Radon found in school

We were going to run a different nugget today, but this came to our attention in a round about way.  So thanks to Gerry Duffy reporting for The Scottish Sun. Here it is in its entirity...

A school was closed after experts found high levels of a killer nuclear gas in classrooms. All four pupils were moved from Cabrach Primary in Moray after the discovery of colourless radon.

Last night one source said of the find: "It's scary to think that so much of this gas was in a school - the parents must be terrified."

The school will be closed until the Easter holidays next month while an underground pump is built to safely release the gas into the atmosphere. Staff and kids will stay at another primary until then

Radon, which is used in nuclear power, occurs naturally in all rocks and soils. Exposure can lead to lung cancer in severe cases. A Moray Council spokesman said: "We are working closely with the Health Protection Agency and Health and Safety Executive to carry out remediation work."(10/3/10)

Images: Miss Leeman's Web Bolg / Flickr

Watch out for those gulls - they may be radioactive!

The North-West Evening Mail brings us this unusual environmental tale. Seagull eggs are being destroyed at Sellafield to control the bird population amid radiation fears. A specialist company is pricking the eggs in a bid to keep the numbers down.

A Sellafield spokesman said the strategy is working so other methods, such as culling with poisoned bait, are not being looked at for the immediate future. The last time birds were poisoned on site was in 2008 when 39 birds were killed.

It was reported in national newspapers this week that an intensive culling programme was being considered at the site as bosses were struggling to tackle the ever-increasing numbers of seagulls. But that was strongly denied by the Sellafield spokesman. He said there has been a 30 to 40 per cent year-on-year reduction in the number of gulls on the site and that proves egg-pricking is working. He added that if the company needs to look at further culling methods in the future, it will do.

“There are concerns that they have been swimming in open ponds containing plutonium and radioactive waste, some of which dates back to Britain’s atomic weapons programme of the 1950s and 1960s.” Gulls flying around the site can become contaminated with radioactivity – such as when they fly into open fuel storage ponds.

But the spokesman stressed any contamination is so low it would not threaten public health. He said: “We are aware of the potential for gulls to become contaminated with low levels of radioactivity as a result of the operations at Sellafield.” (3/3/10)

US 'engaged in economic racism towards Native Americans'

‘Earth Talk’, reporting for Health News Digest, brings us this.

Native tribes across the American West have been, and continue to be, subjected to significant amounts of radioactive and otherwise hazardous waste as a result of living near nuclear test sites, uranium mines, power plants and toxic waste dumps.

In some cases tribes are actually hosting hazardous waste on their sovereign reservations - which are not subject to the same environmental and health standards as U.S. land - in order to generate revenues. Native American advocates argue that siting such waste on or near reservations is an “environmental justice” problem, given that twice as many Native families live below the poverty line than other sectors of U.S. society and often have few if any options for generating income.

“In the quest to dispose of nuclear waste, the government and private companies have disregarded and broken treaties, blurred the definition of Native American sovereignty, and directly engaged in a form of economic racism akin to bribery,” says Bayley Lopez of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He cites example after example of the government and private companies taking advantage of the “overwhelming poverty on native reservations by offering them millions of dollars to host nuclear waste storage sites.” (22/2/10)

New cooling towers needed at Oyster Crerek - Exelon not happy

Kirk Moore writing for the pages of the Ashbury Park Press goes fishing.

Screening and diverting devices that save fish from the Oyster Creek nuclear plant's cooling water intake are "about as good as it can get" in modern techniques, and the reactor's major impact on Barnegat Bay is with the tiny organisms that get sucked in and destroyed, a top state environmental official told a state Senate committee Monday.

Local fishermen and environmental groups have insisted for years the power plant is reducing numbers of clams and fish in the bay.

"Technically, the issue is more entrainment than impingement," said Nancy Wittenberg, an assistant commissioner in the state Department of Environmental Protection, referring to the intake of fish eggs and larvae. A system of fish ladders and chutes — what "I like to call an amusement ride for fish" — screen out and bypass the larger animals, releasing them back into the plant's canal that flows to Oyster Creek, Wittenberg said.

But the only way to reduce the entrainment losses of tiny life stages is to reduce the daily needs for water by constructing cooling towers, she told the state Senate Environment and Energy Committee.The DEP has proposed a new permit for the plant discharge that would require cooling towers; Oyster Creek operator Exelon Corp. has warned it will close the plant if it is forced to build the towers, saying that expense would make the reactor uneconomical. (10/2/10)

Local authorities say no to nuclear dumps in Spain

Emma Pinedo, writing for those nice people at Reuters, sets her sights on Spain. At least seven small Spanish towns had submitted bids to build a nuclear waste dump, but opposition from regional authorities cast doubt over the long-delayed project.

About a dozen towns in all have bid for the dump, most with populations of 500 or less, all hoping the 700 million euro (£615 million) plan will bring much-needed jobs in a country with some of the longest dole queues in Europe. Spanish voters generally shun nuclear power and regional authorities, wary of the project, have substantial autonomy from the central government and some have announced their opposition.

"I am willing to take every political, social and legal measure, whatever it takes, to stop the nuclear dump being built in Castilla-La Mancha," said Jose Maria Barreda, who is government head in the central-southern region. He has ordered his legal team to study the legality of lodging an appeal against two small councils in his region who tendered bids this week.

Barreda's counterpart in northeastern Catalonia, Jose Montilla, opposes a bid by the town of Asco (pictured) home to two of Spain's eight nuclear power stations."Catalan power stations produce 40 percent of all of Spain's power. We've done our bit," he said. (5/2/10)

Minnesota mad at non-collection of waste

Don Davis, reporting for the Pierce County Herald web pages has a slight clean up problem.

Minnesota cities hosting nuclear power plants and some legislators are tired of federal officials' refusal to pick up the waste as they promised decades ago.

"If you had a garbage man who didn't show up for 28 years, would you continue to pay the bill?" Rep. Joe Atkins, DFL-Inver Grove Heights, asked, as he told members of his Minnesota House Commerce and Labor Committee about his proposal to divert money now going to the federal government for nuclear waste storage and use it in Minnesota instead.

Atkins' plan would take the nearly $14 million Xcel Energy now sends the federal government annually for nuclear storage and divide it two ways. Half would be saved for cleanup when nuclear waste no longer is stored in Minnesota; the other half would fund a new commission to manage nuclear waste and help local communities pay for power plants' public safety needs.

Minnesota's nuclear power plants are near Red Wing and Monticello, with radioactive waste being stored near the reactors. Red Wing and the adjoining Prairie Island Indian Community are the most affected by nuclear waste, with 625 tons stored next to two reactors now.  2,450 tons of radioactive waste may be stored there by 2045.

City Council member Lisa Bayley said that Red Wing is not prepared to become a long-term nuclear waste storage site. "We need a plan to deal with the storage and protection of that waste.”(1/2/10)

Maralinga test site returned to former owners

Our thanks to The Economist for this environmental report. Maralinga looks much like the rest of Australia’s outback: Up close, there are differences. Its long, quiet airstrip recalls a time when this was an unlikely epicentre of the cold war. The desert is still littered with radioactive plutonium and other fragments of atomic weapons that Britain exploded more than 50 years ago.

Once teeming with nuclear scientists and British and Australian servicemen, Maralinga fell into eerie silence when the tests ended, in the early 1960s. Then just before Christmas 2009, it returned to life. Dignitaries flew in as guests of the Maralinga Tjarutja aborigines, a group that had been pushed aside when their homeland was chosen as a test site. Keith Peters, one of its leaders, presided over a ceremony to mark the end of his people’s long battle to reclaim their traditional lands.

After Australia agreed to its request for a test site, Britain exploded its first atomic device off north-west Australia in 1952. Maralinga (an aboriginal word meaning “place of thunder”), near the transcontinental railway in the state of South Australia, was chosen later as a better site. Altogether, Britain conducted 12 atmospheric atomic tests in Australia, including seven at Maralinga, up to 1957. The worst contamination came from the so-called “minor trials” of weapons components that took place for another six years. Tests at a site called Taranaki left plutonium, uranium and beryllium dispersed across the range. (20/1/10)

Some like it hot in Utah - but not the HEAL group..

Judy Fahys, reporting for The Salt Lake Tribune, brings us this. A Utah environmental group has scheduled a meeting with Gov. Gary Herbert to press its case that more testing is needed to make sure depleted uranium coming to Utah is not too hot.

HEAL says it reviewed shipping papers for some Savannah River, S.C., cleanup waste already in Utah and discovered that the DU, as depleted uranium is often called, contains reactor waste in concentrations that might top the radiological hazard limit set in state law. But, according to the group, it's hard to say for sure because the U.S. Energy Department has sampled too few of the DU drums from its Savannah River cleanup in South Carolina - just 33 of 33,000.

At least 5,408 drums of Savannah River DU are already buried at EnergySolutions Inc.'s low-level radioactive waste disposal site in Tooele County. Another 5,000 drums are at the site awaiting additional disposal requirements before burial, and two more Utah-bound train shipments are on standby in South Carolina.

EnergySolutions President Val Christensen, said his company "is providing a letter to the Governor correcting HEAL's technical mischaracterizations."(13/1/10)

There's an awful lot of landslides in Brazil - best close down Angra I & II

Today we visit Brazil, courtesy of the BBC’s web pages. Two nuclear power stations near a city in southern Brazil hit by deadly landslides may be temporarily shut down, the mayor has said.

Mayor Tuca Jordao, of Angra dos Reis, said main roads had been blocked by landslides and could obstruct any evacuation in the case of an emergency. He said the plants - Angra I and Angra II - were not damaged or threatened but should be shut down as a precaution.

Mr Jordao said that with roads blocked there was no way to quickly evacuate the city's inhabitants in case of a catastrophe at the nuclear plants.

"There are no operational problems at Angra I and Angra II... but if landslides persist in the hills, we'll need to shut them down," said Mr Jordao. (8/1/10)

Time to decide, Canada..

The provincial government of Saskatchewan in Canada is expected to indicate soon whether the province is open for business to nuclear power, according to a report by Angela Hall on the pages of the Leader Post.

"We want to clearly send a signal to the people of the province what the government's thoughts are on the whole uranium development going forward (and) on the power generation," said Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd.

Boyd said the government will formally respond to a report from the Uranium Development Partnership that said the province should consider nuclear power generation.

The government's response is expected to offer a more definitive answer as to whether nuclear power is currently seen as a viable option to pursue. The Ontario-based company Bruce Power has been considering building nuclear reactors in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

The Alberta Conservative government this week stated it was open to receiving private sector nuclear power proposals. But the Saskatchewan Party government has seemed to cool to nuclear power in recent months, citing concerns over costs.

New Cumbrian waste site 'First of its kind', apparently..

We were going to run this next week:  oh, well... Found on the pages of Materials Handling World web site. Detailed plans for the creation of a low-level radioactive waste disposal site in west Cumbria have been submitted to planners.

Endecom UK Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of recycling and resource management company SITA UK, handed the application to Cumbria County Council following extensive public engagement, including public exhibitions, presentations, leaflets and posters. The company proposes to establish a purpose-built and expertly engineered disposal facility on the derelict former coal quarry for the safe and secure storage of low and very low level radioactive waste. The material will be made up of primarily construction and demolition waste, which will mostly result from the decommissioning of Sellafield.

Development Manager Phil Holland said: "Our proposals for the Keekle Head site have now been submitted following almost two years of extensive research, planning, discussion and consultation. "It will be the first of its kind in the UK and we are therefore delighted to have enlisted the support of leading French radioactive waste management experts ANDRA, which has offered to provide design and peer review to our plans. Having operated its facility very successfully in recent years, it is well-placed to provide international experience and expertise to the Keekle Head team."

If given the go-ahead, the site would be operated to the highest European standards and best practise, ensuring no detrimental impact to health, the environment or the community. It would also be regularly monitored by the Environment Agency.

Red Wing & Monticello emergency services want a fistfull of dollars

Mike Kaszuba, reporting for the StarTribune web site in Minnesota, brings us this controversial environmental tale.

Thirty times in the past four years, Red Wing police and fire fighters responded to emergency calls at the Prairie Island nuclear plant and in Monticello, a fire department designed for a town of 11,000 people stood at the ready when a 13-ton valve box controlling steam pressure collapsed at the nuclear power plant three years ago, shutting it down for days.

Now, with Xcel Energy winning approval to store more radioactive waste at the plants, officials in Red Wing and Monticello say the added safety risks they manage as homes to the state's two nuclear power plants are increasing. In a move already drawing criticism, the two cities are asking that $13 million currently sent each year by Xcel Energy to the federal government for radioactive waste disposal instead be kept in Minnesota so that state and local officials can start planning for how to manage the risk of a nuclear crisis.

The proposal is stirring familiar passions over nuclear energy, pitting those who worry that there is still no long-term solution on nuclear waste storage against those who see nuclear power as an underused energy source with a long, mostly safe, track record.

Volunteers needed to house Canadian waste in New Brunswick - interested?

Colin Woodard, writing for The Christian Science Monitor scans the ‘Wanted’ ads..

If they were to take out a classified ad, it would read something like this: "Wanted: safe, willing home for 40,000 metric tons of nuclear waste. Must be Canadian. Phone for details."

That's what's on offer from Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization, the entity charged with finding a site for the spent fuel produced by Canada’s 22 nuclear reactors. While they don't advertise in newspapers, NWMO officials were in New Brunswick province last month holding a public presentation to make communities aware that they're looking for appropriate candidates to be considered as hosts for the radioactive materials.

Canada, like the United States, is seeking a long-term solution for storing spent nuclear fuel, which will remain toxic for more than 10,000 years. But the Canadian approach to finding a central depository site has fundamental differences, most strikingly that potential host communities must volunteer.

Canada's plan aims to avoid local resistance by requiring communities to ask to be considered as hosts for an underground repository. Volunteers will be given extensive information on the ecological risks and economic benefits of the repository, which is expected to cost between $16 billion and $24 billion. After public endorsement via referendum or other means, the community would become a candidate for extensive technical review.

Looking for somewhere to dump some nuclear waste (again)? Head north, guv, to Lancashire

This was found on the pages of Lep News this week. Concerns have been raised that radioactive rubbish from across the UK will be dumped on the outskirts of a Lancashire city. SITA UK wants permission for waste from more companies to be disposed of at Clifton Marsh. Local councillors are worried this will mean nuclear rubbish from all over the country being buried in Lancashire. If approved, the application will allow more companies to use the landfill site for "very low level radioactive waste" (VLLW) and "low level radioactive waste" (LLW).

Colin Hardman, nuclear regulator for the Environment Agency, said permission would need to be given before waste was transported to Clifton and said: "The volumes are too small to justify anything other than road transport. To some degree, waste can be shipped abroad for treatment, but that is a very expensive operation."

He said radioactive waste arrived at the site in special containers and was buried under a metre and a half of refuse. He said there were no concerns about anything arriving at Clifton Marsh "covertly" because everything was labelled and said: "The radiation levels are generally not a problem."

The Environment Agency is expected to make a decision on the application next year.

Mark Jaffe and the Denver Post get set for some ecological restoration. Buried in the $33 million cleanup of the radioactive Shattuck Chemical site in Denver, along South Bannock Street, was a $250,000 settlement for ecological restoration.

