Group items tagged

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has issued its 'Draft Supplement Analysis for the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Locations in the State of Nevada.' The document, released on April 17, is the NNSA's periodic report on the Nevada Test Site's Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that was completed in 1996.

A major scientific study into the families of soldiers used as guinea pigs in Britain's first nuclear tests shows they will suffer acute health problems for TWENTY generations. Relatives of up to 22,000 servicemen who witnessed tests in the 1950s have been cursed with massive genetic damage which will be passed on for at least 500 years.

A GROUP of veterans insist they have been wrongly denied repatriation benefits because the Howard government refused to believe they were involved in a 1952 nuclear test. Now they have photographs they say prove they were there. Former national serviceman Mike Rowe, who served aboard the frigate HMAS Murchison, said he and others had spent the past five years trying to set the record straight about their participation in the nuclear test at Monte Bello Island off the West Australian coast in October 1952.

Did an atomic test 56 years ago this Tuesday bring on the cancer that later took the life of his father, Augusta Chronicle Editor Louis Harris, who witnessed the event? "I personally always thought that could be a connection," he said of the Nevada nuclear blast near Yucca Flats that Mr. Harris witnessed on St. Patrick's Day 1953 and wrote about in The Chronicle . He's not the first to ask. The health hazards of those nuclear tests have been questioned for decades -- particularly when it comes to the high cancer rate for the cast of a 1956 John Wayne movie suspected of being touched by leftover fallout.

To the consternation of the Simi Valley Radiation Rangers the proposed project at Runkle Canyon, pejoratively named Runkledyne by critics, is coming closer to getting final approval. I wonder if the economic slow down will do more to delay the project than all of the recent hearings, meetings, and tests have done. Local investigative environmental reporter Michael Collins isn't satisfied and continues to insist the project is unsafe and that the process of testing for unsafe chemicals has been riddled with errors. Here is a quote from a recent article that appeared in the Ventura County Reporter:

Bikini Atoll, the site of the United States' largest hydrogen bomb test and the place that lends its name to the skimpy two-piece swimsuit, is seeking recognition as a world heritage site. "Nuclear bomb tests at Bikini Atoll shaped the history of the people of Bikini, the history of the Marshall Islands and the history of the entire world," according to the Bikini proposal released here on Friday. The 86-page document, to be presented to UNESCO's World Heritage program, has been drawn up by Bikini liaison official Jack Niedenthal and Australian-based consultant Nicole Baker. A world heritage nomination involves a multi-level review and a decision is unlikely to be made before June next year, Baker said.

The Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation allows the South Asian country access to US civil nuclear fuel and technology. The cooperation initiated by President Bush during his visit to New Delhi in July 2005 that formed its concrete shape on October 10, 2008. In the last these three years both New Delhi and Washington had to face some opposition at home as well as obligations by IAEA, Nuclear Supplies Group (NSG) and the congressional approval to overcome these obligations. Some laws were amended that posed a question for global non proliferation efforts. There are certain facts on which it became obvious that the Indo-US agreement undermined the non proliferation regime. The 1974-Indian Pokhran test was a result of diversion from civil facilities to military. India was the first country to convert illegally a civilian nuclear facility which was provided by the US for peaceful purposes. The 1974 test was a challenge to the US non-proliferation policy. The US supplies for nuclear power plant were ceased immediately after that. Even Canada suspended work on Rajasthan Atomic Power Plant and left it half way. Officially the cooperation was stopped and President Jimmy Carter signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act 1978 restricting nuclear trade with that states that did not agree to safeguards.

Randall Parrish, a researcher at the University of Leicester, England, found depleted uranium exposure in 20 percent of residents he tested in Colonie, N.Y., where a company once produced uranium weapons for the military. He recommended that ATSDR revisit the area because its earlier health study, without benefit of his test method, assumed it couldn't detect past exposure or tie it to illness years after the plant closed.

Kazakhstan's nuclear curse Sixty years have passed since the former Soviet Union detonated its first experimental nuclear bomb in eastern Kazakhstan. Al Jazeera's Robin Forestier Walker visits the highly contaminated test site, Polygon, and the surrounding area where effects of the experiments can still be seen. Cancer rates in the area are 1.5 times higher than in the rest of the country, and the region has high levels of early mortality from a range of common diseases. Doctors say more research is urgently needed to understand how the 40 years of nuclear tests could harm the children of tomorrow. The report features an interview with Rebecca Johnson, the director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, who has conducted research in Kazakhstan's Semei region.

Around 1000 servicemen who were involved in the nuclear testing conducted off the coast of Australia in the 1950's, have finally won their battle to be allowed to take their claim for compensation to the courts. With the help of "after the event" insurance and a "no win no fee" lawyer, they are finally on their way to receiving a payout from the MOD for the illnesses which have plagued them and their families ever since. The servicemen were involved in the testing of nuclear devices in the South Pacific in the 1950's and were expected to carry out such tasks as burying radioactive material and washing the vehicles used to transport the devices. At no time were they provided with protective clothing or told of the possible risks to their health. The eventual outcome has been cases of cancer, leukaemia in the servicemen's children, skin conditions and infertility. The men have attempted to get legal aid to take their case to court but were refused. They finally turned to lawyer Neil Sampson, a partner at Rosenblat Solicitors, who agreed to take on the case on a "no win, no fee" basis. The action is one of the largest group actions taken in the UK and has been financed by gaining After The Event (ATE) insurance from Brit Insurance. The cost is expected to be millions of pounds. It has previously been thought that ATE insurance is usually capped at £200,000, but changing markets have meant that it is possible to find this type of insurance to cover as much as £20m.

