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Way back in August of 2007, Barack Obama having declared he was a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, some "reporter" asked him whether he would be willing to use nuclear weapons, either in the War on Terror or to prevent "nuclear proliferation" by those dirty Mullahs. To the absolute delight of (a) Dubya the Dimwit, (b) Bomb-Bomb-Iran Mccain and (c) Hillary the chicken-Hawk, candidate Obama replied; "I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance - involving civilians. Let me scratch that. There's been no discussion of [using] nuclear weapons. That's not on the table."

Coloradoans Against ResourCe DestruCtion (C.A.R.D.) will hold a publiC meeting in Fort Collins on Feb. 11 to provide an update on the status of the proposed in-situ uranium leaCh mining projeCt near Nunn. Advertisement The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. in the Fort Collins Senior Center, 1200 Raintree Drive. A Canadian mining Company began buying mineral leases in 2007 in Weld County and announCed its intention to mine uranium six miles northeast of Fort Collins and about the same distanCe north of Windsor.

U.S. Department of Energy Seeks Public comment on National Transportation Plan for the Proposed Repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada Washington, D.c. -- The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OcRWM) is seeking public comment on a National Transportation Plan (Plan) that outlines DOE's current strategy and planning for developing and implementing a system to ship spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) safely and securely from where the material is generated or stored to the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

With Nevada storage site out, radioactive waste would have be kept in Jenkinsville ScE&G would have to store radioactive waste produced by new reactors at its Jenkinsville nuclear plant until the federal government finds a place to bury it, a utility executive said Wednesday. Steve Byrne, vice president of nuclear operations, said the plans for two new reactors the utility wants to build call for waste such as spent fuel rods to be stored above ground in concrete-enclosed casks. Byrne offered his remarks to the state Public Service commission, which is hearing an application submitted by South carolina Electric & Gas and its partner, state-operated Santee cooper, to build two 1,117-megawatt reactor units, costing $9.8 billion, at the V.c. Summer Nuclear Station.

The first 16 barrels of low and medium radioactivity waste were deposited at Hungary's new nuclear waste facility at Bataapati (SW) on Tuesday. The country's sole nuclear power plant at Paks (c) produces some 900 barrels of radioactive waste a year, of which a truckload is planned to be forwarded to Bataapati each day, Jozsef Hegyhati, head of the radioactive waste management company (RHK) told MTI. The current facility - built above ground - has a capacity to receive 3,000 barrels of waste, and its planned underground section is expected to be completed in 2010, Hegyhati said.

The President intends to appoint the following individuals to be Members of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, for the remainder of four-year terms expiring 04/19/12: B. John Garrick, of california, and upon approval designate chair; William Howard Arnold, of Michigan; George Milton Hornberger, of Virginia; Andrew c. Kadak, of Rhode Island; Ali Mosleh, of Maryland; Henry Petroski, of North carolina.

American Electric Power co. says a damaged reactor at its Donald c. cook Nuclear Plant will not be back in service until at least next September or perhaps even sometime in 2010. The plant is near Bridgman in Berrien county's Lake Township. One of its two reactors was shut down on Sept. 20 after severe vibrations caused by broken low-pressure turbine blades damaged the main turbine and generator, causing a fire.

Dan Stout, the Dept. of Energy's director of nuclear fuel recycling, said the comment period on the draft programmatic environmental impact statement for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership would be extended beyond the current deadline of Dec. 16. At this time, however, a new date has not been set, Stout said at last night's GNEP hearing in Oak Ridge.l Stout also indicated DOE was considering a request for additional GNEP hearings at other sites. You can submit a comment by clicking here and doing a search for GNEP. Or you can submit comments in writing to: Mr. Frank Schwartz U.S. Dept. of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy -- NE-5 1000 Independence Ave., SW Washington, D.c. 20585. The draft PEIS is available here.

