The weekly Radiation Bulletin has been published since 1985 by the Abalone Alliance Clearinghouse (SF California USA). It is produced using a combination of social bookmarking and programming.

Every week there are up 1,000 nuclear articles published. The Rad Bull distills this into a digestible stew.

Click on the Green Highlighted bars to access content. To access the full story click on the Story's Title.

News Library Subjects

Best stories	Reactors	Safety	Fuel Cycle	N-Waste
Policy	Weapons	DOE	NRC	Legislation

Each of the above links will take you to the best archived stories - latest to earliest - that has been covered by the Radiation Bulletin. The library currently consists of over 13,000 articles from around the world. There are also over 1,000 other searchable tags as well. Its based on the Web 2.0 concept of publicly shared bookmarking. For more on Social bookmarking watch this Youtube video.
Here is the link to the main news library.

Here's the latest Radiation Bulletin! The changes this week include an extended library index for people wanting to do research on back stories as well as a new division of several of the main subject areas into international and national groupings so that people can sort through content faster. Any ideas are accepted about how the bulletin looks or what other changes might be appropriate. I can't promise the moon but will consider any good ideas.

In general the rad-waste issue continues to draw a lot of attention around the world. A floating waste reprocessing facility in Russia has sunk that includes high level liquid wastes. A report out of Canada blasts contamination of water there, there was also a story about Israel using Palestinian areas as a dumping ground. There are also a number of waste stories across the U.S. as well with the recent national conference on waste in Chicago, more anger over the NRC's push to downblend wastes so that they can be dumped in Utah, hearings in Texas for a dump there as well plans to expand ORNL's waste dump in Tennessee.

Probably the hottest issue internationally continues to be India's Congress Party attempting to push through legislation that reduces accident liability for U.S. countries, with a number of Bhopal victims and the Gulf oil spill in the news, opposition to the waver is quite strong. In another Obama moment, he has proposed funding for nuclear propulsion for rockets.

I'm keeping the summary short as the new design makes it possible for readers to get a fast overview of what's up. I'm still having health problems so won't be using this arena to comment for now, putting most attention on just design and cleanup of the newsletter. Enjoy!

The government has no plans to bring forward the commercial operations of the fourth nuclear power plant as safety remains its top priority, Executive Yuan spokesman Johnny Chiang said.

Chiang dismissed local media reports that Premier Wu Den-yih had asked the plant's builders to move its scheduled opening from the end of next year to Oct. 10 to coincide with the country's 100th founding anniversary next year.

Chiang said the premier was briefed by officials from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Atomic Energy Council and Taiwan Power Company earlier on Friday on the plant's construction progress, and Wu instructed them to monitor its building to ensure its safety."

Canada's nuclear watchdog is fast-tracking a request for a hearing to consider reopening the country's aging medical isotope-producing reactor.

Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. made a request Friday for a formal hearing in hopes of restarting medical isotope production at the Ontario plant by mid-summer.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has not yet scheduled a hearing, which is expected to take one day, but it said the date would be announced quickly and normal hearing rules will be tossed aside to deal with what it calls a priority case.

Bulgaria has suspended construction of its Belene nuclear power plant, Bulgarian News Agency BGNES quoted the country's Prime Minister Boiko Borisov as saying on Friday.

Borisov said the construction of the plant, which was being carried out by Russia's Atomstroyexport, had been frozen as investors had not been found.

Atomstroyexport, the export arm of Rosatom, won a tender in 2006 for the construction of the plant. A $4 billion-contract was signed in 2008.

A new nuclear energy power station must not be built in the Pyhäjoki region in Finland's northern Ostrobothnia because of the rich bird population in the area, according a statement by BirdLife Finland on Friday.

According to BirdLife, the area has a diverse population of birds and is part of an important migratory path for large birds, which would suffer from the construction of a nuclear power plant.

BirdLife is also concerned about the local nature and feels that plans to build the new power station neglect the importance of wildlife.

The government has presented a new nuclear power station construction permit to Finnish utility Fennovoima, but the company has yet to decide whether to build the station in Pyhäjoki or Simo, in northern Finland.

Belarus seems to be finding it increasingly hard to sell its nuclear energy plans to European nations, both near and far. This time, Minsk's desire to build a nuclear power plant (NPP) close to the Lithuanian border was thwarted by vigorous objections from Austria: representatives of Austrian NGOs and federal authorities expressed a strong disapproval of Belarus's intent at a hearing in Vienna in mid-May.

Hearings similar to the one that took place in Vienna have previously been held in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius and Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. Ever since it first brought up the subject of building a nuclear power plant to a controversial Russian project, Belarus has been finding itself more and more hard-pressed to convince its neighbours that they have nothing to fear from the future site. For its location, Belarus has settled on the town of Ostrovets, in Grodno Region, just 23 kilometres off the Lithuanian border, and Lithuania has already made its position known, both as a matter of public opinion and on a state level: No, thank you, Minsk.

PROBLEMS at the Sizewell B nuclear power plant could see the reactor remain closed until September - potentially costing tens of millions of pounds in lost electricity sales.

Sizewell's owner EDF Energy has confirmed that the facility is not expected to be up and running until the third quarter of 2010.

It means the power station, which has been shut since the end of March and employs more than 500 people, could be closed until September while engineers carry out repairs.

Commentators suggest the power station could lose around £350,000 a day in electricity sales.

Working on the basis that it will remain shut until September - about 180 days - it could see losses in the region of £63m.

- Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., the world's largest shipyard, denied a report it may buy Korea Power Engineering Co. and Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co. to expand its nuclear power business.

Hyundai Heavy in December bought a 4.7 percent stake in Korea Power through a fund it set up for "investment purposes," said Kim Ki Young, a spokesman at the Ulsan, South Korea-based company. The stake is worth 169 billion won ($136 million) based on the closing share price on Jun 4. The shipyard isn't considering taking over Hyundai Engineering, he said.

The worst man-made disaster in history took place at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine almost 25 years ago. It has inspired one of Russia's top screenwriter-directors to make a film based on the story.

"On Saturday", Aleksandr Mindadze's tragic exploration of the nuclear disaster, will go back to the events of 1986, when the notorious Number Four reactor suffered an unstoppable chain reaction.

Obama and the Nuclear Rocket
The Obama administration is seeking to renew the use of nuclear power in space. It is calling for revived production by the U.S. of plutonium-238 for use in space devices despite solar energy having become a substitute for plutonium power in space.
And the Obama administration appears to also want to revive the decades-old and long-discredited scheme of nuclear powered rockets despite strides made in new ways of propelling spacecraft. Last month, Japan launched what it called its "space yacht" which is now heading to Venus propelled by solar sails utilizing ionized particles emitted by the Sun. "Because of the frictionless environment, such a craft should be able to speed up until it is traveling many times faster than a conventional rocket-powered craft," wrote Agence France Presse about this spacecraft launched May 21.
But the Obama administration would return to using nuclear power in space despite its enormous dangers.

Conservation Law Foundation officials called for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant to shut down, citing the recent leaks in the site's underground piping and within its main reactor building.

Calling nuclear power "last century's technology," a panel of CLF delegates criticized the Vernon plant for its recent safety record and advocated for a more sustainable energy future in New England during a Thursday evening public forum in downtown Brattleboro.

Nearly 50 people from Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts attended the event.

