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The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) that President Ferdinand Marcos had built on Napot Point at the seacoast in the Bataan town of Morong has an unacceptably high risk of serious damage from earthquakes, volcanism, or both, should it be activated in accordance with a bill currently being considered by the House of Representatives. Marcos decided to build the BNPP in 1973, to address the first serious energy crisis that happened that same year. This rushed timing clearly indicates that the natural hazards of the site could not have been assessed properly. Such a study would have taken at least several years.

A bottle discarded at a waste site in the US contains the oldest sample of bomb-grade plutonium made in a nuclear reactor, scientists say. The sample dates to 1944 and is a relic from the infancy of the US nuclear weapons programme. A team from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory used nuclear forensic techniques to date the sample and track down its origins.

While he was still at Phivolcs, Dr. Ronnie Torres, a foremost expert regarding pyroclastic flows who is now at the University of Hawaii, warned of volcanism and faulting at the site in a 1992 report, "The vulnerability of PNPP site to the hazards of Natib volcano" (Phivolcs Observer, Vol. 8 No. 3: 1-4). Quoting Dr. Torres: "Natib volcano does not erupt very often but could still erupt." As a rough rule of thumb, the longer a volcano is in repose, the more time it has to store eruptive energy, and thus, the stronger the eventual eruption.

The nuclear power industry is pressuring Congress to dramatically expand federal loan guarantees for building new plants, which would put taxpayers and ratepayers at significant financial risk, according to a report released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). view counter Congress already has authorized $60 billion for loan guarantees in which the federal government would shield utilities and private investment firms from the risk of default on loans for building new electricity generation plants. The Department of Energy (DOE) has allocated $18.5 billion of that money for new nuclear plants over the next few years. Given the average projected cost of building one reactor is currently $9 billion, the industry is clamoring for considerably more. To date, the DOE has received $122 billion in applications for loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants.

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.

John Fleck at the Albuqeurque Journal's blog noted an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that says that switching over control of national labs to the Department of Defense could have an adverse effect on the caliber of scientists who could be brought in to the labs for their research. Some experts who have studied or worked with the labs fear that change could reduce the quality of research. "They've already made it much harder for themselves to attract good people," said Hugh Gusterson, a professor of anthropology and sociology at George Mason University who has spent years studying the culture of scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, talking about the management changes. A further shift, he said, "will just compound the difficulty."

Ecologists have expressed fears that remnants of the U.S. and Russian satellites that collided on Tuesday could pollute a large portion of Russia, a federal environmental official said on Friday. Konstantin Tsybko of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources said that a number of large ecological organizations had approached him since a U.S. Iridium satellite and the defunct Russian Cosmos-2251 collided approximately 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Siberia. This was the first time such an incident has occurred. "Their fear is understandable, especially since the Western press has published reports that there could be a nuclear reactor on board one of the satellites," Tsybko said.

Uranium mining could present WA communities with a variety of health problems, from leukemia to congenital defects, according to a health expert at a recent forum. Speaking at the Public Health Association of Australia's "Uranium Mining: What are the health risks for WA?" seminar, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Dr Helen Caldicott said the public health effects on Western Australians could be disastrous if plans to begin uranium mining in the State go ahead. Dr Caldicott said miners and nearby residents could be at risk should they be exposed to harmful materials.

Kelye Allen still speaks with pride about her 18-year career with Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, where she worked as a machinist helping to build components for nuclear weapons. A feeling of patriotism and duty animates the workforce there, Allen said. "You want to protect the country," she said. "Stuff we do there directly affects national security." Along with her enduring pride, however, Allen is left with a permanent health condition from her work with a prized but hazardous metal called beryllium. The Department of Energy, which oversees the lab, is currently conducting an enforcement investigation into whether the lab violated health and safety regulations related to its chronic beryllium disease prevention program.

Russia's Kurchatov Scientific Institute resumes its work to create nuclear power installations for distant interplanetary flights. It was Russia that made a breakthrough in the field of space nuclear power at the beginning of the 1980s when Russian scientists created a small-sized space installation known as Topaz. "It was much more effective than foreign analogues in terms of technical and operational characteristics. We used enriched uranium as fuel," says Mikhail Kovalchuk, the director of the Kurchatov Institute. "We are not simply competitive in the field of power installations. We are actually pioneers. Very few organizations have such technologies. Americans were really surprised to see our Topaz installations. They haven't seen anything like that before."

