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Lawyers have charged £16million in the battle to get justice for Britain's nuclear test veterans. The money has been spent by legal teams for the UK Ministry of Defence and the veterans during a fiercely contested High Court action. It means the final bill could be much higher than any com-pensation eventually received. The revelation comes after a judge told both sides, who are meant to have been negotiating a settlement for the past six months, to start talks. Some 22,000 men, who were sent to Australia and the South Pacific to witness atomic bomb tests, allegedly suffered a range of health problems. Many of the 3,000 survivors have joined together in a major legal case to sue the MoD for negligence. But the case has descended into farce, with the MoD claiming a confidential offer has been made, but vets' lawyers saying they haven't received one. The High Court was told on Friday that costs are already at £15m for the three-year case, with a further £1m expected to pay for an appeal brought by the MoD which will be heard in May.

Lawyers have charged £16million in the battle to get justice for Britain's nuclear test veterans. The money has been spent by legal teams for the UK Ministry of Defence and the veterans during a fiercely contested High Court action. It means the final bill could be much higher than any com-pensation eventually received. The revelation comes after a judge told both sides, who are meant to have been negotiating a settlement for the past six months, to start talks. Some 22,000 men, who were sent to Australia and the South Pacific to witness atomic bomb tests, allegedly suffered a range of health problems. Many of the 3,000 survivors have joined together in a major legal case to sue the MoD for negligence. But the case has descended into farce, with the MoD claiming a confidential offer has been made, but vets' lawyers saying they haven't received one. The High Court was told on Friday that costs are already at £15m for the three-year case, with a further £1m expected to pay for an appeal brought by the MoD which will be heard in May.

The government is refusing to back down over attempts to force it to compensate British nuclear test veterans. Armed forces minister Kevan Jones admitted he had sympathy for over 1,000 veterans of nuclear tests carried out in the 1950s who are seeking compensation. But he said their attempts would continue to be rejected by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) because of a lack of "hard evidence" that their illnesses were caused by exposure to radiation. Labour backbencher Siobhain McDonagh, who obtained the adjournment debate, told the Commons the husband of one of her constituents had committed suicide in 1976 "after 18 years of pain".

The government is refusing to back down over attempts to force it to compensate British nuclear test veterans. Armed forces minister Kevan Jones admitted he had sympathy for over 1,000 veterans of nuclear tests carried out in the 1950s who are seeking compensation. But he said their attempts would continue to be rejected by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) because of a lack of "hard evidence" that their illnesses were caused by exposure to radiation. Labour backbencher Siobhain McDonagh, who obtained the adjournment debate, told the Commons the husband of one of her constituents had committed suicide in 1976 "after 18 years of pain".

"Inadequate mixing of some radioactive wastes at the Hanford vitrification plant could cause a criticality or a build-up of flammable gas that could cause an explosion, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. But the Department of Energy believes the problem can be resolved. It initiated tests on the mixing system planned for parts of the vitrification plant after a panel of experts in 2006 identified it as one of 28 technical issues that needed to be studied. It's the last major and complex issue to be resolved for the plant, which is half-completed. DOE has been testing the mixing systems at the M3 Mixing Test Platform installed at Mid-Columbia Engineering near the Hanford nuclear reservation. It expects to have testing completed in April, including confirming any modifications that need to be done to the mixing system. That's ahead of a legally binding Tri-Party Agreement deadline to have the work completed in June."

"Guam - A group of Guam lawmakers and residents will soon be headed to Washington to push for Guam's inclusion in the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act known as RECA. alt Dim lights Embed From 1945 through 1962, the United States detonated nearly 200 atmospheric nuclear weapons, .many of the tests were conducted in the Marshells on Eniwetok Atoll. Guam is more than 1,600 miles downwind from the Marshalls. Until recently, many thought, it was too far away to suffer any radiation fallout from the atmospheric testing. But that turned out not to be true. That became apparent when President Clinton signed an Executive Order declassifying thousands of pages of documents showing Guam was exposed to fallout carried down wind from the Marshalls. And as "downwinders" Senator Ben Pangelinan says Guam should be included in RECA which would provide up to $50-thousand dollars in compensation to people who lived on Guam between 1946 and 1974. Robert Celestial is the President of the Pacific Islands Association for Radiation Survivors. He was the one who searched through the de-classified documents back in the 90's and found the evidence of Guam's exposure to fallout from the nuclear testing in the Marshalls. Both Pangelinan and Celestial believe that there are links to Guam's high cancer rates and the radiation that fell on island during the atmospheric nuclear testing in the Marshalls."