CLF Senior Attorney Sandy Levine said Vermont Yankee should shut down the plant because of the continuing contamination at the site and into the Connecticut River.

"The plant should not be operating while this is ongoing," she said. "And we wanted to put this in a more regional context, it's not just Vermont. What happens to Vermont Yankee matters throughout the region." "

The Oswego County Legislature has approved a one-year tax agreement with Constellation Energy Nuclear Group for the Nine Mile Point Unit I plant.

The tax agreement nearly triples the amount of taxes the company would pay Oswego County, the town of Scriba and the Oswego school district. The company this year paid $4 million through its payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT, and would pay $11 million in 2011 with the tax agreement.

The county receives $1,489,000 this year and would receive $4,096,400 under the tax agreement.

Forty miles north of Chicago, along the shore of Lake Michigan, gun-toting guards still warily prowl the grounds of the Zion Nuclear Power Station.

Inside, the control room remains staffed by engineers who check radiation levels throughout the plant. But their numbers are far fewer than before 1998, when the two reactors went permanently dark.

"A lot of people are surprised, because they think they're going to find tumbleweeds and the place just falling apart," plant manager Ron Schuster said.

Schuster stood in the shadow of the 10-story building, its outer wall made of reinforced concrete 3 feet thick, that houses one of the dormant reactors. Workers venture inside only about twice a month now, for inspections and maintenance."

The Vermont Public Service Board sanctioned Entergy Corp., owner of the state's lone nuclear plant, after company officials provided misinformation about underground piping carrying radioactive materials.

According to the PSB, the false testimony by Entergy witnesses was sufficiently damaging enough to merit sanctions. The New Orleans-based company, which operates the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon, will have to reimburse costs to the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, the New England Coalition and the Windham Regional Commission attorney fees and other legal costs related to the plant's misrepresentations about whether it had underground pipes carrying radioactive materials.

During 2009 hearings on the proposed extension of the plant's continued operations beyond its scheduled closing in March 2012, Entergy management repeatedly testified that Vermont Yankee has no underground piping carrying radionuclides. "

The American nuclear industry, primed to begin new construction projects for the first time in 30 years, is about as eager for an operating problem at an old reactor as the oil industry was for a well blowout on the eve of opening the Atlantic coast to oil drilling.

Nonetheless, a nuclear reactor where a hidden leak caused near-catastrophic corrosion in 2002 has experienced a second bout of the same problem.

In 2002, the plant, Davis-Besse, in Oak Harbor, Ohio, developed leaks in parts on the vessel head, allowing cooling water from inside the vessel, at 2,200 pounds per square inch of pressure, to leak out.

A man died Monday as he was working under water at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, N.Y., officials said.

The unidentified diver was doing working on a wall that separates the Hudson River from a discharge canal when he stopped responding to communication checks, according to Entergy Nuclear, which owns the Indian Point Energy Center.

A canal channels water back to the river after being used to cool a reactor or make steam.

"The gentleman was doing some maintenance work under water, and when a co-worker up above asked him a question and he did not respond, he was pulled up immediately," said Jerry Nappi, a spokesman for the Indian Point plant.

DEP Commissioner Bob Martin today issued an action plan requiring the owner of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant to take a series of steps to further investigate the 2009 leak of radioactive tritium into aquifers below the plant and ensure the radioactive substance does not endanger public health and safety.

Under a directive of the state's Spill Act, the Exelon Corporation must drill new test wells, increase sampling of existing wells, review accuracy of existing data regarding water flow in and around the nuclear power plant, and expand the search area for a potentially contaminating tritium flow.

"We have given Exelon very specific directions and they have agreed to cooperate and move quickly to comply," said Commissioner Martin, who will tour the Oyster Creek plant on Friday and meet with Exelon officials. "We need prompt action to prevent the continuing spread of the radioactive substance and to ensure it never gets near the region's potable water supplies. This requires immediate attention and Exelon has committed to move as fast as safely possible.

Three degrees might not sound like much. But according to FirstEnergy Corp., a three-degree reduction in Davis-Besse's operating temperature will provide enough safety over the next two years to ensure there is no additional cracking of the steel nozzles that penetrate the reactor's interim head.

Now it's up to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to decide whether it agrees with the utility's analysis of what caused 24 of the massive steel device's 69 nozzles to either develop flaws or full-blown cracks.

One had been leaking reactor acid on top of the lid when the flaws were found in mid-March, though - unlike eight years ago - the problem was caught long before any noticeable amount of steel had melted, according to Vito Kaminskas, Davis-Besse's director of plant engineering.

There are some serious new safety concerns surrounding the Prarie Island nuclear power plant.

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission notified the plant last week that if nearby water pipes broke and flooded the plant, important safety equipment could fail.

Those pipes carry non-radioactive cooling water out of the plant to the Mississippi.

Experts for Xcel Energy say they have already fixed the problem.

But city officials say this should be a warning to the state that Red Wing is underfunded to deal with the possibility of a major catastrophe.

The state ordered Exelon Corp. to dig new, deeper wells Friday in response to a spill of radioactive material last year that seeped into groundwater beneath the Oyster Creek Generating Station.

The Department of Environmental Protection told the company to drill eight new monitoring wells in the Cohansey Aquifer, where the radioactive isotope tritium was detected in levels 50 times higher than what is considered safe for drinking water.

About 180,000 gallons of tritium-contaminated water spilled from a leaky pipe at the nuclear plant April 9, 2009. The state invoked the Spill Act last month, giving it discretion over the cleanup.

The state also directed Exelon to drill a monitoring well into the deeper Kirkwood Aquifer below the Cohansey to determine whether the contamination has seeped into that underground reservoir as well.

Confirming Punjab's worst fears and TOI reports, a document from Germany's Microtrace Mineral Lab has revealed that hair samples of 80% of 149 neurologically-disabled children, mainly from Punjab's Malwa region, have high levels of uranium. The report also establishes the presence of dangerous heavy metals in water.

The presence of the radioactive element has strengthened doubts that depleted uranium used by US tanks in Iraq and Afghanistan was travelling through air, reaching not just Punjab but Delhi as well. TOI was first to report the suspected presence of uranium traces in the hair of kids undergoing treatment at Baba Farid Centre for Special Children.

Despite scrambling in the aftermath of a real-life tornado, Monroe County emergency response officials reacted well this week to an imaginary earthquake that led to a simulated release of radioactivity from DTE Energy's Fermi 2 nuclear plant, federal observers said.
It was part of a periodic, mandated emergency response drill that was held Tuesday meant to show that state and county officials could respond properly if there was a real disaster at the plant.
"Our findings indicate that the State of Michigan and counties of Monroe and Wayne continue to demonstrate the capabilities to protect the health and safety of their residents living within a 10-mile radius of the plant," said Dwaine Warren, exercise director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "

What usually comes to mind when one hears about radiation is nuclear energy or anything that is radioactive. But few realize that radiation has numerous benefits, and agriculture is one of the areas that largely gain from it.

The Philippine Nuclear Research Institute (PNRI) of the Department of Science and Technology which is the sole agency of the government that advances and regulates the safe and peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology in the country, identifies agriculture and natural resources as among its priority areas.

Researchers from PNRI have been developing improved crop varieties through mutation, a non-conventional method of plant breeding which uses mutational agents (mutagens) such as radiation or chemicals e.g. ethyl methyl sulfonate (EMS)

Although the contents of the two documents are not yet revealed, the US Department of Energy and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) have retrieved data on the Huntington Pilot Plant (HPP) from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory vault.