That settlement, with some regional cooperation, has quadrupled to $1 million that will help refurbish Overland Pond Park and restore wetlands along the lower South Platte River. "By partnering with local governments and community groups, we've been able to use that settlement for some ambitious plans," said Laura Archuleta, an environmental contaminants specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Shattuck Chemical Co., which salvaged uranium from defective fuel rods, closed in 1982, leaving its 6-acre site contaminated with radioactivity. The site was officially cleaned up under the federal Superfund program in 2006.

Because the site is in the South Platte River watershed, the restoration efforts are broad. About 280 acres of wetlands on the Eastern Plains will be restored at a cost of $818,000, based on an initial $75,000 from the Shattuck settlement. Adding funds and services to the project are government agencies, private businesses and landowners, said Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Matt Filsinger.

Among those participating are Ducks Unlimited, the Colorado Division of Wildlife, the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District, the Harmony Ditch Co. and Drakeland Farms.

Things get rather dusty in France - 39kg plutonium dusts-worth actually...

Peggy Hollinger, reporting for the Financial Times, reports from France for this one.

Andre-Claude Lacoste, the head of France’s Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), was taken aback when French politicians demanded a public inquiry into the country’s nuclear industry a few weeks ago. He could not understand why his joint letter with two other European regulators demanding design changes to a new-generation EPR reactor being built in France, Finland and soon in the UK, should have prompted a storm in a country traditionally supportive of nuclear power.

The letter came in the wake of a series of recent incidents in France, not least the discovery of 39kg of plutonium dust that had built up over 40 years in fuel-making facilities run by the Atomic Energy Commission, the state nuclear research body. The incidents prompted a call from Greenpeace for the “immediate halt of work on the EPRs in Finland and France”.

France’s independent watchdog insists there is no reason to worry about safety in the country’s nuclear installations. The ASN records roughly 1,000 incidents a year and Mr Lacoste says he does not have the impression that there has been an “unusual accumulation of incidents” this year.

921 nuke warhead detonations cause underground water contamination

Ralph Vartabedian, reporting for the LA Times web pages heads to Nevada for this one.

A sea of ancient water tainted by the Cold War is creeping deep under the volcanic peaks, dry lake-beds and pine forests covering a vast tract of Nevada.

Over 41 years, the federal government detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground at the Nevada Test Site, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Each explosion deposited a toxic load of radioactivity into the ground and, in some cases, directly into aquifers. When testing ended in 1992, the Energy Department estimated that more than 300 million curies of radiation had been left behind, making the site one of the most radioactively contaminated places in the USA.

They have successfully pressured federal officials for a fresh environmental assessment of the 1,375-square-mile test site, a step toward a potential demand for monetary compensation, replacement of the lost water or a massive cleanup.

In a study for Nye County, where the nuclear test site lies, it’s estimated that the underground tests polluted 1.6 trillion gallons of water. That is as much water as Nevada is allowed to withdraw from the Colorado River in 16 years - enough to fill a lake 300 miles long, a mile wide and 25 feet deep.

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Researcher puts his/her foot in it at Montana State - No? How about: What have you stepped in?

Robert Meeder, reporting for the Komu web pages brings us this cautionary tale: always look where you are walking! A researcher at Montana State University accidentally tracked phosphorus from a lab to a few areas across campus recently.

An unidentified lab researcher accidentally spilled phosphorus-32, a radioactive isotope, at a Schlundt Annex laboratory. The researcher then walked outside, unaware that the chemical spilled onto his or her shoes.

Department workers used Geiger counters to locate radiation patches. Most of the radiation was in a dirt filled area, at a corner outside Schlundt Annex, the biochemistry building. The radioactive dirt will be stored for up to six months before it can be disposed. Most of the researcher's footprints have been sealed with black paint to stop any possible contamination from spreading.

The risk of airborne exposure to phosphorus-32 is minimal, but it is very dangerous if ingested. The MU Environmental Health and Safety Department and biochemistry students and teachers declined interviews. After the cleanup, an investigation will determine if disciplinary action is necessary.

It's yet another 'best bring your geiger counter tale': this time we're heading west to Devon

Considering a holiday in Devon? Best take a Geiger counter with you after reading this little gem brought to us by those nice people at Ekklesia.  Campaigners were expected to rally in Plymouth at the weekend to demonstrate against plans for a nuclear waste plant in the city centre. It is thought that if the plans go ahead, the plant would store dismantled reactor components from the UK's nuclear submarines, possibly for several decades until a long-term disposal site can be constructed.

People are particularly concerned that the site is only 400 metres from a primary school. There is also concern that both businesses and tourists could be driven away if Plymouth is identified with the dumping of nuclear waste, thus affecting the city's economy.

“This will be risky work never undertaken before in the UK,” explained Dave Webb, Vice-Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). “The submarines certainly need to be dismantled - however this should not be in the middle of a city.” He suggested that, “Instead of blighting Plymouth with the reputation of being Britain's only city-centre nuclear dump, the government should invest in a green regeneration strategy for the city, providing long-term sustainable jobs."

I was going to say 'water, water everywhere - best bring your geiger counter'; but I won't...

Mary Manning, reporting for the Las Vegas Sun, brings us this environmental report from the Nevada Test Site.

Scientists have found radioactive tritium from nuclear tests in Nevada contaminating groundwater off the Nevada Test Site for the first time. However, state and federal studies indicated it would leave the nuclear site within 50 years.

A groundwater sample taken in a new well drilled on Air Force land contained tritium at about 12,500 picocuries per litre below the federal Environmental Protection Agency Safe Drinking Water Act limit of 20,000 picocuries per litre. A picocurie is a measure of radiation in liquid.

The Energy Department predicted in February that groundwater contamination would leave the Test Site boundary near Pahute Mesa, in the northwest corner of the sprawling site about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Tritium occurred naturally in lakes, rivers and public water supplies at between 5 and 25 picocuries per liter before nuclear weapons testing began in 1945 in New Mexico. Tritium is formed in nature from cosmic rays striking hydrogen. It is produced in nuclear explosions as well.

Current plans are to drill six more test wells, at a cost of U$ 5m each, on and near Pahute Mesa over the next two to three years, said Darwin Morgan, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which operates the Test Site for the Energy Department.

EPA to search for uranium 'hot spots' in Arizona

Cyndy Cole, reporting on the pages of the Arizona Daily Sun brings us this disturbing environmental tale.

A dump near Tuba City that has been leaching low levels of radioactive waste into the shallow aquifer finally is getting some federal attention, if not an actual cleanup yet.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to fence off a remaining section of an old dump, near two Hopi villages, and test for hot spots of radioactivity close by. This includes one area where the agency says uranium levels in the water exceed what's federally considered safe for drinking water by eight times. Local villagers who believe their downstream springs are threatened have long sought a total excavation of the dump.

Uranium-related waste found in the testing will be removed with heavy equipment beginning in October, and 263 new testing holes will be dug to search for more. "We're looking for a uranium source in the dump," said Leah Butler, project manager for the EPA.

The dump, which operated uncontrolled and unlined from the 1950s to 1997, is located a few miles from a former uranium mill. Altogether, eight test wells at the former Tuba City dump show uranium levels exceeding what the EPA considers safe for drinking water.

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Green Party uncover leaks at Aldermaston

Robert Warlow, reporting for the pages of Newbury Today, goes to Aldermaston for this tale. Campaigners  have called for more transparency after details emerged of a radiation leak at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Aldermaston.

Research by Reading Green Party revealed that radioactive contamination was found in a building at the site on June 29. Although radioactive material is not believed to have spread beyond the site boundary, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) and the Environment Agency were informed of the incident, but the details were not disclosed to the press and the public.

The party’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Reading East, Rob White, said: “AWE does not appear to have learnt any lessons following the July 2007 flood that crippled the Burghfield nuclear warhead assembly plant. The company’s instinctive reaction was to cover up the incident and this incident appears to be more of the same with it not keeping people informed.” He added: “This creates concerns and we are asking them to be more upfront and honest about what risks are posed to the public.”

AWE spokeswoman Rachel Whybrow said: “This minor event took place during routine decommissioning work in a building on the AWE Aldermaston site. When an internal contamination alarm sounded, monitoring of staff and a survey of the area was carried out, which confirmed the event posed no threat to staff or the wider public.

Possibility of uranium mine close to Grand Canyon upsets locals

Here’s something that I bet you didn’t know – nope, me neither! So thanks to the Associated Press and the web pages of KSWT 13 in, I believe, Yuma.

Environmental groups on Tuesday filed a 60-day notice that they intend to sue the federal Bureau of Land Management over its decision to allow a uranium mine to reopen north of the Grand Canyon.

Canadian mining firm Denison Mines Corp. says it could reopen its Arizona 1 Mine about 20 miles from the canyon's northern border by the end of the year. Dennison received the final state permit needed to move forward last week.

The BLM says Denison has an approved mine plan and should be allowed to resume operations. The mine closed about 20 years ago.

But the Centre for Biological Diversity, Grand Canyon Trust and the Sierra Club argue that the BLM failed to consider potential impacts to endangered species. They also say the agency is relying on an outdated and inadequate environmental analysis.

Government plans upset residents of West Cumbria

The following is taken from an article on the BBC’s web pages, written by Rachael Howorth for Radio 4’s Open Country. Eleven potential sites for a new generation of nuclear power stations have been short-listed by the government for development. Nine are next to existing reactors; just two are green-field sites in West Cumbria.

The prospect of skilled jobs coming to this isolated region appeals to some in the area, but many of those running small businesses fear for their future.

Carl Carter is the researcher for local Labour MP Jamie Reid. He is convinced that the power station is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for this area to become economically sustainable. If the power station were to go ahead there would be the opportunity for well-paid, highly-skilled jobs.

However, he suggests that the Kirksanton site is really a fallback option to be used only if the site of the existing nuclear facilities at Sellafield, 20 miles up the coast, proves impossible to build on.

For the sake of U$1bn, would you build a nuclear plant here? Progress Energy would..

The following is an editorial for the Tampa Bay Tribune we found on the pages of Tampa Bay Online. Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet's approval of a proposal to build a nuclear plant in Levy County will cause some environmentalists to howl. But the plant will produce clean energy and reduce the nation's dependence on oil.

Indeed, those conservationists rightly calling for Florida to develop alternative energy sources should applaud the addition of the nuclear facility, which will replace two coal-fired plants. Progress Energy's Levy County facility will include two 1,100 mega-watt nuclear-powered units. Florida needs to develop wind, solar, wave and other renewable energy sources. It also needs to put far more emphasis on conservation, which offers enormous opportunities for energy savings at little cost.

But nuclear must be part of the energy inventory if Florida is to seriously reduce carbon emissions yet still meet the needs of some 18 million residents. And Florida Progress officials say nuclear power is far cheaper to generate than power from other sources. They say the Levy plant will save ratepayers $1 billion a year.

This is the first nuclear power plant to be approved in Florida in 33 years. Consider how much more energy self-sufficient and how much cleaner the state would be had not irrational fears of nuclear power halted its utilization.

All packed up and ready to go to Utah - 14,800 drums of waste waiting to be moved

Thanks to the Augusta Chronicle for the following. Nearly 15,000 drums of depleted uranium oxide will be shipped from South Carolina for disposal in Utah under a contract awarded by the Department of Energy.

The 14,800 drums of Savannah River Site (pictured) waste will be disposed of at EnergySolutions’ facility about 70 miles west of Salt Lake City. The shipments will take place over 14 months, although it was unclear last week when they would start. The announcement, made by the Energy Department in mid-July, comes as EnergySolutions fights an effort to place a moratorium on the disposal of depleted uranium in Utah.

Depleted uranium is classified as the least dangerous type of low-level radioactive waste and has been disposed of for 18 years at the EnergySolutions' facility. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has acknowledged, however, that the material is different than other low-level waste because it becomes more radioactive over time for hundreds of thousands of years. The NRC is now studying whether new rules are needed for its disposal.

Spokesman Mark Walker said EnergySolutions could also receive depleted uranium from facilities in Oak Ridge, Paducah and Portsmouth over the next five years.

Hawaii 5-0 it’s not: more like Hawaii Oh no thanks to ‘migrating’ uranium

Found this via Honolulu’s Star Bulletin web pages

A preliminary study has concluded the public is not at risk from depleted uranium at the Pohakuloa Training Area on Hawaii’s Big Island, the military said.

The Army conducted the study as part of its licensing application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a site-specific environmental radiation - monitoring plan.

According to the report, only three pieces of the radioactive material have been found at Pohakuloa (right) and the remainder, if any, likely fell into cracks in the lava. The July 8 report says, "If any significant quantity of DU was fired at PTA, it is expected to have quickly migrated through the pahoehoe (smooth ropy lava) and a'a basalt (a type of rocky cinder) flows and is no longer detectable at the surface."

The migration theory "made me giggle," said Mike Reimer, a Big Island resident who served 10 years as head of research at the Colorado School of Mines after a 25-year stint on a uranium project with the U.S. Geological Survey. "On the basis of that study, they can't come to that conclusion," Reimer said. "That document they sent to the NRC, I think, was extremely superficial and often contradictory."

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How much salt would you like with your Tritium sir?

Michael Scott Moore, writing for the pages of Miller McCune, goes down the mines for this report. Rock salt, at least while it's underground, has two main properties: It can be soft and easy to mine, and it can form a watertight seal. This helps explain why the West German government started fork-lifting thousands of metal drums of "low-to-medium" radioactive waste into an abandoned salt mine called Asse II during the 1960s.

The mine plunges deep into the hills near Braunschweig (aka Brunswick), in the centre of Germany, and politicians in Bonn regarded it during the Cold War as a test site for storage of nuclear waste. An overhead layer of rock salt would shield the mine from groundwater, and the shifting salt itself, over centuries, would seal up any fractures and finally pack the nuclear waste in a safe geological bed.

But that's not what's happening. Around 12,000 liters of groundwater leak into the mine every day. Some of it mixes with the radioactive waste. A few weeks ago, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) finally admitted that some brine collected in Asse II had traces of tritium and caesium 137.

But last year the German public learned that the group in charge of maintaining Asse II at the time had known about the accumulation of suspect water since 2005 — and even tried to mitigate the threat to its employees by pumping it to a deeper level of the mine. Heinz-Jörg Haury, spokesman for the Hemholtz Institute for Scientific Research, tried to explain in mid-2008 why Helmholtz had made no public announcement. "We believed no one was in danger, inside or outside the mine," he said.

Thinking of going to the 2010 Olympics? Better take a Geiger Counter with you, then.

Ted Jeory and David Jarvis, reporting for yesterday’s Sunday Express, bring us this (if true) rather scary Olympic tale.

Thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste is to be buried in a “nuclear bunker” next to the Olympic stadium under construction in London. Contaminated soil found around old industrial works on the site will be sealed in a radiation -proof concrete container just 400 yards from the athletics track and 250 yards from Stratford International rail station. The massive bunker, the size of half a football pitch, will be built under an approach ramp to a bridge across the River Lee inside the Olympic Park and next to a site where new homes will be built after the 2012 games

A total of 7,300 tonnes of toxic soil will be buried in the “disposal cell” between the stadium, the station and the River Lee which drains into the Thames. It will be lined with a plastic membrane and capped with 4ft of clay.

Liberal Democrat Olympic spokesman Don Foster MP called on the Olympic Delivery Authority to reveal scientific proof that the site would be safe for future generations.

A report from radiological consultants Nuvia told the ODA the overall risk to site workers and future visitors was “negligible” and within safety standards. But it warned any future housing “would need to be designed to minimise radon intrusion”. And it added: “Water should not be abstracted from below the disposal site to water vegetables, etc.”

