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Premier Shawn Graham, Energy Minister Jack Keir and every other politician of whatever stripe in New Brunswick need to be told and to clearly understand that New Brunswickers do not want and will not accept a national nuclear waste dump in this province no matter how deep underground, how many jobs it creates or how many glib assurances are given about its safety. Enlarge Photo Click to Enlarge Click to Enlarge Premier Graham has refused to just say "no" to the idea, and as the Nuclear Waste Management Organization prepares to hold public "information" meetings in New Brunswick to find out if the public thinks the "process" proposed for determining a permanent nuclear waste dump site is "fair" and "appropriate," Minister Keir has said "Whatever they do, I want to make sure they do it right and that it's in the interest of Canadians, not just New Brunswickers."

A man who lost his job after raising questions about safety at the Petten experimental nuclear plant has been awarded €200,000 in compensation, news agency ANP reports on Friday. Paul Schaap had demanded €800,000 for lost income and pension rights after he was sacked for publishing a document listing problems at the plant in 2001. Last week it emerged that Ad Bos, who went public with a major corruption and fraud scandal centering on the construction trade in the 1990s, had also been given compensation by the government.

On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station reactor number 4 exploded at 1:24 a.m. "Tons of radioactive dust was" unleashed "into the air…transported by winds, [and] it contaminated both hemispheres of our planet, settling wherever it rained. The emissions of radioactivity lasted [short-term] for 10 days."(1) On 29 April, "fatal levels of radioactivity were recorded…in Poland, Austria, Romania, Finland, and Sweden."(2) The day after (30 April), it hit Switzerland and Italy. By 2 May, it reached France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Great Britain, and Greece. The next day, Israel, Kuwait, and Turkey were contaminated. Then, over the next few days, "radioactive substances" were recorded in Japan (3 May), China (4 May), India (5 May), and the US and Canada (6 May). The radioactive spew from this explosion was "200 times greater than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima."(3) Not one person was safe from this catastrophic nuclear explosion; and "65-million people were contaminated...more than 400,000 people were forced to evacuate the area [around Chernobyl], losing their homes, possessions and jobs, as well as their economic, social, and family ties."(4) The long-term and hidden costs of radioactive contamination have never been adequately reported by mainstream news. According to the authors (including the distinguished Dr. Rosalie Bertell) of a new book, "Chernobyl: The Hidden Legacy" "[i]t will take millennia to recover…[before an area] as large as Italy, will return to normal radioactive levels in about 100,000 years time."(5)

While two more nuclear reactors at Turkey Point would generate clean energy and create at least 800 permanent new jobs in the area, federal regulators Thursday night said the proposed facilities were not a done deal. ''If approved,'' stressed Stephanie Coffin, branch chief for the division of new reactor licensing at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ``This is not an automatic process.'' She and her colleagues from the Rockville, Md.-based federal agency, which regulates the construction and operation of nuclear reactors nationwide, spoke to more than 200 people at the Keys Gate Golf and Country Club, 2300 Southeast Palm Dr. Florida Power & Light has proposed building two more nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point site within the next 12 years.

An environmental group says it will challenge the U.S. Energy Department's plan to lease 2,700 acres within Savannah River Site to a nonprofit economic development group working to lure jobs and new missions to the area. Sign up to get local news by e-mail "At this point they haven't said what the land would be used for," said Tom Clements, the Southeastern nuclear campaign coordinator with Friends of the Earth. "By leaving it vague, this is a foot in the door for missions that could be very detrimental to the states of South Carolina and Georgia."

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (WVLT) -- The Department of Energy is pulling the plug on Oak Ridge's controversial toxic waste incinerator. The DOE says it'll stop receiving waste by the end of April. Crews are scheduled to begin demolishing the facility in five years. The incinerator has burned concerns about emissions for years. "It's basically done its job," said Walter Perry, a DOE spokesman. That job's been burning more than 33 million pounds of waste since 1991. The one-of-a-kind, $26 million dollar incinerator at the former K-25 uranium enrichment plant treats what the DOE calls "mixed wastes." "You have polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs as they're commonly called, as well as hazardous types of waste....and radioactive elements," Perry said. The DOE plans to burn through the remaining 1.7 million pounds of remaining mostly liquid waste by September 30th. "At that time, we'll begin closure activities, which basically taking the incinerator, rinsing all the piping and the tanks, and leading up to the facility demolition," Perry said. The DOE says that's set to happen in 2014.

