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"EnergySolutions Inc. announced Wednesday it is dropping plans to import significant quantities of foreign radioactive waste for disposal in Utah. The decision turns the heat down on a three-year controversy in Utah and beyond that has sizzled since the company asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow 20,000 tons of cleanupwaste from Italy's defunct nuclear program to be shipped to the United States, some 1,600 tons of it for burial in Utah. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, called it: "A win for Utahns," and said the state "shouldn't be the world's dump." The announcement, made at a news conference at the company's Salt Lake City headquarters, signaled yet another dramatictransformation fora company started two decades ago as a shovel-and-truck enterprise centered at its mile-square disposal site in Tooele County."

"NEW DOCUMENT REVEALS GOV'T PLANS TO * Abandon promised science and "ignition and gain" at Livermore Lab NIF mega-laser * Jack up funding for nuclear weapon "life extensions" beyond what the facts justify, and * Escalate bomb budgets through 2030 despite lip service to Obama disarmament goals LIVERMORE -- The Fiscal Year 2011 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (colloquially known as the "Green Book"), obtained recently by Tri-Valley CAREs, reveals that the U.S. Dept. of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) foments internal plans significantly at variance with the agency's public pronouncements and the Nation's disarmament goals. "The document demonstrates that the NNSA will reach deeper and deeper into the taxpayers' pockets in the coming decades, even as it jettisons scientific objectives and delivers less," charged Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs, the Livermore-based nuclear weapons watchdog organization. " What the plan reveals about the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is shocking." (See attached analysis for details.)"

"While most people trace the dawn of the nuclear era to August 6, 1945, and the dropping of the atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, it really began three weeks earlier, in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, with the top-secret Trinity test. Its sixty-fifth anniversary will be marked-or mourned, if you will-this Friday, July 16. Entire books have been written about the test, so I'll just touch on one key issue here briefly (there's much more in my book with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America). It's related to a hallmark of the age that would follow: a new government obsession with secrecy, which soon spread from the nuclear program to all military and foreign affairs in the cold war era. In completing their work on building the bomb, Manhattan Project scientists knew it would produce deadly radiation but weren't sure exactly how much. The military planners were mainly concerned about the bomber pilots catching a dose, but J. Robert Oppenheimer, "The Father of the Bomb," worried, with good cause (as it turned out) that the radiation could drift a few miles and also fall to earth with the rain."

"Nearly three-quarters of opinion formers in Britain think the government should either scrap the country's nuclear weapons or look for a cheaper alternative, according to a poll published on Tuesday. Just under a third of business leaders, politicians, academics and journalists polled by YouGov for the Chatham House think tank said Britain should abandon its nuclear deterrent after it expires in 2024. This is higher than a fifth of ordinary voters polled by YouGov who want to scrap it. The replacement of Britain's submarine-launched Trident missile system is expected to cost at least 20 billion pounds, a sum critics say is unthinkable at a time of drastic spending cuts pushed by Prime Minister David Cameron."

"We are now confronting the problems of nuclear power - the waste generated and the radioactivity of the reactor generators that need to be "decommissioned." Bruce Power will pay Studsvik $1 million for each of the planned 17 generators to be "cleansed" in Sweden. Normally an intelligent country, Sweden is embarking on a process that will harm its workers and proliferate the material throughout its industries. Of course the ship may not run into trouble on its journey through the Great Lakes and across the Atlantic. Retrieving the behemoth from the bottom of the Atlantic would be difficult. It would probably be left there along with the sunken nuclear submarines corroding away."

"Municipal leaders deserve a say in whether radioactive recyclables are ferried through the Welland Canal, says the mayor of St. Catharines. The Bruce Nuclear Generating Station has asked for a licence to ship "low-level" radioactive generators from Lake Huron, through the Welland Canal and the rest of the St. Lawrence Seaway to a recycling plant in Sweden. Each of the 16 bus-sized steam generators contains steel that can be decontaminated and reused, according to Bruce Power officials, but about 10% of the material is thought to be too radioactive to recycle and will be returned to the Lake Huron facility for storage. "

"President Obama says he wants a "world without nuclear weapons." But his Department of Energy may not be so persuaded. It's prepping for a future where the U.S. keeps double the amount of nuclear weapons a new treaty permits - and at higher cost-per-nuke than it currently spends to maintain its arsenal. We're talking $175 billion over two decades. According to an Energy Department plan submitted to Congress in May that the Federation of American Scientists and the Union of Concerned Scientists obtained and published, the department's National Nuclear Security Administration proposes to slash the 5,000-warhead nuclear arsenal down to "approximately 3,000 to 3,500″ warheads. So far, so clear. Nukes going down. President Obama's plan for a nuke-free world going up."

