nuke.news

"Toshiba Corp., Hitachi Ltd. and Tokyo Electric Power Co. are among six Japanese companies that will form a joint venture to sell nuclear reactors and technology to Vietnam and other countries. The group, which includes Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., Chubu Electric Power Co. and Kansai Electric Power Co., will seek financial assistance from the trade ministry, they said in a joint statement yesterday. The companies have set up an office ahead of forming the venture this autumn. Japan is holding talks for nuclear cooperation treaties with India, Jordan, and Russia and has had preliminary discussions with Vietnam. The trade ministry will work to speed negotiations for the treaties, which are necessary for Japanese companies to export nuclear technology, the ministry said in a statement yesterday. "

"The Pickering nuclear power plant is killing fish by the millions. Close to one million fish and 62 million fish eggs and larvae die each year when they're sucked into the water intake channel in Lake Ontario, which the plant uses to cool steam condensers. The fish, which include alewife, northern pike, Chinook salmon and rainbow smelt, are killed when they're trapped on intake screens or suffer cold water shock after leaving warmer water that's discharged into the lake."

"How does a federal ruling finding that the Obama administration does not have the legal authority to abandon Nevada's Yucca Mountain waste site affect U.S. nuclear energy policy? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's board ruled last week that the administration does not have the legal right to withdraw its license for the proposed nuclear waste repository site. President Obama has already yanked funding for the site, and many aspects of the project are being ramped down. The Energy Department plans to appeal the commission's ruling. "

"Writing in a recent issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Madhusree Mukerjee wonders why, at a time President Obama is demanding that BP fully compensate Americans for the Gulf disaster, his administration is simultaneously "leaning on the Indian government to render its citizens unable to claim damages from U.S. power-plant suppliers in the event of a nuclear accident." Pursuant to the controversial nuclear commerce deal that the Bush administration negotiated with India, the United States would like India to adopt nuclear liability limits analogous to those in the U.S. Price Anderson Act, which caps corporate liability for a U.S. nuclear accident at $11 billion. A proposed Indian law would limit corporate liability in that country to $110 million."

"House Democrats choose preemptive bailout for nuclear industry over preventing teacher layoffs WASHINGTON, D.C.-- This week, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on supplemental appropriations for the war in Afghanistan and several domestic programs. The domestic program funding preserves $9 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear reactors, while cutting $13 billion in funds to prevent teacher layoffs. Friends of the Earth's climate and energy tax analyst, Ben Schreiber, had the following response: "This week Congress will vote on whether to take teachers away from students so that they can give nuclear reactors a $9 billion preemptive bailout. We continue to be shocked that Congress brazenly puts the interests of corporations above the needs of regular Americans, including teachers and children. This is further proof our political system has been corrupted by corporate influence and special interests."

"The office of Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania attempted to obtain a statement from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission according to documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act. On August 27, 2009, Arlen Specter wrote to Rebecca Schmidt asking that the NRC "issue a formal public statement confirming that he [constituent Zalman Shapiro] was not involved in any activities related to the diversion of uranium to Israel." http://www.IRmep.org/08272009specter_numec.pdf Zalman Shapiro was formerly president of the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation at Apollo, PA. According to a secret GAO report "Nuclear Diversion in the US?" partially declassified on May 6, 2010 NUMEC received over 22 tons of uranium-235, the key material used to fabricate nuclear weapons. Israel's top economic espionage case officer Rafael Eitan, who handled spy Jonathan Pollard in the 1980s, infiltrated NUMEC under false pretenses in 1968. According to Anthony Cordesman, "there is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to the Apollo plant] but for the nuclear material." CIA Tel Aviv station chief John Hadden called NUMEC "an Israeli operation from the beginning." NUMEC's venture capital came from David Lowenthal, who had close ties to Israeli intelligence and David Ben-Gurion,who spearheaded Israel's nuclear weapons program. "

This link will send you to the ORNL action where 37 people were arrested.

"An Anglo-French consortium has clinched a deal to build a nuclear waste processing plant at Sellafield, said to be worth an eventual £1.5 billion. A group involving British firms Amec and Balfour Beatty and French outfit Areva will design and construct the new Highly Active Liquid Effluent Facility at the site. The plant will analyse and treat radioactive liquid arising from reprocessing at Sellafield before it is made safe for long-term storage."

"A 2008 civilian nuclear energy pact between the United States and India was meant to lift a 34-year-old embargo on nuclear trade despite New Delhi's longstanding weapons programme, a move seen as bolstering it as a counterweight to China. It was also aimed at unlocking the energy-starved country's nuclear industry market, estimated at $150 billion, at a time when nuclear power is undergoing a nascent renaissance worldwide as a more environment-friendly alternative to fossil fuels."

"A controversial radioactive waste plant three blocks from a Williamsburg school will be forced to close under a bill passed by both houses in Albany late last week. Radiac Research and Environmental Sciences, a hazardous waste facility on Kent Avenue since 1969, could finally be compelled to relocate after the state Senate and Assembly made it illegal to operate such a facility within 1,500 feet of a school. Mac Support Store Assemblyman Joe Lentol (D-Williamsburg), who sponsored the legislation, called the bill "a real victory for the North Brooklyn community and the safety of our children," particularly students at PS 84 on Berry Street and S. First Street, just steps from the waste-processing site."

