Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush asked Congress on Tuesday to review a civilian nuclear deal with Russia, but lawmakers warned there may be attempts to block it over Moscow's links to Iran's nuclear program.

A legislative provision that would have linked US import limits on Russian low-enriched uranium to additional downblending of Russian high-enriched uranium was not included in a funding bill passed by the House of Representatives late Thursday. The provision, which was written by Pete Domenici, a Republican senator from New Mexico, was included in the Senate version of the bill.

Sick nuclear workers and their advocates will hold a rally Wednesday to protest "unfair practices and illegal actions" in the current compensation program and call for legislative reform of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. Here's a link to the proposed reforms. The Oak Ridge rally will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Jackson Plaza Office Complex, 800 Oak Ridge Turnpike. That's the site of the Department of Labor's Resource Center, which was set up to help sick workers with their claims.

NEW YORK (AFP) - US authorities announced Tuesday the arrest of a US Army veteran on charges he disclosed secret defense information, including on nuclear weapons, to Israel in a case linked to the huge 1980s Jonathan Pollard spy scandal. Ben-Ami Kadish, now 84, worked as a mechanical engineer at a US Army weapons center in New Jersey, from where he provided classified documents to Israel's consul for science affairs in New York from 1979 to 1985, the Justice Department said.

TALLEVAST -- One month after concerned community leaders asked for a cancer study, state and local health officials visited Tallevast on Monday to start preliminary plans. The state's quick response gives Tallevast hope their concerns will be heard, said Laura Ward, president of FOCUS, an advocacy group for residents. Tallevast residents believe the high numbers of cancers and neurological disorders in their community are linked to contamination traced back to a former beryllium plant. Now known to cover more than 200 acres, the toxic waste includes industrial chemicals known to cause cancer and other illnesses.

There are only seven Web sites that more people use than Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that lets anyone edit most of its articles. None of the sites that are more popular than Wikipedia have as their main purpose producing information about the world. The top sites, Google and Yahoo, mainly function as links to other sites. Facebook and Myspace, which people use to keep in touch with their friends, are third and fifth most popular, respectively. The other sites that are more visited than Wikipedia are YouTube (a kind of online TV), eBay (a virtual flea market), and Microsoft's version of Google.

According to his death certificate, Sir William Penney - known as the Father of the British Bomb after he organised a series of early nuclear tests - died from liver cancer aged 82 in 1991. Experts said it was highly likely it was linked to his role in the blasts, for which he was made a life peer. Gp Chris Steele said: "If someone has been playing with uranium for a large part of their adult life, you're at very high risk of just this type of condition."

The city's latest sewage scandal seems to have elicited a far quieter response than the tonnes of raw sewage that spilled into the river in 2006. Maybe it's because a beach wasn't forced to close or people weren't worried about swimming in E. coli-contaminated water. Maybe it's because the radiation has been linked to medical isotopes, where the word "medical" elicits a certain perception of safety. Or perhaps it's because residents have been reassured their drinking water isn't affected. Regardless of the reason, councillors and residents should be just as vocal (and just as concerned) about radioactive septic sludge as they are raw sewage flowing into the river. Both demonstrate Ottawa has a faulty system when it comes to waste management. After all, if radioactive isotopes are making their way into the waste treatment system without being detected, what else is lurking in the muck?

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Nuclear Energy Institute spent $570,000 lobbying the government in the second quarter on legislation designed to reduce pollution linked to global warming and create clean energy jobs, according to a recent disclosure report. The institute, the policy organization of the nuclear energy and technologies industry, also lobbied on legislation that would certify the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada would remain the designated site for the development of a repository for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste. It also lobbied on legislation that would prohibit importing certain low-level radioactive waste into the U.S. and on a bill to improve the a loan guarantee program to help finance the development of energy technology. For the April-June period, the group lobbied Congress, the departments of Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security and State, as well as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Management and Budget, Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, according to the disclosure filed with the House clerk's office on July 20.

Construction workers at Department of Energy nuclear sites, including Oak Ridge, had a significantly increased rate of cancer deaths, according to a study published recently in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. Oak Ridge, in particular, had an abnormally high number of deaths attributed to non-Hodgkins lymphoma - a type of cancer sometimes linked to radiation exposure. The study, which was funded by DOE as part of a medical surveillance program, looked at death numbers and death causes among 8,976 former construction workers at four DOE sites: Oak Ridge; Hanford, near Richland, Wash.; Savannah River, near Aiken, S.C.; and Amchitka, an Alaskan island once used for nuclear weapons testing. The overall mortality rate of the study group was slightly lower than the U.S. population as a whole, but that's expected when looking at any group of steadily employed workers with access to health care, according to Dr. John Dement, the lead researcher and professor of occupational medicine at Duke University.

Overriding Western objections, a 150-nation nuclear conference on Friday passed a resolution directly criticizing Israel and its atomic program for the first time in 18 years. Iran hailed the vote as a "glorious moment." The result was a setback not only for Israel but also for the United States and other backers of the Jewish state, which had lobbied for 18 years of past practice - debate on the issue without a vote. It also reflected building tensions between Israel and its backers and Islamic nations, backed by developing countries. Of delegations present at the International Atomic Energy Agency meeting Friday, 49 voted for the resolution. Forty-five were against and 16 abstained from endorsing or rejecting the document, which "expresses concern about the Israeli nuclear capabilities," and links it to "concern about the threat posed by the proliferation of nuclear weapons for the security and stability of the Middle East."