The US Department of Energy operated the Huntington Pilot Plant on the same ground as International Nickel (INCO) in Huntington from the mid-50s until the early 60s performing various activities in conjunction with one or more of the DOE's gaseous diffusion plants in Portsmouth (Ohio), Oak Ridge (Tennessee) and Pad (Ky). After remaining in a state of readiness until 1978, the DOE ordered that the plant be demolished. By 1979, all but the ground floor of the plant (now used as a Waste Water Treatment facility by INCO's successor, Special Metals), were demolished and buried in a classified and secret ditch at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, including even the railroad cars and trucks used to transport the debris.

Based on their exposure to such radioactive contaminants as uranium, nickel, plutonium and other metals, workers at the former DOE plant are eligible for compensation.

The U.S. Department of Labor has announced that a new class of nuclear weapons workers from plants located in California and New Jersey have been added to the Special Exposure Cohort of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA), which provides compensation and medical benefits to workers who became ill as a result of working in the nuclear weapons industry. Survivors of qualified workers may also be entitled to benefits.

All former Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory employees who worked at the Berkeley, Calif., site between Aug. 13, 1942, and Dec. 31, 1961, as well as former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employees who worked at the Livermore, Calif., site between Jan. 1, 1950, and Dec. 31, 1973, have been added to the Special Exposure Cohort. In addition, former Westinghouse Electric Corp. employees who worked at the Bloomfield, N.J., site between Aug. 13, 1942, and Dec. 31, 1949, are included. "

The average American receives 620 millirems of background radiation every year, as opposed to the 360 millirems as is often stated in the press.

The number has crept up in the last two decades, from 180 millirems to 300 millirems, then to 360 millirems and most recently, in 2006, to 620 millirems.

Two of the major reasons why the average dose has been adjusted is the recognition that radon poses a substantial threat to health, especially in areas where granite is in abundance, and an increase in the number of medical procedures involving radiation.

Many people never reach the average, which includes exposure rates to people who undergo medical treatments with high levels of radiation.

Ionizing radiation, the formation of ions by separating atoms or molecules or radicals or by adding or subtracting electrons from atoms by strong electric fields in a gas, can cause cancer. "

Mining giant BHP Billiton is risking the lives of its staff and employees at Olympic Dam in South Australia by exposing them to unsafe levels of radiation, according to a company whistleblower.

Documents received by The Independent Weekly say BHP Billiton has been warned about the risks, and has chosen to take no action.

The documents show BHP Billiton uses manipulated averages and distorted sampling to ensure its "official" figures slip under the maximum exposure levels set by government.

But experts have warned exposure levels currently regarded as the international limit should be lowered, following the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London four years ago.

The U.S. Department of Labor is notifying all former Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory employees who worked at the Berkeley, Calif., site between Aug. 13, 1942, and Dec. 31, 1961, about a new class of employees added to the Special Exposure Cohort of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act. The act provides compensation and medical benefits to workers who became ill as a result of working in the nuclear weapons industry. Survivors of qualified workers may also be entitled to benefits.

A worker who is included in a designated SEC class of employees, and who is diagnosed with one of 22 specified cancers, may receive a presumption of causation under the EEOICPA. On April 5, 2010, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services designated the following class of employees as an addition to the SEC: all employees of the Department of Energy, its predecessor agencies, and their contractors and subcontractors who worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., from Aug. 13, 1942, through Dec. 31, 1961, for at least 250 workdays occurring either solely under this employment or in combination with workdays within other classes of employees in the SEC. This designation became effective on May 5, 2010. The Labor Department's role is to adjudicate these claims based on the new SEC class definitions as determined and introduced by HHS. "

NRC News	Accident Reports	NRC Regulations	New Licenses	NRC Responsibilities
NRC Meetings	Public Comment	Radioactive Waste	Radiation Releases	Radbull News Library

The above links will take you to the most important Nuclear Regulatory Commission activities.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has authorized startup of a $3 billion uranium enrichment plant in New Mexico, the first major nuclear facility to be licensed in the US in the past three decades.

NRC officials said in a news release Thursday they are satisfied the facility can begin operations.

The Louisiana Energy Services facility near Eunice will use an enrichment process that employs centrifuges to separate uranium isotopes. The enriched uranium will supply fuel for nuclear power plants in the US and overseas.

LES president and chief executive Gregory Smith calls the NRC approval "a turning point" for the nation's nuclear industry.

The technology used at the New Mexico plant has been in place in Europe for more than 30 years.

As the recent national news headlines make clear every day, finding and developing new sources of energy has been and will continue to be a national priority and will encompass both traditional and new energy sources for the foreseeable future. Regrettably, as the headlines from the Gulf of Mexico also make clear, energy development activities are not free either from risk or environmental consequence, particularly if they are pursued without adequate attention to safety. As a regulator, whose job it is to enable commercial energy activities to proceed, provided that safety, environmental, security or other applicable requirements are met, I can assure you that this regulatory role is neither easy nor at times popular, but it is a necessary and vital role that contributes to the ultimate success of energy development activities and, if performed well, diminishes the likelihood of adverse consequences."

Some links on this page are to documents in our Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS), and others are to documents in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). ADAMS documents are provided in either PDF or Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). To obtain free viewers for displaying these formats, see our Plugins, Viewers, and Other Tools page. If you have questions about search techniques or problems with viewing or printing documents from ADAMS, please contact the Public Document Room staff.

Date: Wednesday, June 23 and Thursday, June 24, 2010

Location: NRC Headquarters Two White Flint Auditorium"

Two local nuclear energy facilities reported incidents to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in recent days.

Global Nuclear Fuel closed part of its Castle Hayne fuel manufacturing operation Friday after discovering some safety-related documents were missing.

The dry scrap recycle furnace was shut down Friday morning when it was determined the list of items relied on for safe operation was incomplete, the company told the NRC, explaining the equipment was shut down pending revision of the safety documents."

China and Kazakhstan agreed on Saturday to build and finance a gas pipeline and deepen atomic energy ties, extending Beijing's influence in a region where it has used its financial might to access natural resources.

Chinese President Hu Jintao and Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev presided over the deals between state companies that give Beijing greater access to resources and allow Kazakhstan, Central Asia's biggest economy, to diversify its energy exports. "

The owners of a closed uranium mine near Golden have been ordered by the state health department to stop discharging polluted water into a creek that flows into a Denver-area reservoir.

The state health department is taking action because Cotter Corp. has been discharging pollution without a permit and uranium levels in the water are significantly exceeding the safety standard, Steve Gunderson, director of the state water quality control division, said Thursday.

The agency sent the notice earlier this month. The Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety has sent a separate notice to Cotter saying it believes the company is violation of several state laws.

Cotter could face fines of up to $10,000 if found in violation. The Denver-based company didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

Russian state-controlled miner ARMZ wants to become one of the world's top 3 uranium producers after buying a controlling stake in Canada's Uranium One , General Director Vadim Zhivov said.

"We view Uranium One as a company to ensure global growth for ARMZ and therefore as a platform for mergers and acquisitions," he told reporters on Wednesday.

ARMZ added it had no plans to further increase its stake in Uranium One after closing the transaction, which will see the Russian firm own at least a 51 percent share."