"Rulison resident Marion Wells, who last summer told the Colorado Independent she was an oil and gas industry "guinea pig," recently bit back with a lawsuit against Williams Companies, the largest natural producer on the Western Slope. According to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Wells, whose home is about 10 miles from the Project Rulison nuclear blast site, is suing Williams for building too large of a well pad for drilling on her property, as well as failing to remove construction materials and drilling waste. Those, Wells contends, are violations of her surface-use agreement. Wells has been a frequent critic of the industry on a number of topics, including the failed 1969 underground detonation of a 43-kiloton by the Atomic Energy Commission. The federal government was trying to free up natural gas with the explosion but produced gas that was too radioactive for commercial sale."

"European states are still using African coasts as a dumping ground of toxic waste, even after enactment of legislation aimed at ending the practice by the European Union. The worst examples of such dumping in the recent past, according to a report by the international environmental campaign group Greenpeace, is at the Somali port of Eel Ma'aan, north of Mogadishu. Greenpeace is now calling on the United Nations to investigate the dumping of toxic and radioactive materials in Somalia. In a 36-page document titled "Toxic Ships," the UK-based group claims that it has photographic evidence from an inconclusive investigation by the Italian authorities into the suspected burying of shipping containers filled with toxic waste inside the foundations of the port at Eel Ma'aan, in the 1990s."

"It was only one paragraph buried deep in the most plain-vanilla kind of diplomatic document, 40 pages of dry language committing 189 nations to a world free of nuclear weapons. But it has become the latest source of friction between Israel and the United States in a relationship that has lurched from crisis to crisis over the last few months. At an annual meeting to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May, the United States yielded to demands by Arab nations that the final document urge Israel to sign the treaty - a way of spotlighting its historically undeclared nuclear weapons."

"NEARLY a quarter of a century after the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in the Ukraine exploded and spewed radioactivity across the world, it has finally stopped making Scottish sheep too "hot" to eat. For the first time since the accident, levels of radioactive contamination in sheep on all Scottish farms dropped below safety limits last month, enabling the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to lift restrictions. Controls on the movement and sale of sheep have been in force since after the explosion in 1986. The Chernobyl reactor near Kiev scattered a massive cloud of radioactivity over Europe after it overheated, caught fire and ripped apart because of errors made by control room staff. It was the world's worst nuclear accident, and has been blamed for causing tens of thousands of deaths from cancers. Peat and grass in upland areas of Scotland were polluted with radioactive caesium-137 released by the reactor, blown across Europe and brought to ground by rain."

"A fire inside a nuclear power station took firefighters seven hours to extinguish yesterday. Emergency plans were put into effect as more than 45 firemen tackled the blaze at the Sizewell B station near Leiston, Suffolk. The blaze in a building which is used to control fuel started at 8.45pm on Friday and was not fully extinguished until 3.40am yesterday. Crews wearing breathing equipment entered a charcoal absorber used to filter gas and flooded it with water to cool the surrounding area."

"Korea settled for a top 16 spot in the South Africa World Cup, the first such feat on foreign soil, but in terms of nuclear deals, Korea appears to be breezing past top dogs such as France. After winning a mega deal in the Middle East last year, Korea is now in talks with the Turkish government to build a pair of nuclear power reactors with the aim of gaining substantial results this year. The latest blip on Korea's atomic energy export radar is Mexico, where a senior bureaucrat asked for assistance in nurturing specialists in nuclear power plants. Mexico's Energy Minister Girogina Kessel Martinez made the request at a recent meeting with his counterpart Choi Kyung-hwan, minister of knowledge economy. ``Originally, it was not on the official agenda. But Mexican officials made the request all of a sudden. Martinez plans to visit Korea for more detailed discussions,'' a ministry official said."

"65 years ago, US army general Leslie Groves came to Tonawanda, the year was 1940. The spring of that year I was fishing at the foot of Sheridan Dr. with my Dad. It was Blue Pike Run time. I was 8 years old and old enough to experience wars realities and fears. All one needed for fishing gear was a bamboo pole a feather and a hook. An hours fishing would fill a large basket and would feed many families / (Sadly here in 2009 those days are over.) Air raid wardens came every night with flashlights in hand so as to ensure peoples lights were turned off."

"Signs of leakage have turned up at a nuclear waste storage cell since shortly after it was built two dozen years ago, an engineer and chemist has told regulators. And some of the federal regulators responsible for the site - almost from the beginning - seem to have been looking the other way, she said. Ann Roberts, a former Town of Porter resident, has recently questioned the Army Corps of Engineers on its monitoring of the radiological waste buried in a 10-acre cell in Lewiston. She believes the cell is leaking, and wants to know why officials deny it's happening, even though nuclear waste materials have been found outside of it. "

"About 150-200 people turned out for Sunday's Peace Vigil at Y-12. Peace activists from around the country are here this weekend for anniversary events associated with the peace and disarmament movements in the U.S."

"Poland and the United States on Saturday signed a deal on a future US anti-missile shield in Europe which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said would help ward off threats from Iran. "This is the first agreement that implements the US European-based Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) for ballistic missile defense and enables the stationing of a US land-based SM-3 missile defense interceptor system in the Republic of Poland," said a joint statement issued by Clinton and Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. "This agreement marks an important step in our countries? efforts to protect our NATO allies from the threat posed by the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction," it added."