nuke.news

"The U.S. government is looking for even a temporary storage site for 10,000 drums of depleted uranium from a South Carolina nuclear plant, Utah officials said. The waste was supposed to have been stored permanently in Utah by EnergySolutions Inc. But the state intervened as the first shipment arrived, seeking more information from the Salt Lake City company and a review of the site. Now the U.S. Department of Energy is searching for sites outside of Utah where the waste can remain for up to seven years, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Thursday. Temporary storage bids are being accepted until next Thursday."

"There is reason for optimism. No social movement in U.S. history has been more successful than the people's fight to prevent construction of nuclear plants and to existing plants from their communities. For the few in the pro-nuke industry, the financial incentives overshadow the costs to the consumer, damage to the environment, daily health risks and periodic nuclear disasters. We, the people must return to our very effective battle that shut down nuclear reactors as an energy source in the 1970s and 1980s. We did it before and we can do it again. The deliberate use of manmade ionizing radiation is an assault upon people, the environment, and all living things. Since the first Plutonium and Uranium nuclear bomb was exploded in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, the continuous contamination of the United States and the rest of the world is like something out of a very bad dream... a dream from which we can not seem to awaken."

"On May 3, 1969, after hours of bitter debate, the Sierra Club fired David Brower. The organization's first paid staffer, Brower had transformed the Club from an exclusive, politically timid, white male hiking outfit of 2,000 members. But the old guard didn't like the direction that Brower, its executive director, was taking the staid organization: toward political confrontation, grassroots organizing and attacks on industrial pollution, nuclear power and the Pentagon. This kind of green aggressiveness in the face of entrenched power alienated funders, politicians and, eventually, the Internal Revenue Service, which, after Brower's successful international campaign to halt the construction of two mega-dams in the Grand Canyon, moved to strip the group of its tax-deductible status. The IRS action proved to be the final straw and Brower was booted out."

"The weaknesses of federal regulatory agencies have been exposed by recent high-profile accidents. Guest columnist Tom Carpenter fears the Department of Energy will reduce its oversight of cleanup at the nation's nuclear waste sites.\n\nBy Tom Carpenter\n\nSpecial to The Times\n\nPREV of NEXT\n\n \n\nRelated\n\nMillions of gallons of oil gush continue to rush unabated from BP's mile-deep well in the Gulf of Mexico, and 11 workers are dead from the massive explosion that caused the biggest oil spill in decades. Weeks before this event, the news was dominated by the preventable explosion that killed 29 West Virginia coal miners.\n\nIn both cases, the not-so surprising news was that the mine and the oil rig had abysmal records of safety violations before the explosions yet were still allowed to operate by the captive regulatory agencies.\n\nWhere is the government accountability? It is the government's job to assure that ultra-hazardous industries operate safely and responsibly.\n\nIs nuclear next? The Department of Energy sits on the nation's biggest nuclear nightmare. Its inventories of highly radioactive and toxic wastes defy comprehension. Washingtonians are familiar with the DOE's No. 1 accomplishment, the Hanford nuclear site, which holds the lion's share of the nation's radioactive detritus. Suffice it to say that the escape of even a small fraction of such material into the environment would constitute a Chernobyl-sized catastrophe."

"The owner of a defunct uranium mine leaking pollution along a creek that flows into a Denver Water reservoir has launched a cleanup as ordered, state officials confirmed Thursday.\n\nCotter Corp. installed a system that can pump and treat up to 50 gallons per minute of contaminated water from inside its Schwartzenwalder Mine, west of Denver in Jefferson County.\n\nWater tests in 2007 recorded uranium levels in mine water exceeding the human health standard by 1,000 times. Elevated levels in Ralston Creek also were recorded.\n\nThe Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment ordered the action. State natural-resources officials also are monitoring the mine, which produced uranium for weapons and nuclear power plants."

Date: July 7, 2010 The Blue Ribbon Commission on American's Nuclear Future (the Commission) was established in accordance with the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), as amended, 5 U.S.C. App. 2, and as directed by the President's Memorandum for the Secretary of Energy dated January 29, 2010: Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. This charter establishes the Commission under the authority of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

"Michael Mariotte, Executive Director for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) said today the estimated $140 billion in total for nuclear subsidies in Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act are wrong. The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report July 1, 2010 documenting that the legislation could be worth a total of $140 billion to the nuclear industry. Taxpayers to fund through the Federal Financing bank The NIRS further reported to its members that the House Appropriations Committee may take up a $36 billion increase in nuclear reactor loans for an increase in the construction of new reactors. This is money the NIRS says "would go to some of the wealthiest companies in the world like Electricite de France, Areva, NRG Energy, Toshiba, General Electric, and the like.""

"The US Department of Energy is looking for a temporary home for two thirds of a shipment of low level nuclear waste that was headed to Utah. Waste containing depleted uranium from the Savannah River site in South Carolina has had its storage here delayed after the Department of Energy and Governor Gary Herbert agreed more information was needed to ensure the safety of nearby residents. The highly populated Salt Lake Valley is just 75 miles east of Energy Solution's Clive Storage Facility in the Tooele Valley. Depleted uranium is low level radioactive waste at this time. The problem is, as it breaks down, its radiation levels increase, with radon emissions peaking after one million years. Energy Solutions is currently working on a report confirming the Clive site can successfully store large quantities of depleted uranium, but it is not expected to be complete before the end of the year. "

"THE pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) technology is unlikely to solve SA's energy shortage in a cost- effective way, according to an Institute of Security Studies paper on the project. The paper pours cold water on the benefits of the PBMR technology at a time when the future of the PBMR company lies in tatters, following the government's decision to drastically cut its funding. Trade unions last month said the majority of the company's employees had opted to take voluntary retrenchment packages."