Perhaps we should put this one under 'Environmental Stuff You Didn't Know'

Linda Gunter, writing for the Ventura County Star web pages brings us something we definitely didn’t know and I bet you didn’t, either.

July 16, 1979, just 14 weeks after the Three Mile Island reactor accident, and 34 years to the day after the Trinity atomic test, the small community of Church Rock, N.M., became the scene of another nuclear tragedy.

90 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste and 1,100 tons of solid mill wastes burst through a broken dam wall at the Church Rock uranium mill facility, creating a flood of deadly effluents that permanently contaminated the Rio Puerco River.

Five weeks after the spill occurred, the mine and mill operator, United Nuclear Corp., were back in business at Church Rock as if nothing had happened.  Why is the Church Rock spill - that washed into gullies, contaminated fields and the animals that grazed there, and made drinking water deadly - so anonymous in the annals of our nuclear history? Perhaps the answer lies in where it took place and whom it affected.

Church Rock was a small farming community of Native Americans, mainly Navajo, eking out a subsistence living off the arid South-Western land. Nearby, several-hundred-million gallons of liquid uranium mill tailings were sitting in a pond waiting for evaporation to leave behind solid tailings for storage. The long-term effects of this enormous level of radioactive contamination are not yet known, given that health effects resulting from radiation exposure can take decades to appear and can affect future generations.

Obama cancels recycling plans - but don't say anything...

Geoff Brumfiel, writing for Nature.com’s web pages brings us this. Earlier this week, the administration of President Barack Obama quietly cancelled plans for a large-scale facility to recycle nuclear fuel. The move may prove a fatal blow to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) set up by previous president George W. Bush.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) set up GNEP in early 2006 to tackle the problems of nuclear proliferation and nuclear waste. As nuclear power spreads, some nations will want the ability to produce their own uranium fuel through enrichment  - a process that can also be used to create material for nuclear weapons. The Bush administration hoped to limit proliferation of enrichment technologies by creating a guaranteed fuel supply for non-nuclear weapons states. Through GNEP, countries with enrichment plants, including France, Russia, and the United States, will guarantee a supply of fuel to countries that agree not to develop their own enrichment capabilities.

Once the fuel is used, the supplying nations will take it back and 'reprocess' it for use in their own commercial reactors. Plutonium and unused uranium isotopes can be chemically extracted and put into new fuel pellets that in turn can be used in specially designed reactors. France, Japan, the United Kingdom and Russia already reprocess fuel for commercial use, although the United States hasn't done so since the 1970s.

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Looks lovely, doesn't it? Wrong - there's plutonium in them thar hills!

LeRoy Moore, reporting for the Daily Camera’s web pages, tells a chilling environmental tale. The most contentious issue regarding the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge in Colorado is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) plan to open the refuge for hiking, biking, picnicking, school field trips and other activities. Before public access is allowed at the refuge, the surface soil needs to be sampled for plutonium content. This type of sampling, which has never been done at the Rocky Flats site, will demonstrate whether or not plutonium is present in breathable particles - its most dangerous form.

Newcomers to the Denver-Boulder area may not be aware that for almost four decades the Rocky Flats nuclear bomb factory located about eight miles south of Boulder produced the explosive plutonium "pit" at the core of every nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal. Routine operations as well as major fires and accidents released very fine particles of plutonium to the environment both on and off the plant site.

Inhaling or ingesting plutonium or taking tiny particles into the body through an open wound can result in cancer, disruption of the immune system, or harm to the gene pool. Because plutonium has a half-life of 24,110 years, its presence in the environment in particles so small they can attach to dust poses a permanent danger.

Production was halted in 1989 after the FBI raided the plant to collect evidence of environmental lawbreaking. Plutonium pit production ended permanently in 1992 when the Rocky Flats mission was changed from production to cleanup of a badly contaminated site.

Duck & cover - those 'muddy' wasps have left radioactive nests laying around Hanford

Shanon Dininny, reporting for the Associated Press brings you, my fellow wasp haters, a tale to chill the blood! If workers cleaning up the nation's most contaminated nuclear site at Hanford didn't have enough to worry about, now they've got to deal with radioactive wasp nests.

Mud dauber wasps built the nests, which have been largely abandoned by their flighty owners, in holes at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation in 2003. That's when workers finished covering cleaned-up waste sites with fresh topsoil, native plants and straw to help the plants grow — inadvertently creating perfect ground cover for the insects to build their nests. Nearby cleanup work also provided a steady supply of mud, which the wasps used as building material.

Today, the nests, which could number in the thousands, are "fairly highly contaminated" with radioactive isotopes, such as cesium and cobalt, but don't pose a significant threat to workers digging them up. "You don't know what you're going to run into, and this is probably one of the more unusual situations," said Todd Nelson, spokesman for Washington Closure Hanford, the contractor hired to clean up the area under the oversight of the U.S. Department of Energy.

The wasps largely built their nests in a 75-acre area around H reactor, pulling the mud from the bottom of a storage basin that once held irradiated nuclear fuel. (15/06/09)

Erm, we've just spilt some Tritium - but, not to worry, it didn't go anywhere

Kim Janssen, writing for Chicago Breaking News, brings us a rather non-story – but worrying nevertheless.  A radioactive leak at Exelon's Dresden nuclear power plant has been contained and isn't a risk to public health, authorities said recently. Leaked tritium  (a radioactive by-product of nuclear reaction that can cause cancer and birth defects) was found Saturday during routine tests at the Grundy County plant, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The leak is not believed to have left the 1,700-acre plant site. Exelon officials said leaked tritium has not entered the public water supply. But the company hasn't found the cause or source of the leak, which was discovered in a monitoring well and storm sewers at the 37-year-old plant, the oldest privately-financed nuclear reactor in the United States and not far from the Kankakee and Des Plaines Rivers.

Workers were digging in the "general area" where a waste pipe is believed to have failed and are testing other wells at the plant, Exelon spokeswoman Krista Lopykinski said. "There's no danger to public or staff safety.”

But Paul Gunther, of anti-nuclear campaign group Beyond Nuclear, said Exelon has a history of "trivializing uncontrolled and unmonitored" tritium leaks. "Where is that contaminated water going to be 10 years from now?" Gunther said. "Groundwater can move and its movement is hard to predict."(12/6/09)

Where do we store spent fuel? NIMBY row rumbles on in the US

Lynn Edward Weaver, reporting for the Ledger’s web pages in Lakeland, Florida, brings us this. The U.S. has already committed $24 billion to build an underground repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, according to the US Department of Energy.

Florida alone has forked over $743 million. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has submitted a budget to Congress that would sharply curtail funding for the repository project, and indications are that its future is very much in doubt.

The administration's decision to cancel a DOE program aimed at reviving the recycling of spent-nuclear fuel has confused matters further. The real question is not "is there a better site for a repository?" but rather "why not leave the spent fuel where it is and compensate utilities for keeping it?"

About 60,000 metric tons of spent fuel - often mistakenly called nuclear waste - is stored at nuclear power plant sites in 35 states, mainly in concrete-and-steel dry casks. The spent fuel is safe-and-secure, and it could remain where it is for another few decades at least. Or until the spent fuel can be reprocessed to produce more electricity, as is being done successfully and safely in other countries, such as France, Great Britain and Japan.

License delays in Levy County put building works on hold

Our thanks to Reuters for this update. Progress Energy's  Florida utility will delay the construction timeline for its U$14 billion nuclear plant in Levy County and scale back early charges to pay for the plant, the company said recently.

Florida's second-largest utility said a 20-month delay in the construction schedule for two 1,105-megawatt, AP1000 reactors will push commercial operation of the first unit to 2018, rather than 2016 as currently envisioned. A second reactor at the site could begin operation about 2020.

The schedule change follows a ruling by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that prevents certain excavation and foundation work until Progress receives a license to construct and operate the plant, the utility said in a statement.

Progress had hoped to proceed with the foundation work ahead of the issuance of a license, expected by early 2012.

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New storage plans at Sequoyah upset residents in Oklahoma

Sally Maxwell, Managing Editor at the Sequoyah County Times, brings us this clean-up tale. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved Sequoyah Fuels’ plan to dispose of contaminated materials in an on-site cell, a plan opposed by some residents near the Gore-area plant in Oklahoma. John Ellis, Sequoyah Fuels president, said the NRC approved the plant’s on-site disposal site Monday, “after 16 years and two months.”

The plant, which at one time processed uranium to use in fuel rods for nuclear power plants, was closed in 1993 after it was found that portions of the plant and groundwater were contaminated.

Sequoyah Fuels and its parent company, General Atomics, have been working to meet the requirements to close the plant ever since. Last week, Ellis said that the proposed on-site disposal cell will cover about 11 acres in the centre of the property, which is about 60 acres now. The completed cell will cover about 17 acres, including its slopped sides, and will be about 50 feet tall.

The disposal is expected to cost General Atomics about $28 million and the NRC has approved the five-year disposal plan for financial reasons, so that the disposal may be paid for over that time period.

Get the map out, we're changing direction at Eagle Rock

This comes from  World Nuclear News’ web pages. Areva Enrichment Services (AES) has submitted a "roadmap" to US regulators defining changes it plans to make to its licence application in order to double the capacity of the Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility (EREF).

AES submitted its licence application for the centrifuge uranium enrichment plant to be built at Bonneville County, Idaho, at the end of 2008. On 31 March 2009 the company informed the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that it intended to revise the application to double the capacity of the plant from the originally planned 3.3 million SWU (separative work units, the unit of measurement for uranium enrichment) to 6.6 million SWU per year.

AES said that it had decided to revise the application to give it the flexibility to build a bigger plant if market conditions warrant but confirmed that it does not have any firm plans to do so. "In recent months, AES' confidence has increased regarding the construction of new reactors both in the United States and other countries," the company told NRC in its letter forewarning them of the revision.

Not a very good start to Earth Day, Oyster Creek

Todd B Bates brings us this environmental tale. Exelon is investigating whether a storage tank or piping may be the "leak source" responsible for an elevated level of radioactive tritium found in water at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant , according to a federal official.

Exelon owns the plant, which received a 20-year license renewal from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week. Workers detected 102,000 picocuries of tritium per litre - five times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standard for drinking water - in water in a concrete vault. A picocurie (in case you didn’t know) is a measure of radioactivity.

"Based on sampling and analysis of ground water monitoring wells in the vicinity, Exelon is investigating the potential that the leak source may be the condensate storage tank or associated piping," according to Neil A. Sheehan, an NRC spokesman.

Sellafield's B30 is contender for Europe's most contaminated buildings list

Robin McKie, reporting for The Observer, brings us this worrying tale from Sellafield. Last week the government announced plans for a new generation of nuclear plants. But Britain is still dealing with the legacy of its first atomic installation at Sellafield - a toxic waste dump in one of the most contaminated buildings in Europe.

Building B30 is a large, stained, concrete edifice that stands at the centre of Sellafield.  Surrounded by a three-metre-high fence that is topped with razor wire, encased in scaffolding and riddled with a maze of sagging pipes and cabling, it would never be a contender to win an architectural prize. Yet B30 has a powerful claim to fame, albeit a disturbing one: It is the most hazardous industrial building in Western Europe.

Piles of old nuclear reactor parts and decaying fuel rods, much of them of unknown provenance and age, line the murky, radioactive waters of the cooling pond in the centre of B30. Down there, pieces of contaminated metal have dissolved into sludge that emits heavy and potentially lethal doses of radiation.  It is an unsettling place, though B30 is certainly not unique. There is Building B38 next door, for example - the second most hazardous industrial building in Europe.

Shake, rattle and roll - Hanford hit by earthquake 'swarm'

Eric Mortenson, reporting for The Oregonian, gets all shook up with reports of multiple quakes at Hanford

It's been a jittery week at eastern Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where more than 100 small earthquakes have been detected in the past seven days.

The quakes are part of an earthquake "swarm" that has puzzled scientists since it began at the first of the year. As of Friday, monitors at Hanford had detected more than 700 earthquakes since Jan. 4, said Alan Rohay, senior scientist and seismologist with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which operates at Hanford.

The quakes haven't disturbed the extensive stores of radioactive waste at Hanford or interfered with cleanup operations there. The plant processed plutonium for nuclear weapons during World War II and the Cold War. Highly contaminated liquid material is stored in underground tanks that have a history of leaks, and critics are wary of leaks or spills that could migrate to the nearby Columbia River.

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There's plenty of fish in the sea - but not at Dounreay

Just in case you were thinking about a spot of fishing in Scotland, John Ross, reporting for the Scotsman has this cautionary (fishy) tale.

A ban on seafood coming from an area near the Dounreay nuclear site is to stay in place, following a Food Standards Agency review. The restriction, preventing the removal of fish and shellfish from a 2km exclusion zone, was imposed in 1997 after the discovery of radioactive particles on the seabed.

The order, under the Food and Environment Protection Act, was to ensure any seafood contaminated by irradiated nuclear fuel did not enter the food chain.

Last year, Dounreay began work using remotely operated vehicles to remove the worst of the particles that have caused concern for more than quarter of a century. Up to £25 million will be spent on covering an area the size of 60 football pitches and on monitoring up to the 2020s.

The FSA examined the existing ban in light of the work, but concluded that the restricted area should remain in place while the work on the seabed is going on and be reviewed once it is complete. The agency said that, with the restrictions in place, the risk to food safety remains extremely small.

Vermont Yankee clean? Vermonters don't think so...

The following environmental report comes courtesy of Julie Elmore, reporting for the Burlington Free Press web pages recently. Vermonters have been witnessing their own magic show on the energy stage in Vermont recently, with the Legislature and ratepayers as its audience. Throughout the past year, Gov. Douglas, utilities, Entergy and corporate special interest groups have presented a steady supply of smoke and mirrors to create an illusion -- the illusion that Vermont Yankee is cheap, clean, green and reliable, and still critical to Vermont's energy portfolio for the next two decades.

Cue the smoke: Vermont utilities continually publicize their efforts to increase renewable energy and conservation as part of their future energy plans. Yet, their plans show a small increased investment in renewable energy over a 25-year time span and continued reliance on Vermont Yankee during this same 25-year period.

Cue the mirrors: Vermonters are told we receive cheap and clean energy due in large part to the cost of purchasing power from Vermont Yankee. In fact, this claim is based on an old contract and doesn't account for the fact that Vermont Yankee will cost a lot more after 2012. Nor does it account for the dangers and cost of cleaning up nuclear waste along the Connecticut River. Nor does it reflect the intensively high CO2 emissions from uranium mining. Where compared to renewable alternatives, energy generated from the entire nuclear fuel cycle releases four to five times more CO2 and is the most polluting energy source, bar none.

Now, where did we dispose of that Cesium, Cobolt...? It's here somewhere

David Gutierrez, staff writer for Natural News brings us this. Hospitals have become a major source of nuclear waste in the United States, producing and storing millions of radioactive materials each year with no long-term disposal plan. Experts increasingly fear that such waste could pose health hazards or be stolen by terrorists and used to build dirty bombs.

"Instead of safely secured in one place, it's stored in thousands of places in urban locations all over the United States," said nuclear waste consultant Rick Jacobi.

Hospitals and other health facilities use radioactive material for a variety of functions. For example, radiation from cobalt and powdered cesium is used to sterilize blood and medical equipment, while cobalt is also used to kill diseased brain tissue.