A whistleblower has accused Olympic Dam of exposing its workers to dangerous radiation levels a claim BHP Billiton has denied.

The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has backed the company, saying it was not an issue.

But Greens MP Mark Parnell says the levels of polonium-210 are above the company's health standards and the whistleblower told him workers are being put at risk, with too few safeguards at Olympic Dam.

Mr Parnell said the substance was a dangerous toxic by-product of uranium production that could kill an 80 kilogram person with one microgram."

MONTROSE " Uranium mill opponents dominated a sparsely attended public hearing in Montrose Tuesday, urging state regulators to proceed with caution or even deny a license to the proposed Piñon Ridge Mill.

On the same day Gov. Bill Ritter inked a law requiring mill owners to comply with cleanup orders before expanding or restructuring, many Piñon Ridge opponents invoked the ongoing British Petroleum oil leak as proof that things can go terribly wrong, despite an industry's insistence to the contrary.

They also questioned the financial viability of Energy Fuels, the Canada-based company that hopes to build the mill near the West End communities of Nucla and Naturita.

"They're mining for investors," Hilary White of the Sheep Mountain Alliance alleged to members of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment."

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter stood by the banks of the Arkansas River near a neighborhood contaminated by a uranium mill today and signed legislation that will force uranium mills to clean up existing messes before launching new projects.

"This just gives us a better hold on the milling process," Ritter said before signing the bill, a bipartisan measure sponsored by Rep. Buffie McFadyen, and Sens. Ken Kester and Bob Bacon.

Greenwood Village based Cotter Corp. operates the mill that became a Superfund cleanup site in 1984. During the statehouse battle over the law, Cotter vice president John Hamrick said the legislation would kill Cotter's proposed project to refurbish the mill and haul 12.5 million tons of uranium ore from New Mexico for processing. Hamrick on Tuesday declined to comment on the status on any future project."

A June update by the U.S. Department of Energy said that 1.5 million tons of uranium mill tailings have been removed from near the banks of the Colorado River and buried in a disposal site 30 miles away.

Federal stimulus funding of $108 million has accelerated the cleanup, which will tackle an additional 1.2 million tons of tailings between now and September 2011."

Far more sewage has been spilled in Canadian urban centres over the last six years than any other harmful contaminant, newly released figures show.

An analysis by The Canadian Press reveals hundreds of millions of litres of sewage, as well as many other dangerous liquids, have been dumped right under Canadians’ noses.

The company leading the decommissioning of Dounreay has awarded contracts totalling more than £12m to three firms for the next stage of the project.

NDSL, Nuvia and Morson International will supply 70 staff to dismantle plant and machinery in some of the most hazardous areas of the Caithness site.

They will wear special suits as protection against radiation.

Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL) said the contracts should help it save millions of pounds.

Disturbing reports are coming from Russia that the former nuclear maintenance vessel Severka may have sunk at the wharf of a shiprepairing yard in Alexandrovsk (former Polyarny) on the Kola Peninsula, in close vicinity to the large administrative centre of Murmansk. Russian authorities have yet to confirm or deny the information.

Before the 1990s, the Severka was used to move spent nuclear fuel in Soviet-produced shipping containers of the type TK-12 from Andreyeva Bay the former naval base in the northwestern part of the Kola Peninsula to a transshipment site in Murmansk dubbed Area SRZ-35. There, not far from the grounds of Atomflot, Russia's nuclear fleet operator, the spent nuclear fuel was reloaded into railway cars to be shipped off to the reprocessing plant Mayak in the Urals.

The Severka was also equipped with special tanks for shipments of liquid radioactive waste.

We have seen the decades of suffering by the Palestinian people at the hands of the apartheid government of Israel and yet little has been said about another unseen problem that lies buried beneath the ground.

Over a long period of time the Israeli Government has secretly been dumping highly radioactive waste from their Dimona Nuclear Facility on Palestinian land. What is ironic is the basis as to why they have dumped their waste at such locations.

Many years ago I started up an environmental action group to safeguard the region I was living in at the time. This would cover all aspects of potential pollution from Gas Turbine Power Stations Agricultural PesticidesAir and Water Quality etc.

The nuclear industry is being offered what campaigners claim is a taxpayer subsidy on the disposal costs of waste from new reactors following a secret lobbying campaign, the Guardian has learned.

The revelation will put further scrutiny on the new government's promise that there will be no subsidy for nuclear power. Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne, the new energy and climate change secretary of state, admitted to the Guardian this week that the government already faces a £4bn funding black hole over existing radioactive waste."

ABORIGINAL traditional owners have initiated a Federal Court legal challenge to plans by the federal government to build Australia's first national radioactive waste dump near Tennant Creek, in the Northern Territory.

Mark Lane Jangala, a senior elder of the Ngapa clan, says he and many other senior elders were not consulted about the nomination of their land.

They say the proposed dump, on the disused Muckaty cattle station, would threaten a sacred male initiation site."

'They will have to dump it over my dead body,' says state senator

State Sen. Roy Herron on Friday blasted a proposal under consideration by weapons manufacturer American Ordnance that would convert the Milan Army Ammunition Plant into a storage facility for depleted uranium.

Herron issued a news release Friday saying that he will do whatever he can to fight the proposal.

"If they want nuclear waste in West Tennessee, they will have to dump it over my dead body," Herron stated in the release. "I was born for this fight. My deep roots here, experience as an attorney and work as a state legislator have prepared me for this battle.""

Residents worried about environmental damage from nuclear waste and those eager for a way to bring jobs to the region spoke Saturday to a commission considering a plan to bury nuclear material from 36 other states in West Texas.

Rose Gardner, who lives just over the state line in Eunice, N.M., told the commission she found the plan "very scary." Gardner lives about 5 miles from where material from nuclear power plants, hospitals, universities and research labs could be buried. She told the commission she worried about her water well and pointed to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as the kind of disaster that could happen.

"We all know it's the human error" that can't be predicted, said Gardner, 52. "I want you to remember, I'm just across the state line.""

The cleanup isn't finished yet at the former Velsicol Chemical radioactive waste dump site in Bethany Township, but the project has uncovered no surprises.

And no surprises is what everyone wants.

When it comes to the contamination in St. Louis, the news is almost always of the worst case kind, but not this time.

There is not a speck of any other type of contamination - only the low-level radiation, said Scott Cornelius, representative of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment

Environmental regulators have approved another expansion of DOE's CERCLA landfill in Oak Ridge, which will push the disposal capacity to 2.2 million cubic yards and apparently be the final addition to the facility that opened in 2002.

Cell 5, which brought the capacity to 1.7 million cubic yards (the previous cap under the original Record of Decision) was completed in May. Bechtel Jacobs Co., DOE's environmental manager in Oak Ridge, said work is already underway on Cell 6, which will be constructed by Avisco -- the same woman-owned company that built Cell 5."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is proposing a rule change that would allow hotter radioactive waste to be mixed with less hazardous waste so it could be disposed of in Utah.

Utah is home to the only low-level radioactive waste facility available to 36 states. But it only disposes of Class A waste, considered the least hazardous.

NRC regulators are proposing the blending of hotter Class B and C waste with Class A waste so that it can legally come to Utah.

Much of the nation's class B and C waste has had no place to go in the past two years since a South Carolina facility was closed to all but three states.