"The Obama administration is planning to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal by as much as 40 percent by 2021, but also wants to spend nearly $175 billion over the next 20 years to build new facilities and maintain and modify thousands of weapons, according to two sections of an administration plan made public today by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The proposal, the "FY 2011 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan," which is part of the Department of Energy's proposed fiscal year 2011 budget, was drafted by DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and presented to members of Congress in May. "

"Uranium nitride, a nuclear fuel that might one day offer a more efficient alternative to the uranium and plutonium oxides now used, has been given a boost by research that has illuminated its reactive properties. The threat of climate change and uncertain fossil fuel prices have made nuclear power a tempting option for meeting some of the world's future energy needs. The nuclear industry today uses oxides of uranium and plutonium, but some chemists think they could one day be replaced with uranium nitrides."

"A proposed nuclear reactor in Maryland that is close to winning a billion-dollar federal loan guarantee would produce twice the energy of the state's two existing reactors combined. But the project at Calvert Cliffs faces many hurdles. Nuclear energy opponents are challenging the reactor's licensing qualifications with charges that the amount of foreign ownership violates the Atomic Energy Act -- which bars nuclear projects with "foreign ownership, control or domination." The Calvert Cliffs reactor would be built by UniStar Nuclear Energy -- a joint venture between Maryland's Constellation Energy Group and French company Electricite de France. Paris-based Areva would provide the reactor technology. Electricite de France and Areva are 85 percent owned by the French government."

"Groups on either side of proposed uranium-mining operations in Colorado this week will present their ideas about how companies should conduct themselves if they use water and chemicals to extract the ore. The Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Board hearings begin this morning and are likely to last through Wednesday. The board will issue formal rules on in-situ mining in August. The in-situ process injects water and chemicals to free the uranium, pumps out the fluid and collects the ore. The state has been gathering information on the proposed rules since last year. The rule-making process is required under a law signed by Gov. Bill Ritter in 2008 that regulates pollution and reclamation activity for in-situ uranium mines in Colorado."

"At first glance, the agenda for last week's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future looked pretty mundane. Who knew that former Sen. Pete Domenici - fresh from cataract surgery and sporting dark sunglasses - would bring the fireworks. The New Mexico Republican lobbed plenty of them at Ron Curry, New Mexico's secretary of environment, during a hearing to examine the Waste Isolation Pilot Project. First, a little background. The commission, appointed by President Obama earlier this year, met in Washington last Wednesday to consider best practices for disposing of high-level nuclear waste. Among those invited to testify were Curry; state Rep. John Heaton, a Carlsbad Democrat; and Don Hancock, director of the Albuquerque-based Southwest Research and Information Center. Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, is a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission."

"How can the United States establish one or more disposal sites for high level nuclear waste in a way that is technically, politically and socially acceptable? State Rep. John Heaton, D-Carlsbad, told a federal blue-ribbon panel last week that the relationship between Carlsbad and the U.S. Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is the road map showing how to achieve that goal. Heaton, along with Lokesh Chaturvedi, former deputy director of the Environmental Evaluation Group, and Don Hancock, from the Southwest Research Center, were in Washington last week to present testimony before the Disposal Subcommittee of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. The topic was WIPP, a low-level nuclear waste repository located about 27 miles east of Carlsbad, and why it has achieved great success."