The federal government has long had a policy that individual states should build sites where radioactive waste produced in that state can be stored and disposed of, but failed to create penalties for states that did not comply. As a consequence, only three such radioactive waste facilities exist in the United States.

A fishy tale brewing at Prairie Island nuke site

John Weiss, writing for the Post – Bulletin web pages brings us this “fishy” tale.

The Department of Natural Resources is waiting to read next month's draft environmental impact statement for expanding the capacity and life of the Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant near Red Wing, Minnesota, before it can tell how the project will affect fishing on the Mississippi River.

But it already is concerned about more warm water, both in winter and summer. The plant's license to operate one of two reactors will expire in four years, while the other will end in five years. The plant is 7 river miles above Red Wing.

Xcel Energy is asking for state and federal approvals to continue operating through 2034 and also expand capacity from the present 1,100 megawatts to 1,264, according to documents filed with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. Jack Enblom, a DNR senior aquatic biologist, said while Xcel doesn't think it will exceed its current limit on warm water in summer and winter, he's not as certain the river can absorb the extra 10 percent more heat.

French flagship reactor 7 times more hazardous, waste-wise - possibly

Despite the French government's global marketing of its flagship European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) as cheap and safe, nuclear energy is rapidly becoming the most expensive way to produce electricity, and its highly radioactive waste poses an ever-increasing problem.

Greenpeace has recently uncovered evidence that nuclear waste from the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) - the flagship of the French nuclear industry - will be up to seven times more hazardous than waste produced by existing nuclear reactors, increasing costs and the danger to health and the environment.

The EPR is designed to extract more energy from nuclear fuel than any commercially operating reactor in order to maximise electricity output. This "high burn-up" method causes the amount of readily-released radioactive substances in spent fuel to increase disproportionately. The storage of the hazardous waste will be more costly for a range of reasons - including an increase in the repository size due to the greater distance needed between canisters.

No appropriate waste facilities exist - or are even being planned - in Finland, France or any of the countries considering buying the EPR (including the UK, the US, Canada and India).

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You want to put a nuke power station where, Ed?

Here’s a little gem for you found on the BBC’s new pages. An outright ban on locating new nuclear power stations in areas of the UK that are susceptible to earthquakes has been lifted by the government. Ministers said the UK's earthquake risk was "modest" and power stations could be built to withstand any activity.

The nuclear industry now has two months to nominate potential new sites. The UK does not sit over a major seismic fault zone, meaning earthquakes are relatively rare and mild. The areas of highest risk are thought to be along the west of England, Scotland and Wales.

Despite being urged by some to keep the ban, the government ruled that some seismic risk should not automatically stop a site getting past the first stages of consideration. Nuclear developers will be able to apply for planning permission from next year and ministers will then announce which sites have been deemed "strategically suitable".

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband told the Nuclear Development Forum on Tuesday: "We'll be judging each site that gets nominated against the criteria we have set out and there will be plenty of opportunities for local authorities and the public to have their say on the options tabled."

New nuke power station on way for Anglesey - maybe...

Tomos Livingstone, writing for the Western Mail brings us this tale from Anglesey.  A new nuclear power station could be built next to the existing Wylfa station on Anglesey, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) said recently.

The NDA said it was “nominating” land near Wylfa – together with three sites in England – for consideration under the Government’s Strategic Siting Assessment process. Any new nuclear site would be built by a private firm, rather than by the NDA itself

But new nuclear build is highly controversial, and any development at Wylfa is likely to meet opposition from some MPs. Richard Waite, the NDA’s acting chief executive, said: “Our aim is to secure value from our assets for the benefit of the taxpayer. To achieve this, we expect to nominate land into the SSA process. Particularly for Anglesey, such a move has the added benefit of contributing towards the socio-economic aims of those communities.”

Polish state-owned nuke group seek partner for new build due 2020

This comes in its entirety from the pages of the Warsaw Business Journal that may have passed you by.

Polish power group, PGE plans to construct two nuclear power plants at the capacity of 3,000 megawatts each. State-owned power group, Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE) plans to construct two nuclear power plants, each with the capacity of 3,000 megawatts, the company’s chief Tomasz Zadroga said recently during a press conference.

According to Zadroga, PGE estimated that the cost of 1 megawatt of capacity would be between €2.5 and €3 (zl.10.3 and zl.12.41) million. “We want for energy to flow from the first plant in 2020. From our analysis, this is realistic,” Zadroga said.

The energy security strategy approved by the Polish government last week aims at one or two nuclear power plants to be built by 2020, as part of a consortium with a foreign partner. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said  that nine locations are being considered for the plants locations.

Faulty sump caused waste leakage into ground over 14 years

Here is a worrying environmental tale for the good folk of Essex, thanks to the BBC. Operators of a nuclear power station in Essex have been accused of allowing radioactive waste to seep into the ground for 14 years. The Environment Agency claims waste leaked from a unit at Bradwell power station, now decommissioned, between 1990 and 2004. 

Magnox Electric Ltd denies 11 breaches of radioactive waste disposal laws. Mr Harris, prosecuting, told Chelmsford Crown Court the power station was no longer running. "The case concerns the disposal of liquid radioactive waste which leaked to the ground from a sump at the site of what is now the former Bradwell nuclear power station," he said.

He went on to say: "These leaks occurred on a number of occasions between 1990 and 2004. They were caused by a combination of poor original design of the sump and no routine inspection or maintenance until after the leak was discovered." 

Judge Peter Fenn warned jurors not to carry out private research. "Resist the temptation to go down to your local library or on to the internet to conduct research into nuclear physics or nuclear power stations," he said.

Stay alert, it's siren testing day at Oakridge

Never let it be said that we don’t do our bit for public services.  Here is a heads-up for the people of Tennessee, courtesy of the OakRidger’s web pages.

The U. S. Department of Energy's Public Warning Siren System will be tested today in the areas surrounding the Department's Oak Ridge Reservation.

The sirens will be tested between 11 am and 2 pm Central. People in these areas during the test will hear a siren for three to five minutes. The sirens are located near the DOE's East Tennessee Technology Park, Y-12 National Security Complex, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The sirens are intended to provide immediate notification of an emergency to people who are within an approximate two-mile radius of DOE's ORR. The 33,725-acre ORR is located in Anderson and Roane counties.

In the event of an actual emergency, the sirens will be sounded. When citizens hear the sirens, they should go inside, close all windows and ventilation systems, and listen to radio or television for public health and safety-related information.

The DOE Public Warning Siren System is tested on the first Wednesday of each month. This effort is consistent with testing of warning systems around the Tennessee Valley Authority's nuclear power plants.

A website has been established that provides information to the public on what to do in case of an emergency at the DOE's ORR and can be found at : http://www.oakridge.doe.gov/emergency - this will take you to the relevant information page. By the way, at this time there is no emergency at OakRidge.

Contamination still a problem at Maralinga test site

Max Blenkin writing for the Herald Sun web pages brings us this sorry environmental report.

In the now well-known nuclear testing program, Britain exploded seven atomic bombs at the Maralinga, South Australia, test site between September 1956 and October 1957.This left Maralinga holding a quantity of bomb-grade plutonium, and no ideas what to do with it.

For the government of Malcolm Fraser, this represented a series of problems. It wasn't very well guarded, it wasn't especially secret and it wasn't clear the British government would want to take it back.

Cabinet papers for 1978 - released by the National Archives of Australia under the 30-year rule - show the government did manage to persuade the British government to take back their leftovers, provided the entire operation was kept top secret.

However, most nuclear waste on the site stemmed from so-called minor tests conducted between June 1955 and May 1963. This included testing of nuclear bomb initiators and a series of experiments termed Vixen B, conducted in 1960-63, to determine what might happen to a nuclear bomb in an intense fire, such as might occur in an aircraft crash.

A history of the site prepared by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) said the trials involved negligible fission yield. But they did produce jets of molten, burning plutonium, extending hundreds of metres into the air. After each trial the plutonium was carried by the wind in long plumes and deposited large distances from the site.

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R2 and 3PO clean up in Wales

Whilst the urge to use yet another image of R2D2 and C3PO is very strong (How could I resist?) Hywel Trewyn reporting for the Daily Post brings us this environmental tale. 35 tonnes of radioactive waste have been retrieved by robots at the former Trawsfynydd nuclear power station in North Wales.

The first stage in the plant’s clean-up finished two months early with a saving of £473,222. This is the first waste retrieval project of its kind, using remote control vehicles, to be completed on a UK nuclear power station.

Staff at the site operated by Magnox North on behalf of the site’s owner, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, completed work to empty underground vaults containing “miscellaneous activated components” (MAC).

Site Director Dr Phil Sprague said: “MAC consists mainly of steel and graphite components from within the nuclear reactors which became highly radioactive during the generating life of the power station. Retrieval of the waste was carried out in extremely challenging conditions, in an area containing high levels of radioactive contamination which could not be directly accessed by the site’s decommissioning teams.”

Dial R for radium 226: old dials may be responsible for US contaminent find

Teresa Rochester, reporting for the Ventura County Star web pages brings us this environmental report from California. Tests have uncovered radioactive contaminants in an open-air burn pit, already rife with chemical pollutants, at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, according to state regulatory officials.

Low levels of radium-226 and plutonium were discovered during recent testing said Norman Riley, the field lab project director for California's Department of Toxic Substances Control.

"These are very low levels of radionuclides, and certainly the discovery of radium is not that surprising. It's fairly common to find radium in landfills. We don't know if we found all that there is to find, and it doesn't answer the question of where it came from."

One possibility for the source is old radio or instrument dials, or it might have been used in experiments. The Field Lab, which is currently owned by Boeing Co. and formerly owned by Rocketdyne, is a former rocket engine and nuclear test site in the hills south of Simi Valley.

Boeing officials notified the state in October about the discovery and, in an e-mail update about the burn pit, wrote: "The levels detected are low in comparison to radiation from a single chest X-ray."

Ontario Power want to bury low-level waste in local limestone

The following environmental tale comes courtesy of the pages of The Canadian Press. As plans progress for a radioactive-waste site buried deep in Ontario limestone, the federal nuclear watchdog says the related safety research is full of holes.  Ontario Power Generation wants a licence by 2012 to bury low-to intermediate-level radioactive waste at its Bruce nuclear plant near Kincardine.

It's the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's job to approve or reject that application. But environmental critics and geoscientific experts are asking how the federal regulator can credibly assess crucial safety issues - especially when the commission itself says it lacks up-to-date, independent research.

"Compared to the European countries, research in Canada on geological disposal in sedimentary rocks is lagging behind by decades," the nuclear regulator said. Consultants will study the extent to which radioactive contaminants could be diffused through tiny pores in the 680 metres of sedimentary limestone under which they're to be buried.

Alice goes nuclear at thought of 1km long train approaching town

Daniel Burdon, writing for the Centralian Advocate brings us this disturbing tale from Alice Springs. Trainloads of radioactive material up to 1km long would pass through Alice Springs every day by 2016, under a plan put before the town council last week.  The proposed expansion of BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam mine in South Australia could result in the ore being ferried north by rail. The train would carry copper concentrate and trace uranium (which would not be highly refined).

Greens have slammed the proposal, citing major concerns including possible derailments, radioactive dust escaping from "closed wagons" and long-term social and environmental effects.

At Alice Springs Town Council's Ordinary Council Meeting, BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam's Expansion project public affairs advisor Anita Poddar said the plan would see four times the amount of ore mined from the site. If the company passed environmental assessments by the South Australian, Territorian and Federal Governments, all of it would travel through the town and on to Port Darwin.

Ms Poddar said the company hoped to have its environmental impact statements completed by April with approvals to proceed, possibly by 2010.

Oz uranium workers' toxic exposure "spot on the average"

This report comes from the pages of abc Australia. An independent radiation safety expert from Queensland (who was called in to speak to Ranger uranium mine employees this week about exposure levels) says management is reassessing its procedures.  The mine's union expressed concern after a dirty clean up job at the mine recently.

Mark Sonter said the mine's general manager asked him to provide an independent perspective to employees on radiation levels after about a dozen men were exposed to uranium oxide when clearing out a hopper in October.  He went on to say that the six men tested showed a very low level of chemical intake which probably happened when they washed after the job: "By getting a bit on their lips while showering after or brushing a still dirty hand on their face while showering or something like that.”

The men were told that the five micrograms of uranium per litre of urine that were detected is far below what constitutes a health or radiation risk.  "The average is that they all get about a tenth of the annual limit or maybe a bit more, so our uranium miners up here in the Territory are spot on the average for radiation workers throughout Australia," he said.

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If you're going out to play kids, remember to suit up...

This environmental tale comes courtesy of Svetlana Osadchuk, reporting for the Moscow Times. What children in a densely populated eastern Moscow suburb used to think of as a good little hill to play and toboggan on has turned out to be a radioactive waste dump — one that local residents and ecologists say could spill over and contaminate a larger area.

The radiation-emitting dump (which was unearthed during incomplete cleanup works) poses a danger to Muscovites, said Vladimir Chuprov, head of Greenpeace Russia's Energy Unit. He said the works, suspended half a year ago, were not done properly, leaving the site in a potentially dangerous state.

"The bad news is that the water has flowed in," Chuprov said. "This water might contain radioactive materials. Liquid is much more difficult to recover and keep from spreading."

Chuprov added that recent checks of the adjacent area by Greenpeace revealed radiation levels of up to 43 microroentgen per hour, compared to normal levels of 10 to 15 microroentgen per hour — possibly because of the fact that the truck wash site was not equipped with drain channels and a water collector, he said.

US draft study considers nuke power plant fuel re-use.

Annette Cary, writing for the Tri-City Herald, brings us this report about a new draft environmental study for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership on the impacts of expanding nuclear energy that favours reprocessing fuel that has been used in nuclear power plants rather than using it only once.

The draft study, or programmatic environmental impact statement, looks at alternatives to the practice of using nuclear fuel once and then sending it to a deep geological repository, such as Yucca Mountain, Nevada (pictured). It did not pick one option as preferred, saying only that the Department of Energy preferred to close the fuel cycle, or reuse fuel. The study also did not narrow sites for researching or reprocessing fuel, but did include information about areas, including Hanford, that might be appropriate for nuclear projects.

The study projects that electricity use in the U.S. could increase by about 40 percent by 2030. The DOE is looking at ways to support the expansion of nuclear energy production, which now supplies 19 % of the nation's electricity, while reducing the risks of nuclear proliferation and the impacts of disposing of nuclear fuel in geologic repositories.

No dear, it's a meltdown warning, not telemarketers...

Yet another siren story; this time it’s courtesy of Joseph Dougherty reporting for the Desert  News web pages. The Clearfield City Council in Utah, recently approved the purchase of three sirens to sound in the community in case of an emergency. It's part of a community emergency preparedness package begun in 2007 with the purchase of a low-wattage AM radio station that can give residents information they need in an emergency, said Clearfield Mayor Don Wood.

The sirens, which should be installed in Clearfield in the next six to eight weeks, are designed to broadcast a sound that will direct residents to turn on AM 1680. Wood said his city already employs a reverse 911 system that allows dispatchers to target a region of the city and send out an automated phone call with instructions and information.

But people may not receive the 911 call: during one drill some residents confused the reverse 911 call for telemarketers and hung up, so the city wanted to set up another notification system.

Clearfield may be one of the most deserving cities for a siren system. The city has Hill Air Force Base nearby (pictured above) where fighter jets are stationed and receive routine maintenance.

"It's like insurance," Wood said. "You hope you never have to use it."

