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There's still nowhere to put that toxic waste Nuclear electricity is affordable and emission free People opposed to nuclear energy applications point to the high initial price tag of enormous nuclear generating facilities that can … read more provide enough reliable electricity for several million people; they often overlook the resulting low cost per unit of power when spread over that large market. There are 104 nuclear plants operating in the US today. Many of us who are old enough to remember the controversies surrounding their construction can remember how many times we were told that nuclear power plants are frighteningly expensive and that they always cost more than predicted. We even remember that electrical power prices often increased immediately after the plants went into operation due to the effect of adding those big, expensive plants into the utility rate base. What many people who consider "news" media to be their only information sources rarely understand, however, is that the 104 plants currently operating provide the US with 20% of its electric power at an average production cost of about 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour. They also do not understand that after a few decades of operation and revenue production, the initial mortgages on those plants are largely paid off. The best information of all, which is not really "news" and does not get regularly published on the front page, is that the plants still have at least 20 years of life remaining during which they can produce emission free, low cost power. The companies that own the plants and their stock holders understand the economics pretty well; that is why 18 applications for 25 new plants have been turned into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission already with more in the pipeline. All of the used fuel - what some people call waste - is being carefully stored in a tiny corner of the existing sites, just waiting to be recycled into new fuel. It still contains 95% of its initial potential energy, but

There's still nowhere to put that toxic waste Nuclear electricity is affordable and emission free People opposed to nuclear energy applications point to the high initial price tag of enormous nuclear generating facilities that can … read more provide enough reliable electricity for several million people; they often overlook the resulting low cost per unit of power when spread over that large market. There are 104 nuclear plants operating in the US today. Many of us who are old enough to remember the controversies surrounding their construction can remember how many times we were told that nuclear power plants are frighteningly expensive and that they always cost more than predicted. We even remember that electrical power prices often increased immediately after the plants went into operation due to the effect of adding those big, expensive plants into the utility rate base. What many people who consider "news" media to be their only information sources rarely understand, however, is that the 104 plants currently operating provide the US with 20% of its electric power at an average production cost of about 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour. They also do not understand that after a few decades of operation and revenue production, the initial mortgages on those plants are largely paid off. The best information of all, which is not really "news" and does not get regularly published on the front page, is that the plants still have at least 20 years of life remaining during which they can produce emission free, low cost power. The companies that own the plants and their stock holders understand the economics pretty well; that is why 18 applications for 25 new plants have been turned into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission already with more in the pipeline. All of the used fuel - what some people call waste - is being carefully stored in a tiny corner of the existing sites, just waiting to be recycled into new fuel. It still contains 95% of its initial potential energy, but

In 1991, facing obvious limits to growth from meager water resources, Las Vegas power brokers decided to bring the drama of high stakes gambling from the casinos to the board room of the Southern Nevada Water Authority headed by the Bernie Madoff of Western water, Pat Mulroy. The strategy was even proudly Ballyhooed in public. Las Vegas would just keep building beyond the capacity of its Colorado River allocation and dare other states or the federal government to stop them. At the time, a spokesman for Nevada's Colorado River Commission even announced, "The federal government will never let Nevada go dry."

In 2008, the KiKK study in Germany reported a 1.6-fold increase in all cancers and a 2.2-fold increase in leukemias, among children living within 5 km of all German nuclear power stations. The study has triggered debates as to the cause(s) of these increased cancers. This article reports on the findings of the KiKK study; discusses past and more recent epidemiological studies of leukemias near nuclear installations around the world, and outlines a possible biological mechanism to explain the increased cancers. This suggests that the observed high rates of infant leukemias may be a teratogenic effect from incorporated radionuclides. Doses from environmental emissions from nuclear reactors to embryos/fetuses in pregnant women near nuclear power stations may be larger than suspected and hematopoietic tissues may be considerably more radiosensitive in embryos/fetuses than in newborn babies. The commentary concludes with recommendations for further research.

MP Tim Farron will call for Sellafield's compensation scheme for radiation-linked diseases to be extended to the wider population. The nuclear industry scheme to compensate workers or their dependents for diseases which may be radiation-linked was set up by BNFL and the unions at Sellafield in 1982. Compensation is paid on a balance of possibilities (20 per cent and over) that a cancer may have been induced by occupational exposure to radiation. A total of £6.2m has so far been paid out. Many of the cases were linked to Sellafield, but the scheme has now been widened to include all nuclear radiation workers. Radiation Free Lakeland is calling for the scheme to be extended to the wider population - within at least a 5km radius of Sellafield. Mr Farron, the Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, will ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change if he will bring forward proposals to extend the scheme for radiation-linked diseases.

