nuke.news

As our presidential campaign season draws towards a close and the attacks / counter-attacks reach a fever pitch, it's almost impossible to separate fact from fiction. So many contradictory proposals, so many disparate numbers - I wouldn't be surprised if someone says the sky is bright pink before we're through. The debate about energy policy is a case in point: the proposals so far have ranged from sound (invest in multiple forms of renewable energy) to questionable (clean coal, 45 new nuclear power plants) to the insultingly cynical and foolish (Drill Baby Drill!).

Preparations are getting under way in earnest for one of the biggest and most expensive dirt-hauling projects ever. It's radioactive dirt, and Moab residents have been arguing about what to do with it for a quarter of a century. For more than two decades, the government has been trying to clean the radioactive dirt-piles left behind when the uranium industry went into a deep slump. Lots of radioactive dirt has been moved to safer places, but the biggest pile of all is right here in Utah. It's a pile of red dirt so big, if they shipped it to the EnergySolutions Arena, it would fill it to the ceiling 23 times. But the EnergySolutions company has other plans.

Professional Case Management of Tennessee held town hall meetings Thursday at the American Museum of Science and Energy to share information with federal workers about its program and other related sick-worker issues. Professional Case Management is a Department of Labor-enrolled provider of home nursing to chronically ill nuclear workers. PCM recently opened an office in Oak Ridge and is currently serving 30 Oak Ridge residents who are eligible for care under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA).

Radioactive tritium has been found leaking from a drainage pipe at FirstEnergy Corp.'s Davis-Besse nuclear plant north of Oak Harbor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Friday. First Energy Corp. personnel discovered the leaking tritium 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Scientific American has a thoughtful article this month about the trade-offs between energy and water. Many big power plants - nuclear, coal, biomass and of course, hydroelectric - use lots of water. Conversely, making water drinkable, and piping it into big cities, can require plenty of electricity. This potentially forces a choice between the two.

Award-winning Frozen Seed screens Nov. 6 Imagine a frozen wasteland where food is scarce and winter is permanent. A nuclear war has forced survivors to seek refuge underground. A buried seed cache lays somewhere in the ruins of modern society and scientists are racing against a totalitarian regime, trying to find it. It's a compelling tale told in just under 10 minutes by producers Tim Bissell and Craig Watkins.

The government's Atomic Energy Commission began looking into how the country's nuclear energy research should proceed in August because of a recent change in the circumstances surrounding nuclear energy. For about 20 years, the nuclear energy industry experienced continuous misfortune and opposition. However, its fortunes began to change in 2001, when the U.S. government started building more nuclear power plants. More recently, in Japan, former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said nuclear energy was an energy source for a low carbon society.

n an unexpected finding that could have applications in medicine and elsewhere, UCLA researchers have found that unspooling a simple roll of Scotch tape produces X-rays -- enough to produce clear images of their fingers.

Global construction of nuclear reactors is rising after a decades-long decline. A number of factors account for this shift, including soaring energy demand in the developing world and the threat of climate change. Most of the new interest in nuclear is occurring outside the United States. Some U.S. policymakers argue nuclear power is a vital part of the country's energy future. But despite legislative efforts and a softening of attitudes toward nuclear power, the U.S. industry has been slow to revive. In fact, nuclear power faces a number of significant obstacles to expansion worldwide, from manpower shortages to high construction costs.

Energy security, alternative fuels, independence, politics, technology transfers, energy contracts and money...these are the issues that need to be assessed before arriving at a decision in the Indo-US Nuclear Deal. It is by no means simple!. AS A re-growing and a re-emerging economy, India must and is rightly thinking about ways to ensure, the continued availability of energy in the years to come. However, it is possible to do the right thing in a wrong way. Considering options other than oil is the right thing to do. Moving to nuclear power as one of the principal sources of future energy is surely not.

