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General Electric and its subsidiary United Nuclear Corp. are preparing to spend $5 million to remove about 97,000 cubic yards of radium-contaminated soil from around three households on Red Water Pond Road and an unnamed arroyo next to the former Northeast Churchrock Mine. Seven Navajo families live in the three households, but for the next five months they are facing "relocation" to apartments in Gallup as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's interim removal action.

he hearing Sen. Mark Udall and Sen. John McCain conducted in Estes Park concerning climate change, Rocky Mountain National Park, and our other national parks was reported by some as a "proof" for global warming. Having attended the hearing myself, I found that to not be the case. Throughout the hearing, it was obvious that both senators assumed anthropogenic carbon dioxide is the primary reason for any changes that occur to our local climate. That assumption, however, was never substantiated or allowed to be challenged. Sen. Udall stated at the beginning of the meeting that they were not going to discuss or debate any of the merits of the global warming argument.

About three years ago, the U.S. Enrichment Corp. in Piketon contracted with Honeywell to set up a team of skilled professionals to assist with the American Centrifuge process. There is a large worldwide market for fuel grade uranium, and the demand is expected to increase as new nuclear plants come on line. It was anticipated that the Department of Energy would give USEC a $2 billion loan guarantee, so it could secure private financing to continue the program. Our politicians indicated they were in favor the loan guarantee. Then, last month, DOE decided it would put off the loan guarantee for six months. This caused the skilled team of more than 100 people at Honeywell to lose their jobs. All this was bad enough, but then the media indicated our government had given a $2 billion loan to General Electric (this was not a guarantee, but an actual loan). Then the media announced our government has encouraged a $2 billion loan guarantee to Brazil's Petrobras oil company, so it can drill for oil off that coast.

When the Israeli ambassador to Japan attended the peace memorial ceremony in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, the United States, Britain and France became the only nuclear powers never to have participated in the annual event marking the atomic bombing of the city. The city of Hiroshima has issued invitations to the peace ceremony to the world's nuclear powers every year since 1998. In the first year, India and Pakistan sent their ambassadors to the ceremony, followed by the Russian ambassador in 2000 and a Chinese consul in 2008. However, the U.S., France and Britain have never dispatched a representative to the solemn occasion.

Kazakhstan's nuclear curse Sixty years have passed since the former Soviet Union detonated its first experimental nuclear bomb in eastern Kazakhstan. Al Jazeera's Robin Forestier Walker visits the highly contaminated test site, Polygon, and the surrounding area where effects of the experiments can still be seen. Cancer rates in the area are 1.5 times higher than in the rest of the country, and the region has high levels of early mortality from a range of common diseases. Doctors say more research is urgently needed to understand how the 40 years of nuclear tests could harm the children of tomorrow. The report features an interview with Rebecca Johnson, the director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, who has conducted research in Kazakhstan's Semei region.

The Egyptian Envoy to the Non-Aligned Movement has sent a formal letter to fellow Egyptian Mohamed ElBaradei - Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Secretariat - urging him to support the inclusion, at next week's regular session of the IAEA General Conference, an agenda item sponsored by virtually all members of the Non-Aligned Movement entitled "Prohibition of Armed Attack or Threat of Attack Against [IAEA Safeguarded] Nuclear Installations, During Operation or Under Construction." Now, the IAEA General Conference has already passed such a resolution - entitled almost identically, also introduced by Iran - way back in September 1990.

It is among the nastiest substances on earth: more than 14,000 tons of highly radioactive waste left over from the building of the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. As the Obama administration and Senate leaders move to scuttle a proposed repository for the waste in Nevada, the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state - along with federal facilities in Idaho and South Carolina - could become the de facto dump sites for years to come. After spending $10 billion to $12 billion over the past 25 years studying a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, President Barack Obama is fulfilling a campaign promise to kill it as a site for the repository. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada also stands to benefit, as polls show he could be in a tough fight for re-election next year, and Nevada residents adamantly oppose a the waste site.