Four security guards at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant were fired after testing positive for steroids, a spokeswoman for Wackenhut Services Inc., the government's security contractor, confirmed today. The guards union, however, is challenging two of the cases, claiming the positive readings were linked to use of over-the-counter supplements. Security police officers at Y-12 are subject to regular and random drug testing, but those tests are typically for Schedule I and II drugs - such as cocaine and marijuana. Courtney Henry of Wackenhut said the company began testing some guards for anabolic sterioids, a Schedule III drug, "for probable cause."

Here's an excerpt from President Obama's opening remarks today at the United Nations Security Council summit on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. "Just one nuclear weapon exploded in a city -- be it New York or Moscow; Tokyo or Beijing; London or Paris -- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And it would badly destabilize our security, our economies, and our very way of life." Here's a link to news report from New York Times and below is the full text of Obama prepared remarks:

Work has started to make Hanford's massive landfill for low-level radioactive waste even larger. Improvements also are being made to help the landfill, the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, or ERDF, keep up with the accelerated pace of environmental cleanup at the nuclear reservation. Cleanup work at Hanford is increasing with the infusion of $1.96 billion in federal economic stimulus money. With more cleanup work comes the need for more waste disposal capacity, so the stimulus funding includes about $100 million for work at ERDF. "The pace of cleanup at Hanford is totally linked to the capabilities of ERDF," said Dave Einan, an environmental engineer for the Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates the Department of Energy project.

Why should we abolish nuclear weapons? This apparently naive question seems to have become a matter of debate, writes Hiromichi Umebayashi, founder and special advisor of Peace Depot, Inc. Japan. In this article, the author writes that in Japan there is a deep-rooted desire for nuclear abolition that derives from its first-hand experience of the appalling damage caused by nuclear weapons. Yet this does not seem to be enough to constitute a successful argument for "a world free of nuclear weapons". The effort to bring about a nuclear abolition must be indivisibly and essentially integrated with the challenge of creating a more equitable, just, and humane global society. The need for a global solution to problems like poverty and climate change is a given, as if tacitly mandated by the standards that guide civilised human society. Nuclear abolition, in contrast, tends to be confined within the category of weapons linked to national security. It is not seen as a moral and global moral issue. To succeed, the nuclear abolition movement must be brought into a wider sphere of people's thinking.

Last November, the Daily Press published a special enterprise reporting project on the Energy Fuels Pinon Ridge mill, uranium mining and human health. It led us to the conclusion that there is much to be mulled over when considering the permitting of a uranium mill. We suggested two appropriate moves by Montrose County. One, declare a moratorium of a year; and two, at least wait until the State of Colorado defines through a state permit what type of beast the mill would be before issuing a special use permit. The Press' report, "Uranium & Health, the Pinon Ridge Mill," adopted the methodology of an environmental impact statement, at least in regard to human health. We treated the mill as a part of mining processing, or development as the county defines it. We then examined what the impacts of the mill would be on the health of miners, transporters, mill workers and neighbors. The mining occupational health analysis indicated definite risks beyond normal occupations. The milling occupational health was a bit of a mystery. One revelation from the special section: according to Phil Egidi of the Colorado Department of Health and Environment's (CDPHE), the state leaves room for creativity in permits based on community and regional requests. (The entire report is on our Web site: montrosepress.com under the link 'special sections.')

The following links on this page are to documents in our Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS). ADAMS documents are provided in either Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) or Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). To obtain free viewers for displaying these formats, see our Plugins, Viewers, and Other Tools. If you have problems with viewing or printing documents from ADAMS, please contact the Public Document Room staff. * NUREG-0585 (PDF - 3.53 MB) In its final report reviewing the Three Mile Island accident, the TMI-2 Lessons Learned Task Force has suggested change in several fundamental aspects of basic safety policy for nuclear power plants. Changes in nuclear power plant design and operations and in the regulatory process are discussed in terms of general goals. The appendix sets forth specific recommendations for reaching these goals.

Idaho's nuclear downwinders have earned their right to cynicism. The federal government has ignored them. Their elected officials - namely Larry Craig and Dirk Kempthorne - had the chance to press the downwinders' case while serving in the U.S. Senate, but didn't do nearly enough. The downwinders believe their elevated cancer rates are linked to nuclear weapons tests conducted on the Nevada desert during the 1950s and 1960s. The Cold War has ended but the bureaucratic battle continues. Senators are taking a third run at expanding a federal program that provides payments to downwind cancer victims. Previous efforts have failed.

Levels of tritium six times higher than federal standards were identified at Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Delta earlier this week. Exelon Nuclear reported Friday that tritium had been discovered in a localized area on the nuclear plant's property by plant workers performing environmental monitoring. The tritium, which at high levels has been linked to cancer, was identified Wednesday from a sample taken Monday. The highest sample concentration showed tritium levels of approximately 123,000 picocuries per liter of water, a news release from Exelon said. A picocurie is one-trillionth of a curie, a measurement of radioactivity. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's standards allow no more than 20,000 picocuries per liter in the environment. "This is not a public or employee health and safety issue, but we are committed to being open about the status of our plant operations," Peach Bottom site vice president Bill Maguire said in the news release.