More than 20,000 people gathered in a small Kazakh town on Thursday to mark 20 years since the closure of a site where the Soviet Union conducted lethal nuclear tests for much of the Cold War. Moscow used the vast open steppes of now-independent Kazakhstan to test some 500 nuclear bombs between 1949 and 1989, poisoning swathes of land and entire generations of people, and feelings among the population still run high. President Nursultan Nazarbayev, despite being a close ally of Russia, used some of his strongest words yet to describe the grave legacy of the Soviet nuclear past. "Millions of Kazakh citizens fell victim to this nuclear madness," he told the crowd gathered at the town's memorial site. "The scar inflicted on our environment is so serious that it will not disappear for at least 300 years."

Children affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster have resumed respite trips to the UK after the resolution of a long diplomatic row with Belarus. The eight-month ban was lifted in May following talks between the two countries, the Home Office has said. Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko stopped all foreign trips after a 16-year-old girl who visited California refused to return home. Every year hundreds of children around Chernobyl are diagnosed with cancer.

Britain's lack of clarity on the future of the Trident missile system is helping to aid nuclear proliferation, an influential committee of MPs has said. Refusals by Iran to stop its uranium enrichment programme and North Korea's insistence it will weaponise its plutonium stocks are down in part to no commitment from the UK to disarm, the foreign affairs committee said. The committee said the group of five recognised nuclear powers had "failed to live up to its nuclear disarmament commitments". "We commend the steps that the government has taken to scale down and de-escalate the UK's nuclear arsenal," MPs wrote. "We welcome the prime minister's announcement that the new Trident submarines are to carry fewer missiles than the current boats, and we recommend that the government should do more to highlight this and other nuclear disarmament steps which it has taken."

1999: After five decades of denial, the U.S. government owns up to poisoning thousands of defense, aerospace and atomic energy workers by exposing them to beryllium. President Bill Clinton asks Congress to enact legislation to compensate the sickened workers and their survivors. The element beryllium (Be, atomic number 4) is a Group 2 alkaline earth metal, the lightest of the family that includes magnesium, calcium, strontium, barium and radium. Because of its low weight, high melting point, resistance to corrosion, great strength and good electrical conductivity, it's widely used in electronics, aerospace, atomic energy and defense. Other applications are in precision machining and die casting, molding plastics, and making dental plates and X-ray tubes.

The Labor Dept. today released information on three more employee groups with "special exposure cohort" designations, which should make it easier for them to gain compensation under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act. In statements distributed to the news media, the Labor Dept. said it had notified the employees or their survivors of the designation, which includes a "presumption" that workplace explosure caused their illness if they were diagnosed with any of the 22 specified cancers. The newly designated special exposure cohorts were:

A new face of nuclear medicine; Other materials may be able to take the place of isotopes (SP, July 4). These "other materials" are also radioisotopes, not substitutes for them. The difference is that they are produced in cyclotrons rather than in nuclear reactors. In fact, the first technetium-99m (the favoured isotope mentioned) was produced in a cyclotron about 12 years before the first reactor was built.

Members of the Navajo Nation plan to take to Washington, D.C., their grassroots campaign to compensate uranium mine workers' children affected by diseases and birth defects. The Navajo Nation Dependents of Uranium Workers Committee met Friday at the Shiprock Chapter House to update community members on the upcoming trip and hear feedback from residents who suffer from cancer, kidney disease, birth defects and other illnesses resulting from prolonged radon exposure from uranium mines. Organizers plan to take their fight to the nation's capital July 7 to 9 and again July 28 to 31. "The government is pretty aware of the damage to the family members," said Phil Harrison, Council Delegate for Red Valley/Cove Chapter of the Navajo Nation. The intent of the trips is to further educate congressional leaders in the issues at hand, request a congressional field hearing in Window Rock or Shiprock, and discuss amending current legislation to extend compensation to family members.

If you haven't thought of the possibility that epidemic influenzas such as 'swine flu,' or 'H1N1 virus,' may come about as a result of low-level radiation in the form of fallout that covers the Earth, neither did I. That was until last week when someone proposed the idea to me. It all sounds like something out of a science fiction novel: 'a catastrophic nuclear war in 2030 covers the Earth with toxic radioactive fallout that gives rise to mutant viruses which infect and destroy surviving clusters of humans...' But, back in the 1950s, the so-called 'father of the [Soviet] hydrogen bomb' predicted that the radioactive fallout from the 'Cold War' could accelerate the rise of mutant pathogens, including influenzas.

After a Knoxville metal recycler melted nuclear material that had inadvertently infiltrated its mill, the company learned its lesson: The combination of radiation detectors and a watchful eye can prevent massive, costly messes. The Knoxville company, Gerdau Ameristeel, has since weeded out radioactive isotopes sent to it with scrap metal at least 50 times, according to reports from a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission database. Gerdau Ameristeel has developed an elaborate firewall to keep out castoff nuclear material, according to Jim Turner, corporate environmental director of the Toronto-based company, which has an executive office in Tampa, Fla.