An NRC paper cites industry estimates that blended waste could slash the volume of orphaned Class B and Class C waste by two-thirds, from 12,000 cubic feet a year to about 4,000 cubic feet."

Virginia's Homeland Security Capital Corp. has received two task orders for environmental cleanup and facility demolition support services.

Homeland Security Capital announced its Safety and Ecology Corp. subsidiary was selected by the U.S. Energy Department to provide environmental remediation services at the New Brunswick Laboratory.

The $1.2 million hazardous material cleanup task order includes dismantling, removal and decommissioning of contaminated nuclear material at the laboratory in Argonne, Ill.

The possibility that depleted uranium could be stored at the Milan Army Ammunition Plant has parents like Stacey Moody worried for their families' safety.

Moody lives on Salem Road, about two miles from the arsenal, with her husband and 2-year-old daughter Elizabeth. She said storing depleted uranium at the arsenal would pose a threat to people and wildlife if a truck accident or explosion exposed people to the element that is classified as nuclear waste.

"It would be very easy for a truck to turn over or have an accident," Moody said. "What kind of sickness would it cause if there was an accident? That's something we don't know."

The Milan Arsenal is being used by American Ordinance to manufacture 40-millimeter munitions, 60mm and 81mm mortars and other munitions for the U.S. military, primarily the U.S. Army. The company has proposed moving that manufacturing to Iowa. It would then use Milan as a place to store depleted uranium shipped from Iowa and from weapons sent to the local arsenal for destruction. American Ordnance's plan must first be approved by the military. The plan can be found at www.jmc.army.mil/milan-ea.pdf.

Utah, say federal regulators, can help solve a big problem for the nuclear industry: the pileup of low-level radioactive waste at many of the nation's reactors.

Much of the hottest low-level waste -- though far less radioactive than used fuel rods -- is stored at 90 power plants because nuclear companies have nowhere to dispose of it.

So, staff at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has proposed changing federal rules to make that waste permissible at the EnergySolutions Inc. disposal site in Utah through "blending." By allowing more hazardous "Class B and C waste" to be mixed with lower-hazard "Class A" waste, regulators would make the blend legal for disposal at EnergySolutions, the only commercial site open to low-level radioactive waste from 36 states.

The blending proposal reflects a big shift in NRC policy, and it directly contradicts the public positions of Gov. Gary Herbert, the Utah Division of Radiation Control and the state's Radiation Control Board.

The Utahns object to blending "when the intent is to alter the waste classification for the purposes of disposal site access." Five years ago, Utah banned "Class B and Class C" low-level radioactive waste. "

The United States has an atomic waste problem.

Nuclear power is without a doubt a viable source of cleaner energy, but the problem has always been what to do with the process’ byproducts.

A new Wall Street Journal report details the U.S. Department of Energy's problems cleaning up temporary caches of steel-and-concrete casks filled with radioactive waste at now-defunct reactor sites.

The Energy Department is legally obligated to relieve nuclear plants of radioactive waste. But it hasn't, because there's nowhere permanent to put it.

Enormous quantities of radioactive waste and other hazardous materials are being transported from cleanup sites on the Dept. of Energy's Oak Ridge reservation. Much of the waste is moved to disposal sites elsewhere on the federal reservation, and the good news is that most of it never traverses public roads.

More than $20 million was spent a few years ago to construct a special haul road to allow daily truck convoys to move waste from demolition projects at K-25 to the DOE CERCLA landfill several miles away. It's expected to take about 40,000 truckloads to move the K-25 contaminated debris to the landfill."

Work has halted to empty the only Hanford tank on which work has been under way to retrieve radioactive waste, but the Department of Energy and its contractor have ambitious plans for the remainder of the year.

"Washington River Protection Solutions is going to be working very hard this summer to pull this off," said Steve Pfaff, DOE project director for tank waste retrieval.

Work started in January to remove 260,000 gallons of solids from Tank C-104, one of 142 leak-prone single-shell tanks at Hanford that still hold radioactive waste from the production of plutonium during World War II and the Cold War.

But this spring the pump lowered into the tank to help remove waste hit an obstruction hidden in the sludge. It was a broken piece of an old pump that Washington River Protection Solutions had removed from the tank to make way for the pump used for waste retrieval."

Two West Texas sisters opposed to a new radioactive dump site are asking the state's highest court to reverse the results of an election that narrowly approved $75 million in bonds for the project.

Peggy and Melodye Pryor filed their appeal Wednesday to the Texas Supreme Court.

The bond referendum, held in May 2009, allows Andrews County to borrow to build the nuclear waste disposal site for Waste Control Specialists.

The bond issue was approved by a three-vote margin, and a recount verified the 642-639 vote. The Pryors unsuccessfully challenged the balloting, and an El Paso appeals court upheld that outcome last month.

Andrews County attorney John L. Pool said he believes the high court will deny the Pryors' appeal."

Not Wales, or Scotland….they want renewables

The Welsh Assembly Government's new Energy Policy Statement ‘A Low Carbon Revolution’, sets out an approach to accelerating the transition to a low carbon energy economy in Wales, focusing on efficiency measures and the use of indigenous renewable forms of energy such as marine, wind, solar and biomass. It claims that by 2025 around 40% of electricity in Wales could come from marine sources and a third from wind.

In addition to local community-level micro-generation projects, it proposes the use of offshore wind around the coast of Wales in order to deliver a 15 kWh/d/p (per day per person) of capacity by 2015/16 and to capture at least 10% (8 kWh/d/p) of the potential tidal stream and wave energy off the Welsh coastline by 2025, and it wants onshore wind to deliver 4.5 kWh/d/p of installed onshore wind generation capacity by 2015/2017. It will back small-scale hydro and geothermal schemes, where they are environmentally acceptable, in order to generate at least 1 kWh/d/p, and wants bioenergy/waste to deliver up to 6 kWh/d/p of electricity by 2020- 50% indigenous/50% imported- also offering an additional heat potential of 2-2.5 kWh/d/p."

Greenpeace is collecting signatures to force the government to review the nuclear liability bill which it says allows foreign corporations to get away by paying a meagre compensation in case of a nuclear accident.
With already over 1.8 lakh signatures online, the petition will be forwarded to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, requesting him to stop the bill in its current form and review it.
"The proposed nuclear liability bill appeases foreign corporations by allowing them to get away by paying a meagre compensatory amount in case of a nuclear accident, which is not fair," reads the petition.
It alleged that the government was only considering cosmetic changes in the bill.
Drawing a parallel with the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984, the petition said: "The Bhopal judgment highlights the manner in which an American corporation has been so easily let off after causing the deaths of over 25,000 people and affecting thousands more."
"India must hold a public consultation before changing the liability rules for any nuclear accidents caused by US corporations." A Bhopal court on June 07 sentenced seven former employees of Union Carbide Indian Ltd to two years imprisonment for culpability in the tragedy and quickly bailed them. The ruling has triggered a furore. "

By most accounts, Brad Duguid is more committed to nuclear power than his predecessor as Ontario's energy minister. But, because of circumstances that mostly predate his time on the job, Mr. Duguid may wind up presiding over the continued decline of the nuclear industry in his province.

That industry revolves around Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the troubled Crown corporation that the federal government is desperately trying to unload. Under the right circumstances, the sale of its Candu division could mean the revitalization of a sector with room for growth and job creation particularly in Mississauga, Ont., where much of its operations are centred. But by most insider accounts, the circumstances really couldn't be much worse. "

India's opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Wednesday asked the government to withdraw the nuclear liability bill in the wake of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy verdict which only gave light penalty to the accused, reported the Indo-Asian News Service.