"For the past decade, control room operators at DTE Energy's Fermi 2 nuclear power plant had their federal licenses issued or renewed without having their senses of touch and smell tested as required by federal regulations. DTE's discovery of the oversight was one of the main concerns the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission had with plant performance in 2009, an Evening News review of records shows. The tests are designed to make sure operators can smell something burning and are able to move the knobs and handles used in the reactor control room. The utility had told the NRC over the years that the tests were given as part of the required periodic medical exams of licensed plant operators before it discovered in August that the testing stopped in mid-1999."

"Young men from the foothills were exposed to radiation in 1957, not knowing it would make them sick and impact the rest of their lives. Soldiers walk toward a mushroom cloud at a nuclear test site in Nevada in 1957. The 2007 film "Time Bombs" tells the story of 40 Canadian soldiers exposed to radiation during the nuclear testing in the United States. Fifty years later filmmakers in Quebec learned of the soldiers' struggles to find out why the Canadian military subjected them to nuclear testing and to gain financial compensation for their years of illness. The resulting film, called "Time Bombs" was released in 2007 and it will be shown for free at the Legion in Turner Valley on Monday."

Nobody has to convince Edna Brackey how important the mobile Early Cancer Detection Program discontinued at the end of 2006 really was. "I really owe eight years of a very enjoyable life to this program," said Brackey, who will turn 90 next summer, during a ceremony Thursday announcing the resumption of the testing program for current and former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers Brackey, like many who develop lung cancer, had no visible early symptoms of the disease, although she did have a prior problem with a cancer in her mouth. Due to the testing program that was in place in Piketon in 2001, however, a very small cancerous mass in her lung was detected with the free CT scan.

Nobody has to convince Edna Brackey how important the mobile Early Cancer Detection Program discontinued at the end of 2006 really was. "I really owe eight years of a very enjoyable life to this program," said Brackey, who will turn 90 next summer, during a ceremony Thursday announcing the resumption of the testing program for current and former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers Brackey, like many who develop lung cancer, had no visible early symptoms of the disease, although she did have a prior problem with a cancer in her mouth. Due to the testing program that was in place in Piketon in 2001, however, a very small cancerous mass in her lung was detected with the free CT scan.

"Radiation is expected to continue spewing for months from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that suffered a meltdown following an earthquake and tsunami in March, but despite grim reports from Japan, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has quietly stopped running extra tests for radioactive material in America's milk, rain and drinking water. The EPA initially ramped up nationwide testing in the weeks following the disaster in Japan, and radioactive materials like cesium and iodine-131 were detected on US soil. Citing declining levels of radiation, the EPA has abandoned the extra tests, even as reports from Japan indicate that the Fukushima plant continues to emit radiation and the disaster is one of the worst in world history."

"India successfully test-fired on Friday a nuclear-capable, short range ballistic missile, the Prithvi-II, state television reported, citing defense officials. The surface-to-surface Prithvi-II, India's first domestically produced ballistic missile, with a range of 350 km and payload capacity of 500 kg, was blasted off from the Chandipur firing range in the eastern state of Orissa. India conducted the previous test of the Prithvi-II missile from the same base on March 27."

Tests on 16 well systems in Connecticut in the past year have shown uranium contamination in the water, according to state Department of Public Health records. All residential public water systems serving 25 or more people must test quarterly for uranium. At the end of the third quarter in September, nine systems in four towns were out of compliance, according to the records, which were reviewed by The Hartford Courant. Seven other systems that had violated the uranium standard earlier in the year were in compliance after the latest round of tests, the newspaper reported Sunday.

French Polynesia's nuclear test veterans' group, Mururoa o tatou, has welcomed news that the French government plans to introduce a law to set up a compensation fund for those suffering poor health as a result of the French nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific. Such a law is expected to be tabled early next year and could pave the way for France to recognise a causal link between the tests and the prevalence of conditions such as thyroid cancer.

A new era of US diplomacy under Barack Obama is providing fresh momentum for a global ban on nuclear tests, monitors in a UN-backed group said Tuesday. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), drawn up in 1996, has been signed by 181 countries and ratified by 149. But it needs to be ratified by nine others, including China and the United States, before coming into force. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) said recent positive signals from the Obama administration will persuade other countries to ratify. A conference is being held in New York this month to speed up the process.

