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"The Federal Aviation Administration has fined two Indian companies $422,500 for sending a radioactive shipment of depleted uranium as cargo on a passenger-carrying British Airways flight from Mumbai to Logan International Airport in 2008. The FAA alleges that IIS & Allied Services and its freight forwarder, Gallant Freight & Travels, failed to declare the hazardous nature of the shipment, which wasn't properly packaged or labeled. Radioactive materials are not allowed to be shipped as cargo aboard passenger aircraft, with some exceptions. The depleted uranium was destined for QSA Global Inc. in Burlington."

An independent radiation safety expert from Queensland, who was called in to speak to Ranger uranium mine employees this week about exposure levels, says management is reassessing its procedures. The mine's union expressed concern after a dirty clean up job at the mine three weeks ago.

A council has now decided to ban uranium explorer Marathon Resources from dumping any waste at the Hawker dump in the northern Flinders Ranges of South Australia. The company wants to dump waste including industrial clothing, calico and plastic bags and cardboard from its uranium exploration site in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.

The tailing pipes carrying the radioactive and toxic slurry from the mills of the Uranium Corporation of India (UCIL) burst Saturday night(16/8/2008) in the Dungridih village under the Jadugoda police station of Potka block of East Singhbhum in Jharkhand State of India, spewing the village with uranium waste.

A Canadian company that acquired a reported 550 tonnes of yellowcake uranium from Iraq says that the U.S. military wanted the deal to be kept quiet. "We were following the request of the U.S. government,'' Saskatoon-based Cameco Corp. spokesperson Lyle Krahn told The Canadian Press of the clandestine route the material took to get out of Baghdad and to Canada.

In a resolution adopted on depleted uranium (DU) weapons, the House calls for a moratorium on their use, increased pressure for an international treaty to ban them, and more research on these weapons. The resolution "strongly reiterates its call on all EU Member States and NATO countries to impose a moratorium on the use of depleted uranium weapons and to redouble efforts towards a global ban." The resolution was adopted with 491 votes in favour, 18 against and 12 abstentions.

FREDERICTON (CP) - Environmental groups in New Brunswick are calling for an immediate ban on uranium exploration and mining as companies continue staking large swaths of the province. Representatives of several conservation groups said Wednesday about 30 organizations, including church and farming groups, have signed a statement calling for a no-uranium mining policy, similar to moratoriums already in place in Nova Scotia and British Columbia.

An industry-first Uranium Open Day will be held in Adelaide next week, aimed at informing the public about the mining, processing, use and disposal of the element.

I am a Middle East Consultant living in the UK and would like all people living in or near areas of conflict to understand the High Tech Weaponry used by many military establishments worldwide, especially the US (the manufacturers) and other NATO forces. The reason for pointing this out to you is as a response to my research on the terrible rise in cancer related deaths. This is not only confined to military personnel in the battle zone but also the indiscriminate contamination of civilians, field crops and water supplies in the immediate area as well as the adjacent areas/countries. Below is my report: Concerns regarding radiation contamination by the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) weaponry in the Balkans, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Eastern Mediterranean Countries. The majority of high tech weapons today contain Depleted Uranium and or other Heavy Metals. Some are coated in DU and others have both DU and Heavy Metal in their warheads. DU is also used to act as a counterweight.

BHP Billiton says it has cleaned up the site of a radioactive waste leak at its Olympic Dam uranium mine in South Australia. Green groups have released photos they say were taken by a mine worker in December 2008, showing a clean-up operation outside a tailings dam. The mining company says it notified the State Government and the Environment Protection Authority at the time.

The Commonwealth supervising scientist of the Ranger uranium mine at Kakadu National Park says investigations are continuing into water contamination at the site. Alan Hughes has told a Senate estimates committee that Energy Resources of Australia has conducted geophysical surveys to determine the impact and extent of leaking from a tailings dam at the mine. Mr Hughes says the company has only preliminary results from the surveys and is not sure if ERA will make the findings public. "I understand that they are having significant discussions with the traditional owners and the Northern Land Council about tailings and seepage issues on an ongoing basis," he said.

The Commonwealth supervising scientist of the Ranger uranium mine at Kakadu National Park says investigations are continuing into water contamination at the site. Alan Hughes has told a Senate estimates committee that Energy Resources of Australia has conducted geophysical surveys to determine the impact and extent of leaking from a tailings dam at the mine. Mr Hughes says the company has only preliminary results from the surveys and is not sure if ERA will make the findings public. "I understand that they are having significant discussions with the traditional owners and the Northern Land Council about tailings and seepage issues on an ongoing basis," he said.