When Barack Obama was campaigning for president, he unveiled an eight-page energy plan with progressive gestures toward renewables and conservation, green jobs and green technologies. Then, on page six, Obama dropped the n-bomb: "Nuclear power represents more than 70 percent of our noncarbon-generated electricity. It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power as an option." Obama's Energy Secretary, Stephen Chu, echoed these sentiments during his confirmation hearings in January. Even while acknowledging nuclear energy's persistent and unresolved problems with funding and waste disposal, Chu told the Senate committee that the "nuclear industry is, should have to be, part of our energy mix in this century." Nuclear, it appears, is now officially part of the solution, a potentially radical shift in consciousness 30 years after 1979's Three Mile Island disaster.

U.S. Rep. Harry Teague, D-N.M., announced in a press release today that $172 million in stimulus money will be spent at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, known as WIPP, in southern New Mexico near Carlsbad. "The Recovery funding that will go to WIPP will create hundreds of jobs in southeastern New Mexico and help jumpstart the economy in a responsible way," said Teague. "The work that WIPP does to prepare and store nuclear waste is a unique and vital asset to our nation." WIPP is federal government's only nuclear waste repository, and it recently reached its 10-year anniversary.

After nearly three years of work, the Board of Health has finalized its rules for detecting radioactive material at the Covanta waste transfer in town. Health Director Ann McCobb said the agreement will likely be signed at the board's April 2 meeting. The last issue to be settled was the placement of radiation detectors where trucks enter and exit the station on Washington Street. Board members decided to keep them where they are now. The board's consultant, who was analyzing the detectors' placement, wrote in a report that one pair of detectors on the outbound scale for trucks could be moved for the best possible monitoring. However, health officials said the consultant also assured them the pair of detectors in question will do a very good job discerning radiation in its current location.

Sharon Pfeiffer remembers March 28, 1979, like it was yesterday. So does her husband, Ron. The couple now lives in Horsham, but on that day, had a home in Palmyra, Pa., near Three Mile Island, a nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, which had the worst nuclear accident in United States history 30 years ago Saturday. The main water pumps in Reactor 2 failed at the plant, along the Susquehanna River. The reactor core melted down, but the containment walls did their job, according to news accounts at the time. "I have very vivid memories of that day. My husband was at work and I had just dropped off our daughter, who was then 6 years old, who had a field trip to, of all places, the airport, which was right next to Three Mile Island," Sharon Pfeiffer said.

The race for the top job at the UN atomic agency remained open after the first three rounds of voting Thursday, with neither of the two candidates able to secure a convincing lead. Japanese candidate, Yukiya Amano, 61, had previously been seen as the front-runner to take over from Mohamed ElBaradei, who has headed the International Atomic Energy Agency for the past 12 years. But Amano failed to secure the necessary two-thirds majority and even lost ground to rival Abdul Samad Minty, 69, from South Africa as the voting process progressed.

Thorium is a slightly radioactive element, a cousin of uranium. For the past four decades, in fits and starts, researchers have been testing it as a potentially attractive competitor to uranium as a source of nuclear fuel. Within the nuclear community, it's won a small, devoted following. Up to now, it's had little commercial impact. People Who Read This Also Read * Gauging the Prospects for Nuclear Power in the Obama Era 23399268 * The Truth About All Those Green Jobs 23289542 * Gang of Juvenile Dinosaurs Discovered 23288904 * Bailout Scorecard: The End of the Beginning 23296138 * Depression Linked to Brain Thinning 23391986 Recommendations by Loomia Today, however, thorium is getting a serious second look from some powerful global players. With interest in nuclear power soaring, thorium is being re-examined as a potential solution to-or at least a palliative for-some of the industry's daunting problems, particularly the production of hazardous radioactive waste. Advocates say that adding thorium to a nuclear reaction would help reduce the volume of nuclear waste that is produced and help prevent civilian nuclear fuels from being converted into weapons-grade material.

