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Two environmental groups have asked federal land managers to reconsider their approval of Utah's first new uranium mine in three decades. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and Uranium Watch oppose the Daneros Mine, located about 120 miles from Natural Bridges National Monument in southeastern Utah. The groups also want the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to stop Australia-based White Canyon Uranium from mining there until the agency's Utah director, Selma Sierra, determines whether the mine's environmental impact was sufficiently studied. "There are a lot of issues associated with uranium mining that were not adequately assessed before the permits were issued," said Liz Thomas, a lawyer for SUWA.

An emergency at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory after a release this morning of nitric acid - a corrosive material that can cause severe burns - is moving into cleanup stage, officials said. Advertisement "A hazardous materials team is planning to enter the facility to clean up the spill," according to a U.S. Department of Energy emailed statement. The accident took place while a truck was filling a tank with nitric acid, and it overflowed. The building where the spill happened is a waste facility operated by the Bechtel Jacobs Co. Four people were evacuated from the building. No injuries have been reported at this time.

Three workers helping clean up a former nuclear weapons site in South Carolina have been sent to a hospital for treatment of chemical burns. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions spokesman Will Callicott says the employees were cleaning a chemical processing complex Tuesday at the Savannah River Site when they came into contact with nitric acid. They were being evaluated at a local hospital. Four others were treated at the scene for less serious injuries. Callicott says the workers were removing pipes from a facility formerly used to make plutonium for nuclear weapons. Officials don't think radioactive material was involved.

Second contract signed by Uranerz for the sale of uranium to a U.S. utility Uranerz Energy Corporation has announced that it has entered into an agreement for the sale of uranium to one of the United States' largest nuclear operators, with plants located in several states. This is the second contract signed by Uranerz for the sale of uranium to a U.S. utility; the Company announced its first such contract in July 2009. This agreement is a long-term contract with deliveries over a five year period and pricing which contains market referenced prices, with combined spot and long term indicators, to set the final sales price. The agreement's pricing structure contains floor prices to provide Uranerz with downside protection and ceiling prices which protect the buyer from unlimited upside price risk. Uranerz continues to pursue additional uranium off-take sales opportunities to develop a portfolio that reflects a balance between market-related and fixed price contracts thus providing appropriate security to market price fluctuations, production cost fluctuations and pricing diversification.

The Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito ruling coalition insists Japan should remain under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, while opposition parties' policies vary on the issue, a survey by a nongovernmental organization opposed to atomic weapons found. The LDP and New Komeito say the U.S. nuclear shield is an "appropriate" deterrent, but the Democratic Party of Japan said there should be more debate, according to the survey conducted by the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament Japan NGO Network.

Kim Dae-Jung, a tireless democracy campaigner who survived assassination attempts and a death sentence to win South Korea's presidency and the Nobel peace prize, died on Tuesday aged 85. Kim was a towering figure in the country's decades of struggle for democracy against army-backed autocrats. During his 1998-2003 presidency he held South Korea's first-ever summit with communist North Korea, in 2000, and was awarded the Nobel prize later that year. Kim was admitted to hospital on July 13 with pneumonia and related complications.

Around 1000 servicemen who were involved in the nuclear testing conducted off the coast of Australia in the 1950's, have finally won their battle to be allowed to take their claim for compensation to the courts. With the help of "after the event" insurance and a "no win no fee" lawyer, they are finally on their way to receiving a payout from the MOD for the illnesses which have plagued them and their families ever since. The servicemen were involved in the testing of nuclear devices in the South Pacific in the 1950's and were expected to carry out such tasks as burying radioactive material and washing the vehicles used to transport the devices. At no time were they provided with protective clothing or told of the possible risks to their health. The eventual outcome has been cases of cancer, leukaemia in the servicemen's children, skin conditions and infertility. The men have attempted to get legal aid to take their case to court but were refused. They finally turned to lawyer Neil Sampson, a partner at Rosenblat Solicitors, who agreed to take on the case on a "no win, no fee" basis. The action is one of the largest group actions taken in the UK and has been financed by gaining After The Event (ATE) insurance from Brit Insurance. The cost is expected to be millions of pounds. It has previously been thought that ATE insurance is usually capped at £200,000, but changing markets have meant that it is possible to find this type of insurance to cover as much as £20m.