If leading US energy experts have their way, the US will be storing tens of thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste above ground for decades to come. But are dry casks, originally intended as a short-term fix for nuclear waste, a safe bet? Researchers from MIT and Harvard University fielded questions from US Senator Tom Carper yesterday in Cambridge, Massachusetts on what the US should do with its nuclear waste now that plans for Yucca Mountain, a national underground repository, have been put on hold by the Obama administration. Surprisingly, the assembled scientists unanimously told Carper not to worry, saying existing aboveground storage would be perfectly save for another 60 to 70 years. Instead, they pressed the senator to spend time and money developing better waste reprocessing technology, rather than rush to develop the same reprocessing technology now used by Japan and other countries.

Collectively, Americans now receive more than twice as much radiation each year as in the 1980s. That's according to a new tally by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. Of course, the operant word here is collectively. NCRP isn't saying every individual is getting twice as big an annual radiation dose, only that if you sum up doses to the entire population each year, that big figure has doubled and more over the past two decades or so. A burgeoning population accounts for 30 percent of the increase, notes Ken Kase, who chaired the NCRP panel that prepared the report. The rest of the increase stems largely from an increase in medical procedures that rely on radiation - from conventional diagnostic X-rays and CT scans to radiotherapy for cancer. Kase, a semi-retired health physicist and senior vice president of NCRP, describes his team's findings in a Q&A appearing in the May Health Physics News.

Each year, the administration releases its federal-spending blueprint - usually in a series of phone book-sized tomes that must surely weigh eight to 10 pounds. And of course, the first thing most of us look for is what programs are slated for big gains - or excisions. Well, team Obama made looking for the big cuts a little easier this year. This morning it issued a 120-page volume: "Terminations, Reductions, and Savings: Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2010." Barack Obama entered office with the nation facing a record $1.3 trillion budget deficit for the current year. "Just as families across the country are tightening their belts and making hard choices so must Washington," the new budget document says. The 121 programs that it recommends should die or diminish substantially could save taxpayers $17 billion. First, there are the terminations: more than five dozen in all. Among them:

Uranium's long and winding history leaves a radioactive path in its wake. For anyone even the least bit connected with the world, you've probably heard of nuclear power - after all, it runs power plants, creates medical isotopes and even powers space probes. The history behind all of this is a fascinating one, detailing the first uses of the strange element that was first discarded as useless, misunderstood as a healing device (protip: radiation is not a very nice thing to bathe yourself in), and finally used as a hugely important source of energy. While Uranium isn't the be-all and end-all of our power problems like some would claim, it is a very good tool to use that has shaped the way our society has evolved, and the impacts of its introduction can't be ignored. It's a bit weighted towards America, completely ignoring some main points of the history (but as we know history is determined mostly by the victors who can change it to suit them better). Take a little time out of your afternoon, and give the full summary a read over at io9.

Tochmash, Russia's defense enterprise from the city of Vladimir, conducted successful tests of a special ampoule that was designed to store spent nuclear fuel of Russian nuclear power plants. The ampoule guarantees that the storage of toxic fuel will be ecologically secure. Russia develops special tube to store nuclear wastes Russia develops special tube to store nuclear wastes BREAKING NEWS Latin America creates new currency Train carrying deadly virus arrives in Moscow Relations between Russia and USA get into Cold War spirit again Pilot lands plane on school playground More... Engineers of the enterprise were working on Ampoule PT for eight years. "It is made of stainless steel, is not heavy at all and is equipped with a unique spring lock that does not let the lid open even under the impact of heavy pressure," a spokesperson for the enterprise said. The ampoule looks like a cylinder with a lid. The cylinder will not let fuel particles penetrate into the environment for over 50 years.

It will be exactly 30 years tomorrow since the nation's worst commercial nuclear accident occurred on a three-mile (five kilometer) slip of land in the Susquehanna River in the shadow of Harrisburg, Pa. Until that day, few people had ever heard of Three Mile Island-now there are few who haven't. Once a majestic symbol of nuclear power, the plant would become synonymous with its dangers after one of its two reactors-the newer one, known as Unit 2-nearly melted down on March 28, 1979, just months after it was fired up.

In the Salado salt formation a half-mile below the New Mexico desert, WIPP has room to store all the radioactive waste an expanded nuclear power program could produce. Emphasis on the word could. The "nice" elevator is right out of a luxury hotel with a smooth ride and room for 75 people. It has six degrees of safety redundancy, which means that if one cable were to snap, several others, plus an emergency brake or two, would prevent the six of us from hurtling to our deaths. But just as I'm adjusting the self-rescuer respirator on my utility belt, we get the news: There's a problem with the "nice" elevator. We have to take the salt shaft.