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Alarm systems at Britain's nuclear weapons factory were put out of action for 10 days by last summer's floods, leaving tens of thousands of people without warning in the event of a nuclear accident. Floods near Reading: Parts of the Atomic Weapons Establishment site at Burghfield came within 2 to 3 hours of being overwhelmed by the waters Photo: AP The floods disabled key radiation alarm systems, designed to detect an impending nuclear accident at the Atomic Weapons Establishment site at Burghfield, in Berkshire, according to secret documents seen by Channel 4 News.

Proponents of nuclear power speak of a "nuclear renaissance." The facts show that rather than a renaissance, we face a nuclear apocalypse, heralded by, instead of the traditional four horsemen, five horsemen: cost, proliferation, risk, waste, and water consumption. Consider them individually:

Consultation has begun on plans to build a nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset. French energy company EDF is proposing to build a third-generation plant on the 86 hectare site. A series of exhibitions, newsletters and meetings will allow people to submit their views on the proposals.

The Isle of Wight Citizens Association met with representatives of Dominion Power and discussed the controversial possibility of farmers in the county using treated sewage sludge for fertilizer at their meeting Monday night. Sonny Stanley, the director of nuclear safety and licensing at the Surry Power Plant, told the audience assembled at the Carrollton Public Library that unless additional power plants were constructed, the state would be facing a deficit of 4,000 megawatts by the year 2017.

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector said Tuesday that slack engineering by Entergy Nuclear workers was to blame for two recent cooling tower leaks at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon. "Entergy's design change process requires providing adequate engineering drawings and instructions ... and also requires engineers to resolve technical issues identified during implementation," NRC's George Malone said. "Entergy did not do that."

Nearly 900 people have signed a petition demanding that Cumbria County Council opposes any move to create a new nuclear dump in the county. Activists from West Cumbria Friends of the Earth (FoE) do not want the area to be put forward as a "volunteer" for an underground repository.

Ecologists Timothy Mousseau and Anders Pape Moller have been studying long-term effects of radioactive contamination on nature since 1999 in the closed area surrounding Chornobyl, the site of world's worst nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986. Their work is taking place in the exclusion zone, a 30-kilometer radius around the nuclear power plant. It provides a perfect ground for the study of biodiversity and survival of animals living in the conditions of irradiated environment. The team has documented many consequences of radiation, including dramatically increased rates of genetic mutation, lower life spans and lower reproduction rates of some species.

David Huber held the Texas flag with 50 protesters stationed outside Exelon Nuclear's headquarters in Chicago. Rally-goers marched with signs that read "No Thirsty Nukes" and "Don't Mess with Texas Water."

Nuclear power could provide up to four times more electricity by midcentury than now if the industry can soothe concerns about its safety and the disposal of radioactive waste, a research group for the industry said Thursday. The report by the Nuclear Energy Agency, an organization in Paris that advises industrialized countries on nuclear power, said the technology represented a more secure supply of power than oil or gas. But it said that opposition to nuclear power remained strong enough to curtail such an expansion.

The Republic of Georgia is one of the primary routes for the smuggling of nuclear materials out of the former Soviet Bloc. The U.S. has spent millions training and equipping the Georgian government to thwart nuclear trafficking. The recent Russian invasion has set this effort back significantly.

Government accused of driving through energy policy by using slanted study A public consultation on new nuclear power stations which was run by a company linked to the Prime Minister's personal pollster has been criticised for breaching industry guidelines. Environmentalists and opposition MPs denounced the exercise as "fixed" after the Market Research Standards Board said some material given to focus groups was "inaccurately or misleadingly presented".

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission got the ball rolling Friday for license hearings on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The commission voted to issue a formal notice for hearings on the Department of Energy's application to build out the Yucca site, including a waste-handling complex and tunnels that would hold 77,000 tons of radioactive material. The notice is largely a formality that sets up a process for interested parties to intervene in the case. But once it is published in the Federal Register in the next several days, the notice will start a 60-day clock ticking for the state of Nevada and other parties to file challenges to the project.

For a newly hatched striped bass in the Hudson River, a clutch of trout eggs in Lake Michigan or a baby salmon in San Francisco Bay, drifting a little too close to a power plant can mean a quick and turbulent death. Sucked in with enormous volumes of water, battered against the sides of pipes and heated by steam, the small fry of the aquatic world are being sacrificed in large numbers each year to the cooling systems of power plants around the country.

In a letter to the editor in Boston Globe, Thomas D'Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), writes that the United States is reducing its nuclear weapons and that, "Currently, the stockpile is the smallest it has been since the Eisenhower administration." That statement leaves considerable confusion about the size of the stockpile. If "since the Eisenhower administration" means counting from 1961 when the Kennedy administration took over, that would mean the stockpile today contains nearly 20,000 warheads. If it means counting from the day the Eisenhower administration took office in 1953, it would mean fewer than 1,500 warheads.

A debate was held at the University Monday, talking about the pros and cons of nuclear energy. Both sides were represented, with Gordon Edwards of the Coalition for Nuclear responsibility talking about the dangers, and Duane Bratt of Mount Royal College in Calgary explaining the benefits. Bratt says nuclear energy is better than what we already have, such as coal. But Edwards says there are alternatives that don't produce radioactive waste, such as wind or hydro power.

Estonia has completed the decade-long clean-up of one of Europe's most hazardous radioactive waste dumps on the Baltic coast, an official in charge of the operation said Monday. "EU experts considered the radioactive waste storage at Sillamae one of the four most dangerous sites of its kind in Europe," Tonis Kaasik, director of the OkoSil firm responsible for the clean-up of the Soviet-era dump told AFP.

The Air Force is moving forward with a "get-well plan" to restore its historic reputation for nuclear stewardship and create more accountability with the creation of a new command to oversee its nuclear mission. High-profile blunders in recent years have shown that the service has been distracted from its nuclear operations, say senior officials, in part by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as senior leaders encouraged airmen to contribute overseas.

Thousands of Chagos islanders have had the right to return to their homeland in the Indian Ocean overturned by a House of Lords judgement. The former residents, evicted from the British overseas territory between 1967 and 1971, hoped their heritage could be rebuilt around a new tourist industry and fishing. But the largest Chagos island of Diego Garcia, which the UK leased to the US for a military air base remains an issue of contention.

Ray Benson concerned on how reactors would effect Guadalupe River Grammy Award winner Ray Benson from Austin will sing in radio spots questioning the use of water by a proposed nuclear plant. Benson, known as the guitarist and singer for Asleep at the Wheel, joined the Texans for a Sound Energy Policy Alliance in urging residents to question how two nuclear reactors would affect the future of the Guadalupe River Basin, an Alliance news release stated.

BHP Billiton says any increase in the amount of uranium being transported through the Northern Territory would not create problems, but an environmental lobby group is not so sure. BHP currently produces about 4,000 tonnes of uranium a year from its Olympic Dam mine in South Australia. About a quarter of that is taken by train to the Port of Darwin.