More pollution problems stateside - this time in Colorado

This is another environmental tale from the US; this time from the Associated Press and picked up by the Examiner web pages. Federal researchers have begun a public health review in Canon City, Colorado, amid renewed concerns about pollution from a closed uranium mill.

The study, by the Health and Human Services Department, is examining potential exposure to pollution from the Cotter Corp. mill and the possible health risks. "We're not saying these (potential health impacts) were caused by the contamination," said environmental scientist Teresa Foster. "We're not at the point where we can make that determination. We're taking the community's concerns very seriously."

Lakewood-based Cotter says previous studies concluded that slightly elevated cancer rates in Canon City were not statistically significant. Company officials say the new concerns might be an attempt to head off a possible reopening of the mill. The mill was designated a federal Superfund cleanup site 24 years ago because of radioactive contamination of air and groundwater drifting away from the site just south of Canon City. The cleanup is less than half complete.

Not so much the stars at night are glowing bright - more like cows glowing green...

Tara Bozick, reporting for the Victoria Advocate, brings us an environmental tale from deep in the heart of Texas. Rancher John L. Gibbs worries what the release of radioactive water into the Guadalupe River would do to his cattle that drink from it. The 72-year-old DuPont retiree owns the land adjacent to the proposed Exelon Nuclear plant and shares a portion of Linn Lake with the 11,500-acre site 12 miles south of Victoria. “Any concentration at all with radioactive waste wouldn’t be good,” Gibbs said. “Good, clean water going in there is what you want.”

Gibbs saw that Exelon’s environmental report in its application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stated that: ’Discharge of cooling basin blowdown water and treated radwaste effluent will be to a diffuser structure located approximately mid-channel of the Guadalupe River.’

“It’s not going to harm anybody,” Bill Harris, Exelon’s community outreach manager, said. ”Landowners won’t be affected by minute, periodic discharges as the releases would be monitored and in accordance with Nuclear Regulatory Commission permit requirements. Landowners won’t need to be notified by such releases.”

The purified effluent would have low levels of tritium, sometimes lower than natural levels. Exelon operates its plant to keep radioactive releases as low as reasonably achievable, well below the maximum levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Angela & Pamela cause concern for Alice

Here’s a brief (but interesting) report courtesy of the pages of ABC Australia’s web pages. The exploration licence for a uranium mine outside Alice Springs has been granted. The Northern Territory Government has granted the licence to the joint venture of Cameco Australia and Paladin Energy to explore for uranium at the Angela Pamela site, 25 kilometres from Alice Springs.

The licence includes the condition that Cameco obtain further regulatory authorisation under mining laws. The approval of the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority is also required before ground work goes ahead.

An Alice Springs environment group says it’s disappointed, but not surprised, by the granting of the licence. Natalie Wasley from the Arid Lands Environment Centre says that process will involve risks to the area's ecosystem.

"It means there will be activity, a uranium project occurring 25 kilometres down the road. At the exploration stage there is still potential for contamination because we are dealing with a radioactive substance."

Mutters in Manatee over suspect Beryllium spill

Our thanks to Beth Burger, reporting for the Bradenton Herald’s web pages.Last week Tallevast residents in Manatee County, Florida, once again stood in front of Lockheed Martin Corp. representatives and said how a spill from a beryllium plant has affected their lives. Tallevast residents have distrusted the company since 2003, when they learned that three years earlier dangerous chemicals had spread from the nearby plant into their backyards.

Ray Johnson, a senior vice president with the company, flew in from Maryland for the two-hour meeting to assuage their concerns and listen. Johnson said he didn't have answers to all of their questions, but said: "I'm here because I care and we want to do the right thing,"

Many residents are concerned about the health effects of the contamination, dwindling value of their homes, dust and noise from construction.  Even though Johnson said no health issues or depreciation in property values could be linked to the contamination, the company has offered a medical exam program, as well as a property value program.

Radioactive sludge heads for landfill sites in US

Thanks to James McGinnis reporting for the Bucks County Courier Times and found on the Phillyburbs web pages for the following.  Federal and state regulators have agreed to let Waste Management accept low-activity radioactive waste (which originated at the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant, Pennsylvania) at its landfills in Tullytown and Falls.

The landfill operator said it would transport 750 tons of sludge laced with radioactive Cesium-137 and Cobalt-60 in special “super sack, polyethylene bags.” That's enough to fill about 55 transport trucks.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission senior health physicist Betsy Ulrich said the “extremely small quantities” of radiation in the sludge pose an “extremely small risk” to the public. “It is highly unlikely that this would affect anyone.”

Environmental groups were nonetheless disturbed by the plan to import the radioactive materials to a municipal landfill along the Delaware River. “Agreeing to store nuclear waste is a slippery slope,” said James Browning, state director of the Public Intoerest Research Group.

Scottish beach contaminated by nuclear waste

Chris Haslam, writing for The Times online web pages this week, brings us a cautionary tale should you be considering a holiday by the sea in Scotland. A beach contaminated by nuclear waste is a “radioactive minefield” that should be closed immediately, say worried locals.

Sandside beach, an attractive bay two miles west of the decommissioned fast-breeder reactor at Dounreay, is a popular stopping off site for tourists on the Highland coastal route – but campaigners say that thousands of tiny but potentially lethal radioactive fuel particles have contaminated the sand.

The Dounreay Particles Advisory Group (DPAG) has estimated that 5,000 particles have been accidentally discharged from the reactor’s crumbling storage shafts, with many being washed ashore at Sandside and the popular surf spots at Dunnet Bay and Murkle, east of Thurso.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) says that just 27 particles were found on Sandside beach in 2007, eight of which were large enough to pose a significant health risk. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) is required to scan the beach for particles every month and say the risk is minimal.

Sydney properties built on site of uranium smelter

Thinking of buying property in Australia? Well, best read this report from the pages of The Age news site, then. New South Wales Health has been accused of failing to effectively clean up at least four Sydney properties at the site of a former uranium smelter that operated from 1908-1915. Some years after it closed the land was acquired by the state health department and subdivided.

NSW Health still owns the now vacant lots at numbers 7 and 9 Nelson Parade in Hunters Hill, but neither it nor the DECC could tell a recent inquiry where contaminated materials from the sites were sent after being removed in 1987.

"The records talk about it being removed and placed elsewhere but we don't know precisely where it went to," DECC regulation director Craig Lamberton said. When challenged about the disposal of the waste, he said: "Well, it was (more than) 17 years ago."

Navajo reservation due for major clean-up

This emotive story comes courtesy of Ginger Richardson, reporting for The Arizona Republic and found on the azcentral web pages. The U.S. government will spend tens of millions of dollars to assess and clean up uranium contamination across the vast Navajo Reservation, but the effort is unlikely to erase decades of frustration over what has been characterized as a slow and sporadic federal response.

The exploration scarred the three-state Navajo Reservation's landscape and resulted in what tribal officials call a public-health tragedy on the reservation. The premature deaths of Navajo miners, cancer clusters and passed-on genetic defects are all thought to be the result of prolonged uranium exposure.

Today, the Navajos say the new federal response effort, which includes testing of water sources and the review of hundreds of homes and buildings for radioactive materials, is a "good step forward." But they also have grave concerns about the proposal, which is short on specifics in several key areas.

"It's a significant step, but there's still a long road ahead of us," said Steve Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency.

Alberta residents risk radioactive exposure  

This environmental story comes via Jeremy Loome, reporting for the Edmonton Sun. Albertans could face a significantly higher risk of radioactive exposure due to storage transportation, say opponents of a proposal to build a nuclear power station in Canada.

Canada is still 20 to 30 years away from completing a national storage facility which (according to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization) would see spent fuel rods from across the country being shipped to one central underground storage location.

According to environmental activists, a study out of the University of Calgary shows there is nowhere geologically appropriate at the proposed location that would suit an underground, temporary, on-site storage chamber.

With the Peace Country facility expected to take 12-15 years to be approved - if at all - that would mean transporting it to a storage facility elsewhere in the province. The risk from transportation will increase, says environmentalist and municipal councillor Trudy Keillor, when the federal facility is built some 15 years later. "Any time you're putting a lot more of this material on the roads, you are increasing the risk of public exposure," she said.

Texas waste buried near Mexican border

Here’s something from deep in the heart of Texas, courtesy of Enrique Rangel writing for the Lubbock Online web pages.  Starting next year, residents of Andrews County and south-eastern New Mexico will live with nuclear waste buried in their large but sparsely populated area.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality agreed to let Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists dispose of radioactive waste in a dumping site 3.5 miles from the Texas-New Mexico border and 30 miles from the town of Andrews, the county seat.

"We're very pleased. We're very excited," Rod Baltzer, president of Waste Control Specialists told reporters after the commission voted 2-1 to authorise his company to dispose of the nuclear waste.

Andrews Mayor Bob Zap said after the hearing that he and other residents in the community of 9,652 were supportive of the company.

"Our town, from the very beginning, looked at this and asked questions. ... We studied it. We worked closely with them. "We're really supportive of everything that's being done and supportive of the way WCS has handled it and will continue to handle it. We don't have any questions or doubts."

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White Man speaks with forked tongue at Vermont Yankee

This environmental tale is brought to you thanks to Susan Smallheer reporting for the Rutland Herald news pages.  The recent spate of advertisements promoting the electric power generated at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant as "clean and green" doesn't tell the true story, said two Native Americans whose lands are severely affected by the nuclear power industry.

Lorraine Rekmans, of the Northern Ojibwa people from Elliot Lake, Ontario, and Ian Zabarte, from Mercury, Nev., secretary of state of the Western Shoshone National Council, spoke in Brattleboro  recently,  their last stop in a weeklong visit to Vermont.

Rekmans' home, which is located on the north shore of Lake Huron, was devastated by the pollution from 11 different uranium mines, which she said had turned 10 lakes in the area into radioactive waste sites. For every pound of uranium, she said, there is a ton of mine waste, and the waste was dumped into lakes.

"People who get their power from nuclear plants should know that uranium doesn't just fall out of the sky," she said.  Much of the Western Shoshone's tribal lands are now operated as the Nevada test site.

Development prospects at Ohio waste dump

Looking for a bit of land to develop?  Bob Downing, reporting for the Ohio.com web pages, may have the answer.

A cleaned-up Ohio toxic waste dump is seeking a new owner: The Industrial Excess Landfill, a Superfund site that has been in the headlines for three decades, will soon be for sale under proposed consent decrees in U.S. District Court in Youngstown.

Negotiating terms of the sale will be up to potential buyers and Industrial Excess Landfill Inc., the Akron-based company that owns the 30-acre site.

But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has imposed restrictions on what can be done with the land: No houses, apartments, excavating or wells for drinking water. Potential buyers, Lake Township, are proposing to use the site as either green space, or a nature preserve.

Calvert Cliffs could be site of new power plant in Maryland

Gwen DuBois, writing for the Baltimore Sun’s web pages, brings us this environmental story from Maryland.

With the recent settlement between the state of Maryland and Constellation Energy Group, the power company is once again championing Calvert Cliffs as the site of a new nuclear power plant. This is not a cause for celebration.

On July 13, Constellation submitted the first new application to build a nuclear power plant in the U.S. since Three Mile Island. But the company threatened to go elsewhere if Maryland lawmakers re-established state regulatory control on new power plants.

Fear of a growing energy shortage is leading to calls for more nuclear power plants. With wind power already more economical than nuclear power, and solar power soon to be, one critic predicts nuclear power plants will be economically obsolete before they are built.

No uranium mining in Colorado, please

Here’s something that probably passed you by, courtesy of the Associated Press and Colorado’s Summit Daily web pages.

Jean Hediger can stand at the edge of her organic wheat farm in Nunn, Colorado and look west to the Rockies, east toward this speck-in-the-road town and straight ahead into what she sees as her worst nightmare.

A Canadian company’s plans to establish a uranium mine just across the two-lane county road from Hediger’s farm has triggered a bitter tug-of-war with residents of this fast-growing region about 70 miles north of Denver who fear the risk of contaminated water and other health problems.

“How do you farm organically next to a uranium mine?” Hediger asks. “It’s pretty darned scary, isn’t it?”

Powertech Uranium Corp. Chief Executive Officer Richard Clement insists the firm’s closed-system mining process, in which a solution of oxygen and sodium bicarbonate is injected to recover the uranium, is safe. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there about nuclear, about uranium, about radiation, about the effects of mining,” he said.

5,304 fish killed at Oyster Creek plant (who counted those?)

With thanks to Tristan J Schweiger, writing for the APP web pages. A total of 5,304 fish were killed as a result of the unplanned shutdown of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey, New Jersey, a company official confirmed recently.

Operators manually shut down Oyster Creek's reactor after one of the three pumps that feed water into the reactor tripped, according to a report on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Web site.

A final root cause will likely take several weeks to determine.  Elaine Makatura, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the determination of whether to impose any fines on the operator would be made after the cause of the incident is known.

1.4m Carolina residents to receive nuke pills

This report comes from Kathryn Thier, at The Charlotte Observer, found on the News & Observer website. Plans are under way to distribute pills to 1.4 million people in North and South Carolina to protect them in a nuclear disaster, replacing ones distributed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Officials are urging the public not to throw away their old potassium iodide pills as the Food and Drug Administration has extended their shelf life for two years.

Despite the shelf life extension, Carolinas officials are ordering new doses now. State health officials have said new pills are on order with the federal government to replace the outdated medication for residents living near nuclear reactors: The pills are expected to arrive around October 2008.

US visitors to be checked for radiation particles

Here’s something to make you think whilst packing your suitcases for your annual jaunt to foreign climes; a little gem found in yesterday’s Guardian. Apparently, there is a chance that future visitors to the USA and, possibly, Europe may find themselves being scanned for traces of radioactive materials! 

Because there are so many radioactive materials and articles going ‘missing’ every year (as we have mentioned in this section before) officials fear that it would be very easy to get hold of some of it for nefarious uses!! Our friends at the IAEA report that there have been 16 confirmed cases of illegal trafficking of enriched uranium of the past 10 years and also that incidents involving material with the potential to make a dirty bomb run into 100s.

People who have had radioactive iodine treatment (been there, done that!) are advised not to travel too soon after treatment as this, too, can set machines buzzing and bleeping and, in one instance back in 2003, led a bus in a New York tunnel to be stopped by the State Police as a passenger on board had had similar treatment earlier in the day!!

White powder causes alert in Whitehaven

A man who sent a white powder to a nuclear agency (the NDA) in Whitehaven, Cumbria, sparking a security alert will not face any charges, as police have now decided there was "no criminal intent".

At least 20 firefighters, along with police and two ambulance crews were on standby for more than five hours after mailroom staff alerted them over the package. Cumbria Police suspected the powder was toxic, but laboratory tests proved it was harmless.

The NDA said it was reviewing security procedures as a result of the alert

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Radioactive materials released to landfills

According to a recent report released by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, radioactive materials are being released from nuclear weapons facilities to regular landfills and could get into commercial recycling streams.

Diane D’Arrigo, NIRS’ Radioactive Waste Project Director, said "People around regular trash landfills will be shocked to learn that radioactive contamination from nuclear weapons production is ending up there, either directly released by DOE or via brokers and processors.  Just as ominous, the DOE allows and encourages sale and donation of some radioactively contaminated materials."

