nuke.news

Australia is reconsidering a pact to sell uranium to Russia following its military push into Georgia, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith warned on Monday. He spoke as the head of a parliamentary committee examining the deal that would allow sales of uranium for use in Russia's civil nuclear power industry, expanding on the terms of a 1990 agreement, raised fears the yellowcake could be diverted for nuclear weapons use.

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearing in Chadron last week, intended primarily to take public comment on a proposal for use of a generic Environmental Impact Statement in issuing permits for In-Situ Leach (ISL) mines such as the Crow Butte Resources mine near Crawford, provided a primer on the ISL process for an audience of about 35 people, and a discussion forum for several of those involved in challenges to Crow Butte's proposed expansion project. Among the details to emerge from the meeting was acknowledgment by the NRC that, although ISL mine permits call for returning groundwater to its original condition when mining is done, some of the "baseline parameters" have proved unachievable by mining companies.

Norway may be planning on becoming Europe's battery, but based on what Reuters is saying about a new proposal from Greenpeace it won't just be Norway which supplies Europe with electricity, it will be the North Sea. The head of renewable energy for the European Commission, Hans Van Steen, has called the proposal "ambitious but realistic". 118 Wind Farms + €20 Billion Electric Grid There may be no actual plan in place, but the Greenpeace proposal goes like this: Build 118 offshore wind farms by 2030 in the North Sea off the coasts of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. Connect the 68 gigawatts of power these windfarms would produce to the mainland through a grid of power cables on the sea bed, the construction of which could cost €20 billion ($29 billion).

Tomorrow's column will be about a tentative agreement to extend the deadline (now at 2016) for completing the Oak Ridge cleanup of the Dept. of Energy's Oak Ridge reservation. One of the decisions yet to be made is what to do with White Oak Lake, which historically was used as a giant settling basin for ORNL's radioactive discharges before the water was released into the Clinch River and reservoirs beyond.

THE Commonwealth is expected to decide where to build a nuclear waste dump within months, with a scientific survey looking at the best sites in the Territory due to be completed within weeks. Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said no decision would be made without the "proper scientific assessment". His office yesterday indicated the scientific surveys of four Territory sites would be completed within a month.

Chinese steelmaker Sinosteel has moved to buy into Australia's uranium industry, applying to develop a mine in the outback, a report said Wednesday. The Australian newspaper said Sinosteel PepinNini Curnamona Management had lodged a minerals claim with the South Australian government, a development which could lead the way to a formal mining lease application.

The Government is committed to a new generation of nuclear power stations to fill Britain's energy gap. But Tom Burke says the new nuclear policy is fundamentally flawed and is based on a misunderstanding of nuclear power's economics. # John Webley on wind power: Government's economic insanity # Ten UK nuclear power stations by 2020 # Nuclear power . . . what's the problem? Gordon Brown does not dither about nuclear power.

Leaking nuclear waste in a storage facility in Lower Saxony has raised the temperature of the conversation over nuclear power in Germany. Conservatives say nuclear power is safe and clean, but the Left is saying, 'I told you so.' But no one knows what to do about radioactive water leaking from the mine. The Asse II salt mine, in Lower Saxony, is leaking radioactive brine. The trouble with nuclear waste is that it never goes away, German politicians are (re-)learning this week, after a status report on barrels of leaking nuclear waste in a storage facility based at a former salt rock and potash mine called Asse II in Lower Saxony

Matt Bumpus stood guard outside a cavernous bunker on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq. Inside were several 50-gallon drums filled with something unknown. Something bad. Nearly three years later, lying in a hospital bed in Sacramento, the memory of that night and those drums would come back to him. As a teenager, Matt was an active young man, who stood 6 feet 2 inches with broad shoulders and played football for Roseville High School. He joined the Army in 1996, a year after he graduated. At the time, he thought that "it was kind of one of those macho things to do. Join the infantry and be a tough guy, play with guns and things that blow up."

Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., is sitting on a stockpile of orphaned bomb-grade uranium it doesn't want to talk about. Since the Crown corporation pulled the plug in May on further development of its two troubled MAPLE reactors at its Chalk River, Ont., nuclear laboratories, officials have debated how to deal with the estimated 45 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) the United States exported to Canada for production of medical isotopes in the now-doomed reactors. Whatever the options are now for the highly enriched uranium, AECL isn't saying.

A charter member of George W. Bush's infamous "axis of evil" on account of its nuclear-weapons program, arms sales and brutal human-rights record, North Korea was unsurprisingly targeted by Bush for regime change from the start. That Kim Jong Il - a man the American President once called a "pygmy" - has not only survived, but emerged in the twilight of the Bush era with an agreement eerily similar to the one he signed with Bill Clinton over a decade earlier, makes for a remarkable tale.

Germany's Asse nuclear storage facility is to get a new operator who will be responsible to the federal environment ministry following revelations this week of serious safety violations at the site. Germany's Federal Office for Radioactive Protection (BfS) is to take over the ailing Asse nuclear storage facility in the state of Lower Saxony after strong criticism of operators Helmholtz's German Research Center for Environmental Health in Munich for failing to alert the government to violations at the site.

Two days after Exelon Nuclear stepped forward in its quest to set up shop here, opponents sounded a warning and announced an October community forum. John Figer, director of Texans for a Sound Energy Alliance, said questions remain regarding nuclear power, safety and water usage.

They were among the worst nuclear accidents in history -- and also the most sensitive.

In a couple of years, a new kind of vessel will appear at sea: the floating nuclear power plant (FNPP). The Academician Lomonosov, currently under construction in Russia, is only one project of several being developed so far. The formal keel laying ceremony took place in April 2007 at the Sevmash shipyard of the Russian State Center for Nuclear Shipbuilding in Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk Region. After about a year and a half, the state-owned corporation Rosatom revoked the general contract, handing it over to the Baltiysky Zavod (Baltic Plant) Shipyard in St. Petersburg. So now the birthplace of the first-ever floating nuclear power plant will be the Baltic Sea instead of the White Sea.

Lisa Bumpus of Roseville wears a necklace that holds the wedding ring of her husband, Matt Bumpus, who died Aug. 3. Both thought his rare form of leukemia can be traced to an assignment in Iraq.

James Chilman makes jokes about glowing in the dark. His buddy -- Jim Huntley from the same platoon of the Queen's Own Rifles, Second Battalion -- marvels at how absurd it was to practise field-stripping a rifle while marching toward a towering mushroom cloud minutes after the detonation of an atomic bomb.

SCE&G's plan to build two reactors goes before state regulators Wednesday SCE&G and Santee Cooper estimate it will cost about $10 billion to build two nuclear reactors in Fairfield County. What nuclear energy can you do with $10 billion? A few ideas: Thirty years after the commercial nuclear power industry appeared dead, South Carolina is on the leading edge of its rebound. Nationwide, applications to build a dozen nuclear power reactors - four in South Carolina - have been filed with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. While there is growing public support for nuclear power, its resurgence also has touched off a firestorm of debate.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday called for a decision on where to store radioactive nuclear material after a scandal over leaks at a depot this week sparked a row about what to do with atomic waste. Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said last week his ministry would assume responsibility for the Asse facility in the state of Lower Saxony after he attacked the operators for presiding over years of leaks of radioactive waste.

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearing in Chadron last week, intended primarily to take public comment on a proposal for use of a generic Environmental Impact Statement in issuing permits for In-Situ Leach (ISL) mines such as the Crow Butte Resources mine near Crawford, provided a primer on the ISL process for an audience of about 35 people, and a discussion forum for several of those involved in challenges to Crow Butte's proposed expansion project. Among the details to emerge from the meeting was acknowledgment by the NRC that, although ISL mine permits call for returning groundwater to its original condition when mining is done, some of the "baseline parameters" have proved unachievable by mining companies.