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India has put its nuclear power plants under alert and tightened security around them after intelligence about possible attacks, a report said on Monday. The step comes after a man arrested in the United States on charges of plotting attacks in India was found to have travelled to Indian states that have nuclear installations. The Press Trust of India quoted unnamed sources in the home ministry as saying that state governments had been asked to step up security around their nuclear plants as a "precautionary measure". "The step is precautionary in nature. The states have been asked to increase the vigil and patrolling to thwart any sabotage attempt aimed at these vital facilities," a home ministry official was quoted as saying. Indian media often reports security alerts based on unnamed intelligence sources.

India has put its nuclear power plants under alert and tightened security around them after intelligence about possible attacks, a report said on Monday. The step comes after a man arrested in the United States on charges of plotting attacks in India was found to have travelled to Indian states that have nuclear installations. The Press Trust of India quoted unnamed sources in the home ministry as saying that state governments had been asked to step up security around their nuclear plants as a "precautionary measure". "The step is precautionary in nature. The states have been asked to increase the vigil and patrolling to thwart any sabotage attempt aimed at these vital facilities," a home ministry official was quoted as saying. Indian media often reports security alerts based on unnamed intelligence sources.

he U.S. Government Accountability Office has found that the National Nuclear Security Administration's is not doing enough to prevent rogue actors from acquiring nuclear-weapon components from at least one facility, the Kansas City Star reported yesterday (see GSN, June 8). The GAO report focuses on current operations and plans for a site that would replace a facility in Kansas City. Mo. The Kansas City Plant, overseen by the nuclear agency and managed by a private contractor, produces 85 percent of the non-nuclear components that go into building the average nuclear weapon. Congressional auditors said it has not done enough to ensure that sensitive "dual-use" equipment does not fall into the hands of terrorist organizations or foreign countries.

he U.S. Government Accountability Office has found that the National Nuclear Security Administration's is not doing enough to prevent rogue actors from acquiring nuclear-weapon components from at least one facility, the Kansas City Star reported yesterday (see GSN, June 8). The GAO report focuses on current operations and plans for a site that would replace a facility in Kansas City. Mo. The Kansas City Plant, overseen by the nuclear agency and managed by a private contractor, produces 85 percent of the non-nuclear components that go into building the average nuclear weapon. Congressional auditors said it has not done enough to ensure that sensitive "dual-use" equipment does not fall into the hands of terrorist organizations or foreign countries.

"After reports from a German lab highlighted the threat of high uranium content in water, linking it with high incidence of abnormalities among residents of the Southern-West Malwa region of Punjab, another preliminary report by Baba Atomic Research Center (BARC), Mumbai, and researchers at Guru Nanak Dev University (GNDU), Amritsar, has found unsafe concentrations of uranium and heavy metals in water samples collected from Bathinda, Faridkot, Muktsar and adjoining areas. This comes at a time when the state health department is facing flak for its alleged attempts to play down this serious threat to people's health. Dr HS Kushwaha, director health, safety and environment group of BARC, said, "235 water samples were collected from the region about a year back, and many of these were found to have high uranium content. So, we assigned the task of exploring the possibility of uranium prospect and health risk assessments in area to physics department of GNDU, about six months back." "

"Mike Carlson was at his desk when he noticed his chair starting to move. The computer monitor on his desk at Central Vermont Public Service Corp. in Rutland shuddered, too, Wednesday afternoon moving from side to side, thanks to a magnitude-5.0 earthquake in Canada at abount 2:30 p.m. that shook a region stretching as far west as Michigan and into New England. Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon reported an "unusual event," the lowest of four levels of emergency classification. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan says the earthquake wasn't felt in the control room but was in other parts of the site. Yankee officials say there's no evidence of damage to the plant. Vermont Emergency Management spokesman Mark Bosma said no reports of damage have been reported. Advertisement "

"According to a report by researchers at the Oak Ridge Insitute for Science and Education, undergraduate degrees in health physics (the science of radiation protection) increased slightly in 2009 -- cotninuing a recent trend -- but the number of doctorate degrees awarded hit a 40-year low. The report, "Health Physics Enrollments and Degrees Survey, 2009 Data," surveyed 24 academic programs -- including the University of Tennessee -- with students majoring in health physcis or in "an option program equivalent to a major." ORISE reported that a total of 154 degrees in health physics -- B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. -- were awarded in 2009, but only nine of those were Ph.D.s."

