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A claim by a leading Indian scientist that one of India's nuclear weapons tested in 1998 "fizzled" has unsettled the military here and opened fresh debate about the need for more trials. The tests under the then-Hindu nationalist government sparked outrage the world over and drew sanctions, but were declared a success and are credited with propelling India to the status of full-fledged nuclear-armed state. India has still not signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), but any further tests have been ruled out by the Congress party-led government, which has also acclaimed the tests a complete success. Nevertheless, some in the nuclear and military establishment have used the scientist's claims to make a case for further trials, which would inevitably spark fresh tensions between India and its regional rivals China and Pakistan.

A Black Country soldier died as a result of exposure to depleted uranium during the first Gulf War, an inquest has ruled. Stuart Dyson, of Cherwell Drive, Brownhills, formerly a Lance Corporal in the Royal Pioneer Corps, died of colon cancer in June last year aged only 39. His family has sought to prove his belief that he was dying because of being exposed to the lethal substance while cleaning tanks in the Gulf between January and May 1991. A jury, sitting at Smethwick Council House, heard medical evidence that cancer-inducing particles from uranium in tank shells had been breathed in and swallowed by Mr Dyson and that the onset of cancer in such cases could typically take ten years to show.

The Federation for a Sustainable Environment (FSE) informs Mining Weekly that two of the three mining companies responsible for cleaning and treating the toxic mine water in the Western Basin have once again stopped pumping and treating the mine void water. The mines were instructed earlier this year by the Depart(ment of Water and Environ-mental Affairs (DWEA) to pump and partially treat the toxic water that rose up to just 0,6 m from the surface. The department further directed that, after October 31, 2009, the water had to be pumped and treated to values with sulphates of less than 600 mg/ℓ, failing which it might take any measures it considered necessary to remedy the situation, which could include taking the measures itself and recovering all reasonable costs for measures taken by the department from the parties to whom the directive was issued as well as taking legal action against the parties.

Utah Congressman Jim Matheson has a message for Governor Gary Herbert: do not allow foreign nuclear waste into Utah! Matheson sent a letter to Herbert re-stating his opposition to Italian or any foreign nuclear waste coming to Utah. ABC 4 first reported that Energy Solutions had again approached the state about cutting a deal to allow the low level waste here. In his letter, Matheson says it is "a horrible idea".

that once produced plutonium for our nation's atom bombs. That's how I spent my Labor Day weekend. Located just outside of Richland, in eastern Washington State, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation spans 586 square miles on high desert plains. The mighty Columbia River marks the site's eastern boundary where its waters once served as the depository for a few of the reactors' contaminated effluent. Belly-high barbwire fencing, with phallic smoke stacks positioned next to its aging boxy structures, surrounds Hanford's dry austere landscape. The aura of this rough terrain, taken from the Wanapum tribe only 66 years ago, is evocative to say the least. Hanford's 3-B Reactor. Photo by Chelsea Mosher At noon on this particular Saturday a group of us climbed onto a bus in Richland to tour Hanford's notorious B Reactor, which was designated a National Historic Landmark in August of 2008. Constructed by DuPont in just 11 months back in the early 1940s, B was the first full-scale plutonium production plant in the world. This summer the Department of Energy, along with the help of the Fluor Corporation, provided regular public tours of the reactor, hoping that one day the facility will be turned into a national museum of sorts.

Xcel Energy says a monitoring well at its nuclear power plant in Monticello detected a radioactive element at higher levels than allowed under one of the company's permits. The monitoring well showed levels of tritium, a mildly radioactive type of hydrogen, that were below the Environmental Protection Agency's drinking water standards. But the amount exceeded what is allowed under Xcel's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit. In reporting the incident to state and federal regulators on Thursday, Xcel said no elevated levels were detected in any other monitoring wells. The company also says there's no indication tritium has been released off the power plant site. Officials are investigating the source of the tritium.

Canada may divide its nuclear agency into two units in a bid to resolve the global shortage of medical isotopes, which are used for medical imaging to diagnose cancer and heart disease, Canada's natural resources minister said Friday. Lisa Raitt said the government would likely separate state-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. into a research division that includes the medical isotopes reactor and another division for the pressurized heavy water reactors that generate electric power. The government has hired investment bankers N.M. Rothschild & Sons to develop a restructuring plan for AECL, Raitt said, and they are scheduled to report back to her in the next few months.