LOSSES made by Sellafield's failing SMP (mox fuel) recycling plant have been disclosed to Parliament after to searching questions from Labour MP Michael Meacher, who as environment minister tried to stop the plant from opening in 2001. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which took over ownership from British Nuclear Group in 2005, is resisting calls from opposition MPs for the plant's immediate closure. The Whitehaven News was the first to reveal three months ago that SMP's costs had soared to over a billion pounds but closure would put 1,000 Sellafield jobs at risk. One of the government's options was to build a new plant to help reduce Sellafield's 100-ton plutonium stockpile.

Three weeks into his job as head of the White House Office of Science and Technology, presidential science adviser John Holdren has laid out clear positions on myriad issues facing the Obama Administration. Speaking this morning with ScienceInsider, Holdren discussed why he thinks the United States doesn't need to design and build any new nuclear weapons. He warned of likely delays beyond 2015 in replacing the space shuttle after its 2010 retirement and the possibility that U.S. astronauts, in the interim, might arrive at the international space station aboard a Chinese vehicle. He shared his concerns that reporting requirements for spending stimulus money could shackle U.S. scientists. And he lamented the recent decision by the Texas state school board to modify science standards in ways that might undermine the teaching of evolution, warning that it was a "step backwards."

Who really benefits from the rezoning of Elmore County agricultural land to industrial in order to build a nuclear power plant? AEHI, the company behind the proposed nuclear plant, would have Elmore County citizens believe they would be the beneficiaries with job production and economic wealth. But how would AEHI benefit and does it matter? It matters if AEHI cannot finance a $30 billion nuclear power facility themselves and end up selling the land and permits to out-of-state or worse, out of country energy companies. Then this power plant is no longer an Idaho company and the land in Elmore County no longer belongs to the citizens of Idaho.

South Carolina will receive a portion of a $6 billion funding for environmental cleanup under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the funding today which he says will create thousands of jobs. The projects in 12 states will focus on accelerating cleanup of soil and groundwater, transportation and disposal of waste, and cleaning and demolishing former weapons complex facilities. "These investments will put Americans to work while cleaning up contamination from the cold war era," said Secretary Chu. "It reflects our commitment to future generations as well as to help local economies get moving again."

THE federal government long ago recognized that men and women had risked their lives on Cold War and space race research and were owed compensation for illnesses they developed while working with radioactive and toxic materials. Yet, too many Santa Susana Field Lab workers are still waiting for recompense. The Energy Employee Occupational Illness Compensation Program enacted by former President Bill Clinton in 2000 pledged billions of dollars to government employees who got sick from their Cold War-era jobs. But the law was narrowly written and program managers have been legalistic in reviewing claims. As a result, hundreds of men and women who worked at the hilltop lab on the western edge of the San Fernando Valley and became sick, potentially as a result of their work, have been denied compensation worth $150,000 to $250,000.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced $6 billion in new funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to accelerate environmental cleanup work and create thousands of jobs across 12 states. Projects identified for funding will focus on accelerating cleanup of soil and groundwater, transportation and disposal of waste, and cleaning and demolishing former weapons complex facilities. "These investments will put Americans to work while cleaning up contamination from the cold war era," said Secretary Chu. "It reflects our commitment to future generations as well as to help local economies get moving again." These projects and the new funding are managed by the Department's Office of Environmental Management, which is responsible for the risk reduction and cleanup of the environmental legacy from the nation's nuclear weapons program, one of the largest, most diverse and technically complex environmental programs in the world. The states and DOE sites that will receive this funding include:

President Obama is planning to put Vice President Biden in charge of what is expected to be the difficult job of getting the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, administration sources said. Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg spoke of the pending assignment at a Monday luncheon sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, but Biden aides said yesterday that they could not confirm when it will be officially announced.

The Mound Advanced Technology Center in Miamisburg will receive $20 million from the economic recovery legislation to finish environmental cleanup work, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, announced Tuesday. The Mound, a former Department of Energy research site, will use the money to create 40 jobs in the region, complete the cleanup project and attract clients for its technology, science, and business park. Brown led a bipartisan group of eight U.S. senators to get investment in Department of Energy nuclear cleanup sites in the new stimulus bill, according to a Brown-issued press release.