Protestors in Alice Springs say opposition is growing to a proposed uranium mine close to the town. Jess Abrahams, from the Arid Lands Environment Centre, says they believe industries like cattle grazing and ecotourism will be at risk should the mine go ahead. He says they're calling on the government to reject any application for a mining lease at Angela Pamela, 25 kilometres south of Alice Springs.

Protestors in Alice Springs say opposition is growing to a proposed uranium mine close to the town. Jess Abrahams, from the Arid Lands Environment Centre, says they believe industries like cattle grazing and ecotourism will be at risk should the mine go ahead. He says they're calling on the government to reject any application for a mining lease at Angela Pamela, 25 kilometres south of Alice Springs.

"An Iranian who claimed he was "abducted" by US spies last year denied upon his arrival in Tehran Thursday that he was a nuclear scientist, but said he was questioned by Israelis during his captivity. Shahram Amiri, who vanished from Saudi Arabia in June 2009 while on a pilgrimage, arrived in Tehran on Thursday after surfacing in Iran's Interest Section in Washington two days ago. Immediately after his arrival he told reporters that he was just a "simple researcher", refuting earlier claims by Iranian officials that he was a nuclear scientist. "I had nothing to do with Natanz and Fordo sites," Amiri said referring to Iran's two uranium enrichment plants."

When the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission was struggling last December with a shortage of medical isotopes sparked by the Chalk River reactor shutdown, it was also dealing with another Ontario nuclear plant where there had been an "unprecedented" weld failure on one fuel bundle. In all, 10 defective welds were found on the fuel bundle, a collection of processed uranium rods resembling the barrel of a Gatling gun about a half-metre long.

About 30 members of St. Petersburg's ecological organizations protested on Thursday the transportation of nuclear waste from other countries to Russia, the bi-weekly published St. Petersburg Times reported. The picket near the Avtovo metro stop was timed to coincide with the arrival of the MV Schouwenbank ship with 1,250 tons of so called 'uranium tailings.' At the end of the protest, police detained co-chairman of the ECOperestroika environmental organization, Rashid Alimov, for what they called "the violation of fire safety rules and rules on holding public events," representative of ECOperestroika Vera Ponomaryova stated.

With the receipt of dummy fuel from Russia, India has moved a step forward towards commissioning the first unit of 2x1,000 MW Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project in Tamil Nadu. IANS reliably learns that the dummy fuel landed in Tuticorin port Saturday and has reached Kudankulam where the Nuclear Power Corp of India Ltd (NPCIL) is putting up the project with Russian equipment. Kudankulam is in Tirunelveli district, about 600 km from Chennai. Dummy fuel is similar to real fuel in terms of weight and other features, but without uranium. It will be inserted into the reactor core to test the functioning of all systems, a process technically called status of hot operation. If the systems function as per norms, the real fuel will be loaded so that the reactor attains criticality.

If the unthinkable happened, would we be left on the day after, as radioactive dust settled, with the unknowable? If a terrorist nuclear bomb destroyed the heart of a great city, how would we know who did it, with what? Mideast fanatics with a device improvised from stolen uranium? A weapon smuggled in by a rogue regime? A hijacked U.S. bomb? Where do you strike back? How do you head off another attack? U.S. President Barack Obama calls nuclear terrorism "the most immediate and extreme threat to global security." It's an unthinkable that's being thought about daily in classified corners of world capitals.

Buffett's bankroll, Obama's clout and the partnership of a savvy ex-Soviet strongman may turn the steppes of central Asia into a nuclear mecca, a go-to place for "safe" uranium fuel in an increasingly nervous atomic age. The $150 million idea, with seed money from U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett, must still navigate the tricky maze of global nuclear politics, along with a parallel Russian plan. But the notion of such fuel banks is moving higher on the world's agenda as a way to keep ultimate weapons out of many more hands. Decisions may come as early as next month here in Vienna.

A French anti-nuclear activist nicknamed the "unbending squirrel" managed to stop a train carrying uranium from a German processing plant in spectacular fashion, police said on Tuesday. Cecile Lecomte, 27, rappelled down a motorway bridge near the western city of Münster late on Monday night to hang suspended over a rail line, forcing the 25-car train carrying the enriched nuclear fuel to stop. Police climbing specialists then had to dangle off the bridge to remove her. It was the third time that Lecomte had succeeded in blocking trains from the Gronau processing plant in western Germany.

"Spent nuclear fuel shipped under heavy guard from Israel and Turkey is the latest batch of weapons-grade material now stored at Savannah River Site. The shipment -- four casks with 131 spent fuel assemblies -- entered the U.S. through the Charleston Naval Weapons Station and was moved by truck to SRS last week. The material contains highly enriched uranium -- a critical ingredient for nuclear weapons -- and marks the 50th such operation completed since 1996, when the U.S. government launched a program to recover material in foreign countries that could be vulnerable to exploitation by terrorists."