nuke.news

The two Russian Tu-160 Blackjack strategic bombers that landed in Venezuela last week have successfully carried out a patrol mission along the South American coast, a Russian Air Force spokesman said on Tuesday. "The aircraft took off from the Libertador airbase in Venezuela on Monday and flew along the South American coast toward Brazil," Lt. Col. Vladimir Drik said.

Russian engineers announced plans on building high-temperature nuclear reactor with gas cooling in our country by 2020. Existing atomic power plants are aimed at producing electricity and low-temperature heat for warming and water desalination. High-temperature reactors will expand plant workability. Temperatures about 1000 degrees Centigrade allow using heat in other field of economy, such as hydrogen synthesis, fertilizer production, metallurgical industry and etc. Moreover, high-temperature nuclear reactors do not leave radioactive wastes, thus solving many problems with environment and nuclear weapons.

Scientists have puzzled for years about why uranium contamination in groundwater continues to exceed drinking water standards in an area located at the south end of the Hanford Site. The Department of Energy wants answers to why the uranium persists. Now, an innovative system has been installed for field experiments to better understand this complex site and to support future cleanup decisions. The site is one of three Integrated Field Research Challenge, or IFRC, locations supported by DOE's Office of Science to investigate fundamental science issues important to contaminant transport and groundwater remediation. New insights may offer scientific advances in environmental cleanup beyond Hanford.

The Union of Concerned Scientists said Tuesday that Oconee Nuclear Station workers were exposed to "dangerous" levels of radiation due to "mishaps" during an April incident -- allegations Duke Energy denies. A Duke spokeswoman said Tuesday that areas of the reactor building were evacuated as a precaution, and workers weren't sent into high-radiation areas. Dave Lochbaum, director of nuclear safety projects for the union, said that during the shutdown "the company had damaged two reactor coolant pumps, unknowingly exceeded reactor cool-down limits and triggered a potentially disastrous loss-of-coolant accident."

Since when is nuclear an "alternative energy source"? Nuclear power has been around for decades. It's second only to coal for electricity production in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. And yet in its recent public survey, Three Mile Island repeatedly refers to nuclear power as an "alternative energy source."

After a long and challenging 14 months, Cameco Corporation has received permission to resume production at its uranium hexaflouride (UF6) plant. "We're in the final stages of putting the plant back into operation and production should start within the next several days," said Andy Oliver, vice president of Cameco's fuel services division, during a presentation to Port Hope council on Sept. 16. He detailed the status of the contamination at Cameco's Port Hope conversion plant.

British climate and energy policy is incoherent and needs an overhaul, dumping carbon targets and building more coal and nuclear power stations to stop the lights going out, a pro-nuclear scientist said. A report entitled "A Pragmatic Energy Policy for the UK", by Professor Ian Fells and Candida Whitmill, said renewables would not fill the impending energy gap so old nuclear and coal plants had to be kept going while new ones were built urgently.

Twenty-two years ago, the most serious accident in nuclear history disrupted the lives of millions of people. Massive amounts of radioactive materials were released into the environment resulting in a radioactive cloud that spread over much of Europe. The greatest contamination occurred around the Chernobyl nuclear power station in areas that are now part of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. People in Czechoslovakia were not in acute danger, but like others in the communist block they learnt about the nuclear accident many days after it happened and the media censorship ordered by the communist regime prevented them from taking even the most basic precautions.

The Ottawa Coalition Against Mining Uranium (OCAMU) is an Ottawa-based community association. Our mission is as follows: We are a group of Ottawa citizens acting to ensure that Ottawa's water, air and surrounding ecosystem remain free of the byproducts of uranium mining. Uranium mining would poison these basic elements irreversibly. Our goal is to raise awareness and request a moratorium on uranium mineral prospecting, exploration, and mining in the Ottawa watershed. We call on our local political representatives to fulfill their responsibility of ensuring a healthy Ottawa.

Oconee Nuclear Station should have responded faster when a control room alarm warning of radiation levels activated for 81/2 hours in April, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman said Wednesday. No enforcement action was taken against Duke Energy by the federal agency because the incident was of low safety significance, said NRC spokesman Roger Hannah. The Union of Concerned Scientists had criticized Oconee Nuclear Station on Tuesday for exposing workers to "dangerous" radiation levels and not responding to the alarm for 81/2 hours, during which time a containment hatch was opened and workers were sent into the reactor building.

An inquiry into the removal of body tissue from dead Sellafield nuclear workers can examine the patients' medical records, a judge has ruled. Michael Redfern QC is heading a public inquiry into why samples were taken between 1962 and 1992 and whether next of kin were informed.

Mohave County residents along Highway 93 had plenty of questions for Arizona Department of Transportation officials during Tuesday night's U.S. 93 Area Plan meeting. Most of the questions centered on the federal government's plans for the controversial CANAMEX corridor.

Kazakstan's nuclear test zone has lain deserted for the last 20 years largely forgotten by the outside world, but experts say radiation will continue to be a health risk until the huge site is cleaned up thoroughly. The testing ground was closed for use in 1991. This month, the international Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization is running a series of trials at the Semipalatinsk site to test equipment that can identify and give the location of nuclear explosions

Collectively, they're known as atomic veterans. Hundreds of thousands of military personnel participated in bomb tests between 1945 and 1962, the period in which the United States conducted atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons. These include the U.S. occupation forces at Hiroshima and Nagasaki soon after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan at the close of World War II.

60 gallons a minute pouring from pipes The Vermont Department of Public Service is asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to send inspectors to examine the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon to see if it is safe. The call comes in the wake of the discovery of more problems with the plant's cooling towers. The state wants inspectors to "consider whether any of the newly discovered cooling tower problems could affect the safety or seismic cooling tower cells," said the letter by Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien's letter, dated Friday, to NRC regional administrator Samuel Collins.

BRIDGMAN - Fire crews were called to battle a small fire at the Cook Nuclear Plant, along Red Arrow Highway in Bridgman. Firefighters were called to put out the fire in a nonnuclear part of the plant, said Cook spokesman Bill Schalk late Saturday.

The response to the Georgia invasion is ill-timed, many experts say. WASHINGTON -- Nearly six weeks after Russia sent troops into neighboring Georgia, the Bush administration remains deeply divided over whether to retaliate against it -- and some officials fear the internal conflict is already undermining strategically important national security collaborations.

Before a nuclear plant is allowed to run for an additional 20 years, federal regulators should make sure local emergency plans have kept up with the communities' needs. That's the basis of an appeal Eric Epstein, a nuclear watchdog and activist from Harrisburg, has filed with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

Police detained 40 protestors Tuesday in a demonstration against government plans to build Turkey's first nuclear power plant, a day before the tender process was to open, activists said. Several dozen members of environmental groups, among them Greenpeace, demonstrated outside the energy ministry in central Ankara, brandishing banners that read "No to nuclear."

Nuclear energy provides Switzerland with 40 per cent of its power but more than half of the public oppose the technology to some degree, a survey has revealed. The study, released on Tuesday by the Federal Energy Office, found that just seven per cent of respondents were totally in favour of energy production by nuclear power stations. Double that percentage were fully opposed.