A spokesman for the BJP said the Congress-led government should withdraw the nuclear liability bill as "the aim of the bill is to please Americans".

The BJP had earlier demanded a revision of the civil nuclear liability legislation in the light of the Bhopal gas disaster, in which a gas leak from the U.S.-based Union Carbide killed at least 20,000 people 25 years ago in the central Indian city."

Germany's government has proposed a new nuclear fuel tax as part of a wider austerity package, without linking this explicitly to the expected extension of nuclear run-times. According to a statement posted on the government's website, extra profits generated by nuclear plant operators in the wake of higher power prices because of extra CO2 certificates justifies the next tax, which also will contribute to financing nuclear waste storage solutions. From 2011, the government expects Eur2.3 billion ($2.8 billion) a year until 2014 from nuclear plant operators through the planned new measures. E.ON, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall Europe, which run Germany's 17 operational reactors, are hoping their plants' life spans will be extended beyond the start of the next decade, when nuclear power should be phased out, according to a still valid law. "

The government today sought to end the debate on the civil nuclear liability Bill by agreeing to "periodically review" the Rs 500-crore cap fixed for operators of nuclear power plants as damages in the event of an accident, and increase it, if necessary.

At the same time, it has tried to make it easier for the nuclear operator to demand compensation amount from a foreign supplier in case the accident happens due to a fault in equipment. This has been done by removing a provision in the original Bill that gave the operator the right of recourse only if the accident had resulted from "wilful act or gross negligence" on the part of the supplier. "

Chancellor Angela Merkel's plan to extend the running time of German nuclear power plants faces legal and legislative obstacles, the Financial Times Deutschland said, citing an internal report by her government.

Only a "moderate" extension is possible without the consent of Germany's upper house of parliament, where Merkel lacks a majority, the newspaper reported today. That means her plan for a law to extend nuclear power by between 12 and 20 years can't succeed, FTD said. "

A loan granted by Britain's last government to a steelworks company to help it build a manufacturing facility for the nuclear industry is under review, the new business minister said on Thursday.

Vince Cable said the 80-million-pound ($118 million) loan to Sheffield Forgemasters agreed under the Labour government that lost power after a May 6 election was being re-examined, like all other projects agreed after Jan. 1, 2010.

"We inherited a very large number of projects which were agreed in a hurry in the run-up to the last general election," Cable told parliament during a question and answer session."

Exelon will get incentives from the American Power Act and the bill will increase the company's earnings in five years, if it passes.

John Rowe, chief executive officer of nuclear firm Exelon, saw the writing on the wall about government penalties and rewards for producers of greenhouse gases. Rowe considers himself the "senior chief executive in the utility industry" having served in those positions since 1984. He presided over Exelon's formation from the merger of Chicago utility Unicom and Philadelphia utility Peco.

During his time at Unicom predecessor Commonwealth Edison, Rowe changed the course of the company's future to focus on nuclear power instead of dirtier coal and oil-fired plants."

Much like Captain Renault in Casablanca, the White House is suddenly shocked, shocked to find that oil rigs can explode, destroying ecosystems and livelihoods. The Obama administration has backed away from its offshore oil expansion policy in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe as the long-term environmental and economical consequences unfold in the Gulf States. Headlines are clamoring for the criminal investigations of BP, TransOcean, Halliburton and ultimately, the federal regulator, Mineral Management Services (MMS). Rather paradoxically, President Obama is using the oil spill to call for more nuclear power.

Yet, with the exception of a handful of insightful political cartoonists, the obvious parallel between the regulatory delinquency of MMS and that of its nuclear equivalent - the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) - and the potential for an equally catastrophic accident in the nuclear sector, has not been drawn. As with the MMS debacle, the NRC is gambling with inevitable disaster with the same spin of the wheel of misfortune and with potentially even higher stakes. "

The use of nuclear energy to provide electricity is well-established. At least that is the case in France, which has been a leader in developing nuclear technology. Thus 75 percent of the nation's electricity is generated by nuclear power plants. Production is so high, France has been contracting out an 18 percent surplus to its neighboring countries.

It has accomplished this with just 59 nuclear power plants in operation. However, it is expanding this number by building a more advanced reactor, called Generation III.

Contrast France's application of nuclear reactors to a nation's need for energy with the absence of any progress in that direction in the United States. It's been 30 years since construction of any new nuclear power plants was undertaken. Some reasons suggested for the lack of new construction include opposition by some with interests in fossil fuels."

A Toronto businessman accused of sending devices that could be used to build nuclear weapons in Iran was concealing his crime by ripping off their labels, the Crown charged Friday.

Federal prosecutors Bradley Reitz and Jennifer Conroy made their closing arguments against Iranian-born Mahmoud "David" Yadegari, 36, who is the first Canadian to be tried under UN anti-nuclear provisions.

"Why would Yadegari remove the labels (indicating they were pressure transducers) on the equipment that he was shipping to Iran," Reitz said. "

A Foreign Ministry investigation into a secret Japan-U.S. pact on U.S. nuclear-armed ships' port calls has ended together with the administration of former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

In closing the investigation, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada commented, "To lose diplomatic documents is to lose history."

Normally this would be regarded as a wise saying, but in light of the Foreign Ministry's investigation into the secret pact, it is a stray comment. The reason is that the secret pact is not yet "past history"; it is Japan's nuclear strategy today."

India has claimed that its nuclear assets are not under the threat of extreme left-wing Naxal rebels who have staged a series of high-profile attacks against government forces and were suspected to have sabotaged a passenger train recently, according to local daily The Hindu on Sunday.

Indian National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon told participants at an international conference in Singapore on Saturday that they "don't need to worry about" the rebels affecting the security of India's nuclear assets, according to the daily."

n a clear reference to Pakistan, India today said clandestine proliferation network in the region had adversely affected its security and pitched for a new global paradigm to meet the challenge, factoring in the "real" risks of terrorists gaining access to nuclear material.\n\nNational Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon also highlighted the dangers India faces by being in the vicinity of "epicentre" of global terrorism and pressed for increased global collaborative efforts to defeat the menace particularly when terror groups are "networked to an unprecedented extent"."

Documents smuggled out of Myanmar by an army defector indicate its military regime is trying to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, and North Korea is probably assisting the program, an expatriate media group said Friday.

The Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma said the defector had been involved in the nuclear program and smuggled out extensive files and photographs describing experiments with uranium and specialized equipment needed to build a nuclear reactor and develop enrichment capabilities.

But the group concluded in a report that Myanmar is still far from producing a nuclear weapon."

U.S. Senator Jim Webb abruptly canceled a planned visit to military-ruled Myanmar on Thursday because of concern about the country's alleged nuclear cooperation with North Korea.

Webb, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific, said his visit would be "unwise" having learned of a report containing new allegations that Myanmar was seeking North Korea's help in developing a nuclear program.

It was not immediately known what report Webb was referring to and a U.S. embassy spokesman could not confirm the origin of the report, or where it was published."

The recent disclosure that the U.S. military is expanding its covert operations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa is widely seen as a dangerous precedent, with Iran as one of the main targets.

The Americans and their allies have long been waging a war of the shadows against the Islamic Republic, with Tehran often giving as good as it gets.

