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Almost 12 million tons of radioactive waste will be moved from the banks of the Colorado River, the source of drinking water for more than 25 million people across the West, the government said Wednesday. Energy Department officials on Wednesday cleared the way for a plan that was announced this year. The 94-foot high pile of uranium mining waste is near Moab, Utah, and 750 feet from the river. The department now will work on the specifics of moving the waste to a site at Crescent Junction, more than 30 miles northwest. Concern that contaminants would leach into the Colorado River was heightened by January flooding in southern Utah.

Moab's rich uranium deposits were mined for nuclear bombs starting in the 1950s. The Uranium Reduction Co. sold its mill in 1962 to Atlas Corp., which ran it sporadically until declaring bankruptcy in 1998. The Energy Department took over the site in 2001.

Left behind was a 130-acre uranium mill tailings pile, which is mostly in the open air on bare ground, surrounded by a chain-link fence. "This decision demonstrates our commitment to fulfilling our Cold War cleanup obligations as well as preserving the long-term environmental health of the river and the many communities it serves," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a statement. Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Republican who lobbied the Bush administration to move the waste, said the development "was great news for Utah and the millions of people who rely on the Colorado River for their water supply." The cleanup cost is expected to be more than $400 million. The department estimates it will begin moving the tailings in 2008 and finish by 2014, department spokesman Mike Waldron said.

A baby bunny apparently born without ears (photo at left) in the town of Namie, near the massively leaking Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, has raised concerns about mutagenic effects caused by radioactivity in the environment. Naysayers abound, despite evidence of genetic mutations in animals (such as a two headed calf) and plants (including deformed flowers) in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island meltdown collected and documented by Mary Osborn; numerous scientific studies showing adverse impacts on wildlife populations in Chernobyl contaminated regions, such as on birds by Dr. Tim Mousseau of the University of South Carolina; and, further back in time, an epidemic of ewe deaths in southwest Utah immediately downwind of the Nevada Nuclear Weapons Test Site. An excellent book by John G. Fuller, "The Day We Bombed Utah," published in 1984, recounts how Mormon sheep farmers experienced unprecedented sheep and ewe deaths in the early 1950s, shortly after nuclear weapons blasts upwind in Nevada. The farmers sued the Atomic Energy Commission for damages. AEC research scientists swore, under oath, that they had no evidence that radioactivity could cause such a die off in sheep and ewes. However, over a quarter century later, it was shown by the sheep farmers and their attorney that the AEC had lied -- they had conducted experiments on sheep at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State: they observed die offs very similar to what occurred in Utah. The same judge who had presided over the original trial heard the new evidence as well, and ruled that the AEC had perpetrated a fraud upon the court. Fuller also wrote "We Almost Lost Detroit," published in 1975, about the 1966 partial meltdown at the Fermi 1 experimental plutonium breeder reactor in Monroe, Michigan.

The tiny Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians Reservation in Utah is targeted for a very big nuclear waste dump. Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a limited liability corporation representing eight powerful nuclear utilities, wants to "temporarily" store 40,000 tons of commercial high-level radioactive waste (about 80% of the commercial irradiated nuclear fuel in the U.S. as of the end of 2004) next to the two-dozen tribal members who live on the small reservation. The PFS proposal is the latest in a long tradition of targeting Native American communities for such dumps. But there is another tradition on the targeted reservations as well–fighting back against blatant environmental racism, and winning.

NIRS, joining with allies such as Indigenous Environmental Network and Honor the Earth, has been privileged and honored to assist tribal members opposing dumps targeted at their communities for well over a decade. Of 60 Indian communities directly targeted by the nuclear power establishment, 59 have fended off the threat. But the Skull Valley proposal has advanced further than any other before, and could be granted an operating license by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sometime in early 2005. NIRS and Skull Valley Goshute tribal opponents to this environmental racism – and threat of irradiated fuel trains by the hundreds rolling through dozens of U.S. states as early as 2007 – need YOUR help today!

Judge David M. Ebel vacated decisions by the U.S. Department of Interior that had blocked construction of the proposed Tooele County facility and remanded Private Fuel Storage's right-of-way application and lease of tribal land to for further consideration.