Southern California Edison Company; San Onofre NuClear Generating Station, Unit 3, Environmental Assessment and Finding of No SignifiCant ImpaCt The U.S. NuClear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is Considering issuanCe of an exemption from Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Part 74, SeCtion 74.19(C), for FaCility Operating LiCense No. NPF-15, issued to Southern California Edison Company (SCE, the liCensee), for operation of the San Onofre NuClear Generating Station (SONGS), Unit 3, loCated in San Diego County, California. Therefore, as required by 10 CFR 51.21, the NRC is issuing this environmental assessment and finding of no signifiCant impaCt.

Work to get weapons-grade plutonium off the Hanford site is running ahead of schedule, and all the weapons plutonium may be gone by early June, according to the Department of Energy. More than half the plutonium already has been shipped off site. With good weather, the work could finish even sooner than June, said Doug Shoop, deputy manager of the DOE Hanford Richland Operations Office. DOE had planned to have all the plutonium shipped to the Savannah River, S.c., nuclear site by the end of September 2009 when shipments started in fall 2007.

You have been consistent in foisting the problem of radioactive waste off on Nevada, a state that has no nuclear reactors and has given more than enough to the national effort through atomic bomb tests and a landfill for radioactive waste. Based on its past record, the Nuclear Regulatory commission is expected to make a positive licensing decision. As you recognize, a waste repository in Nevada was chosen for political reasons. It will likely die for political reasons. Why wait for the N.R.c.'s verdict? It makes more sense to safely store waste at reactor sites for the indefinite future while the radioactivity declines to safer levels. Marvin Resnikoff

On October 5, 1990, congress passed the Radiation Exposure compensation Act ("REcA" or "the Act"), 42 U.S.c. § 2210 note, providing for compassionate payments to individuals who contracted certain cancers and other serious diseases as a result of their exposure to radiation released during above-ground nuclear weapons tests or as a result of their exposure to radiation during employment in underground uranium mines. The 1990 Act provided fixed payments in the following amounts: $50,000 to individuals residing or working "downwind" of The Nevada Test Site; $75,000 for workers participating in above-ground nuclear weapons tests; and $100,000 for uranium miners.

The Shearon Harris nuclear-power plant that supplies Wilson with most of its energy has received a 20-year license extension that allows it to operate through 2046. The Nuclear Regulatory commission approved the operating-license renewal of the power plant in southern Wake county. The license was set to expire in 2026. The extension, which was granted earlier this month, could mean future lower electric rates for municipal members of the N.c. Eastern Municipal Power Agency. The agency owns a share of the Harris plant, and the plant provides member cities with 16 percent of their power generation. The plant is also the largest part of the agency's debt that the 32 member cities are set to pay down until 2026.

MarylandDoesn't Need a $10 Billion Radioactive Boondoggle, Groups Say WASHINGTON, D.c. - Four environmental organizations filed a legal challenge late Wednesday against the proposed calvert cliffs-3 atomic reactor before the federal Nuclear Regulatory commission (NRc). The filing, which is a formal petition to intervene in the NRc's licensing process, marks the latest action in an ongoing fight to stop the proposed reactor before construction starts. The challenge asserts that the calvert cliffs project runs afoul of laws and regulations that prohibit foreign ownership or domination of a U.S. reactor; that the company - UniStar Nuclear, a subsidiary of constellation Energy and Electricite de France - does not have adequate assurance that it will have the funds necessary to decontaminate and decommission the facility; that the license application does not consider the cumulative effects of adding yet another nuclear reactor's radioactive and chemical discharges to a chesapeake Bay already groaning under the effects of discharges from 11 atomic reactors; and that the proposed reactor does not have any place to put either its high-level or "low-level" radioactive waste.

Unistar Nuclear Energy is seeking federal approval to build a new nuclear reactor at the calvert cliffs plant on the west bank of the chesapeake Bay, just 45 miles from Washington, D.c., and 55 miles from Baltimore. At 1,600 megawatts, the new reactor would be easily the largest in the United States - and, at $10 billion, perhaps the most expensive. Supporters claim it will go a long way toward meeting future energy needs - and would do so in a "clean" manner.