And, just in case you were thinking about moving to Tennessee (well, you might) the report found that the State of Tennessee is a leader in licensing processors that can release radioactive materials for the nuclear waste generators. "Tennessee is serving as a funnel to bring in nuclear weapons and power waste from around the country to disperse into the landfills and recycling without public knowledge," D'Arrigo said

Going batty at Capenhurst

Roosting bats have caused a four-month delay to the UK's leading clean-up program. A colony of protected Pipistrelle bats has colonized the structure of the former Capenhurst plant, which is currently being demolished by British Nuclear Group (BNG). After hibernating over the winter, the tiny flying mammals are now fully active and there is a possibility they may begin to breed. BNG is hoping to stick to its 2009 completion date and is currently consulting with local conservationists. They are also investing in new roosting boxes to encourage the bats to live elsewhere

Wildlife flourishes at Chernobyl

The exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power station is teeming with life. It may be the most contaminated place on earth, but in fact it is a perfect place for wildlife. As humans were evacuated from the area, animals and birds moved in, including Przewalski’s horses. Existing populations multiplied and species not seen for decades, such as the lynx and eagle owl, began to return.

There have even been tantalising footprints of a bear, an animal that has not trodden this part of the Ukraine for centuries, and birds have been seen nesting in the steel and concrete shield that was placed over the reactor.

EPA investigates buried waste at Camp Lejeune

Here’s something that may have passed you by, thanks to the Chicago Sun Times: The Environmental Protection Agency is investigating whether cancer-causing radioactive material was buried in the 1980s near a rifle range at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the Marine Corps' primary base on the Atlantic Ocean.

A recently recovered Navy document dated 1981 said the material included 160 pounds of soil and two animal carcasses laced with strontium-90, an isotope that causes cancer. The document said the dirt, carcasses and other materials containing strontium-90 originated at a naval research lab near the base and were buried in a remote area.

According to the paperwork, the waste was later recovered, ''safely stored'' and was awaiting shipment to an approved disposal site in South Carolina

DTE customers to contribute to new nuke build

Tina Lam writing for the Detroit Free Press brings us this environmental tale.

DTE Energy submitted 17,000 pages of documents last week to apply for the first new nuclear plant in Michigan in 20 years. If approved by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the utility proceeds, the new plant would be built next to the existing Fermi 2 nuclear plant near Newport. The application won't be approved for at least four years, and the construction would take at least six.

The expected cost is about U$10 billion -- most of which consumers will pay as the plant is built. Those costs will be on top of charges that will add 15% to customers' bills over five years.

The plant's cost depends on uncertainties, such as future costs of steel and copper as well as recent problems in the financial markets. "Obviously, financing a $10-billion plant is a challenge," a spokesman said.

There has been a debate for several years over whether and how fast electricity demand is rising in Michigan and whether any new power plants are needed. DTE projects demand will grow enough to need a new plant by 2020

Hanford cleanup nears completion

This is a follow-up on a story we ran earlier this year, regarding the massive cleanup operation in Richmond. Annette Cary reporting for the Tri-City Herald continues with this report.  Hanford workers digging up the final trench at a burial ground north of Richmond are finding huge stainless steel tanks (one with radioactive powder inside) measuring around 10x 8 ft., and approximately 100 drums of potentially flammable zircaloy chips. They also found processing equipment and pipes. 

Workers have about 60 percent of the trench dug up, which Washington Closure expected might have different materials. The approximately 500-foot-long trench has been called the thoria trench (a reference to a white, powdery oxide of radioactive thorium that's sometimes used in gas mantles for lanterns). At Hanford thorium was used in a program to research a new type of nuclear weapon.

The zircaloy, a metal alloy of zirconium and a small amount of beryllium, has been in pieces large enough so far not to present a fire danger: the drums have been well marked with a sticker that indicated it contained beryllium

Chilling figures from Yucca Mountain

For years, Nevadans have successfully beaten back plans to build a massive nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain, just 90 miles from Las Vegas, writes Lydia Ball for the Reno Gazette Journal’s web pages.

As Americans find themselves sinking deeper into an energy crisis, the nuclear energy industry is pushing to build more plants around the country. There is one very big problem with this: It would also double the production of nuclear waste and right now the only plan for dealing with that waste is to ship it all to Nevada.

The high-level nuclear waste that would be transported is nasty stuff. Under the latest proposals, 15,638 casks of nuclear waste would travel to Nevada. Each cask would carry between 2 and 15 tons of high-level waste.

On its way to Nevada, the nuclear waste would travel through more than 703 counties in 45 states. More than 123 million people live along the proposed truck routes alone and, as if that wasn’t scary enough, more than 10 million people live within a half-mile of the proposed routes. Ultimately, Nevadans will be most vulnerable to a disaster.

A return to Uranium mining on cards for Colorado? Locals concerned.

Thanks to the pages of the Salt Lake Tribune web site for this one. Cattleman George Glasier sees the next nuclear era amid the blood-orange mesas of the Paradox Valley, Colorado; the same western lands that hold a darker legacy from the last rush to pull uranium from the ground.

Glasier, the one-time mining executive-turned-rancher, wants to build a uranium mill on cattle grazing land near his spread. It would be the first in decades for America. The land is not far from the toxic uranium mines, now mostly abandoned, that serve as a reminder of an industry born of the Cold War.

As the third global energy shock begins to drastically alter national economies, a potential shift in U.S. energy policy has moved to the forefront of the upcoming presidential election. Glasier also believes the time to return to nuclear power is now and thinks Paradox Valley, about 300 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, is well placed to reap the rewards.

The proposed uranium mill would cost as much as U$150 million to build, money that Glasier is still trying to raise. The company hopes to begin construction by 2010.

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Contaminated water shuts down plant in Florida

Our thanks to Donna Wright, reporting for the Bradenton Herald’s web pages.

A broken pipe caused the accidental release of contaminated water in Tallevast, Florida, over the weekend, Lockheed Martin Corp. said this week. The alarm system that should have been triggered by the leak and shut down the system failed to go off.

Local residents want answers: For months residents’ groups have been repeatedly asking for a detailed safety response plan should an accident occur.

While a safety plan is under development, Lockheed has repeatedly said that its systems are designed to protect the community and pose no risk. All that changed Sunday when the water treatment system failed and waste water from the most contaminated source of the plume spilling out of a storage tank. The water treatment system pumps contaminated groundwater from the source area of the toxic plume stemming from an old beryllium (illustrated here and Be, 4 on the Periodic Table) plant and into storage tanks where it’s sent through to a treatment system prior to being discharged into the county sewage system.

For now, the treatment centre is shut down whilst investigations continue.

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Getting careless down in Boulder, Colorado

Found on the World Net Daily web pages. A glass bottle of plutonium powder that probably cracked when a federal employee tapped it up against a piece of marble later fell apart, releasing the radioactive material into a Boulder, Colorado lab, according to a new federal report on the June 9 spill.

The report on the accident at the National Institute of Standards and Technology campus also confirmed the substance that makes up a key component of a nuclear bomb trigger was obtained without managers' approval. When the powder spilled the worker washed his hands at a sink connected to the municipal sewer system and left the lab, thus spreading the contamination. Boulder City officials have complained to Congress about the mis-management of the spill and possible contamination.

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Three strikes and you're out - trouble at Tricastin

With thanks to Angelique Chrisafis, reporting for the Guardian for the following. A nuclear treatment centre next to the Tricastin nuclear plant in Provence run by a subsidiary of Areva, is causing problems for local people. Last month an accident at the treatment centre during a draining operation saw liquid containing untreated uranium overflow out of a faulty tank. About 75kg of uranium seeped into the ground and into the Gaffiere and Lauzon rivers. Locals’ homes are plumbed into the local groundwater from the now contaminated wells. After the incident there was a ban on using the groundwater for washing, drinking and watering gardens: however, since the official ban was lifted recently, locals still won’t drink water from their taps.

Here’s a little footnote to this story found thanks to The Guardian. Last week, 100 workers at the Tricastin plant were contaminated with a low dose of radiation last week and it was also reported that there was a further ‘incident’ at this plant on Tuesday – an alarm was accidentally triggered and 120 workers had to be evacuated. The French safety authority, ASN, played down this latest incident and insisted that there was no leak and that the traces of radiation found on workers were from the previous incident! Well, no worries there, then…

Shall we go awandering in California?

Fancy Californian hike?  Well, thanks to David Sneed, writing for The Tribune/Mercury News, there’s an unusual one for you to try out.

Hikers now have access to three miles of coastline north of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which owns the plant and surrounding property, opened the entire length of the Point Buchon Trail to the public in June.

The trail, which is open from 8 am to 5pm Thursday to Monday, goes from the southern boundary of Montana de Oro State Park to Crowbar Canyon, a point just north of Diablo Canyon Power Plant. Hikers must sign in but do not need to be accompanied by docents (that’s volunteer guides to you and me).

The California Coastal Commission required that PG&E build the trail (which winds through part of a security buffer zone around the plant) in exchange for permission to install an above-ground storage facility for the plant's highly radioactive used reactor fuel. This is the first time the public has had access to this part of the Californian coastline in years. So, still fancy this, do we??

Texan's favour new nuke plant

Here’s a recent report from Allison Miles, writing for the Victoria Advocate in Texas. More than half of area residents surveyed favour a proposed nuclear energy plant coming to Victoria County, according to a recent Nuclear Energy for Texans poll.

The organization, a group dedicated to raising awareness about nuclear energy’s benefits, found 52% of the 601 respondents favoured a build in the area. In December, Exelon Nuclear selected Victoria County as the primary site for a proposed nuclear plant. The company is researching an area, but has not made a decision to build.

18% of respondents who favoured the plant said it was because of economical issues. Others cited the need for energy, environmental issues and efficiency.

Towards the end of the survey, the public received bits of information regarding the specifics of Victoria’s proposed plant, such as waste storage, safety records and inspections. They were asked to gauge their opinions, based on the information.

Tom Forbes, NET’s president, said: “ As respondents’ knowledge increased, their support also increased. ”

Safety training in Reno

Our grateful thanks goes to Lenita Powers, reporting for the Reno Gazette-Journal, for this gem: Members of two National Guard Civil Support Teams and the Reno Fire Department are in Reno this week, training with the city’s Hazardous Materials Response Team.

The 92nd and 95th Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team, from Hayward, California and Las Vegas, respectively, are training how to deal with chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear events. This will hopefully prepare them for any emergencies enabling them to assist local emergency services in the less-populated areas of their home states.

Here are some facts and figures: Each Civil Support Team has seven officers and 15 enlisted members. The emergency vehicles include a command vehicle, operations van, a communications vehicle that has satellite communication capabilities and an Analytical Laboratory System van that can detect more than 84,000 organic chemicals, toxic industrial chemicals, explosives, biological agents and other hazardous materials. Impressive, or what?

Tennessee Valley recycling programme

The following was filed by Mary Orndorff, writing for the Birmingham News/al.com web pages recently. New government-sponsored research into recycling spent nuclear fuel will be done in the Tennessee Valley under an agreement announced by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The deal between the Tennessee Valley Authority and the energy department will explore ways to reprocess fuel that leaves less waste with lower levels of radioactivity. The announcement also prompted Senator Jeff Sessions, a nuclear power advocate, to prepare legislation that would encourage the construction of the nation's first reprocessing facility.

The research agreement was announced by Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy, Dennis Spurgeon and TVA Chief Operating Officer William McCollum. TVA operates six nuclear reactors, including the recently restarted unit at Browns Ferry. 

Take your geigers to Spain

As our thoughts turn to what to pack for our Summer hols (bucket and spade, bikini, Geiger counter) here’s a little gem courtesy of Expatica’s web pages in Spain.

Two ditches containing radioactive material dug 42 years ago during the clean-up operation after two US air force planes collided midair in 1966, spilling their nuclear payloads over southern Spain have been found, according to Teresa Mendizábal of the government-run environmental studies agency Ciemat.

"Two ditches have appeared, each 1,000 cubic metres in size, which have radioactive material that the US army left behind at the last moment and which appear in confidential reports of the [US] Department of Energy," said Mendizábal.


The US army said then that it had cleaned up the sites, claiming to have shipped 1.6 million tons of radioactive soil to the United States. Mendizábal said that while hundreds of US soldiers camped at the sites during the clean-up operation, they had left nuclear waste behind.

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800 people being tested for contamination

There is a lot of traffic about the following incident at the moment, so we thought we’d join in. Our thanks, therefore, go to Martin Roberts, reporting for the Guardian’s web pages, for picking this up via Reuters.

Up to 800 people are being examined for contamination after a leak of radioactive material at a nuclear plant in northeast Spain last November, the nuclear watchdog said on recently.

The Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) said it had so far examined 579 out of between 700 and 800 people who had been through the Asco I nuclear plant in Tarragona since the leak and none had   been contaminated. The CSN said it was considering sanctions against the plant's operators for not providing it with enough information about the leak, which it considered to be more serious than originally classified.

The CSN was not advised until April 4 of the leak, which occurred during refuelling at the 1,000 megawatt Endesa-owned Plant and was first made public by environmental group Greenpeace on April 5. CSN confirmed this shortly afterwards and sent inspectors to the site. In a statement the CSN said it had raised its rating of the leak to 2 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES)

Australia to expand uranium mining?

Pip Hinman has filed the following report on the Green Left Weekly web pages in Australia. The federal ALP government intends to proceed with plans to extend uranium mining. The Uranium Industry Framework (UIF), which was set up by the previous government of John Howard and has never been disbanded, has been given a new lease of life. Resources minister Martin Ferguson was quoted in the April 2 Age newspaper as saying: “Some countries see nuclear as part of their commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.

Uranium exploration is underway all around Australia and Ferguson wants Australian uranium to power nuclear reactors in other countries, and predicts substantial growth in nuclear power outside Australia. The UIF committee will shortly be churning out publicity putting the “case” for the nuclear industry, to be paid for by the uranium industry.

Dr Jim Green, anti-nuclear campaigner for Friends of the Earth, recently told Green Left Weekly: ‘Labour is using widespread concern about climate change to push nuclear energy.’

Florida's future - more power plants

The following article was found on the Tallahassee Democrat web pages recently and filed by Bruce Ritchie.

Florida's energy future, as envisioned by Gov. Charlie Crist and put forward in sweeping House and Senate energy bills, means more nuclear power plants and more power lines across state conservation lands.  For environmental advocates it represents a trade-off: the earth-friendly ends are important enough that some are willing to accept the means to get there.

Environmental opposition has been muted after Crist came out against proposed coal-fired power plants in 2007 and made climate change fixes a state priority. But some groups say Florida should do much more to conserve energy before heading into a nuclear future.

Crist signed executive orders last summer directing Florida to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Along with using solar panels to produce electricity and hybrid cars to save gasoline, Crist says nuclear energy will play a key role in reducing the emissions linked to climate change. After all, 'You have to have juice', he said…

Turkey Point great place to be a croc!

This is a follow-on to Friday’s nugget, found whilst searching for images of Turkey Point. It's a shame not to share this with you especially as it is Easter and if you think nuclear power is a bad thing.

Florida Power & Light's (FPL's) Turkey Point nuclear power plant has played a crucial role in saving the endangered American crocodile (crocodylus acutus). The plant, thanks to its cooling system, has become the main breeding ground for the crocodiles, which were on the brink of extinction 30 years ago. The plant's cooling system, consisting of over 100 km of canals, has created the ideal breeding environment for the animals, which can grow up to 14 feet (4.25 m) long and live for 50-60 years. The reptiles prefer the plant's cooling water canals because the constant water level within the system eliminates the problem of nest flooding and protects the nest from predators. Turkey Point has become home to one-quarter of the USA's entire population of American crocodiles.