"Nearly half of Japan's 54 commercial nuclear power reactors had problems that needed to be addressed during operations last financial year but none required operations to be suspended, a report said on Monday. World The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency report said 21 reactors had "significant issues" over occurrences or safety, two needed more inspections and 29 had little or no problem. "The report is to identify problems that need to be addressed so we can prioritise inspections and use our limited resources effectively," said an official at the agency, an affiliate of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry."

"Confirming Punjab's worst fears and TOI reports, a document from Germany's Microtrace Mineral Lab has revealed that hair samples of 80% of 149 neurologically-disabled children, mainly from Punjab's Malwa region, have high levels of uranium. The report also establishes the presence of dangerous heavy metals in water. The presence of the radioactive element has strengthened doubts that depleted uranium used by US tanks in Iraq and Afghanistan was travelling through air, reaching not just Punjab but Delhi as well. TOI was first to report the suspected presence of uranium traces in the hair of kids undergoing treatment at Baba Farid Centre for Special Children. "

"U.S. Senator Jim Webb abruptly canceled a planned visit to military-ruled Myanmar on Thursday because of concern about the country's alleged nuclear cooperation with North Korea. Politics | North Korea Webb, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific, said his visit would be "unwise" having learned of a report containing new allegations that Myanmar was seeking North Korea's help in developing a nuclear program. It was not immediately known what report Webb was referring to and a U.S. embassy spokesman could not confirm the origin of the report, or where it was published."

The U.S. Department of Energy's "Report to Congress on the Demonstration of the Interim Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel from Decommissioned Nuclear Power Reactor Sites" (DOE/RW-0596, December 2008) concluded that the agency does not have authority under present law to accept spent nuclear fuel for interim storage from decommissioned commercial nuclear power reactor sites. According to a Dec. 10 press release, the report was prepared pursuant to direction in the House Appropriations Committee Report that accompanied the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008 that DOE develop a plan to take custody of spent nuclear fuel currently stored at decommissioned reactor sites.

Federal agencies in charge of radiation protection are struggling to revise their standards to take into account the differences in susceptibility to radiation-induced cancer among men, women and children, and, according to a report released Wednesday, are lagging in that task. The report, from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said the rules were still too heavily based on "Reference Man," a standard created by the International Commission on Radiological Protection in 1975. That standard is a 5-foot-7, 154-pound man who is "Western European or North American in habitat and custom."

Bharatbook.com is proud to announce the new report 'US Nuclear Energy Outlook' from its vast collection of informative market research reports. (http://www.bharatbook.com/detail.asp?id=84504) Nuclear power plays a major role in the US energy industry as the country, after coal and natural gas, produces its maximum amount of electricity from nuclear power plants. Oil and hydropower are the next biggest sources of energy. But the US heavily depends on imported uranium for its nuclear power industry. And with China, India and Russia planning for massive deployments in nuclear power, the country may have tough times ahead in procuring raw material (uranium) for its nuclear reactors, says "US Nuclear Energy Outlook", our recent research report.

Florida's energy future should be "clean" - not just "renewable" - and include nuclear power as a source of green energy, according to recommendations from the staff of utility regulators released Wednesday. The 111-page report is the latest step in the debate over whether power companies can count new nuclear power toward their obligation to generate renewable energy. The report follows months of lobbying by Florida Power & Light - the state's largest utility and producer of nuclear power - to persuade regulators to create a "Clean Energy Portfolio Standard" rather than a "Renewable Portfolio Standard." Florida statues do not include nuclear power in the definition of "renewable" energy. FPL generates no renewable energy in Florida.