One of the companies accused of polluting the drinking water in the Rialto area has sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency saying the agency is withholding evidence that supports the company's case. charlotte-based Goodrich corp. says in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District court in Washington, D.c., that EPA has modelling showing the company is not responsible for the contamination. The EPA is in the process of declaring a 160-acre portion of Rialto a Superfund site because various chemicals, including perchlorate, are flowing through the city and toward colton and Riverside.

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.

URGENT ACTION ALERT! Condemned by health and environmental groups aCross the Country, GNEP means foreign nuClear waste imported and "reproCessed" in the USA. This is a national issue! We need a big national outCry!!! Washington, Oregon, Idaho, New MexiCo, Ohio, Tennessee, KentuCky, Illinois, South Carolina, and all our sister states! Cold War nuClear sites are thirty years behind on Clean-up! NO foreign waste! Global NuClear Energy Partnership In the dying throes of the Bush administration, one last environmental disaster is being foisted on the publiC. With GNEP, the PaCifiC Northwest, Hanford NuClear Reservation and Idaho Falls, the Southwest and sites in the Eastern USA Could all get a lot more nuClear waste (both from within and outside the Country) and dirty nuClear waste 'reproCessing' plants, "reCyCling" reaCtors, and "advanCed fuel CyCle researCh faCilities"-all verbal green-washings of very dirty proCesses. The Department of Energy (DOE) is holding publiC hearings on GNEP in November through early DeCember, 2008, final hearing on DeCember 9 in Washington DC in a rush to push this awful idea in under the wire. Thursday, November 20, 7:00 p.m. Hilton Garden Inn 700 Lindsay Boulevard Idaho Falls, IDAHO 83402 Tuesday, November 18, 7:00 p.m. Best Western Hood River Inn - Gorge Room 1108 East Marina Way Hood River, OREGON 97031 Monday, November 17, 7:00 p.m. Red Lion Hotel 2525 North 20th Avenue PasCo, WASHINGTON 99301 Monday, November 17, 7:00 p.m. Lea County Event Center 5101 North Lovington-Hobbs Hwy Hobbs, NEW MEXICO 88240 Tuesday, November 18, 9:00 a.m. PeCos River Village ConferenCe Center Carousel House 711 MusCatel Avenue Carlsbad, NEW MEXICO 88220 Tuesday, November 18, 7:00 p.m. Eastern New MexiCo University-Roswell OCCupational TeChnology Center Seminar Room 124 20 West Mathis Roswell, NEW MEXICO 88130 Thursday, November 20, 7:00 p.m. Hilltop House Best Western 400 Trinity Drive (at Central) Los Alamos, NEW MEXICO 87544 Mon

The U.S Department of Energy (DOE) announced today that the Department is prepared to execute the Standard contract for the Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and/or High-Level Radioactive Waste (Standard contract) set forth in 10 c.F.R. 961, together with a new reactor amendment, with those companies desiring to construct new nuclear power reactors. The Department is making the Standard contract and the new reactor amendment (collectively "disposal contract") available to those companies that have notified the Nuclear Regulatory commission (NRc) of their intent to build new nuclear power reactors.

Duke Energy Carolinas has raised the expeCted ConstruCtion Costs of its proposed Lee NuClear Station to $11 billion, exCluding finanCing Costs. That's roughly twiCe the Company's original estimates. Based on the finanCing Costs for Duke's new Coal-powered unit at Cliffside Steam Station, finanCing expenses would inCrease the nuClear plant's priCe to more than $14 billion. The new estimate is inCluded in a Cover letter Duke has sent to the N.C. Utilities Commission with its 2008 Integrated ResourCe Plan. That annual plan outlines Duke's expeCtations for demand over a 20-year period and outlines how the utility expeCts to meet the demand.