Beyond the police roadblocks that mark the no-go zone around Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, six-foot tall weeds invade rice paddies and vines gone wild strangle road signs along empty streets.

“Older folks want to return, but the young worry about radiation,” said Harada, whose family ran the farm for 40 years.

What’s emerging in Japan six months since the nuclear meltdown at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant is a radioactive zone bigger than that left by the 1945 atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While nature reclaims the 20 kilometer (12 mile) no-go zone, Fukushima’s $3.2 billion-a-year farm industry is being devastated and tourists that hiked the prefecture’s mountains and surfed off its beaches have all but vanished.

Chanting "Sayonara nuclear power" and waving banners, tens of thousands of people marched in central Tokyo on Monday to call on Japan's government to abandon atomic energy in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Police estimated the crowd at 20,000 people, while organizers said there were three times that many people.

But he has also said the country should reduce its reliance on atomic energy over the long-term and explore alternative sources of energy.

India wants new test results in light of the Fukushima disaster before finalising a multi-billion-euro order for new reactors with French nuclear energy giant Areva, France's Energy Minister Eric Besson said Monday.

India, which along with China is a major market for new nuclear plants, signed last December a framework deal worth an estimated seven billion euros ($9.5 billion) for Areva to build two EPR reactors, plus an option for four more. Once finalised, it would allow Areva to steal a march on US and Japanese competitors in the race to sell reactors to India, which aims to tap atomic power for a quarter of its power by 2050 from less than three percent now

A furnace used to treat low grade nuclear waste has exploded at a nuclear site in southern France, killing one person and injuring four others. France’s Nuclear Safety Authority said on Monday there were no radioactive leaks from the explosion at the waste treatment site at Marcoule run by EDF, the operator of France’s 58 nuclear power stations.

Nonetheless, the accident is likely to amplify emerging concerns over the safety

French public opinion has remained largely favourable to nuclear power, which provides 78 per cent of the country’s electricity, polls showed a growing proportion of people questioning the role of nuclear power after the Japanese catastrophe.

Scosche Industries, award-winning innovator of consumer technology, is excited to announce the RDTX-PRO radiation detector and app for iPhone and iPod touch. The radiation detector requires no calibration and allows users to accurately detect gamma radiation above 60keV within +/- 5% accuracy.  The device attaches to an iPhone or iPod touch via the dock connection and is extremely compact for ease of use.  It can also be used as a radiation alarm independently from the iOS device.  When being used as a standalone alarm the RDTX-PRO runs on one AA battery and provides up to 96 hour of radiation detection. “I was extremely impressed with the accuracy and performance of the RDTX-PRO from Scosche,” said Julius James, Radiation Specialist of Fluke Global Calibration Laboratories.  “The detector is as accurate as units that cost significantly more and is much smaller in size.” After connecting the Scosche RDTX-PRO with an iPhone or iPod touch users are prompted to download the free accompanying radTEST app.  The app offers a consumer friendly meter display that shows radiation levels as safe (green), elevated (yellow) or dangerous (red).  For the advanced user the digital display mode can be used to determine exact radiation levels.   Users can also share their results using Facebook, Twitter and Google Maps.

The Scosche RDTX-PRO retail for $329.99 and will be available in September from Synexx in Tokyo Japan.  $10 of each unit sold will be donated to a group of charities with a goal of reaching 1 million dollars within two years.  The charities include the Bikki Children’s Fund, Samaritan’s Purse, All Hands Volunteers, and others committed to aiding those that were affected by the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission last fall began identifying hundreds of employees with expertise it deems too valuable to lose.It captures that expertise by a variety of means — recorded presentations and interviews, collected documents — for posting on the online NRC Knowledge Center. Veteran employees also connect with staff through mentor programs, job shadowing and brown-bag lunches."The workforce today doesn't have the 30 years of experience in licensing and inspecting nuclear power plants," said Patricia Eng, NRC's senior adviser for knowledge management. "In 2009, 50 percent of the NRC staff had been with us for less than five years," which created a "huge training issue," she said.

. There are virtual communities of practice, based on profession and skill set, where members can post questions and answers, documents and videos that are permanently stored and available for view.

soon be able to subscribe to RSS feeds.

ALARMIST predictions that the long-term health effects of the Fukushima nuclear accident will be worse than those following Chernobyl in 1986 are likely to aggravate harmful psychological effects of the incident. That was the warning heard at a conference on radiation research in Warsaw, Poland, this week. "We've got to stop these sorts of reports coming out, because they are really upsetting the Japanese population," says Gerry Thomas at Imperial College London, who is attending the meeting

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency report that the release of radioactivity from Fukushima is about 10 per cent that of Chernobyl.

Nearly 50,000 tons of sludge at water treatment facilities has been found to contain radioactive cesium as the result of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Over 1,500 tons is so contaminated that it cannot be buried for disposal. Water treatment facilities in eastern and northeastern Japan have been discovering sludge containing cesium. The health ministry says there is 49,250 tons of such sludge in 14 prefectures in eastern and northeastern Japan.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA)’s daily press conference is ongoing (August 29). The NISA spokesman Moriyama mentions neptunium-239′s conversion ratio to plutonium-239 as 1 to 1. According to the June 6 estimate by the NISA: Plutonium-239: 3.2×10^9 Neptunium-239: 7.6×10^13 So, now it is: Plutonium-239: 7.6 x 10^13, or 76,000,000,000,000 or 76 terabecquerelsThe amount of plutonium-239 has increased 23,000-fold.

After accounting for losses along the way as the sulfate particles fell into the ocean, decayed, or eddied away from the stream of air heading toward California, the researchers calculated that 400 billion neutrons were released per square meter surface of the cooling pools, between March 13, when the seawater pumping operation began, and March 20, 2011.