Russia is in talks with Kazakhstan, one of the world's largest uranium producers, to set up a nuclear joint venture by merging key assets, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday. "There are prospects, which we actively discuss, that relate to... setting up a civil nuclear energy company," Medvedev told a Russian-Kazakh cooperation forum after meeting a Kazakh leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Kazakhstan, with around one-fifth of world uranium reserves, is on track to become the world's largest producer of the metal this year but has no nuclear power plants or nuclear fuel facilities. Kazakh Energy Minister Sauat Mynbayev said discussions on the joint venture were going well but some "complicated issues" are yet to be resolved.

A 20-year-old telegram has heated up Germany's debate over nuclear power in the run-up to parliamentary elections later this month. The telegram seems to substantiate charges that politicians in the government of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl pressured scientists to recommend an old salt mine as a potential site for long-term nuclear waste storage. The debate is part of a larger controversy over whether or not the country should phase out its nuclear power by 2022, as current law stipulates. The country's two center-right parties, which have a slight lead in the latest polls, have said they want to let the country's nuclear power plants run up to a decade longer. The country's three, main, left-leaning parties support the phaseout. As many as 50,000 people attended a march against nuclear power in Berlin last weekend. The long-running controversy over the site will seem familiar to observers of the debate over the proposed nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, which has been defunded by the Obama Administration. Germany, like the United States, has no long-term disposal site for high-level radioactive waste.

Labour in the Dutch parliament wants the US to remove its nuclear weapons from the Netherlands. The presence of American nuclear arsenal at the Volkel airfield has never been officially admitted. A Dutch poster from the 1970s protested the deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe. A Dutch poster from the 1970s protested the deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe. Labour member of parliament Martijn van Dam on Thursday asked defence minister Maxime Verhagen, a Christian democrat, to officially call on Washington to remove its nuclear weapons from Dutch soil. Labour and the Christian democrats are coalition partners in the Dutch government, but Verhagen told parliament that he is not keen on following up on Van Dam's request. Verhagen said he opposes unilateral nuclear disarmament as long as international disarmament talks between the big powers are still ongoing.

The UN nuclear watchdog said it has airlifted deadly radioactive cobalt materials out of Lebanon to safety in Russia. The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement that a plane carrying 36 Cobalt-60 sources -- each one radioactive enough to kill a person within minutes -- arrived in Russia from Lebanon on August 30. The cobalt materials, which came from an irradiator used for a long-defunct agricultural project, are now securely stored in Russia, the statement said. "Given the political situation in the Middle East and particularly in Lebanon we saw this source as vulnerable to malicious acts. If it was stolen it could cause a lot of damage to people," said Robin Heard, an IAEA radioactive source specialist who oversaw the mission.

Following recent action by Africa, a majority of the world's countries have now banned nuclear weapons from their national territory for the first time. The change happened when an all-Africa treaty entered into force in July. International civil society organizations including the World Council of Churches (WCC) played a catalytic role. Taking a shared approach to a safer world, Africa became a nuclear-weapon-free zone when Burundi recently became the 28th state to ratify the Treaty of Pelindaba. A WCC delegation visited the central African country in March 2009 to encourage the step. The addition of 54 countries in Africa means that 116 nations are now within treaty zones banning nuclear weapons. The WCC Central Committee has saluted Africa's new nuclear-free status in a September 2009 statement and invites further church support for such actions. The committee has also urged Russia and the United States "to join China, Britain and France in ratifying the treaty protocols that give Africa added protection" from nuclear attacks.

This month marks the 60th anniversary of Moscow's entry into the nuclear club. At first blush a historic footnote, the roots of the Soviet achievement demand far more attention because they explain why President Obama will find it so difficult to fulfill his vaunted nuclear disarmament agenda any time soon. For the Soviet Union, the development of the Bomb marked a coming of age, its ascendance to superpower stardom. For Russia, the inheritor of the Soviet atomic legacy, nuclear weapons remain a critical foundation for its claim today to be a major player on the world stage. It is unlikely to relinquish this privilege in ongoing arms control talks.

Barack Obama has demanded the Pentagon conduct a radical review of US nuclear weapons doctrine to prepare the way for deep cuts in the country's arsenal, the Guardian can reveal. 'A multilateral process in which weapons states agree to radical disarmament': Julian Borger Obama has rejected the Pentagon's first draft of the "nuclear posture review" as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials.