This time around, U.S. Senate skeptics who killed the nuclear test-ban treaty a decade ago must take into account a new, $1-billion verification network underpinning the pact, the treaty chief said Wednesday. In 1999, "the system was a blueprint," Tibor Toth said of the high-tech web of stations on alert for nuclear bomb tests. Now "I could call it a `verification Manhattan Project," he said, referring to the all-out U.S. program that built the first bombs in the 1940s. Toth, who heads the U.N.-affiliated Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, spoke with The Associated Press on the eve of a conference of some 150 nations convened every other year to urge those that have not ratified the treaty, including the United States, to do so. The two-day session will be held in parallel Thursday with a summit of the 15 U.N. Security Council members on the subject of nuclear nonproliferation, presided over by U.S. President Barack Obama.

The U.N. Security Council on Monday unanimously condemned North Korea's latest nuclear test, saying it was a "clear violation" of a resolution passed in 2006 after Pyongyang's first atomic test. The nonbinding statement was agreed to after a Security Council meeting that lasted less than an hour. "The members of the Security Council voiced their strong opposition to and condemnation of the nuclear test conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea on 25 May 2009, which constitutes a clear violation of resolution 1718," it said.

Suddenly, a flash of blinding light burst on the horizon, a deafening roar ripped across the steppe and a huge nuclear mushroom cloud slowly unfurled in the sky. This image still haunts Zheyembek Abishev who was a child when the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear bomb near his village in northern Kazakhstan where generations of his ancestors grazed horses in the quiet wilderness of the steppes. "I was born in 1947 and the explosions started in 1949. I remember it all very clearly," said Abishev, whose village is perched on the fringes of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site.

New research on the ill health of veterans of Britain's nuclear weapons tests has been promised by the MoD. Under secretary of state for defence Kevan Jones is expected to tell the Commons this week that a study on the health affects resulting from exposure to the nuclear test blasts will commence. Only around 3,000 of the 20,000 or so veterans who took part in the tests during the 1950s are still alive today. Many of the survivors suffer from rare cancers, skin problems and blood disorders as do their children.

A ten-million euro compensation package for the victims of nuclear test is being described as "peanuts". The French Defence minister Hervé Morin has outlined the main points of a proposed Bill to compensate, for the first time, victims of nuclear testing conducted by France both in Algeria and later in French Polynesia, between 1966 and 1996. Roland Oldham, the president of the French Polynesian nuclear test veterans' group, Mururoa o Tatou, says the deal is a bad joke. "They announce a few million like that, just like we should be very happy, we should drop on our knees and say thank you to the French Government. But that's not the case at all, because it's peanuts , it really is peanuts when you compare how the French government spends a lot of money on defence."

France recognises link between tests and illnesses * Burden of proof reversed * Government sets aside 10 million euros initially PARIS, March 24 (Reuters) - France will compensate victims of past nuclear tests in the south Pacific and the Sahara, and for the first time has formally recognised a link between the explosions and illnesses suffered by soldiers and civilians. Defence Minister Herve Morin told reporters on Tuesday France had conducted the tests as safely as possible, and had needed them to build up a credible nuclear deterrent and emerge as a global nuclear power.

"Nations have gathered at the United Nations in New York to review the 40-year old Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which spells out commitments for halting the spread of nuclear weapons. In addition to supporting efforts to halt further weapons production, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) has enlisted regional support in proposing that the meeting also show international recognition of testing impacts. Speaking before the NPT plenary meeting last Thursday, RMI UN Ambassador Phillip Muller told the Parties to the NPT agreement that the 67 nuclear tests conducted in RMI took place with UN approval through two UN resolutions, passed in 1954 and 1956, after the UN rejected petitions by traditional Marshallese leaders. Nations have gathered at the United Nations in New York to review the 40-year old Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which spells out commitments for halting the spread of nuclear weapons. In addition to supporting efforts to halt further weapons production, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) has enlisted regional support in proposing that the meeting also show international recognition of testing impacts. "

"Then U.S. president Bill Clinton had offered Pakistan a $5 billion package to refrain from conducting tit-for-tat nuclear tests in response to India's in 1998 but the offer was rejected at the cost of sanctions, Nawaz Sharif, who was the prime minister at the time, said on Friday. "I told him (Clinton) that we are not among those people who are sold for a few dollars, not now and in future too. Thus we successfully carried out our nuclear tests," Online news agency quoted Mr. Sharif as telling party activists on the 12th anniversary of the May 28, 1998 nuclear tests. "