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fossil fuels. Applications for new and extended reactor licenses are snowballing. Yet progress on a national nuclear dump site is virtually paralyzed. Late last month, California and Nevada filed a litany of challenges against a proposed nuclear-waste repository near Las Vegas, delivering another in a series of setbacks to this mega-billion dollar plan.

A new nuclear weapons report by a panel of scientists and two new books by weapons scientists show just how deeply the nuclear genie still haunts the scientific heirs of the Manhattan Project. "Scientists have always felt a special responsibility for nuclear weapons, the one weapon they have created of such import," says physicist John Browne, a former head of Los Alamos (N.M.) National Laboratory. Now, amid pressing economic and wartime worries, nuclear weapons are poised once again to enter public debate, fueled by warnings from Congress and a campaign pledge by President-elect Barack Obama to support the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The treaty, which bans nuclear weapon test explosions, has been ratified by 143 nations, but not the United States.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has obtained evidence suggesting that documents which have been described as technical studies for a secret Iranian nuclear weapons-related research program may have been fabricated.

A coroner is to examine the death of a doctor who worked in a university building at the centre of an inquiry into residual radiation. Arthur Reader, who died of pancreatic cancer, worked in the University of Manchester's Rutherford Building. A report has already questioned whether the building could have contributed to the deaths of two former lecturers.

MONTICELLO (AP) - Utah health officials are taking a closer look at cancer rates among residents of Monticello. Some are occurring at twice the normal rate, possibly because of a uranium mill near the southeastern Utah town. State officials say Monticello residents had higher-than-normal rates of lung and bronchial cancer. Epidemiologist John Contreras says it's "plausible" that there's a connection between cancer and dust and contaminated soils from the defunct mill.

The New South Wales Government is facing scrutiny over plans to sell-off contaminated land at Hunters Hill, on Sydney's north shore. An Upper House inquiry will be established into the land, which was once used for uranium processing. The Greens won support for the inquiry from the Opposition and crossbenches.

RICHLAND, Wash.- The U.S. Department of Energy and its contractor are being hit again for a radioactive spill in Hanford's S-Farm in July 2007. DOE and contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group have agreed on a proposed $30,000 settlement with the EPA.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States arrested an 84-year-old American on Tuesday suspected of giving Israel secrets on nuclear weapons, fighter jets and missiles in the 1980s, in a case linked to the Jonathan Pollard spy scandal that rocked U.S.-Israeli relations. The arrest of Ben-Ami Kadish indicates that Israeli spying revealed by the Pollard case, still an irritant to the U.S. alliance with Israel, may have spread wider than previously acknowledged.

A surprisingly high concentration of deuterium gas discovered in the cooling system at the Point Lepreau nuclear plant could have harmed personnel and damaged equipment last May had it exploded. Deuterium can explode in air if it reaches a concentration of five per cent, and a sample taken at Lepreau on May 23, 2008 was 6.4 per cent. But the gas was in a closed system of tubes and lacked an ignition source as the reactor was offline.