Faced with a paper trail of minor maintenance problems and mounting pressure from regulators, Southern California Edison has changed maintenance contractors at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Gil Alexander, a spokesman for Southern California Edison, the plant's majority owner and operator, said Friday that the company has hired Louisiana-based Shaw Industries to conduct all maintenance operations at the seaside plant. Since 1994 that work had been done by multinational Bechtel Inc., which also helped build the plant's atom splitters in the late 1980s. Shaw also performs maintenance activities at 36 of the nation's 104 operating nuclear power plants. A division of Bechtel has been working for years on an $800 million project to replace steam generators inside both of San Onofre's concrete containment domes. Alexander said the company will continue to work on that project.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission held the second of two scheduled public meetings on the U.S. Army's application for a license to possess depleted uranium. The first meeting was held Wednesday in Kona. Bigislandvideonews.com covered the second meeting at the Hilo High School Library on Thursday evening. Residual amounts of DU have been found at Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island, as well as Schofield Barracks on Oahu.

Jim Albertini, a Big Island resident who has stood in opposition to the military presence on the island, especially in regards to nuclear weaponry, testified at the NRC meeting in Hilo. "Ongoing live-fire at PTA (millions of rounds annually) risks spreading the DU radiation already present," Albertini wrote in a recent media release. "DU is particularly hazardous when small burned DU oxide particles are inhaled. The Hawaii County Council, more than a year ago, on July 2, 2008, called for a halt to all live-fire and other activities at PTA that create dust until there is an assessment and clean up of the DU already present. 7 additional needed actions have also been noted by the Council. The military has ignored the Council and continues live-fire and other dust creating activities at PTA, putting the residents of Hawaii Island at risk, since no comprehensive testing has been completed."

After decades of national debate over what to do with spent nuclear fuel, and with no resolution in sight, the Kewaunee nuclear power plant in northeastern Wisconsin finally ran out of storage space inside the plant. So over the past week, Kewaunee workers have begun storing radioactive waste in casks on the grounds of the reactor, a short distance from the shores of Lake Michigan. After a practice run a few weeks ago, workers moved spent fuel into the first of the 25-ton, 16-foot-long casks and then transferred the cask into a concrete vault outside the building Aug. 22, said Mark Kanz, spokesman for the Kewaunee Power Station. A second cask was transferred Thursday. An expert on nuclear waste from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's regional office in Chicago was on hand for the first procedure, said Viktoria Mitlyng, an agency spokeswoman. The process went smoothly, she said.

After I wrote my piece this past week about Dr. Herbert Clark from RPI passing away I realized that I had written a piece about this subject a bit more deeply 20 years ago. I had interviewed a man who was an "Atomic Vet," one of the thousands of our brave soldiers who became guinea pigs during the flurry of atomic tests that began in the 1940's. I am reproducing here again for those not associated with the subject and I will follow it up with an update on the issue in the near future. I published this piece in Hardcopy for the Common Good, a monthly social issues magazine I published in the 1980s. This article appeared in the December, 1989 issue - 20 years ago. What About the Atomic Vets? When Saratoga's John Delay was drafted into the army in 1956, at age 19, he thought his time would be spent like most post war GI's - perform his assigned duties and go back home. What he didn't know was that he would become a human guinea pig in a series of radiation experiments conducted by the U.S. Government. Many people have compared these experiments to the human atrocities of Germany and Japan during the second war.

A huge crane poses the biggest risk of a nuclear disaster at the Faslane naval base on the Clyde, according to newly released safety assessments by the Ministry of Defence. Plutonium from up to 48 nuclear warheads could escape and cause widespread contamination and cancers if there was an accident while a Trident submarine was being moved by the crane - known as a shiplift' - the reports say. But the MoD has been accused by experts and anti-nuclear campaigners of playing down the real dangers. The amounts and risks of the radioactivity that could be released have been underestimated, they say. The shiplift at Faslane is a unique facility with a chequered history. Set up in 1993, it uses nearly 100 winches to hoist the 16,000-tonne Vanguard-class submarines into the air for maintenance while they remain loaded with up to 48 Trident nuclear warheads. The shiplift had to be modified in 1997, and in 2003 a report by consultants suggested accident risks had been underestimated. Regarded by some as Faslane's most hazardous operation, there have been hints it may end up being replaced by the kind of dry dock used elsewhere.