The Goshute tribe had agreed to lease land to Private Fuel as a long-term solution. Private Fuel obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate the spent fuel storage facility near the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground. The waste would be transported via railway and, for the last 24 miles, by "heavy haul" trucks onto the Goshute land, Ebel said. However, the Interior's Bureau of Land Management denied the consortium's request for a right-of-way access to the land.

The Department of Interior's main concern was that Private Fuel would not be able to dismantle the storage facility after the lease was up. "There is no evidence in the administrative record that [Private Fuel] could not physically dismantle the site and decommission the facility," the judge's 36-page answer states

EnergySolutions Inc. is making a deal with a Sweden-based competitor, Studsvik, to dispose of solid nuclear waste in Utah. The Deseret News of Salt Lake City reported Tuesday that EnergySolutions signed a contract in December with Studsvik Inc. That's a U.S. subsidiary of Sweden's Studsvik Holding.

The plan is to use the company's THOR (Thermal volume/Weight Reduction Technology) to process nuclear power plant waste into solid form rather than a mix of powdery, radioactive resins.

Studsvik's patented technology features a pyrolysis / steam reforming system to volume and mass reduce organic waste streams to a non-reactive waste form for efficient Disposal or On-site Storage. Bead Resins, Powdered Filter Medias, Sludges, Activated Charcoal, Non-Metal Filter Cartridges, and Dry Active Wastes (DAW) all have been successfully processed. This entire process is referred to as Thermal Organic Reduction or THOR.

The tiny Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians Reservation in Utah is targeted for a very big nuclear waste dump. Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a limited liability corporation representing eight powerful nuclear utilities, wants to "temporarily" store 40,000 tons of commercial high-level radioactive waste (nearly the total amount that presently exists in the U.S.) next to the two-dozen tribal members who live on the small reservation.

At the same time, the nuclear power industry contributed large sums to Congressional and Presidential campaigns, and lobbied hard on Capitol Hill to establish a "temporary storage site" at the Nevada nuclear weapons test site, not far from the proposed federal permanent underground dump for high-level atomic waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Both these proposed "temporary" and permanent dump sites would be on Western Shoshone land, as affirmed by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. Yucca Mountain is sacred to the Western Shoshone, and their National Council has long campaigned to prevent nuclear dumping there.

Having lost its bid to "temporarily" store its deadly wastes on Western Shoshone land near Yucca Mountain, nuclear utilities have re-focused their hopes for "interim" relief on Nevada’s neighbor, Utah. PFS must have done its homework: it would be hard to find a community more economically and politically vulnerable than the Skull Valley Goshutes to the Faustian bargain of getting "big bucks" in exchange for hosting the nation’s deadliest poisons.

Due to the fact that commercially-ready cold fusion technologies like Andrea Rossi's E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) exist and can produce kilowatts of power, I'm not too interested in previous systems from years ago that could only produce a couple watts of power (or less). However, I am very interested in the events that took place immediately after the birth of Cold Fusion in 1989, when Pons and Fleischmann announced the existence of their technology to the world. Although cold fusion systems at the time were not ready for the market place, they proved the effect was real -- a fact the establishment could not allow the public to accept.

Immediately after the announcement was made, the "mainstream" scientific community went on the attack. The late Eugene Mallove was in the middle of it, being employed at MIT in the news office -- before resigning in protest of the institution's misconduct. In a featured article for Infinite Energy Magazine, Mallove detailed exactly what took place that led to his resignation, and the depth of hatred that many professors at MIT had for Pons and Fleischmann's work. The article titled, "MIT and Cold Fusion: A Special Report" also looks at how the replication performed by the institution's Plasma Fusion Center actually did produce positive results, how data from the experiment was altered by unknown individuals at least twice, and how the hot fusion scientists in charge of such tests were far too biased to conduct proper research.

If you think the suppression Pons and Fleischmann faced was bad, you don't have a clue until you have read this article. 

nergySolutions is once again asking for the State of Utah’s permission to accept another vagrant bunch of radioactive waste. It plans to blend, or dilute, Class B and Class C waste with less radioactive waste until it just meets the Class A waste levels its license allows at its Clive disposal site. Think of it as kind of a radioactive smoothie.

This blended waste is a unique waste stream: something unforeseen and unknown to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) when it developed its low-level waste regulations in 1981. While the commission is currently trying to develop coherent new guidance on this, its rules state that it is only OK to intentionally mix wastes “as long as the classification is not altered.” Utah does not have such a regulation.