Through covert dealings, Gov. Sarah Palin, State Dept. of Natural Resources, Bureau of Land Management, the Alaska and U.S. senators and representatives and an ANCSA corporation entrusted with the security and health of their constituents have accepted the lease proposal to explore for uranium at the Fireweed/Boulder Creek area located in southwestern Seward Peninsula, without the knowledge, consent nor approval of the citizens of Western Alaska. When students of Elim, Alaska first realized this, they began researching the effects of uranium mining and created educational posters to share what they learned. A community meeting was organized in Elim to share their findings and garner support to protest this action. The community responded favorably and in March 2007, demonstrated when the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race went through their town.

The U.S. needs new nukes. That's the message Pentagon chief Robert Gates is delivering right now, as part of a broad, spirited defense of America's nuclear arsenal. Congress and the Bush administration have been wrestling for years over the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead - the next generation of nuclear weapon designs. Lawmakers have had the upper hand in the match, eliminating funding for RRW. Today, in a speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Gates looks to scramble back on top, with a dire warning to Capitol Hill.

Nuclear waste from Canada and Mexico is buried in Utah, and state regulators didn't even know. Gov. Huntsman says the shipment of low-level nuclear waste into Utah by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is shameful. Today he's vowing it won't happen again. Federal regulators granted two waste disposal licenses to a Mexican nuclear power plant and one for Canadian waste between 2004 and 2006, but no one bothered to notify Utah.

Proposals are being considered for an underground nuclear waste disposal site in Cumbria. Cumbria County Council is considering "expressing an interest" in a formal government process to find a suitable location for a nuclear waste dump. But council chiefs stressed they were not committing to a site and any plan would be subject to the scrutiny of a full public consultation. Around 70% of the UK's high level nuclear waste is stored at Sellafield.

The owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant says it will have to wait almost 60 years before it has enough money to decommission the plant. Faced with that lengthy timeline, lawmakers are likely to try again to force Yankee to set aside funds for decommissioning. VPR's John Dillon reports: (Dillon) As the stock market has plummeted in recent months, so has the value of the Vermont Yankee decommissioning fund. It's worth around $397 million these days. But the expected cost of decommissioning is around $875 million.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates believes the United States needs to resume its nuclear tests. The US needs to take steps to transform an ageing and very expensive complex of nuclear weapons from the Cold War era to a smaller and less costly enterprise that could meet the nation's security needs for the future. He said the current nuclear stockpile has been re-engineered to extend its life span, but such extensions cannot continue indefinitely. Without a modernization program, Gates said, the long-term outlook for the arsenal is "bleak."

Nuclear power is a risky source of energy that comes with many hidden costs, said an environmental analyst and long-time leader in the U.S. environmental movement Tuesday. Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, said the "flawed economics" of nuclear power are placing unforeseen burdens on taxpayers: the costs related to the construction of nuclear plants, the disposal of nuclear waste, the decommissioning of old plants, and security in case of an accident all contribute to the price the world pays for nuclear power. Wind energy is a more economically sound option, said Brown.

A decision by management of Sweden's Oskarshamn nuclear power plant to have custodial workers stand in as guards has drawn a sharp rebuke from the country's nuclear regulatory authority. For a week in early October, members of a contract cleaning crew stood guard along sections of the plant's perimeter fencing during repairs to the plant's alarm system.

New problems have been found at the construction site of the Olkiluoto-3 nuclear power facility. According to a release by the environmental group Greenpeace, the problem concerns welds in the steel liner of the inner shell of the reactor building which have been carried out contrary to orders. Lasse Reima, the director of Nuclear Reactor Regulation at the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority STUK has confirmed the problem.

Compounds used in medicine are making their way into the Broome County landfill and into the Susquehanna River. Some -- such as the nuclear medicine used for diagnostic imaging and fighting cancer -- are radioactive, and have set off radiation detectors at the landfill. Wastewater treatment plants aren't specifically designed to treat effluent for such substances. While fish downstream of the Binghamton-Johnson City Joint Sewage Treatment Plant haven't been tested, Bingham-ton University researchers found traces of hormones and drugs -- including antibiotics, estrogen and aspirin products -- in the plant's effluent prior to a new secondary treatment system that went online last year. The area hasn't been tested for drugs since.