Japan's new government launched an investigation Friday into whether previous administrations entered secret security pacts with Washington, including one said to endorse U.S. nuclear-armed ships despite a policy of barring such weapons. The Democratic Party of Japan, which unseated the long-ruling Liberal Democrats in parliamentary elections last month, has vowed to improve transparency in government as well as review military ties with the U.S. Japan's previous governments have always denied secret deals, but some bureaucrats have recently said that long-standing speculation that they existed is correct, prompting new Foreign Minister Katsuya Okadato to launch an inquiry. "We will reveal everything we find," Okada told reporters in New York, according to Kyodo news agency. Four alleged pacts are subject to the investigation, including one between the two allies in 1960 giving tacit approval of port calls by U.S. military aircraft and warships carrying nuclear weapons.

Thank you, Madame President. Congratulations on your election as President of this Conference. I would also like to congratulate Ambassador Amano on his appointment as Director General. I pledge my government's full support as Ambassador Amano assumes this critical role. I would also like to thank Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei for his quarter century of distinguished service to the IAEA and 12 years as Director General. Dr. ElBaradei's leadership earned him and the IAEA a Nobel Peace Prize and our enduring gratitude. It is a great honor to represent the United States at this conference, and I want to share a personal message from President Barack Obama:

The IAEA's 53rd General Conference of Member States concluded today in Vienna, with over 1 400 delegates from IAEA Member States attending the week-long event. Following discussion, the General Conference adopted resolutions on the following items: the Agency's Programme and Budget for 2010-2011; measures to strengthen international cooperation in nuclear, radiation,transportation and waste safety; nuclear security - measures to protect against nuclear terrorism; strengthening of the Agency's technical cooperation activities; strengthening the Agency´s activities related to nuclear science, technology and applications; strengthening the effectiveness and improving the efficiency of the safeguards system and application of the Model Additional Protocol; implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement between the Agency and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea; application of IAEA safeguards in the Middle East; and Israeli nuclear capabilities. The item on the prohibition of armed attack or threat of attack against nuclear installations, during operation or under construction was included in a Presidential statement. The full texts of adopted resolutions and the Presidential statement will be posted on the IAEA website as they become available. Story » :: DG Statement to Conference

Italian authorities have discovered a ship that was sunk by the mafia off the coast of southern Italy with 120 barrels of radioactive waste on board, a local prosecutor said. The 110-metre (360-feet) long ship was found on Saturday 500 metres (1,640 feet) under water and around 28 kilometres (17 miles) from the coast of Calabria, Paola city prosecutor Bruno Giordano told AFP. "For the moment, we do not know the origin of the waste, but it is probably from abroad. It is a first lead," he said. The Cunsky is one of 32 vessels carrying toxic material that has been sunk by the mafia in the Mediterranean, according to the prosecutor's office in Reggio Calabria.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is proposing to double the period that nuclear power plants can store spent fuel on site to 40 years, as plans to build a permanent federal repository stall. The rule would formalize a site-by-site exemption the commission has used when nuclear plants, including those owned by Dominion Resources Inc. and Progress Energy Inc., applied to renew waste storage licenses for longer than 20 years. "This change would codify a technical approach begun in 2004," the commission said in a statement today. Utilities store nuclear waste on site until the government removes the spent fuel under contracts the U.S. has yet to honor because it has no permanent storage facilities. President Barack Obama abandoned support after he took office this year for the government's Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, which had been proposed as a permanent underground site for spent fuel.

Yucca Mountain may never be used, but a physicist lays out his argument favoring repositories over costly reprocessing. By Frank von Hippel September 15, 2009 * EmailE-mail * printPrint * Share * increase text size decrease text size Text Size The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project is now comatose, if not dead. And that puts us back at square one on a crucial question: What are we going to do with all the radioactive waste being discharged by U.S. nuclear power reactors? Many conservatives on Capitol Hill favor the French "solution": spent-fuel reprocessing. But reprocessing isn't a solution at all: It's a very expensive and dangerous detour. Reprocessing takes used or "spent" nuclear fuel and dissolves it to separate the uranium and plutonium from the highly radioactive fission products. The plutonium and uranium are then recycled to make new reactor fuel, thereby reducing the amount of fresh uranium required by about 20%. But based on French and Japanese experience, the cost of producing this recycled fuel is several times that of producing fresh uranium reactor fuel.