"Tularosa downwinders prepare for vigil, meetings this week There will be a candle for Ruthina Utter Tyler, who died after battling a series of cancers. There will be a candle for Tony Cordova, who endures two types of cancer, and a candle for Demetrio Montoya, a former mayor of Tularosa who died of pancreatic cancer. There will be candles for mothers, sons, a daughter or a father, a grandparent who told their children of their memories of that morning 65 years ago when the brilliant light and roar of the very first detonation of a radioactive bomb at the historic Trinity Test site brought a secret military project to the Tularosa Basin and an unexamined legacy. These and hundreds of others will be honored at a candlelight vigil Friday evening at the Tularosa Little League Park to begin a weekend of educational programs and documentation of as many oral histories as possible of the fateful day. Organizers hope it will bring more light onto the dark secret of suffering and a widespread "cancer culture" among residents of the area. Ruthina Tyler believed her cancers were a result of exposures throughout her life to the contaminated food, water and land after the Trinity Test. Her son Fred Tyler agreed with her and while she was still alive, he publicly questioned the impacts of the historic test on local residents in Tularosa and the surrounding areas."

"We cannot look the other way on the Hanford cleanup controversy Referring in print to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation as America's Chernobyl is a pretty good way to get a call from Hanford's press office, which is understandably anxious to avoid comparison with the Soviet reactor disaster. But according to the latest analysis, Chernobyl may start calling to complain about being lumped together with Hanford. This is because the amount of deadly plutonium buried near the Columbia River in southeastern Washington state is three times what the U.S. government has previously estimated. Highly cancer-causing even at microscopic quantities, it is now thought that nearly 26,000 pounds of the bomb-making material was discarded as waste at Hanford."

"t's not out of the question that the United States might not be around long enough to see the complete cleanup of its Cold War legacy in Washington State. Not far from the banks of the Columbia River resides the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, once the most important manufacturer of plutonium for America's nuclear arsenal. Today, the 560-square-mile decommissioned facility is teeming with plutonium, one of the most toxic substances on earth (minute particles of it can cause cancer), with a half-life of 24,000 years. The U.S. Department of Energy estimated back in the mid-1990s that Hanford had more than 111,000 kilograms of plutonium to dispose of. A former department official, Robert Alvarez, recently went over old Energy reports and determined that the original math was way off. It turns out that Hanford has three times more plutonium than was calculated in 1996."

"Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius expressed hope that Minsk would drop its plans to build a nuclear power plant close to the Baltic country's border, BelaPAN reports. He said that Vilnius could encourage Minsk to change its mind on the project by offering cooperation in the sphere of nuclear energy, according to Lithuania's National Radio and Television. "

"The formidable Anne Lauvergeon, the CEO of French nuclear giant AREVA, has been doing interviews. She's always worth paying attention to, as much for what she doesn't say as what she does. Take this for example, from her interview with the UK's Financial Times… What is the smartest business idea you have ever had? Setting up Areva and creating the 'CO2-free' strategy. Really? Considering Anne's 'CO2-free strategy' (and it's proper that the term is in quotation marks because AREVA's 'CO2-free strategy' is anything but) is currently eating the company's profits thanks to the botched construction of the Olkiluoto-3 EPR reactor in Finland, we're not sure we'd describe it as the 'smartest' business idea. How about… What do you like most about your job?"

"Critics slam plan, regulators downplay risks The Bruce Nuclear Generating Station plans to ship 1,760 tonnes of radiation-laced steel through Lake Ontario - a precedent-setting project that has officials worried on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. On April 1, Bruce Power asked the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Canada's nuclear regulator, for a licence to ship low-level radioactive generators from its power plant on Lake Huron to Sweden, where 90 per cent of the metals inside the generators are to be cleansed and resold. The remaining materials that are too radioactive to be recycled will then return to the Bruce plant to be contained for the rest of their radioactive lives. But the planned journey, which would have 16 decommissioned steam generators travel through the Great Lakes, down the St. Lawrence River and then to Sweden this fall, has municipal officials concerned because they haven't been given the chance to vet the proposal. If approved, this would be the first time a licence has been issued by the commission to ship nuclear waste through the Great Lakes."

" Levels of radioactive tritium remain high in a number of monitoring wells at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey, according to new state data. The Oyster Creek nuclear plant looms near its discharge canal in Lacey (file photo by Peter Ackerman) Through late April, the highest tritium level - nearly 50 times government limits - was in a well in the Cohansey aquifer beneath the plant. The Cohansey is used for drinking water beyond Oyster Creek property lines. A different well in the shallower Cape May aquifer beneath Oyster Creek had a tritium level that was about 45 times above government limits. The state Department of Environmental Protection has posted a map of well locations."