"Selling all or part of the country's publicly-owned nuclear agency is the only way to save it, says embattled Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis. He appeared Wednesday before the Senate's finance committee, which is furiously studying a massive 900-page budget bill that includes giving the government carte blanche to restructure Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. any way it sees fit without any public consultation. Paradis - who is under investigation by Parliament's ethics czar for a potential conflict in dealings with disgraced former MP Rahim Jaffer - argued AECL and particularly the CANDU reactor division is too small to compete globally and needs a huge injection of cash to get it on a more competitive footing. CANDU hasn't sold a new reactor in over 10 years."

"Heart imaging procedures can deliver a significant amount of radiation to patients, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday, urging patients and doctors to weigh the risks against the benefits. They said nearly one in 10 adults under the age of 64 had a heart procedure involving radiation over a three-year period in five major healthcare markets. "For many patients in the United States, there is a substantial cumulative radiation exposure from cardiac procedures," said Dr. Jersey Chen of Yale University School of Medicine, whose study appears in the Journal of the American College of Radiology."

"In April 2005, a Presidential Directive established the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office within the Department of Homeland Security to enhance and coordinate federal, state, and local efforts to combat nuclear smuggling abroad and domestically. The DNDO was directed to develop, in coordination with the departments of Defense, Energy, and State, an enhanced global nuclear detection system of radiation detection equipment and interdiction activities. (DNDO refers to this system as an architecture.) DNDO is to implement the domestic portion of the architecture."

"Throughout the Senate debate on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) one of the central issues has been funding for nuclear weapons. Earlier this year, President Obama asked Congress for the largest nuclear weapons budget in history. However, Republicans, led by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), continually question whether the nuclear weapons stockpile and its supporting industrial infrastructure are adequately funded. With the release of a new government report, it appears that both Senate Republicans and the administration may lack sufficient information for either side to determine how much money is actually needed for long term maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report titled "Actions Needed to Identify Total Costs of Weapons Complex Infrastructure and Production Capabilities" detailing the federal government's loose budgeting and accounting practices for nuclear weapons programs. According to GAO, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is responsible for maintaining the U.S. nuclear stockpile, determines its future budgets by simply looking at each of its program's prior year budget and then adds or subtracts money based on programmatic changes. This means, rather than looking at what programs actually cost in any given year, NNSA simply assumes that it is working with the right numbers. "

"Local opposition to the proposed nuclear waste repository was strong. A public hearing at the Asheville Civic Center April 4, 1986 lasted nine hours. This "Free Vacation Map" shows some of the creativity the opposition brought to bear. Lee also possesses a vinyl recording of a song written about the proposed nuclear waste repository, "There's a Glow in the Smokies Tonight.""

"The construction contractor for Plant Vogtle, Shaw Group, temporarily stopped work after an internal audit showed new employees weren't given a questionnaire about their past or current abuse of drugs and alcohol. A Shaw spokesperson said employees were asked the questions verbally. "

"Nearly 100 lawmakers, mostly Republicans, are urging Energy Secretary Steven Chu to stop moving forward on shuttering the nuclear waste repository site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The Obama administration has yanked funding for the project, which has been in the works for more than two decades, and let go employees who worked at the site. In a harshly worded letter sent Tuesday, the lawmakers -- led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash. -- assert that the Energy Department is violating the Nuclear Waste Repository Policy Act, which in 1987 designated Yucca Mountain as the only option for the nation's nuclear waste repository site. "

"The Disposal subcommittee was established to address the question: "How can the U.S. go about establishing one or more disposal sites for high level nuclear wastes in a manner that is technically, politically and socially acceptable?" The membership on the subcommittees overlap to ensure the subcommittees do not operate in isolation from one another. Each subcommittee will also address a series of questions related to governance and institutional arrangements. Disposal Subcommittee Members Chuck Hagel - Co-Chairman Jonathan Lash - Co-Chairman Lee Hamilton - Ex Officio Brent Scowcroft - Ex Officio Mark Ayers "

"President Obama obliquely referred to the Israeli nuclear weapons program Tuesday, and expressed continued U.S. support for it. Nonproliferation expert Avner Cohen of the Monterey Institute of International Studies talks with Robert Siegel about the well-known "secret" program."

"At a briefing held yesterday to outline plans for an underground repository for high-activity nuclear waste in the United Kingdom, Bruce McKirdy of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) said the U.K. government had learned from past mistakes to be open and transparent with the public. To this end, NDA has released a new report today detailing the amount of nuclear waste that needs to be stored and how they will use a "volunteer system" to select a suitable site. The last attempt for such a facility in the United Kingdom came to a halt in 1997 when a planning application for construction at Sellafield in Cumbria was refused due to opposition by the local community. "The site selection had been done behind closed doors, as the government was worried about adversely affecting house prices," McKirdy says. "If you choose a site that would be geologically suitable and then impose these plans on a community, projects like this fail." A recent high-profile example of this is the abandoned plans for an underground nuclear waste disposal facility at YuccaMountain in the United States. "

"RADIATION from Chernobyl was carried far and wide by the wind and some of it was deposited in heavy rain on the upland areas of North Wales. More than 300 Welsh farmers are still unable to take a total of 180,000 lambs to market without calling in Government inspectors armed with Geiger counters. The men from the ministry scan animals for signs of radiation because the land they graze is still contaminated. Many continue to have to be moved to lower pastures in order to be clear of radioactivity."