at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, according to state regulatory officials. Low levels of radium-226 were discovered during testing this fall, said Norman Riley, the field lab project director for California's Department of Toxic Substances Control. "These are very low levels of radionuclides, and certainly the discovery of radium is not that surprising," Riley said Monday. "It's fairly common to find radium in landfills. We don't know if we found all that there is to find, and it doesn't answer the question of where it came from."

The discovery of radium-contaminated soil has forced the closure of the ballfields in Great Kills Park. The startling find means that the park's five ballfields, located between Bay Terrace and Fieldway Avenue, will not be available all spring for league play, the National Park Service announced yesterday. Although officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services believe the risk of significant exposure is very low, the fields will be closed until a secondary survey can be conducted, the National Park Service said.

A huge maintenance hangar at former MCAS El Toro remains "radiological restricted" over California Department of Public Health concerns about a Navy radiological survey. The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has not approved an MCAS El Toro hangar contaminated with Radium-226, despite a July 2002 Navy report recommending unrestricted use.

"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? "

An underground container that holds about half of the world's supply of radium may be leaking into groundwater in northwestern Niagara County, an advisory group to federal regulators warns. The Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for investigating an area in the towns of Lewiston and Porter holding leftovers from the Manhattan Project, has found uranium contamination beneath ground level in portions of a former federal weapons site. But corps officials insist there are no leaks in a 10-acre cell, known as the Interim Waste Containment Structure, constructed in the mid- 1980s on the 191-acre Niagara Falls Storage Site as a temporary container for various radioactive wastes and other radiological materials.

"Health officials in South Florida have confirmed a cluster of childhood cancer cases in one Palm Beach County community, though the cause remains uncertain. Officials confirmed higher than normal rates of brain tumors and cancer among children in The Acreage, a semirural community about 20 miles northwest of West Palm Beach. Investigators have interviewed affected families to try and determine any commonalities. The state Department of Environmental Protection concluded last year that some homes in The Acreage have wells with elevated levels of radium and other radioactive substances that could result from natural causes. The study also found ground water quality was "generally good." "

Could Utah be an option for Churchrock mine cleanup? CHURCHROCK - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not believe there will be a problem with shipping steel piping contaminated with special nuclear material cross-country from a former uranium enrichment facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to EnergySolutions in Utah. But when it comes to disposal of 900,000 cubic yards of radium- and uranium-contaminated waste from the Northeast Churchrock Mine, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found numerous arguments for leaving it on the Navajo Nation - an alternative tribal officials and the Churchrock community say is not an option. EnergySolutions, formerly Envirocare of Clive, Utah., is seeking a fifth amendment to a 1999 order from the NRC that allowed it to possess special nuclear material below specified concentrations. The federal agency has prepared an environmental assessment and has concluded that a "finding of no significant impact" is appropriate.

Could Utah be an option for Churchrock mine cleanup? CHURCHROCK - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not believe there will be a problem with shipping steel piping contaminated with special nuclear material cross-country from a former uranium enrichment facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to EnergySolutions in Utah. But when it comes to disposal of 900,000 cubic yards of radium- and uranium-contaminated waste from the Northeast Churchrock Mine, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found numerous arguments for leaving it on the Navajo Nation - an alternative tribal officials and the Churchrock community say is not an option. EnergySolutions, formerly Envirocare of Clive, Utah., is seeking a fifth amendment to a 1999 order from the NRC that allowed it to possess special nuclear material below specified concentrations. The federal agency has prepared an environmental assessment and has concluded that a "finding of no significant impact" is appropriate.

When the EPA evacuates your town for Superfund cleanup, what happens to the people left behind? After decades of uranium mining turned the tiny town of Church Rock, New Mexico, into a Superfund site, in August the EPA moved seven resident Navajo families to Gallup apartments, where they'll wait for five months while the EPA scrubs their town of radioactive waste. But as the EPA hauls away the uranium tailings and radium-infused topsoils that have been permanent fixtures since mining ceased in the 1980s, Church Rock's remaining residents are asking why they have been left behind. In 1979, the largest spill of radioactive waste in US history occurred in Church Rock when 94 million gallons of mine waste were accidentally released into a stream. Children swam in open pit mines and the community drank water from local wells as recently as the '90s. (Now they haul in drinking water.) Cancer rates and livestock deaths remain higher than they should be. As for the families who remain, Church Rock evacuee and local activist Teddy Nez says the agency "drew an imaginary line in the sand" that excludes a residential area half a mile west of the Superfund site.

