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With the Obama administration staking the nation's energy future on clean sources, the U.S. nuclear power industry aims to make a comeback by building dozens of new reactors that supply plentiful, carbon-free electricity. But 30 years after the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania led to moratoriums on new plants across the nation, concerns about the cost and safety of nuclear power remain, including what to do with the growing stockpiles of highly radioactive waste from the nation's reactors.

In the article on nuclear power [''A comeback for Nuclear Power", August 2009], there was no discussion about what to do with the nuclear waste or the actual cost to build nuclear power plants. I have heard it may be approaching $1 billion dollars. Do not forget the cost of dealing with nuclear waste (if there is a safe way). I wonder how much solar or wind power we could build for a billion dollars.

In the article on nuclear power [''A comeback for Nuclear Power", August 2009], there was no discussion about what to do with the nuclear waste or the actual cost to build nuclear power plants. I have heard it may be approaching $1 billion dollars. Do not forget the cost of dealing with nuclear waste (if there is a safe way). I wonder how much solar or wind power we could build for a billion dollars.

Where to store Germany's nuclear waste? The issue - decades old and still unresolved - has injected controversy into campaigning ahead of Germany's federal election on 27 September. Farm residents at Gorleben in northern Germany have long opposed a proposal that salt caverns under their feet be used as the nation's long-term underground nuclear waste disposal site. Driving tractors, they have begun a week-long road trek to Berlin to press their anti-nuclear case. Equipped with a rolling kitchen, they aim to spearhead a demonstration in the capital next Saturday. En route, the tractor trekkers plan stopovers at three other sites used variously as nuclear storages and all controversial - the former Konrad iron mine near Salzgitter; Asse, a mine with water leaks near Wolfenbüttel; and Morsleben, an old salt mine near the former East-West-German border. Nuclear industry proponents accuse detractors of exaggerating the risks.

Dirt and rock taken from an old uranium mining site, and used for fill dirt, has been removed from private properties south of Tusayan and at Grand canyon Village. The Bureau of Reclamation says its contractor excavated materials from two private residences south of Valle, from a Grand canyon sanitary plant, from a business near the airport at Valle and from a South Rim trailer park. The Arizona Radiation Regulatory Agency said it wasn't consulted about the clean up. Agency director Aubrey Godwin said his agency would have advised nearby residents to stay indoors last week, during the removal, because of blowing winds. Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Peter Soeth called the fill materials' radiation level normal for the region. He said all but one of the six sites, to which it was hauled, had average readings for radioactivity upon first inspection.

Areva Inc has announced a five-year deal that will see it become the comprehensive supplier of services and products for Progress Energy's four nuclear power plants. The deal will see Areva provide refuelling and outage services, replace and repair plant equipment, and provide engineering and maintenance support plus other technical services to Progress Energy's plants in North and South carolina and Florida.

Bidders for nuclear work are gearing up to fight for a multibillion pound contract to manage the clean-up of the Dounreay site on the northern coast of Scotland On Monday, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority issued a tender seeking a consortium to oversee the restoration operation at the derelict site, which contains three former nuclear reactors. The programme is valued at about £3.6bn. The Pentland Alliance is regarded as the frontrunner for the job. Members of this consortium, which includes Amec, cH2M Hill and the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), have been seconded to senior posts at Dounreay over the past three years. However, in a surprise move last week, the commercial arm of UKAEA chose engineer Babcock International rather than Amec to be its buyer, which raised questions about the future of the Pentland Alliance. However, it is thought that the consortium will continue.

According to Daniel Ellsberg, the weapon could have accidentally fired because "five of the six safety devices had failed." Nuclear physicist Ralph E. Lapp supported this assertion, saying that "only a single switch" had "prevented the bomb from detonating and spreading fire and destruction over a wide area." nuclearbomb shadow shadow shadow ***** It (a B-52 bomber) was carrying two nuclear weapons, each 1,000 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. One of the bombs dropped on the countryside and didn't explode. It had six safety locks on, and when it was found, five of them had flipped. It would have destroyed all housing within a circle of 25 miles and ignited all things burnable within a 75-mile radius. --Lloyd J. Dumas, author of Lethal Arrogance: Human Fallibility and Dangerous

Ships carrying nuclear waste from Italy are unlikely to unload their cargo in charleston - if federal regulators allow the European refuse to be buried in the United States, officials with a nuclear services company say. Energy Solutions Inc. believes other ports will work better than charleston, said Jill Sigal, the company's vice president for government relations. The company has previously said in federal documents that it intends to bring the material through either charleston or New Orleans, but never said which port it preferred. Sigal declined to say whether that means New Orleans is the preferred site. "It's extremely, extremely unlikely that charleston would be the port of entry," Sigal said. "We have some other ports for a variety of reasons that might (be) better." Earlier this month, a federal judge upheld the nuclear services company's bid to import 20,000 tons of Italian low-level waste. The next step is a Nuclear Regulatory commission decision on whether to approve the permit.

The federal government plans to spend as much as $3 million a year to demolish and rebuild uranium-contaminated structures across the Navajo Nation, where cold War-era mining of the radioactive substance left a legacy of disease and death. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its Navajo counterpart are focusing on homes, sheds and other buildings within a half-mile to a mile from a significant mine or waste pile. They plan to assess 500 structures over five years and rebuild those that are too badly contaminated.