PETER A. BRADFORD, adjunct professor, Vermont Law School, and former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: * For an even-handed recent overview of most nuclear power issues, see "Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding," a June 2007 report by the Keystone Center, a non-profit organization that brought together a cross section of parties interested in nuclear energy - including environmentalists and consumer advocates, industry representatives and government officials - to create a base of agreed-upon knowledge about the costs, risks and benefits of nuclear power. www.keystone.org/spp/documents/FinalReport_NJFF6_12_2007(1).pdf * For a responsibly skeptical look at nuclear power's rapidly rising costs in comparison to available low carbon alternatives, see "The Nuclear Illusion" by Amory Lovins and Imram Sheikh in the November 2008 Ambio, the Journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. https://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E08-01_AmbioNuclIlusion.pdf The Journal Report * See the complete Energy report. * The Web site of the Nonproliferation Education Center, maintained by WSJ op-ed contributor Henry Sokolski, features an ongoing collection of thoughtful conservative pieces skeptical of nuclear power. http://www.npec-web.org/ * For an excellent short critique of reprocessing and the Bush Administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, see Victor Gilinsky and Alison Macfarlane's Minority Opinion from the National Academy of Science's Review of DoE's Nuclear Research and Development Program, http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11998&page=73 * For an even-handed look at how nuclear construction went astray in the U.S. in the 1970s, the best book remains "Light Water: How the Nuclear Dream Dissolved, Irvin C. Bupp and Jean-Claude Derian. * Another good overview text is Megawatts and Megatons, Richard Garwin and Georges Charpak.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology doesn't put a priority on safety and doesn't give researchers and scientists the tools they need to be safe, according to a report released Friday by a blue-ribbon commission charged with analyzing the adequacy of NIST's safety programs. U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez formed the commission in August after a plutonium spill June 9 on Boulder's NIST campus. The commission's report said the staff at NIST "is eager, willing and ready to embrace a safety culture," but that it needs leadership to make that happen.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in what was termed a "fairly unusual meeting" by its regional administrator, presented to the public Tuesday night its special inspection report on the status of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant's cooling towers. Because of the public's interest in the matter and because of the concerns of local elected and appointed officials, said Samuel Collins, the administrator for the NRC's Northeast region, the agency felt it was important that it present the results in Brattleboro rather than relying solely on a written report to describe what it found.

A small fire broke out Friday at a nuclear fuel plant in the village of Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, but did not cause any injuries or environmental damage, said the operator of the plant, which was scolded for delaying the report. The Ibaraki Prefectural Government told Mitsubishi Nuclear Fuel Co. to promptly report fires to local authorities in the future after learning that the company waited for about 30 minutes to report the fire, prefectural officials said.

Hype over the future of nuclear power is rampant, but the facts tell a different story. The percentage of nuclear-generated electricity in the overall global energy mix is decreasing. In this three-part series Mycle Schneider, a French independent nuclear analyst, explores the difficulties facing nuclear power throughout the world and in Western Europe and Asia in particular.

7 groups of opinion identified by ideas on U.S. 'portfolio' The question of where the United States will get its energy in coming decades is central to this year's presidential race, and a new University of Tennessee report aims to help policymakers long-term by identifying where Americans stand on the issue. "Until recently, we haven't given (energy policy) much thought," said K.C. Healy, director in the energy and resources practice of Deloitte Consulting LLP, which wrote the report with UT's Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff is revising its schedule for the issuance of two reports that are central to the agency's review of the license renewal application for the Indian Point nuclear power plant. The documents are the draft Safety Evaluation Report (SER) and the draft Environmental Impact Statement for the application. Release of the draft SER will be extended by approximately four months for several reasons. They include additional time required to review supplemental information provided by the plant's owner, Entergy; time devoted by the license renewal review staff to responding to an unusually large number of contentions filed by those seeking a hearing on the application; and the staff's efforts to address, in reviews currently under way, issues raised by the agency's Office of Inspector General in a report on the NRC's license renewal program. As a result of the schedule change, the NRC now expects to issue the draft SER in early January.

Thousands of containers of lethal nuclear waste are likely to fail before being safely sealed away underground, a devastating official report concludes. The unpublicised report is by the Environment Agency, which has to approve any proposals for getting rid of the waste that remains deadly for tens of thousands of years.