At present there are no disposal sites that accept Classes B and C low level waste, but that will change in about a month when a Texas disposal site opens and starts accepting these materials, without any of the hazards incurred in actually putting these things in the blender. The public understands how corporations often use regulatory loopholes to their own benefit.

The Obama administration moved Wednesday to speed up permitting and construction of seven proposed electric transmission lines in 12 states, saying the projects would create thousands of jobs and help modernize the nation's power grid.The projects are intended to serve as pilot demonstrations of streamlined federal permitting and improved cooperation among federal, state and tribal governments. The projects will provide more than 2,500 miles of new transmission lines in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

In all, the projects are expected to create more than 10,000 direct and indirect jobs, help avoid blackouts, restore power more quickly when outages occur and reduce the need for new power plants, officials said."To compete in the global economy, we need a modern electricity grid," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Wednesday in a statement. "An upgraded electricity grid will give consumers choices while promoting energy savings, increasing energy efficiency and fostering the growth of renewable energy resources."

American Energy Fields, Inc. (OTCBB:AEFI), formerly Sienna Resources, Inc. is a uranium exploration and development company based in Arizona. Their focus is uranium deposits in the United States. The Company’s three main projects (in which they have sole interest) are  the Coso and Blythe  projects in California, and Artillery Peak project in Arizona. All three properties have been previously explored and developed, and are currently in early exploration stages.  A 43-101 technical report for the Artillery Peak project is available for review on American Energy Field’s website. What we like about American Energy Fields, Inc: Over 9.2 million pounds U3O8 historic resources with 2.8 million pounds 43-101 verified More than $25 million in development work, by past operators, has been spent on AEFI’s current projects Committed to near term production of low cost U.S. Uranium

The Artillery Peak property consists of 1,777 acres of federal land and is located 112 miles northeast of Phoenix, Arizona. American Energy Fields’ historic records indicate 1.7 million pounds of uranium was previously identified through exploration on Artillery Peak. There has been significant exploration work completed on the property, including over 400 holes drilled by Jacquays Mining, Homestake Mining, Hecla Mining, Getty Oil, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, and Santa Fe Mining between the 1950s-1970s. A 1979 report by Central and South West Fuels, Inc. found that the northern portion of the property contains a historical resource of 1.7 million pounds U3O8 with an average grade of 0.113%. In 2007/2008 new exploration was conducted which included 34 additional drill holes to verify historic drilling and further delineate mineralization. In 1979, the Department of Energy conducted an evaluation of the Date Creek Basin and the Artillery Mountains where they estimated that the area could contain as much as 1,260,000,000 pounds of U3O8. The Company will begin a preliminary exploration program to verify the historic data reported by Central and South West Fuels Inc.

Coso – Inyo County – California The Coso project covers 169 federal mining claims and 800 state-owned acres and was previously developed by Western Nuclear, Pioneer Resources, Federal Resources, and Union Pacific Mining/Rocky Mountain Energy. An estimated U.S. $20,000,000.00 was spent on exploration and development of the project, including an engineered pit design, where exploration records indicate 5.5 million lbs. of uranium was identified with an average grade of 0.07 U3O8. American Energy Fields recently received its exploration permit for the 800 state-owned acres from the California Land Department and is currently developing an exploration plan to confirm the historic data with the goal of moving the project towards production. Blythe – Riverside County – California The Blythe project consists of 66 Federal mining claims in Riverside County, California covering 3 historic mines, the Safranek, the McCoy Wash, and the Little Ore Hill operated by Humbug Mining and Bokum Corporation. According to Bokum’s records during the years of 1963 to 1964, the Safranek Mine produced and shipped 1,400 tons of uranium ore averaging 0.80% U308 to the VCA mill in Salt Lake City, Utah for processing. These records also indicate the Safranek site currently contains 100 tons at 0.40% U3O8 and 4,000 tons at 0.30% U3O8 of stockpiled ore, while the McCoy Wash has 3,000 tons of stockpiled ore with a grade of 0.20% U3O8. Bokum Corporation drilled the property in the early 1970s and the results indicated approximately 153,000 lbs of U3O8 while outlining a further potential for an additional 2,000,000 lbs of U3O8. American Energy Fields aims to identify, expand, and develop the ore body with the goal of putting the past producing mines back into production. Management