On May 24, Abdolhamid Rigi, a senior commander of the largest insurgent group in Iran, Jundallah, was hanged for masterminding bombings and the murder of government officials."

The United States must cut military spending dramatically to allow the government to fund other necessary programs, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said Friday.

Frank released a report by a panel he created that recommends almost $1 trillion in cuts during the next 10 years, The Hill reported. The Sustainable Defense Task Force includes members from left-liberal groups and from libertarian ones like the Cato Institute.

Frank heads the House Financial Services Committee. He acknowledged many of the task force proposals will have trouble passing Congress, especially weapons systems that provide jobs for constituents."

The right wing revolt in the Utah Republican Party that denied renomination to incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Robert Bennett has now produced an issue affecting Nevada.

The two Republicans contending in the primary election to replace Bennett have both talked about reviving nuclear testing in Nevada.

"We need to always have our eye on the ball for developing new weapons systems, and that is going to require new testing," candidate Mike Lee told the Salt Lake Tribune.

His opponent Tim Bridgewater agreed. "I would support that," he said. "I would prefer that we don't have to move down that road, but … we shouldn't give up our strong position in the world because more nations are becoming nuclear powers, and the greater the deterrent, the less likely we ever have to use them.""

How do wars begin? With a "master illusion", according to Ralph McGehee, one of the CIA's pioneers in "black propaganda", known today as "news management". In 1983, he described to me how the CIA had faked an "incident" that became the "conclusive proof of North Vietnam's aggression". This followed a claim, also fake, that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964.

"The CIA," he said, "loaded up a junk, a North Vietnamese junk, with communist weapons—the Agency maintains communist arsenals in the United States and around the world. They floated this junk off the coast of central Vietnam. Then they shot it up and made it look like a fire fight had taken place, and they brought in the American press. Based on this evidence, two Marine landing teams went into Danang and a week after that the American air force began regular bombing of North Vietnam." An invasion that took three million lives was under way."

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and GOP Sen. George V. Voinovich are locking arms politically to go after federal cash to help fund the cleanup of the site of a closed uranium-enrichment plant in southern Ohio.

Ohio's U.S. senators asked key members of the Senate Appropriations Committee last week to come up with all the money President Barack Obama asked for in his proposed 2011 budget for cleanup and related efforts at the Piketon site: $479million total, including $416million for direct decontamination and cleanup efforts. Voinovich is a member of the appropriations committee.

This is separate from ongoing work by USEC, a private company, to try to build a commercial enrichment plant on the site. Commercial uranium-enrichment plants produce fuel for nuclear-power plants. The old Piketon plant produced fuel for nuclear-power plants before it closed in 2001, but in the Cold War, it also made weapons-grade uranium for the country's atomic-weapons program.

Congress allocated $303million for the cleanup in the 2010 budget, and the Piketon cleanup got an additional $118 million from the stimulus package."

At first, the Fernald Preserve inspires jokes.

"Let's come back and go hiking -- in 500 years," I say, checking out trails marked with radiation monitors.

My mom and stepdad make cracks about fish with three eyes and birds with six wings, ha ha. Still, we're a little nervous.

Fernald Preserve used to be the site of the factory where uranium was processed for nuclear bombs.

From 1951 to 1989, it was known as the Fernald Feed Materials Production Center, a secretive facility in the middle of farm country in southwest Ohio. It produced nearly 70% of all uranium used in America's nuclear weapons"

As part of the Obama Administration's ongoing commitment to transparency surrounding the response to the BP oil spill, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that Department is providing online access to schematics, pressure tests, diagnostic results and other data about the malfunctioning blowout preventer.

Secretary Chu insisted on making the data widely available to ensure the public is as informed as possible, and to ensure that outside experts making recommendations have access to the same information that BP and the government have. The site will be updated with additional data soon.

"Transparency is not only in the public interest, it is part of the scientific process," said Secretary Chu. "We want to make sure that independent scientists, engineers and other experts have every opportunity to review this information and make their own conclusions."

The information is posted at energy.gov/oilspilldata. It includes detailed raw data on the pressure readings within the blowout preventer, as well as rates and amounts of hydrocarbons captured by the top hat and by the riser insertion tube. There is also a timeline of key events and detailed summaries of the Deepwater well configuration, the blowout preventer stack tubes, and the containment system."

Stimulus funds wills ease environmental concerns

Congressman Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) met with representatives of the Department Energy Tuesday at Brookhaven National Laboratory to announce that the lab will receive an additional $28 million in Recovery Act funding to complete the dismantling of the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor by this fall.

The remaining steps include the removal of a 300-foot stack at the site and a concrete shield that once surrounded the reactor's core, already removed. Also to be dismantled are concrete air ducts, equipment from an associated ventilation building and exhaust filters, and other contaminated pipes and structures."

EnergySolutions Inc., as the managing partner for Uranium Disposition Services (UDS), marked the commencement of the initial operation of the DUF6 Conversion Facility at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

EnergySolutions, working closely with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), took control of the project in 2007 to manage the operational reviews and construction, completing the project within budget and ahead of schedule. Working closely with AREVA NP Inc. and Burns and Roe Enterprises, the work involved managing the operational reviews and construction. The facilities will be used to convert DOE inventory of depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) into a stable form for beneficial use, re-use and/or disposal."

Every minute, 10,000 gallons of water mysteriously gush out of the desert floor at a place called Ash Meadows, an oasis that is home to 24 plant and animal species found nowhere else in the world.

A new Brigham Young University study indicates that the water arriving at Ash Meadows is completing a 15,000-year journey, flowing slowly underground from what is now the Nevada Test Site.

The U.S. government tested nuclear bombs there for four decades, and a crack in the Earth's crust known as the "Gravity Fault" connects its aquifer with Ash Meadows.

A nuclear explosion was set off 37 years ago, near Krestishche village in Krasnograd district, Kharkiv Region. It was the first in Ukraine and probably the only one in the European part of the Soviet Union. Scientists had determined that a large gas condensate field in the area which was discovered in 1970 could hold up to 300 billion cubic meters of fuel. In 1971, 17 wells were already operating in the Krasnograd district. But an accident occurred when drilling a new well at the field in July 1971. Gas came to the surface before the well reached its planned depth and the force of the spewing gas condensate reached 400 atmospheres, throwing two workers into the air.

Engineers took days deciding what to do to stop the well. The nearest village was just 500 meters away. Residents were told to not light any fires and to stay out of their homes and not turn on any lights. Unable to stop the gas, the engineers decided to light it. By the next day, the burning flare was tens of meters high. Several attempts were made during the next year to put out the fire. Filling the well with tons of concrete slabs did not work - they flew apart like toys. Such flares are normally put out by capping the well. But for this case, specialists from Moscow offered an original solution an underground nuclear explosion."

In a fight that showed the flaws in California's ballot initiative process and the sheer nerve of PG&E, the state's largest utility, clean energy and local control has won. Proposition 16, which would have change California's constitution to force cities and counties to get the approval of two-thirds of their voters before using public money to invest in local energy projects or utilities. PG&E spent over $46 million on the effort, which would have ensured its monopoly.

Prop 16 stems from a 2002 state law, that allowed "community choice aggregation," which allows counties or cities to purchase electricity while utilities continue to offer the infrastructure for power delivery--the power lines, distribution equipment, supply natural, and even billing.