A woman sparked an alert when she went into Suffolk's fire service headquarters with a test tube she said contained uranium oxide. Firefighters put on air-tight suits and breathing apparatus to take the tube from the woman so it could be locked away in a secure place. Experts from Sizewell nuclear power plant tested the substance and said it had a low level of radioactivity. Dave Pedersen from Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service said it was low risk.

Key elements in the resolution adopted unanimously Thursday by the U.N. Security Council: NUCLEAR-FREE Resolved "to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons." COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN TREATY Urged all states to ratify the treaty, which outlaws all nuclear tests everywhere. Lack of ratification by a handful of nations, including the U.S., has kept the treaty from entering into force. FISSILE MATERIAL CUTOFF TREATY Called for negotiation of a treaty that would ban production of fissile material used for nuclear weapons. STRENGTHENING NONPROLIFERATION TREATY

The Kansas City, Kan., Fire Department responded to a case of "hazardous material release" Wednesday afternoon at the City Cemetery at 38th and Bryant Circle. When arriving on the scene, crews discovered a container with a label of "radioactive." "Haz Mat crews located a container with labeling indicating contents were Radioactive," said Craig Duke, spokesperson. "Crews using monitoring equipment confirmed contents had a low level Radioactive material. On scene command contacted company listed on container and identified contents as a Nuclear Density testing machine which is used in highway and bridge construction to test the compactness of the soil during bridge construction."

BEFORE the spring of 1989, all most people knew of the Santa Susana Field Lab were the occasional rocket tests that sent a thundering boom across the Valley and shook the homes in West Hills, Chatsworth and Simi Valley, near the hilltop facility. The sprawling 2,859-acre lab built during the Cold War developed and tested rocket engines that powered missiles and, eventually, the Apollo and space shuttle missions. But 20 years ago last month, the Daily News obtained and reported on an environmental survey that, for the first time, revealed extensive toxic and radioactive contamination from a 290-acre U.S. Atomic Energy Commission nuclear research facility located at lab. The news shocked both neighbors and local environmental regulators, who never knew the site was once home to 10 nuclear reactors - one of which experienced a partial meltdown in 1959 - nor had any idea of the radioactive contamination.

In an era when the corporate media and the corporate politicians and the corporate military men gang up together and denounce and threaten other countries because of their nuclear related activities, they should spend much of that rhetorical energy by cross-examining themselves in a mirror. North Korea's latest nuclear test received much more attention than its earlier 'possible' test because of its greater power and the strategic message sent by its politically timed Taepodong II rocket launch. Iran has moved a little bit off the radar screen as its elections have proven more interesting than its nuclear 'threat' but it is under increasing scrutiny as it reaches weapons potential. When placed in relation to this "cautionary history", North Korea and Iran are acting only as all other nuclear powers have acted in the past, for the main theme behind In Mortal Hands is that of lies, deceit, deception, cover-ups, and secrecy to cover up the real issues with the nuclear industry. The real issue as reiterated constantly and perceptively by Stephanie Cooke is that of an industry whose central purpose is to create fissile material for weapons production regardless of and in spite of all other attempts to equate nuclear energy with peaceful purposes and with the 'greening' of the energy industry.

Algeria has minimized the value of French bill related to the compensation of victims of nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara, and Polynesia. In fact, APS has quoted Foreign Minister, Mourad Medelci, saying the abovementioned financial compensations "are not the lone required demand capable of settling such issue, but rather removing the nuclear pollution caused by such tests." At the margin of Africa Day celebrations, attended by accredited diplomatic corps, Medelci indicated that Algeria is following with great interest the French bill on nuclear damages compensation. He further mentioned that "such a bill would only settle a part of the issue."

Katherine Peshlakai, Faye Willie and Elsie Tohannie have a lot in common, besides their years.Following the Long Walk in the 1860s and the imprisonment of Navajos at Bosque Redondo, their families settled in an area later known as Wupatki National Monument. Recognition of Navajo occupancy was not included in enabling legislation that created the park, and in the early 1960s, the families were kicked out. Driven from their winter sheep camps at Wupatki and across the Little Colorado River to make way for the national monument near Flagstaff, they settled in Black Falls, an area contaminated in the 1950s by radioactive fallout from above-ground atomic testing at Nevada Test Site.

New York and Washington may be separated by only a few hundred miles, but in the last few weeks, they have appeared to be light years apart on arms control and nonproliferation issues. In New York, representatives of more than 100 countries worked from May 4-15 to prepare for next year's nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference. Buoyed by U.S. President Barack Obama's April pledge to seek a world free from nuclear weapons, their work was marked by a spirit of cooperation and compromise that had been noticeably absent during the eight years of the Bush administration. They approved an agenda for next year's event in record time and contemplated forwarding an ambitious set of recommendations to the conference. They welcomed the reinvigoration of U.S-Russian strategic arms talks and Obama's commitment to again seek ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) prohibiting nuclear weapon tests.

NUCLEAR test veterans in Derbyshire fear they could die before getting compensation after a court ruled that the Ministry of Defence could appeal against their claims. At a High Court hearing earlier this month a judge ruled that more than 1,000 servicemen, who blame their ill health on being exposed to radiation during the nuclear tests in the 1950s, could sue the MoD. But now the MoD has been given the right to appeal against that ruling and veterans in the county say they don't think they will be alive to see a pay out.

A special investigation is underway to find the reason behind the failure of a piece of a safety system last month at the Callaway Nuclear Plant. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced Monday that a team of inspectors is looking into a problem that was found with a secondary feedwater pump at the plant May 25 that has raised concern about that backup safety precaution. "In routine testing that pump didn't start automatically, but we did determine that it could have been started manually," Ameren UE spokesman Mike Cleary said. "It was technically inoperable and we don't know when it failed between the previous test on May 4 and May 25.