When the EPA evacuates your town for Superfund cleanup, what happens to the people left behind? After decades of uranium mining turned the tiny town of Church Rock, New Mexico, into a Superfund site, in August the EPA moved seven resident Navajo families to Gallup apartments, where they'll wait for five months while the EPA scrubs their town of radioactive waste. But as the EPA hauls away the uranium tailings and radium-infused topsoils that have been permanent fixtures since mining ceased in the 1980s, Church Rock's remaining residents are asking why they have been left behind. In 1979, the largest spill of radioactive waste in US history occurred in Church Rock when 94 million gallons of mine waste were accidentally released into a stream. Children swam in open pit mines and the community drank water from local wells as recently as the '90s. (Now they haul in drinking water.) Cancer rates and livestock deaths remain higher than they should be. As for the families who remain, Church Rock evacuee and local activist Teddy Nez says the agency "drew an imaginary line in the sand" that excludes a residential area half a mile west of the Superfund site.

After receiving overwhelming opposition to a cleanup plan for the Northeast Churchrock Mine, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is going back to the local community to try to work through concerns. The Navajo Nation wants complete removal of an estimated 900,000 cubic yards of radium-contaminated soils. U.S. EPA and former mine operator United Nuclear Corp., a subsidiary of General Electric, have opted for total removal of the most highly radioactive waste to an approved repository, possibly in Idaho, while low-level waste would be moved to the former UNC Mill, a Superfund site that eventually will be turned over to the U.S. Department of Energy's Legacy Management for lifetime monitoring.

After receiving overwhelming opposition to a cleanup plan for the Northeast Churchrock Mine, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is going back to the local community to try to work through concerns. The Navajo Nation wants complete removal of an estimated 900,000 cubic yards of radium-contaminated soils. U.S. EPA and former mine operator United Nuclear Corp., a subsidiary of General Electric, have opted for total removal of the most highly radioactive waste to an approved repository, possibly in Idaho, while low-level waste would be moved to the former UNC Mill, a Superfund site that eventually will be turned over to the U.S. Department of Energy's Legacy Management for lifetime monitoring.

"Radioactive waste buried under the Olympic Park could jeopardise plans to develop the site after the Games, it is claimed. Traces of thorium and radium have been buried in a disposal cell under the site of the main stadium. The Olympic Delivery Authority insists the deposits pose no risk during the Games. But experts say that a reassessment of the site after 2012 may be necessary before any development plans - housing, for instance - are put in place. Independent nuclear analyst John Large said: "There is some doubt about the applicability and validity of the radiological risk analysis undertaken for the future legacy use." The Lower Lea Valley site was industrial land which was used for landfill and where illegal dumping of waste was common in the Fifties and Sixties."

"The development of the Olympic site in east London after the Games have finished could be in jeopardy because of radioactive waste buried beneath the site, experts have warned. According to a Guardian investigation, any development of the site risks unearthing a hundred tonnes of radioactive waste dumped at the former landfill site decades ago. Documents obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) rules reveal that, contrary to government guidelines, waste from thorium and radium has been mixed with very low-level waste and buried in a so-called disposal cell under, or close, to the Olympic stadium."

A BEACH may have to be partially covered in concrete to seal dangerous material that could give children a dose of radiation. The move could stop the area being officially designated as contaminated land, which residents fear would devastate the community. The news follows the discovery of 39 radioactive radium items in the latest survey of the foreshore at Dalgety Bay, Fife, which is close to a former airfield used in the Second World War. The largest of them was 4in across and weighed 8oz.

The Ministry of Defence has criticised the monitoring of radiation hotspots on a Fife beach, carried out by environment watchdog Sepa. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency said 39 radioactive items were detected in September at Dalgety Bay. Radium from wartime aircraft is thought to have been in landfill used when the foreshore was reclaimed.

I am very concerned about the possible nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan, and scared to death that it could be in the Prince Albert area. It is bad enough that we are mining the uranium out of the ground, but to build a reactor would be insane. There is no safe storage option for uranium products and wastes. Radium, radon gas and polonium are highly radioactive byproducts. Storage methods are at best controversial and at worst responsible for death and a toxic legacy for generations. Mining poses serious health risks. Radon gas is a known cancer-causing agent. Uranium mining can poison water sources. Reactors need a lot of water. They, too, can leak radioactive substances into both watersheds and ground water.

People living near a former RAF base yesterday spoke of their shock at being told their homes could be radioactive. Radium and asbestos have been found at the site, where military waste was burned and buried. The council is now testing 90 nearby homes.

SCIENTISTS have pinpointed seven new radioactive hotspots on a public beach in Fife, it emerged yesterday. Close to the site of a former Second World War airfield, Dalgety Bay has long been suspected of being contaminated by parts from planes which were dismantled prior to parts of the coastline being reclaimed. Dangerous material such as radium was used to coat the luminous dials of wartime aircraft so that they could be read at night.

Clean-up of radioactive waste from the former Naval Air Station-Alameda will enter a more intensive phase in coming weeks as workers under the auspices of the U.S. Navy begin excavating and removing soil and storm drains contaminated by decades of sloppy disposal of cadmium, radium-226, PCBs and other toxic compounds. Work is expected to commence in mid June.