A medical mystery: As overall cancer rates fall, why are thyroid cancer rates rising? Diagnoses of cancer in this gland in the neck are increasing about 6 percent a year, faster than cancers found anywhere else, according to one National Cancer Institute analysis. Researchers know one big reason: The many medical scans Americans have, for everything from neck pain to artery plaque, are turning up thousands of tiny thyroid tumors that otherwise might go undetected and often would do no harm. "We call them 'incidentalomas,' " says Amy Chen, a head and neck surgeon at Emory University in Atlanta and American Cancer Society researcher. But that's not the whole story. Two recent studies, including one co-written by Chen, show larger thyroid tumors are being found at an increasing rate, too. And those can't be explained by more aggressive diagnosis alone, researchers say. "There is something else going on" to contribute to the 37,000 cases of thyroid cancer expected this year, Chen says. That's up from 18,000 in 2000.

Washington Closure Hanford president Chuck Spencer will become president of the tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions on Oct. 1. He will replace River Protection Solutions president and project manager Bill Johnson, who is retiring. In a Tuesday e-mail to Washington River Protection Solutions employees, Johnson said retirement will allow him to spend more time with his family. Spencer's move from Washington Closure to Washington River Protection Solutions is considered a transfer within the URS Corp. That company partly owns Washington River Protection Solutions and Washington Closure.

Florida's two biggest electric utilities must disclose how much they pay their executives and other top employees, state utility regulators decided Tuesday. Florida Power & Light Co. immediately said it would appeal the Public Service Commission's ruling. A Progress Energy Florida spokesman said his company has not yet decided if it will take the issue to court. The five commissioners unanimously ordered the companies to disclose the compensation of those making more than $165,000, saying that information is vital to helping them decide whether to raise customers' rates in January.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued three Confirmatory Orders to the United States Enrichment Corporation's Paducah, Ky., facility as part of settlement agreements involving three unrelated issues. One issue involved operators concealing damaged equipment and falsifying records while moving a uranium hexafluoride cylinder. In the second issue, classified information was mishandled when a package was sent to an unapproved mailing address. The third issue stemmed from a U.S. Department of Labor decision that USEC retaliated against a former manager and an NRC concern for the potential influence this would have on the willingness of other employees to raise safety concerns. In each case, USEC requested the alternative dispute resolution process, which includes the use of a mediator, to resolve its differences with the NRC concerning the apparent violations and to discuss corrective actions. The confirmatory orders document USEC's commitments to the NRC reached as part of the NRC's ADR process, which can be requested in place of traditional NRC enforcement. Often, the ADR process is more effective in developing effective long-term corrective actions than traditional enforcement.

There are two million high-level radioactive fuel bundles sitting at temporary storage sites in Canada, as the Nuclear Waste Management Organization wrestles with the mandate of finding a community to host a central storage facility for the waste for perhaps tens of thousands of years. More than 120,000 high-level radioactive fuel bundles are stored at the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant in New Brunswick. (Canadian Press)More than 120,000 high-level radioactive fuel bundles are stored at the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant in New Brunswick. (Canadian Press) Throw in the fact that the cost of storing this nuclear waste could be up to $24 billion - a figure that will likely rise - and environmental groups are dead set against a central facility, and it shapes up to be a challenge of colossal proportions. The process of finding a site to bury the high-level spent fuel has dragged on for decades as reactors keep churning out more spent bundles.

The Greens have tabled a letter in the Federal Senate from people who say they are the traditional owners of the Muckaty Land Trust calling for a meeting with the Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, about plans for a nuclear dump on their land. The letter has been signed by 57 of the traditional owners who are opposed to the plan. The Greens Senator Scott Ludlam says their views about a nuclear dump on their land have not been sought and they are keen to discuss the matter with the Minister.

A draft cleanup agreement between the state and two federal agencies that conducted operations at a polluted former rocket engine and nuclear test site near Simi Valley was released Wednesday for public review and comment. Missing from the consent order between the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control, the U.S. Department of Energy and NASA is the Boeing Co., the primary owner of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. "Unfortunately we have not gotten to a public review stage with Boeing," Maziar Movassaghi, acting director of the DTSC, said in an interview.

Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt is defending her government's decision to shelve the two Maple reactors, arguing that they wouldn't have prevented the global isotope crisis because they simply couldn't be brought online. "The reality is that the Maples would not have solved this problem today," she said in an interview with The Globe and Mail Thursday. But she said an expert panel on isotope alternatives will take a second look at the mothballed reactors because restarting the Maples is part of at least one of the 22 proposals submitted to the panel - that of medical technology company MDS Nordion, which is suing AECL over the decision not to bring the two reactors online. Medical isotopes are used in diagnostic tests.

Uranium One Incorporated; Moore Ranch In-Situ Recovery Project; New Source Material License Application; Notice of Intent To Prepare a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Notice of Intent (NOI). SUMMARY: Uranium One Incorporated (Uranium One) submitted an application for a new source material license for the Moore Ranch In- Situ Recovery (ISR) Project to be located in Campbell County, Wyoming, approximately 50 miles south-southwest of Gillette, Wyoming and approximately 45 miles north-northeast of Casper, Wyoming. The application proposes the construction, operation, and decommissioning of ISR, also known as in-situ recovery, facilities and restoration of the aquifer from which the uranium is being extracted. Uranium One submitted the application for the new source material license to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by a letter dated October 2, 2007. A notice of receipt and availability of the license application, including the Environmental Report (ER) and opportunity to request a hearing was published in the Federal Register on January 25, 2008 (73 FR 4642).

Morris Jeppson, one of the crew members aboard the Enola Gay, the B‐29 Superfortress bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, has told the Mainichi he didn't know the effects of radiation from the bomb would be so serious.

A PROBE is under way after the discovery of radioactive contamination at the site earmarked for Dounreay's new low-level waste (LLW) dump. advertising Two hot spots were detected by a monitoring team in a field just over 200 metres from the perimeter fence to the east of the former experimental fast reactor complex. More finds could hit the schedule for the ?110 million dump which is designed to take all the LLW produced by the plant and the neighbouring MOD site at Vulcan. The hot spots also raise question marks about the possible spread inland of contamination from historic operations at Dounreay. The site's multi-million-pound drive to deal with off-site pollution is focused on the seabed immediately off the plant and stretches of the surrounding coastline. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) this week called on the site operators to review its monitoring regime in light of the latest finds. The contamination was picked up on Thursday of last week during a scheduled month-long survey of the 44-hectare site zoned for the LLW dump, which was given planning consent in April.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has approved a new long-term contract for imports by a U.S. company of Russian low-enriched uranium, Russia's state nuclear company Atomenergoprom said on Friday. On August 19, the department "approved a direct contract for deliveries by Techsnabexport [Atomenergoprom's uranium export arm] of enriched uranium to the U.S. energy company Constellation Energy Nuclear Group," the company said in a statement. The contract is the sixth in a series of deals between U.S. firms and Techsnabexport signed in May-July of this year. The department earlier approved two Techsnabexport contracts with electricity supplier and distributor Exelon Corporation, and is currently considering approval of three other contracts with the fuel industry servicing company Fuelco.

In an explosive revelation that may well have unsavory foreign policy repercussions, a senior official of India's premier defense organization - the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) - who played a pivotal role in orchestrating India's nuclear program during the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998, has declared that the tests that year were a dud and not nearly as successful as projected to the world. The declaration by K Santhanam - remarkable as it comes from a top nuclear scientist directly associated with India's nuclear program - has stirred a hornet's nest in New Delhi. The scientific community and political parties - primarily the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and its principal right-wing opposition Bharatiya Janata Party under whose stewardship the tests were conducted - are scrambling to offer explanations to counter Santhanam's statement.

In an explosive revelation that may well have unsavory foreign policy repercussions, a senior official of India's premier defense organization - the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) - who played a pivotal role in orchestrating India's nuclear program during the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998, has declared that the tests that year were a dud and not nearly as successful as projected to the world. The declaration by K Santhanam - remarkable as it comes from a top nuclear scientist directly associated with India's nuclear program - has stirred a hornet's nest in New Delhi. The scientific community and political parties - primarily the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and its principal right-wing opposition Bharatiya Janata Party under whose stewardship the tests were conducted - are scrambling to offer explanations to counter Santhanam's statement.