NDA markets site development

Grateful thanks go to Anika Bourleyand, Chris Story and Cumbria’s News and Star web pages. In an announcement made on Thursday it was revealed that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is marketing its sites in West Cumbria to developers who could secure the sprawling atomic complex’s future.

The creation of a new power station forms the backbone of the Britain’s Energy Coast Masterplan – a bid to use £2bn of public and private sector cash to transform the west Cumbrian economy by £800 million and create 16,000 jobs.

Agencies charged with revitalising the area’s economy believe it is a major move towards attracting firms interested in creating a new station in west Cumbria – fuelled by waste already stored there.

NDA officials have started a process to gauge interest from firms interested in developing its land, including Sellafield, Calder Hall, Windscale and the low level waste repository at Drigg.

US to become worlds' nuclear dump?

Found on the Christian Science Monitor’s web pages and filed by Mike Clayton. The US federal government is considering a Utah company's request to import large amounts of low-level radioactive waste from Italy – a step critics, such as Friends of the Earth, say could lead the United States to become a nuclear garbage dump for the world.

If approved, the company would ship up to 20,000 tons of metal piping, sludge, wood, contaminated clothing, and other mildly radioactive material from Italian nuclear-power plants to Tennessee, process most of it, then dispose of the remainder in Utah. It would be by far America's largest import of nuclear waste.

Tom Clements, Southeast nuclear campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth in Washington, said: "The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) has an obligation to deal with the waste generated in this country first and not accept foreign waste that fills up existing sites."

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Twin Falls drill project approved

Here’s an interesting report found via the Magic Valley web pages, part of the Times News group based in Twin Falls, Idaho.

A Canadian company's request to drill 21 exploratory cores on 2 acres of central Idaho's Salmon River Mountains to search for uranium (originally submitted in 2007) has been approved by the U.S. Forest Service.

The Yankee Fork Ranger District of the Salmon-Challis National Forest last month approved the Big Hank Exploration Project proposed by Vancouver, British Columbia-based Magnum Minerals USA Corp., a scaled-back version of the 3.5-square-mile, 71 holes the company had originally requested.

The exploration northeast of Stanley in central Idaho was approved as a "categorical exclusion" under the National Environmental Policy Act, meaning no thorough environmental study will be required.

Yankee Fork District Ranger, Ralph Rau said the drilling would not harm federally listed species, or cause harm to riparian areas, road-free areas, natural areas, or culturally significant sites. Friends of the West, an environmental group based downstream on the Salmon River in Clayton, called the proposal "totally irresponsible."

IAEA response team set up

An IAEA-based international nuclear emergency response network has become operational through receipt of its first pledges of assistance from four Member States. Finland, Mexico, Sri Lanka and the United States have stepped forward to make the initial commitments to the Response Assistance Network (RANET), a global response arrangement designed to coordinate international assistance in case of a radiation incident or emergency.

Warren Stern, Head of the Incident & Emergency Centre said: "With these initial registrations, we have successfully launched the first phase of RANET. When designing the system, we worked with a group of countries to make sure that RANET was interoperable and responsive to a State´s needs in the event of an emergency.”

The backbone of RANET´s capabilities consists of technology and trained experts which could be made available for on-site emergency response assistance.

Cleanup due at Richland, Washington State

Cleanup is due to begin on a dangerous burial ground just a mile north of Richland, Washington sate, according to a report found on the KNDO web site.

The US Department of Energy says this site poses the usual radioactive risks, but in this case, they also think the buried materials may spontaneously ignite once they're exposed to the air. Alicia Boyd, spokesperson for the EPA said: "It's good for the environment to go ahead and move this stuff to someplace we can have a better feel for where it is and that it's in a safe and secure location."

Records show workers could encounter pyrophoric chips of uranium.  That means flammable, in case you were wondering…

Government to announce new plant builds

Never let it be said that we don’t bring you up to date news stories.  This comes from the BBC’s web pages: The British government's decision on whether to build new nuclear power stations will be announced on Thursday.

A Number 10 spokesman said Business Secretary John Hutton would reveal the decision in a Commons statement to MPs. Ministers have already indicated they back new nuclear power on environmental and energy security grounds.

Speaking to the Sunday Observer newspaper, Gordon Brown said: "When North Sea oil runs down, both oil and gas, people will want to know whether we have made sure that we've got the balance right between external dependence on energy and our ability to generate our own energy within our own country.”

Yankee site released for public use

The NRC has approved releasing most of the 210-acre Connecticut Yankee (Nothing to do with Bing Crosby!) site for unrestricted public use, but said that the company's licence for the Haddam Neck plant site will still apply to the spent fuel dry cask storage facility.

Residual contamination on the land is below the NRC's limit of 25 millirem per year for maximum radiation dose, it said. Well, no worries there, then...

The 616-MW Westinghouse PWR started commercial operation in 1968, and was decommissioned and dismantled earlier this year.

How we gonna clear this up, then?

The following gem was found via the North Texas Star-Telegram web pages. Spokane, Washington State: Workers are trying to determine how to clean up one of the worst radioactive waste leaks in years at the Hanford nuclear reservation, officials said.

No workers were contaminated during this accident, and the spill was contained within a tiny area, posing no threat to the public, officials said.

The leak was estimated at 50 to 100 gallons, although officials are not yet sure how big it was, Delmar Noyes of the federal Energy Department told reporters during a conference call. The spill area has been capped to prevent the waste from becoming airborne. A plan to safely dispose of the spill is being developed.

"The release to the environment of this waste material is not acceptable," Noyes said.

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Rocket engine site added to cleanup list

Found this on the LA Times web pages, written by Gregory Griggs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has determined that a former nuclear and rocket engine testing facility at Boeing's Santa Susana Field Laboratory near Simi Valley should be added to the national Superfund cleanup list.

In a letter sent to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the EPA's San Francisco office recapped the history of chemical and radioactive contamination at the 2,850-acre hilltop lab that first began operations as a nuclear research facility in 1948. Later, it also became a rocket engine testing facility.

According to the EPA, soil and water poisoned with trichloroethylene, estimated at more than 500,000 gallons, forced the closure of on-site drinking wells in 1980. 32 years of nuclear testing at the lab produced radioactive pollutants that have tainted water at the location and could affect municipal drinking water supplies in the future

Waste to go by road to Diablo Canyon

Here’s a report written by David Sneed for the Tribune newspaper. The latest plans for transporting highly radioactive waste from Diablo Canyon, California, nuclear power plant to a proposed underground disposal site in Nevada (Yucca Mountain) allow for the possibility that the waste could be shipped by truck over local roads to San Luis Obispo to be loaded onto trains.

However, officials with the federal Department of Energy say the exact method of transport will be made on a case-by-case basis for each nuclear power plant. This leaves open the possibility that Diablo’s waste could be taken by barge from the plant to Port Hueneme, where it could be loaded directly onto trains, thereby bypassing local roads.

“If a utility has the crane capacity and other infrastructure to load a rail cask but does not have access to a railhead, then a barge or heavy-haul truck will be used to move the cask to a railhead,” said Allen Benson, a spokesman for the Yucca Mountain Project.

Understandably, San Luis Obispo residents are voicing their concerns about this turn of events.

East Anglian sites to be redeveloped

With thanks to the EADT news pages for this one. Two nuclear power station sites in East Anglia have been earmarked for redevelopment, it was announced recently.

A new generation of nuclear power stations moved a step closer after British Energy said Sizewell in Suffolk and Bradwell in Essex were the most likely sites for new reactors.

A final Government decision on the future of nuclear power is expected in 2008 and British Energy has commissioned geological, environmental and marine studies to assess the impact of building new stations at its existing eight nuclear plants. The company also published details of extra flood defences needed to protect its power stations - all of which are on the coast - from the impact of climate change.

50th Anniversary of worst Windscale accident

Never let it be said that we are not paying attention here at anythingradioactive! The subject of today’s nugget is being featured a lot this coming week with a programme on Radio 4 plus, tonight, a documentary on BBC2 at 9pm. This report was filed by Russell Jenkins on the Times Online pages.

On the 50th anniversary of Britain's worst nuclear accident, physicists believe that they have a workable plan to dismantle the damaged core of the Windscale Pile 1 reactor with the aim of starting to clear away the damage left behind by the accident. The hope is that they can do this safely without having to immerse the core in water. This dirty relic of an early nuclear age has remained entombed behind its concrete bioshield since fire raged for two days in October 1957 and now, hopefully,  they will be able to find out how the accident happened

You can't keep waste at Sellafield - probably 'illegal'

We found this article by Terry Macalister via the WorldNews Network. The UK government has been warned that it would be "wrong" and possibly illegal to use Sellafield in West Cumbria for long-term nuclear waste disposal.

David Smythe, emeritus (that’s retired, to you and me) professor of geophysics at the University of Glasgow and a nuclear waste expert, said ministers should have ruled out Sellafield - assumed to be the favoured site - long ago after spending millions over previous decades on research that proved the area was unsuitable because of its rock formations. "There is clear evidence, after the expenditure of some £400m, mostly directed to the Sellafield area, that West Cumbria possesses no suitable rocks in which to site such a repository.”

Switzerland needs waste depositry

Asked what might happen if storing nuclear waste above ground becomes a major problem— particularly if Swiss voters continue to reject proposals to bury nuclear waste permanently at a deep underground site — Walter Heep, chief executive of Zwilag (a company that safeguards waste from Switzerland’s five reactors) is blunt about the problems that a lack of such a site will present for the future of the nuclear industry in Switzerland.

“We are not planning on a Plan B,” said Mr. Heep. “We need a final repository in Switzerland.” But a huge obstacle remains: more than a half century after the opening of the first commercial reactor, there is still no permanent disposal site anywhere for highly radioactive waste of the kind overseen by Mr. Heep

Ontario residents want proof of contamination

Residents of Port Hope, Ontario, home to two nuclear industries, held up their own self-funded research today as proof their lives are being threatened by uranium contamination.

After their pleas for federal government study and research went nowhere, the community of about 16,000 raised the C$11,000 that was needed to send some test samples overseas for analysis.

The group now says the worst fears have been confirmed and the results show their picturesque town is being plagued by an invisible killer — uranium contamination. Faye More, chairwoman of the Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee, said Port Hope was home to two nuclear industries that have been there for decades operating without a buffer zone from the people, emitting uranium to air and to water every day.

Port Hope is also the site of the largest cleanup of radioactive soil in North American history and is currently home to the Cameco (TSX:CCO) uranium refinery.

Just mark the dates for testing days

With thanks to Brian Lawson writing for the Huntsville Times

On the second Tuesday morning of each month 100 sirens within 10 miles of the Browns Ferry nuclear plant will go off.

Tennessee Valley Authority wants people to be aware that there can be an occasion - with three operating reactors at Browns Ferry - in which a problem at the Athens plant prompts an evacuation.

In preparation for this, TVA mailed out 42,200 calendars this year to residents who live inside a 10 mile radius of the plant. Residents who hear the siren, outside the normal testing period, should tune in to their radios or TV to find out if emergency information is being broadcast, TVA officials said.

Residents in Lauderdale, Lawrence, Limestone and Morgan counties are all included in TVA's emergency plans. Because Madison County is considered a host county, it would offer shelter to residents if shelter needs prove too great for the affected counties.

Capenhurst decommissioning wins accolade

This one probably passed you by.  Work to safely decommission a redundant nuclear enrichment facility and associated buildings at Capenhurst, near Chester, has won a top accolade.

The site has come out top of all UK decommissioning sites for its safety record, progress against schedules and costs.

Capenhurst, which is bidding to become the first UK decommissioning site to complete its clean-up in 2009, was judged to have attained this accolade by the site's owner, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, in its quarterly review.Phil Malem, head of Capenhurst's decommissioning site, said: “This is a big endorsement of the effort and diligence of everyone on site”

Ontario could eliminate new plant needs

Ontario could eliminate the need for two planned new nuclear plants by counting on inter-provincial energy imports, stepping up renewable power generation and encouraging energy conservation, two national environmental groups say.

The Pembina Institute and World Wildlife Fund want to make the proposed plants an issue in this Autumn’s election and opened a recent debate by presenting a computer modelling study showing how Ontario could meet future energy needs without the new plants and how it could shut down its two coal plants before the current 2014 deadline.

Spokespeople for both the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and the Ontario Energy Association have called the plan impractical.

"The province's industrial plants, potential new automotive investments, new high tech investments, the millions of jobs these industries support - they all need to know Ontario has clean, reliable and competitively priced baseload power," said Shane Pospisil, head of the OEA.

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Dounreay workers monitored for contamination

Here's a recent news item, found on the Scotsman web pages:Ten workers were monitored for possible plutonium contamination after a surprise find at the

Dounreay nuclear plant.  A team of four was carrying out an inspection at a manhole where plutonium was not expected and so were not wearing respiratory gear.

Readings showed suspected plutonium and work was stopped. Three of the four were being monitored as a precaution, as were another seven workers who have had reason to work there before. The UK Atomic Energy Authority suspended all work of a similar nature at the complex until it identified the cause of the contamination.

Safety measures in place for US power stations

Measures at the 104 US nuclear power stations to mitigate the effects of large fires and explosions that could result from a terrorist attack, including the impact of a large commercial aircraft, are now mostly in place and, with minor exceptions, will be completed by the end of 2007, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reported recently.

In early 2002 the NRC ordered a sweeping series of nuclear plant security upgrades in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. Nuclear plant operators have been working since then to implement site-specific measures to increase security. Nuclear plants are already recognised as robust, with the very design features that protect against external hazards such as tornadoes and hurricanes, as well as nuclear accidents, providing protection against potential acts of terrorism.

Russian Arctic waste dump could explode

Found recently on the Fox News web site from Oslo, Norway: A nuclear waste dump in the Russian Arctic may be in danger of exploding because of corrosion caused by salt water in enormous storage tanks, the Norwegian environmental group Bellona warned Friday. The three tanks are used to store spent nuclear fuel rods at Andreeva Bay, on the Kola Peninsula of northwestern  Russia, just 28 miles from the Norwegian border, the Oslo-based group said in a statement.

Alexander Nikitin, one of Bellona’s nuclear experts was quoted as saying:" We discover now that we are sitting on a powder keg, with a fuse that is burning, but we don't know how long that fuse is."

Muckaty Station waste dump 'safe'

Here’s a little gem found on the Australian ABC web site: The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) says the nuclear waste dump proposed for Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory will be completely safe. The Northern Land Council has nominated the site, 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek, for a low- and intermediate-level repository.Traditional owners from the region visited ANSTO's Lucas Heights facility in New South Wales to see the type of waste that could be delivered to the dump.

ANSTO chief of operations Dr Ron Cameron said that the waste includes plastic gloves and contaminated clothing and is, therefore, completely innocuous. He was also quoted as saying: "I think some people want to use misinformation to try and get up a scare campaign. We want to let people know the type of waste that this really is.”

No public risk over Thorp leak

UK safety authorities recently completed their analysis of the internal leak of radioactive liquor at Sellafield's Thorp facility. Although the leak at Thorp was contained by design and did not put workers or the public at risk, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has concluded that the failure to promptly detect it was down to the "inadequate monitoring arrangements and management oversight"  Mike Weightman, the Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations, called for sustained excellence in nuclear operation, saying that "High standards are expected."