The U.S. government's only effort to hunt down castoff radioactive waste has recovered just 4 percent of the estimated 500,000 X-ray machines, industrial sensors and other items discarded across the country. In the past decade, the U.S. Department of Energy's Off-Site Source Recovery Project in New Mexico has retrieved 21,000 items, said project manager Julia Whitworth. It currently has a two-year waiting list and a 9,000-item backlog - and is fielding requests to collect an additional 2,000 newly detected items a year.

Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project, New Mexico AGENCY: Bureau of Reclamation, Interior. ACTION: Notice of Availability of the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project Planning Report and Final Environmental Impact Statement FES 09-10. SUMMARY: Pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (as amended), Public Law (Pub. L.) 92-199, and the general authority to conduct water resources planning under the Reclamation Act of 1902 and all acts amendatory thereof and supplementary thereto, the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), in cooperation with the Navajo Nation, Jicarilla Apache Nation, City of Gallup, State of New Mexico, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Heath Service, Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, and Northwest New Mexico Council of Governments, has prepared and made available to the public a Planning Report and Final Environmental Impact Statement (PR/FEIS). This document was undertaken to provide a discussion for the (1) Various ways to provide a municipal and industrial (M&I) water supply to the Navajo Nation, City of Gallup, and Jicarilla Apache Nation; (2) identification of a preferred alternative; and (3) associated environmental impacts and costs of the No Action and two action alternatives.

Relatives of workers who died of exposure to radiation or toxic materials at a Cold War-era uranium enrichment plant in Ohio are fighting a ruling by state officials that keeps them from receiving workers' compensation death benefits. Advertisement They say they should not be penalized for missing a deadline for filing claims because the government withheld information for years and workers did not know they were working in a life-threatening environment. "There isn't any amount of money on this earth that could replace what we lost," said Anna Fleshman, 77, of Chillicothe. "But I do believe they owe us. If they could see what they go through with that cancer ... they should have told the boys."

THE expert probing contamination fears at Manchester University says he will definitely consider the latest death linked to the scare. Safety campaigners suspect links between the deaths of six former workers at labs once used by nuclear pioneer Ernest Rutherford. Prof Tom Whiston, a former occupant of rooms used by the physicist a century ago, is the latest person who has been linked to the case. He died at his Brighton home earlier this month from pancreatic cancer.

The 168-mile-long loop of canals that cool the twin nuclear reactors at Turkey Point was dug in the 1970s to avoid pumping billions of gallons of damaging hot water into Biscayne Bay. More than 30 years later, the solution to one environmental problem has emerged as a prime suspect in another -- an underground saltwater wedge that has pushed miles inland from Florida Power & Light's bayside plant. Regulators don't yet know the size of the salty plume, but preliminary studies suggest a leading edge has marched far enough east, just past the Homestead Miami Speedway, to pose risks to drinking-water wells for Keys and Homestead residents and Everglades restoration projects intended to revive historic freshwater flows to the bay.

Forgotten about for 50 years, an odd stash yields clues about above-ground nuclear tests and cancer They were locked away in an ammunition bunker near St. Louis, Mo., in dozens of cardboard boxes. Each was in its own manila envelope, with an index card identifying the donor. These 85,000 baby teeth were collected in the late 1950s and early 1960s to study the effects of radioactive fallout in the environment. The fallout came from hundreds of above-ground nuclear tests in America and other parts of the world. The radioactive isotope Strontium-90, one of the by-products of the bombs, spread into the atmosphere, fell onto the land, was ingested by dairy cows and passed into the milk supply. Strontium-90, like calcium, was concentrated in children's teeth in detectable amounts. In 1958 scientists in St. Louis began a campaign to collect baby teeth to study the link between above-ground testing and human exposure. The undisputed link between the tests and a radioactive element in baby teeth provided much of the impetus for the 1963 Test Ban Treaty, which outlawed above-ground nuclear weapons-testing.

Big heads, bulging eyes, twisted hands that don't reach their mouths and bent legs that can barely support their frail frames. Intrigued by these abnormalities among children in a pocket of Faridkot, visiting South African toxicologist Dr Carin Smit had their hair samples sent to a German laboratory. The results, which have just come in, are shocking: the deformities were caused by alarmingly high levels of uranium. ''The test results have left us baffled as there's no apparent source of uranium in Punjab,'' said Prithpal Singh, head of Baba Farid Centre for Special Children in Faridkot. More tests are now being organized among the 150 affected children with the help of a team of German and South African doctors to establish whether the traces found are from depleted uranium or natural sources.