An investigation team has found three times more highly radioactive plutonium in the disused nuclear waste depot in Asse than the inventory states, the German Environment Ministry announced Saturday. The waste depot, near the town of Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony, was taken over by the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) from the allegedly careless former proprietor Helmholtz Zentrum in January. The BfS is currently carrying out an investigation on the site and has begun medical tests on former workers. A new investigation has revealed that 28 kilogrammes of radioactive plutonium are stored in the underground shaft depot, three times as much as the environment ministry of Lower Saxony previously understood to be there.

Where to store Germany's nuclear waste? The issue - decades old and still unresolved - has injected controversy into campaigning ahead of Germany's federal election on 27 September. Farm residents at Gorleben in northern Germany have long opposed a proposal that salt caverns under their feet be used as the nation's long-term underground nuclear waste disposal site. Driving tractors, they have begun a week-long road trek to Berlin to press their anti-nuclear case. Equipped with a rolling kitchen, they aim to spearhead a demonstration in the capital next Saturday. En route, the tractor trekkers plan stopovers at three other sites used variously as nuclear storages and all controversial - the former Konrad iron mine near Salzgitter; Asse, a mine with water leaks near Wolfenbüttel; and Morsleben, an old salt mine near the former East-West-German border. Nuclear industry proponents accuse detractors of exaggerating the risks.

A shipwreck apparently containing toxic waste is being investigated by authorities in Italy amid claims that it was deliberately sunk by the mafia. An informant from the Calabrian mafia said the ship was one of a number he blew up as part of an illegal operation to bypass laws on toxic waste disposal. The sunken vessel has been found 30km (18 miles) off the south-west of Italy. The informant said it contained "nuclear" material. Officials said it would be tested for radioactivity. Murky pictures taken by a robot camera show the vessel intact and alongside it are a number of yellow barrels. Labels on them say the contents are toxic. The informant said the mafia had muscled in on the lucrative business of radioactive waste disposal.

US President Barack Obama has shelved plans for controversial bases in Poland and the Czech Republic in a major overhaul of missile defence in Europe. The bases are to be scrapped after a review of the threat from Iran. Mr Obama said there would be a "proven, cost-effective" system using land- and sea-based interceptors against Iran's short- and medium-range missile threat. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has welcomed the US decision, calling it a "responsible move".

It is among the nastiest substances on Earth: More than 14,000 tons of highly radioactive waste left over from the building of the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. As the Obama administration and Senate leaders move to scuttle a proposed repository for the waste in Nevada, the Hanford nuclear reservation -- along with facilities in Idaho and South Carolina -- could become the de facto dump sites for years to come. After spending $10 billion to $12 billion over the past 25 years studying a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, President Obama is fulfilling a campaign promise to kill it as a site for the repository. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada also stands to benefit, as polls show he could be in a tough fight for re-election next year, and Nevada residents adamantly oppose a the waste site. Local leaders and lawmakers from the sites where the waste is now stored, however, are increasingly concerned that the Energy Department will leave it in place, even though that might violate legally binding cleanup agreements.

It is among the most toxic substances on earth: 28,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste left over from the building of the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. And as the administration and the leader of the Senate move to close down a proposed repository for it in Nevada, the Idaho National Laboratory, along with the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, could become the de facto dump sites for years. After spending $10 billion to $12 billion studying a dump site at Yucca Mountain outside of Las Vegas, President Barack Obama is fulfilling a campaign promise by killing it. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada also stands to benefit as he faces a difficult re-election fight next year.

New Mexico-based Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) , the nation's leading nuclear weapons lab, once again finds itself the focus of concerns about potentially serious cybersecurity lapses. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) , a watchdog group, Wednesday released a memo from the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) expressing concern over the theft of three computers from the home of an employee at Los Alamos National Security LLC (LANS) in January. LANS is a limited liability company comprising the University of California at Oakland, Bechtel National Inc. and two other firms that have been managing LANL since 2006.