Billions are going to be spent on nuclear power stations in the next 10 years, assuming, that is, we can find 33,000 recruits in a hurry. Which is where you come in... As we know, the most reliable way of becoming a superhero is to have some kind of accident involving radioactivity. In the case of Tim Scroggins, the mild-mannered construction manager who built a neutrino-generator in his potting shed using a meteorite he found while camping in the New Forest (it's a long story), the mishap turned him into captain Uranium, able to build nuclear power stations wearing only his underpants, and boil water for tea by looking at it. In our own time-space continuum, the transformative possibilities of nuclear energy are still fairly impressive, and have the additional advantage that you don't have to have a nasty accident first.

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, backed by 2008 Republican presidential candidate John Mccain, introduced legislation Thursday to provide "rebates" from a $30 billion fund to build the stalled Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository in Nevada. Because South carolina has more nuclear reactors than most states do, its residents have contributed a disproportionately large share - more than $1.2 billion - to the Nuclear Waste Trust Fund for developing the Yucca repository.

Reports say Iberdrola consortium has bowed out as government set to net £400m from nuclear land auction The British government could make over £400m in the auction of land to build nuclear power stations, as prices skyrocketed on Tuesday forcing out one of the three dominant bidders, the Financial Times has reported. French firm EDF and the German partnership of RWE and E.ON were left to battle it out alone after the consortium of Spain's Iberdrola, France's GDF Suez and the UK's Scottish & Southern Energy pulled out of the race.

Anyone who believes that nuclear power in the United States is in a state of remission hasn't picked up on electricity generation in South carolina recently. Our economy is poised for growth in years ahead thanks to the stellar performance of the state's nuclear power plants. Nuclear power is South carolina's energy mainstay. It accounts for 51.2 percent of the state's electricity, with coal a distant second at 40 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Safe and dependable, nuclear power supplies electricity to one out of every two homes and businesses in South carolina, without producing any air pollution or greenhouse-gas emissions.

"The power source that's been shunned for more than a quarter century following accidents at Three Mile Island and chernobyl may make a comeback with help from the U.S. military. The electric grids that the United States depends on for computers, communications gear and command centers are increasingly unreliable. They're strained by growing civilian demand, enfeebled by aging equipment and vulnerable to cyber and other attacks. So the military is considering generating its own electricity, possibly with nuclear energy. The push comes partially from the U.S. congress, which last fall ordered the Defense Department to study the feasibility of building nuclear power plants on military installations. A report is due to lawmakers June 1."

"A researcher from Simon Fraser University is investigating childhood leukemia in southern Iraq, where the rate of the blood cancer in some areas is now four times that of neighbouring Kuwait. Tim Takaro and his associates from the University of Washington, Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and Basrah University said in a newly published study that the rate of leukemia in children under 15 from Basrah rose to 8.5 cases per 100,000 from three per 100,000 over the 15-year study period. The rate in nearby Kuwait is two per 100,000. The intensity and duration of armed conflict in Basrah has presented researchers with a natural laboratory to conduct their search for the causes of childhood leukemia, Takaro said."

"The arrival of men with a Geiger counter, rubber suits and face masks at the homes of former Bannister Federal complex workers marked the only known residential contamination incident and a health mystery that's lasted two decades. An NBc Action News review of government documents and interviews with witnesses indicates government workers went to not only Ivory Mae Thomas' home, but actually searched the homes of four workers, and found contamination during a 1989 incident where a radioactive material got outside the plant."

"High Point expects to see a 4.9 percent wholesale electric rate increase from North carolina Municipal Power Agency Number 1 in June, and customers of the city's municipal electric service will likely see a corresponding rate increase on their July bills, although the High Point city council has not yet set the retail rate. There may not be a city in North carolina with more short-term problems than High Point: the collapse of its manufacturing industry, threats to its signature furniture market, 11.9 percent unemployment. But the city of High Point has also come up on the winning side of some long-term bets in infrastructure and energy that leave it with a competitive advantage over other cities. "

"In an attempt to bolster U.S. President Barack Obama's non-proliferation efforts, the United States on May 3 dispensed with decades of cold War secrecy and published the size of its U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko praised the U.S. step and said Russia would consider doing the same after the ratification of the nuclear arms deal signed by Obama and Kremlin chief Dmitry Medvedev last month. Russia and the United States hold more than 95 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, enough to destroy the planet many times over, after first developing the weapons in top secret programs in the 1940s."

"he Ukrainian Security Service has detained six Ukrainians in Slavyansk, Donetsk region, after allegedly attempting to illegally sell three slabs of depleted uranium weighing in total two and a half kilograms, the Ukrainian State committee for Nuclear Regulation said in a statement on its website. The arrest was carried out almost two months ago on March 17, with the authorities reporting the arrest on May 12. "The power of the exposure dose on the surface of the seized nuclear material is over 1.2 millirem per hour, which is 100 times the natural background level," the statement said. At the same time, no damage to the population and environment has been detected. Two criminal cases have been launched. "

Amec has been chosen by czech utility cEZ to manage radioactive waste at a nuclear power plant in Dukovany for the coming five years. Amec's Slovakian business will manage the contract, which already provides a range of services to nuclear power plants in the Slovak and czech republics. commenting on the contract win, Amec's managing director of its Slovakian nuclear division, Pavol Stuller, said: "This important contract confirms Amec's position as an important partner to both cEZ and ENEL in the area of radioactive waste management in the central and Eastern European region". Amec says it will reduce the volume of liquid radioactive waste at the Dukovany plant, thereby cutting the cost of waste management. Earlier this month, Amec announced it was partnering with Energy Solutions in a bid to be appointed "parent body organisation" at Dounreay in north west Scotland. The decommissioning of Dounreay is one of the UK nuclear industry's most significant challenges, with Amec and Energy Solutions claiming that their joint venture would offer "unrivalled experience" and, thus, "the right recipe of global skills, experience, capabilities and culture to safely deliver the desired solution for Dounreay"."