The trace levels of radiation that reached the California coast never posed a threat to human health. "Although the spike that we measured was very high compared to background levels of radioactive sulfur, the absolute amount of radiation that reached California was small. The levels we recorded aren't a concern for human health. In fact, it took sensitive instruments, measuring radioactive decay for hours after lengthy collection of the particles, to precisely measure the amount of radiation," Thiemens said.

Concentrations a kilometer or so above the ocean near Fukushima must have been about 365 times higher than natural levels to account for the levels they observed in California.

A shortage of skilled engineers is threatening to hamper efforts by BP to boost production in the North Sea, a senior executive has said. The oil giant is expected to recruit between 150 and 300 jobs a year but admits that one of its biggest problems is finding the right people with the right skills. The comments, reported in the Sunday Telegraph, come a month after BP and its partners announced plans to invest £3 billion in redeveloping two oil fields off the Shetland Islands. The move should create hundreds of new jobs but Trevor Garlick, head of the company's North Sea operations, said BP would struggle to attract enough engineers for the available roles. He said

"Getting hold of the right people is a real issue for us. We are hiring a lot of people, but we are also an exporter of a couple of hundred people to other regions. We are a centre for recruiting elsewhere.

Cap: The total carbon emissions are limited (capped) in a simple, no-nonsense way Share: The huge amounts of money involved are shared equally by the population

The primary fossil-fuel suppliers (e.g. oil companies) are required to acquire permits in order to introduce fossil fuels into the economy (by importing them or extracting them from the ground).

Next, the Share. Since the fossil fuel suppliers have to buy the permits, they will pass on this cost by increasing the fuel price. This flows through the economy (like a carbon tax), making carbon-intensive goods cost more.

Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility achieved a major milestone this week as recirculating cooling was restored to the used fuel storage pools at the last of the four damaged reactors.

marking the first time since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that the pools at all four reactors have used recirculating cooling rather than water injection

TEPCO plans to train approximately 4,000 workers in radiation safety by the end of the year.

Since its formation inside the NRC in 1989, the OIG has fielded thousands of whistleblower complaints and conducted a compelling list of investigations, many exposing abuse and neglect both at the NRC and within the nuclear power industry that led to Congressional investigations and subsequent agency reform. The OIG became legendary for preparing exhaustively detailed, and publicly available, reports of its investigations. Now, Mulley -- along with numerous freelance and non-profit nuclear safety advocates who for years relied on the IG's office as a vital backstop against lax nuclear oversight at the NRC -- all say that the IG's office appears to be broken.

At a time when the safety of the nation's nuclear power industry has come under intense scrutiny -- particularly following what investigators now say was a preventable meltdown at a Japanese nuclear facility hobbled by an earthquake and flood this spring -- the absence of a robust inspector general, say nuclear-safety advocates with organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace and the Project on Government Oversight, leaves the public more vulnerable to nuclear accidents

Chief among the omissions from the OIG's final report: that NRC staff had known since at least 1990 that the pipes in question inside the Byron nuclear power plant had been corroding, but had consistently failed to take steps to force the plant operator to correct the issue until the pipes ultimately sprung a leak.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) reported on Monday that radiation exceeding 10 sieverts (10,000 millisieverts) per hour was found at the bottom of a ventilation stack standing between two reactors.On Tuesday Tepco said it found another spot on the ventilation stack itself where radiation exceeded 10 sieverts per hour, a level that could lead to incapacitation or death after just a short period of exposure.

Take NASA scientist James Hansen, who wrote (pdf) a public letter in June suggesting that the fate of the planet rests with the 1,700-mile Keystone XL project.

The climatologist said the proposal is a steppingstone to exploiting the entire oil sands region in Canada, where a vast amount of carbon dioxide sits underground in sand formations. Hansen asserted that its extraction would mean "game over" for the Earth when combined with emissions from coal. Canada holds the second-largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia.

, proponents of Keystone XL say that oil production in the Canadian region will continue no matter what, and that developers will find a way to transport the oil overseas if the United States declines to approve the pipeline.

Seventy percent of the Japanese public supports centre-left Prime Minister Naoto Kan's policy to make the country nuclear free in future but most people still want him to quit, a poll said Sunday

Kan said earlier this month that the country must gradually reduce its reliance on atomic power with the eventual goal of becoming nuclear-free, despite fears that power shortages could slow an already limping economy.

Kan's scepticism about boosting nuclear power in the quake-prone island nation has also set him on a collision course with pro-nuclear lawmakers, both in the conservative opposition and within his own party.

EDF's 1,650-megawatt Flamanville 3 nuclear reactor was already two years behind schedule and $2.4 billion over budget before Wednesday's announcement, in which the utility says it needs to carry out tougher safety inspections in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

Citing "structural and economic reasons" for the new delays, the state-owned company sent notice its flagship plant's costs will increase to $9 billion due to the new requirements while its opening has been pushed back to 2016.

The latest cost overruns and delays are a blow to the French company and its hopes for the worldwide commercialization of a new type of nuclear reactor, known as a European Pressurized Reactor, manufactured by the French nuclear group Areva.

Heatstroke cases in Japan have shot up in the early summer as many air-conditioners have been switched off amid an energy saving campaign following the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

More than 13,000 people were rushed to hospital by ambulance in June and the beginning of July

The sharp rise came amid a sweltering heatwave, when the average temperatures in late June in eastern and western Japan hit their highest levels since such data were first kept in 1961, the agency said.

Lockheed Martin has completed delivery of the National Source Tracking System (NSTS) to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The system is an Information Technology tool that assists in the accounting and tracking of radioactive source material typically used in medical, academic and industrial applications.