Energy Alberta looks for host communities

Energy Alberta is searching for communities to host the province's largest power station, which would provide emission-free power for oil sands projects. The company plans to build a C$6.2 billion twin Candu reactor plant in northern Alberta, and is looking at various communities as potential hosts.

Canada has huge reserves of oil sands -extracting it requires huge amounts of heat and steam. The associated greenhouse gas emissions are a further barrier to economic oil extraction. According to Alberta Energy President Wayne Henuset, "I believe nuclear is the best way to produce the power the province needs."

German waste disposal site gets go-ahead

Germany's first disposal site for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste is set to go ahead after the Federal Administrative Court ended years of legal argument and delay. The plan to convert the Konrad site,a former iron ore mine in Lower Saxony, and to use it as a final repository, was first approved by the state environment ministry in 2002 after almost 20 years of proceedings. The Konrad site will hold up to 303,000 cubic metres of waste - some 95% of the waste volume with 1% of the radioactivity from Germany's nuclear industry.

Faulty reactor start-up allowed

Internal documents seen by the Independent on Sunday, Britain's nuclear watchdog last month allowed a faulty nuclear reactor to start up even though it had not been fitted with an important safety system

The documents also show that the Nuclear Installation Inspectorate (NII) judged that the reactor, at Oldbury nuclear power station in Gloucestershire, was not safe enough to operate for the next 18 months, but allowed it to go on-stream until November anyway.

The revelations - described as "deeply alarming" by top nuclear expert John Large - are bound to fuel concern at a time when ministers are encouraging the building of a new generation of reactors.

Exelon receives Early Site Permit

Exelon have received the first Early Site Permit (ESP) to be issued in the new US nuclear licensing scheme. It certifies the Clinton site in Illinois as suitable for a nuclear power plant, to be built sometime in the next 20 years. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has voted to approve the ESP and should formally issue the permit shortly. An ESP confirms that in principle the site is suitable for a new nuclear plant: should Exelon go ahead with a new nuclear plant at Clinton, its next steps would be to select a reactor design and submit a combined Construction and Operating Licence (COL) application to the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

Two year delay at Cigar Lake due to rock fall

Following a dramatic rock fall and water inflow at the Cigar Lake uranium mine in October 2006,  developers Cameco have announced a two-year delay to the project. Led by Cameco, a consortium of Areva Resources Canada, Idemitsu Canada Resources and Tepco Resources have been developing the deposit in the north of Canada's province of Saskatchewan. In October 2006 a rock fall in the underground production area of the mine led to flooding which was not stopped by the closure of bulkhead doors. Cameco managers decided to evacuate the mine and allow the water to overtake it.

Uranium mining could return to Spain

Uranium mining could return to Spain. Mawson Resources of Canada has submitted two applications to explore for uranium in the La Haba district of Extremadura in southwestern Spain.  Spain currently has no front-end nuclear fuel cycle facilities: operation of the Saelices el Chico (Salamanca) uranium mine ended in 2000, and a previous operation at La Haba was shut down in 1990. The La Haba project includes the historic open pit uranium mine and existing resources, which are overlain by a 3865 ha State Reserve to which Mawson presently has no entitlement.

EPA fines Energy Dept $1.1m over 'violations'

Richland, Washington:  The Environmental Protection Agency fined the federal Energy Department $1.1 million over violations of an agreement to clean up the Hanford nuclear reservation, America's most polluted nuclear site.  The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. 

This fine involved operations at a landfill that is the primary repository for contaminated soils, debris and other hazardous and radioactive waste from cleanup operations across the site. 

UKEA lodges planning application for new plant

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) has lodged a planning application to construct an integrated plant to treat and store intermediate-level radioactive waste at Dounreay. The waste to be handled by the facility includes the raffinates from the recycling of used nuclear fuel from the site's two fast reactors which account for 50% of radioactive inventory and 80% of the radioactive hazard at Dounreay and are currently stored in underground tanks that are set to be cleaned out for decommissioning.

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Finland embarks on 'final' waste solution

Finland is one of a handful of countries to embark on the journey towards a "final" waste solution. Investigators will be the first to go down the Onkalo tunnel, aiming to demonstrate that the rock is structurally sound enough to proceed with the disposal of spent fuel rods containing plutonium and other unpleasant materials.

If they were to turn up a positive result, and if government agencies grant the necessary licences, the first canisters of spent fuel would begin rolling down the tunnel about 15 years from now 

WNA claims world needs 20x current nuclear plants

Environmentalists have rejected a claim by the World Nuclear Association that the world needs 20 times as many nuclear power plants to avoid the disastrous effects of global warming.

Using more nuclear power was not only environmentally damaging but would also risk increasing nuclear proliferation, the head of Greenpeace Australia said. .

20 Ontario plants store radioactive material in mine

There are 20 plants in Ontario, each producing 100 tons of radioactive material presently stored in tanks filled with water. They are now planning on storing it in a mine near the Great Lakes. We hope it’s a pretty deep mine

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Scotland's watchdog plays down contamination risk

Scotland’s green watchdog played down the risks of radioactive contamination at a popular coastal resort in Fife following an 11th-hour intervention by government spin - doctors. Internal emails revealed the Scottish Environment Protection Agency delayed and then altered a news release after it had been described as "not entirely helpful"…

Carlsbad plant to receive high-level waste

More stuff to keep you awake at night: The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad in SE New Mexico is going to be receiving waste that is much more radioactive than the waste it has been storing. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is scheduled to sign what ‘s being called a major permit modification for the plant that will allow it to receive the hotter waste.

Swiss nuclear bunker - doors don't shut

LUCERNE, Switzerland: For 30 years, tourists speeding south through the Sonnenberg tunnel to Italy have had no idea they are driving through one of the world's biggest nuclear bunkers. It takes two weeks to prepare in an emergency – oh, and by the way, the doors don’t shut!!

Homeland Security to up port defences with radiation scanners

San Francisco -- The Department of Homeland Security announced plans last month to bolster U.S. port defences with radiation scanners. The program, primarily aimed at detecting nukes smuggled by terrorists in shipping containers, will cost an estimated $1.15 billion, but won't be completed until 2011

Areva after US nuclear recycling project

PARIS (Reuters) - France's Areva (CEPFi.PA) is among several companies interested in vying for a nuclear recycling project in the United States, the world's largest maker of nuclear reactors said. Areva, however, declined to confirm that the investment would amount to between $10 and $15 billion.

Russian tanker looking for dump site for spent fuel

Heard on the news today (29th Sept) about the Russian tanker cruising the Arctic Circle carrying spent nuclear fuel and how its transportation is an environmental accident waiting to happen in this very busy sea lane. If you know any more, drop us a line and we may visit this topic again.

Radioactive material found in drinking water

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - High levels of a radioactive material — nearly three times the amount permitted in drinking water — were found in groundwater near the Hudson River  beneath a nuclear plant although the owner, Entergy Nuclear Northeast, said it didn’t intersect drinking supplies

70 years since protection recommendations began

It’s been 70 years since international organizations began establishing recommendations for the protection of people and the environment from any harmful effects of radiation.

Cooling ponds safe haven for baby crocs

As most of the world’s nuclear power plants are clean, the areas around cooling ponds are often developed as environmentally rich wetlands, providing a safe environment for all kinds of wildlife. In Florida, for example, 160 miles of dredged cooling canals now provide a safe haven for newly-hatched crocodiles  

Nuclear energy produces no greenhouse gas

 Found in Cosmos magazine: Nuclear energy produces no greenhouse gases, but it has many drawbacks. Now a radical new technology based on thorium promises what uranium never delivered: abundant, safe and clean energy - and a way to burn up old radioactive waste.

Here, kitty, kitty!

Radioactive Kitty Litter  found amongst 20 tons of rubbish at a US nuclear power station sparked a safety alert. This was traced to a pet cat that had been treated with the radioactive substance iodine-131 - yes, really!! 

Jelly fish close Japan plant

A nuclear plant in central Japan was forced to slash its power generation after a swarm of jellyfish blocked off its pipes. 

We don't want refugee traffic around here

NEW YORK - A terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant and the panic that would ensue is a nightmare that has kept many Americans up at night since Sept. 11.

Particularly concerned are those who live near the plants: local householder Elise Cooper said ‘It’s beyond enormous: weekday traffic in the area is bad enough even without a catastrophe jamming the streets with fleeing residents.’

Unusual event declared at Nine Mile Point

SCRIBA, N.Y. Officials at Nine Mile Point, declared an "Unusual Event" effectively shutting down the nuclear power plant. The "Unusual Event" is the least serious of four emergency classifications defined by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In order of increasing seriousness, the classifications are: Unusual Event, Alert, Site Area Emergency and General Emergency. There was no release of radiation or injuries associated with the event; all appropriate local, state, and federal agencies were notified.

Nuclear power gets second look in California

Thanks goes to Janis Mara (Costa Contra Times) for this piece found on the Inside Bay Area / Oakland Tribune web pages. As concerns about greenhouse gases and global warming mount, nuclear energy is getting a second look in California.

Stewart Brand, who created the Whole Earth Catalogue, which covered subjects including alternative energy, recently said: "Global warming is affecting the fisheries in northern California and creating drought to the south. Like a number of other environmentalists, I have had to change my tune,"

Indeed, nuclear is an energy alternative that produces fewer greenhouse gases than coal, generates cheap round-the-clock electricity and creates roughly 1 million times the energy released by the burning of oil.

Despite numerous obstacles, a small group of business representatives are fighting to launch a renaissance of nuclear energy in California and recent comments by Governor Schwarzenegger suggest that he is in agreement with these plans.

Hanford Nuclear awaits clean-up

This little environmental gem comes via Tacoma’s News Tribune web pages. Residents of Washington State once counted on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation being cleaned up in their lifetimes. Due to serious lack of funding it’s looking like not even their great-grandchildren will live to see the day.

The cleanup project long ago veered from the 30-year timeline laid out in 1989 when the federal government committed itself to remedying the toxic legacy of Cold War nuclear production.  President Bush has proposed the lowest level of nuclear cleanup funding since 1997. His budget would put the biggest cleanup challenge on pace for completion somewhere around 2150.

Some of the double-wall tanks due for cleaning are past their design life; none of them is built to last another 150 years. They will eventually fail, and when they do, the leaking waste will join the plume of contaminated groundwater headed toward the Columbia River. Nice one, George…

Hanford in need of clean-up

Our thanks go to Annette Cary writing for the Tri-City Herald web site for this one. Plans are being developed to start cleaning up Hanford's 13-square-mile ‘BC controlled area,’ which is spotted with radioactive caesium 137 and strontium 90 even though none of the work to produce plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program was done there.

Just south of the BC cribs and trenches 50 million gallons of liquid waste contaminated with radioactive salts were discharged during the Cold War. Animals attracted to the salts spread the waste across miles of the Hanford desert.

Matt McCormick, Department of Energy assistant manager for central Hanford cleanup, said "This area has a large spread of contamination on the surface with the ability to move around with our winds,"

An engineering analysis concluded that the surface soil in contaminated spots should be dug up and hauled to a lined landfill for low-level radioactive waste a few miles to the west. Work to dig up an estimated 237,000 cubic yards of dirt could begin later this year.

Ocean County residents risk thyroid cancer

Our thanks to Alan Guenther, writing for the Asbury Park Press. More than 150,000 people in Ocean County are unnecessarily at risk of getting thyroid cancer if there is a radiation release from the oldest US nuclear plant, Oyster Creek, in Lacey, New Jersey.

Local residents are at risk because most have failed to pick up free KI pills that could be taken in the event of an accident at the plant. The KI (potassium iodide) pills originally distributed in 2002 have expired.

New pills were made available in April; but of the 162,951 people living within 10 miles of the power plant, only 4,150 pills were picked up at six free clinics offered by Ocean County last year and approximately 250,000 KI pills are stockpiled, unclaimed by the public.

If you thought that was bad, more than 35,000 KI pills are stockpiled at local schools in case there's a nuclear accident, but, as yet, have not been sent home with the children.

Rockwell man makes mini nuclear reactor

Whilst the Americans are worrying about a potential terrorist threat from Europe (and that includes us, people) here’s a little gem that makes this job worthwhile, courtesy of Jason Trahan and the Dallas News web pages. A 22-year-old Rockwall man's Internet boasts that he had made a mini-nuclear reactor in his garage resulted in a visit from the FBI and Texas Health Services.  They removed science equipment at the request of the man’s parents.

The man, who was not identified by authorities and who could not be reached, was experimenting with Americium-241, a man-made radioactive element common in smoke detectors, and natural radioactive ore that he had bought legally on eBay.

Officials discovered the homemade atomic lab in December, when they found the man's boasts on an amateur science blog. On it, he said that he had produced high amounts of radiation in his house while making Plutonium-239, a component in nuclear weapons.  Tests on the home did not show abnormal levels of radiation, and his neighbours were in no danger.

Robots to clean up offshore sites in UK

With apologies for the picture on the index page – well, we couldn’t resist – and staying in the UK, here is a nice little story from the pages of World Nuclear News. A team of underwater robots could scour the offshore next to the Dounreay nuclear site to remove radioactive particles from the seabed and reduce the number being washed onto the beach if proposals by the UK Atomic Energy Authority are approved.

Radioactive particles escaped into the environment, mainly during the period of reprocessing during the early years of the Dounreay site. The systems in place to minimise particulate release, including a diffuser, were not sufficiently effective to prevent the release of particles.

It is proposed that over the next seven years remotely operated vehicles will scour around 600,000 square metres of seabed.

Drum Thunker leads way in safer storing of nuclear waste

Back to ’97, this time to   Starkville, Miss.--A "drum-thunker" and a high-temperature electric torch were helping a Mississippi State laboratory develop ways for America and the world to reduce and safely store nuclear wastes..

Hurricane more powerful than nuclear weapons

Impress your friends at dinner parties with this little gem: In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons combined.

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Lab coats on for nuke waste disposal

Lab coats on for a trip to the US: Back in ’97, a Dr. Delbert Day from the University of Missouri-Rolla, received a patent to research if glass may be the answer to safely dispose of nuclear waste by encapsulating plutonium in a special type of glass.

Floating nuclear power plant proposed for Russia

With thanks to World Nuclear News: A site selection process has been agreed for another floating nuclear power plant in Russia. At a recent meeting between the Republic of Sakha and Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) the Yakutia region was proposed.

If you know your geography, you will know that Sakha is the largest republic in the Russian Federation. It spans three time zones in the Yakutia region (the proposed new site) but has less than one million inhabitants.

Rosatom said the agreement, signed by Sergei Kiriyenko and Sakha President Vyacheslav Shtyrov, was aimed towards developing an investment project for the construction of a floating nuclear power plant in order to support later infrastructure projects in the Arctic north of Sakha

Gorbachev - 'Look before you leap' when building power stations

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, has warned countries to "look before you leap" before building more nuclear power stations. The Soviet Union had been forced to spend tens of billions of roubles to combat the radiation danger, he said, but the pollution of the soil, earth and air was still causing long-term damage.

Plutonium is dangerous - do not inhale

Here’s a gem from the department of the blindingly obvious: Plutonium is radiologically hazardous, particularly if inhaled, so must be handled with appropriate precautions.                                               

British Government must act over waste

The government must act now to dispose of Britain's nuclear waste, the Royal Society has said,

because the process itself will take decades. Their solution, based on current scientific knowledge: bury the stuff in deep concrete bunkers!