How the world is fed and fueled will in large part define development in the 21st century as one that is increasingly sustainable or a dead end for billions of people.

A new and hard-hitting report concludes that dramatically reforming, re-thinking and redesigning two sectors -- energy and agriculture -- could generate significant environmental, social and economic returns.

Current patterns of production and consumption of both fossil fuels and food are draining freshwater supplies; triggering losses of economically-important ecosystems such as forests; intensifying disease and death rates and raising levels of pollution to unsustainable levels."

What a wonderful presentation from a company that really knows how to deliver a product!

Ecogeek has a post on an offshore wind farm planned for the US great lakes - Nation's First Freshwater Offshore Wind Farm Planned for Lake Erie.

It's an exciting time in wind energy these days. The U.S. will be getting its first offshore wind farm thanks to Cape Wind's long-awaited approval, and now plans for the first freshwater offshore wind farm in the U.S. have been announced as well. The Lake Erie Energy Development Corp has signed a deal with GE to purchase five offshore wind turbines destined for the Ohio waters of the lake.

The 4-MW turbines will be placed three to five miles offshore though their exact planned location isn't known. This is expected to be the first order of many from the development corp that has made a goal of having 1 GW of freshwater-based wind energy online by 2020.

Stuart at Early Warning has a post on a study of the impact of rising fuel prices on different geographical regions in the US (which looks similar to a comparable study done in Australia a few years ago - The Impact Of Rising Oil Prices On Sydney Suburbs) - Peak Oil Stress Map.

The map [below] is a first rough cut at where the stress of peak oil (or any oil shock) is likely to be greatest. It comes from taking county level data from the Census Quick Facts and extracting two variables: the average travel time to work (from the 2000 census), and the median household income (from 2008 data). The idea is that if average travel time is long, that probably indicates that people in that county need a lot of oil to run their cars. On the other hand, if income is low, they are probably going to have more trouble paying for that oil. So I divided the travel time by median income, and then rescaled that index by its own average and standard deviation to produce a map of where the problems are likely to be greatest.

The ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil disaster is bringing the mainstream media a little closer to the peak oil debate.

It's been out there on the business pages for a while, but it is beginning to make its way into news pages via comment columns, and in a roundabout way, of course. It's still at the flirtatious stage, but its beginning.

It's a hot topic, and few mainstream writers are actually throwing their weight behind the concept of Hubbert's peak (M King Hubbert, left). Right now, they are mentioning peak oil to deny it, but doing so with words that clearly agree with the concepts behind the issue. Perhaps it's a coded way of informing people in the know that the writer is in on the bigger picture, but can't actually come out and say it. Or at least not right away."

As the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster continues to unfold, the peak oil community has a "teachable moment" in which it can illuminate the reality of our energy plight. The public has had a crash course in the challenges of offshore oil, and learned a whole new vocabulary. They are more aware than ever that the days of cheap and easy oil are gone.

What they do not yet grasp are the challenges in transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables.

The Greens (anti-fossil fuel agitators) want to end offshore drilling, but don't realize that their alternatives are in the wrong scale or the wrong time frame to make a difference. The Browns (the fossil fuel industry) are in full damage-control mode while rapidly losing the public trust. Meanwhile, the politicians are focused on who's to blame and who will pay, while skirting the fundamental problem of our addiction to oil."

t is a crucial, if geekish, point: Wind and solar power are NOT intermittent, they are VARIABLE.

If someone talks about problems with the intermittencies of wind and solar energies, it is out of ignorance or to intentionally discredit them. Obviously, the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow but those things can be scheduled and forecasted and are no reasons whatsoever not to keep building wind power and solar energy as fast as is humanly possible.

The Western Wind and Solar Integration Study, from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), says transmission system tools are now available that would allow the Mountain West and Southwestern states to get 35% of their electricity from wind and solar energies by 2017. All it will require, aside from the building of the wind and solar production capacity, is a change in the WestConnect group of grid operators’ standard operating procedures."

In the wake of the BP Gulf oil disaster, the natural gas explosion in Texas this month and the coal mine diaster earlier this year. It seems like public consciousness is finally shifting. While being green and supporting renewable energy was a good public relations move for the last few years, it now seems like a practical one as well to prevent disasters like these from occurring again. It seems like the mood is ripe for the transition to renewables and other sustainable energy technologies to begin in earnest.

I had the chance to sit down with Dr. Amory Lovins, chief scientist and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, to talk about how the transition to renewables will make the U.S. energy system more secure and stable and where the country currently stands in that process."

An interesting map overlay of the BP oil spill.

click on the site and it will bring up a google map with the oil spill on top of where you live.

This is a major multi-part report on the growing crisis coming between the growing use of energy and water demand.

German companies Siemens, RWE and SWE are teaming up to build the world's largest wind park off the coast of Wales in the Irish Sea, they announced together on Friday.

The German engineering conglomerate and energy companies have agreed to invest in 160 wind turbines for the Welsh-named "Gwynt y Môr" project, expected to power 400,000 British homes.

Located 13 kilometres from the shore of North Wales, the 124-square-kilometre wind park will be completed in 2014, though it will begin providing electricity in 2013.

Democrats are trying to take control of public anger over the BP spill, and that means moving the debate to energy legislation. Harry Reid is now urging chairmen to pass cap and trade out of committee by July, and to include a strong section regulation offshore drilling and associated liabilities. Remember when the compromise to get the bill passed was going to be moreoffshore drilling?

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday called for a global fund to fight ecological catastrophes like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, as he sought to burnish his credentials as a green leader.

Admitting that Russia itself was lagging behind other countries in its standards of environmental protection, he also said Russians should feel free to protest against the authorities on environmental issues.

Medvedev said that the oil spill from the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico -- the worst in US history -- had showed that the world had been unable to imagine the scale of such catastrophes.

Skills gained from decommissioning the Dounreay nuclear plant could be turned to the dismantling of defunct oil and gas platforms, an expert has said.

Simon Coles, a member of industry forum Decom North Sea, said 80% of the skills at the Caithness site "overlapped" with those needed in the oil sector.

Two years ago, it was estimated that work breaking up redundant rigs could be worth £30bn by 2040.

Most of the 470 offshore structures in UK waters will need to be scrapped.

The more one hears about BP's ruinous catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the more one has to worry about the risks inherent in the proposed in situ uranium mining in nearby Weld County. Both BP's extraction of oil and Powertech's extraction of uranium depend on piping systems to bring the desired substance to the surface.

The piping system Powertech proposes to use involves many injection wells to push chemically treated water down through the Laramie Fox-Hills aquifer, which thousands of people depend on for water, and into the uranium ore body. Many more extraction wells will be used to pull the dissolved uranium and other dangerous heavy metals to the surface."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will consider whether to allow for the first time nuclear waste processors to "blend" higher level radioactive waste with the lowest level radioactive waste at a hearing on June 17. Low-level radioactive waste is generated by universities, hospitals, and commercial nuclear power plants, and is classified as Class A, B. or C depending on the concentration of the waste's radioactivity (with Class A having the lowest concentration). The proposal before the Commission would allow Class A waste to be mixed with more radioactive Class B and C waste and still be classified as Class A. If the proposal goes through, "blending" would allow utilities, processors, and waste disposal sites to avoid existing environmental and safety requirements for how they dispose of the hotter waste."