August 24, 2016 – ARS Technica – Nuclear waste accident 2 years ago may cost more than $2 billion to clean up – The Los Angeles Times is estimating that an explosion that occurred at a New Mexico nuclear waste dumping facility in 2014 could cost upwards of $2 billion to clean up. Construction began on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico’s Carlsbad desert in the 1980s (PDF). The site was built to handle transuranic waste from the US’ nuclear weapons program. The WIPP had been eyed to receive nuclear waste from commercial, power-generating plants as well. According to the LA Times, the 2014 explosion at the WIPP was downplayed by the federal government, with the Department of Energy (DoE) putting out statements indicating that cleanup was progressing quickly. Indeed, a 2015 Recovery Plan insisted that “limited waste disposal operations” would resume in the first quarter of 2016. Instead, two years have passed since the incident without any indication that smaller nuclear waste cleanup programs around the US will be able to deliver their waste to the New Mexico facility any time soon.

August 24, 2016 – Frederick News-Post – 240 apartments planned for property near Fort Detrick – A contractor is building an apartment complex on a property between Fort Detrick’s Area B and Waverley Elementary School. S.L. Nusbaum Realty Co. has invested $50 million to develop the property on Waverley Drive, across the street from the school. Morgan-Keller Construction will build the 240-unit apartment complex on about 11 acres. The new apartment complex will be called “The Fred.” Construction is scheduled to be complete in the first quarter of 2018, though tenants may start moving in during summer 2017, Johnson said. Waverley View Investors sued the Army in 2014 for not cleaning up radiological and biological contamination, left from decades of research at Fort Detrick, at a nearby property it still owns on Shookstown Road. A U.S. District Court judge dismissed the $37 million lawsuit in 2015 because the developer failed to show the Army was responsible for environmental cleanup activities.

August 24, 2016 – Tri-City Herald – Hanford 324 Building topic of Aug. 24 meeting – Demolition of the Hanford 324 Building, which sits over a highly radioactive spill just north of Richland, will be discussed at 5:30 p.m. Aug. 24 at the Richland Public Library. The meeting will cover demolition of the building’s four hot cells and two underground vaults after the spill has been cleaned up, a process that could take seven years. More information is posted on the calendar at www.hanford.gov under each day of a comment period that concludes Sept. 9. Participants may attend via an online webinar.

August 24, 2016 – The Inquisitr – It Has Been Zero Days Since The Last Nuclear Catastrophe – Fukushima Daiichi is still pouring radioactive water into the Pacific ocean, the consequences of which we still don’t know in the short term and can’t predict in the long term. I’m pointing this out now because as the slander campaign against Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein ramps up, her criticisms of nuclear power have been coming under fire by people who insist that it’s perfectly safe, sane, and healthy to have hundreds of these power plants dotting our globe when we don’t know when the next Level 7 nuclear event is coming, or how bad it will be. While the most recently-added disaster is literally still happening. TEPCO has been making its latest pathetic attempt at rectifying its crimes against humanity by trying to freeze a one-mile barrier around the four reactors damaged in the 2011 Japanese tsunami over the last five months. Unsurprisingly, it has failed, with the barrier doing “little or nothing” to prevent 300 tons of groundwater per day from becoming polluted by pouring through the highly radioactive meltdown zone. Three hundred tons of groundwater. Per day. Not in 2011. Every single day for the last five and-a-half years. This is currently happening, right now.

August 24, 2016 – Gazette & Herald – Frack-site gas not any danger, expert claims – THE leader of the gas and oil industry body has moved to reassure residents living near the site of an impending fracking operation in Ryedale. Concerns had been raised over the operation leading to a colourless and odourless radioactive gas linked to cancer being inhaled. However, professor Averil MacDonald, chairman of UK Onshore Oil and Gas, said the first monitoring measurements at the area surrounding Third Energy’s well at Kirby Misperton, suggested that radon concentration in the outdoor air was “close to the UK average”.

August 24, 2016 – Whatech – Radiopharmaceuticals market to reach $8,207 million, globally, by 2022 according to market forecasts – Radiopharmaceuticals are pharmaceutical formulations comprising radioactive isotopes that are used in diagnosis and therapeutics. They are simple and small substances that contain a radioactive substance that is used in the treatment of cancer and cardiac & neurological disorders.

August 24, 2016 – Midland Reporter-Telegram – Scan measures visceral fat in abdominal region – Midland Memorial Hospital is dedicated to delivering the highest-quality screening and diagnostic imaging services to the Midland area. Because of this, dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is the most common method used as a clinical tool to investigate body composition outcomes.

August 24, 2016 – InfraCircle – India may auction 70 atomic mineral deposits in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala – With the department of atomic energy (DAE) submitting a list of around 70 atomic mineral blocks, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala may shortly auction these deposits containing rare earth elements such as monazite. The plan is an integral part of the National Democratic Alliance government’s strategy for India’s resource security, wherein the respective state governments will bid out blocks which contains monazite below the threshold value. The ministry of mines on 18 July notified the Atomic Minerals Concession Rules, 2016, allowing for auction of specific mineral deposits such as monazite, ilmenite and rutile, which are not used for atomic energy production, but have high economic value. “We have received a communication from DAE that it has identified around 70 blocks spread over an area of 1,400 sq. km along the country’s coastline, which can be auctioned by the states,” said a senior government official on condition of anonymity.

August 24, 2016 – The Hankyoreh – North Korea may have reprocessed enough spent nuclear fuel for 2-4 nukes – If North Korea reprocessed spent nuclear fuel from its 5MW nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in the first half of this year, it probably extracted enough weapon-grade plutonium to make between two and four nuclear weapons, an American research institute estimates. The estimate was made on Aug. 22 by David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), an American public policy institute, as part of remarks about a recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and about North Korea’s claims that it had reprocessed spent nuclear fuel.

August 24, 2016 – Nanowerk – Atomic gyroscope design – Shrink rays may exist only in science fiction, but similar effects are at work in the real world at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). After successfully miniaturizing both clocks and magnetometers based on the properties of individual atoms, NIST physicists have now turned to precision gyroscopes, which measure rotation. The NIST team has demonstrated a compact atomic gyroscope design that could, with further development, be portable, low power, and accurate enough to be used for navigation (Applied Physics Letters, “Point source atom interferometry with a cloud of finite size”). Gyroscopes, traditionally based on mechanical components that spin or vibrate, are common in navigation applications and are increasingly used in consumer electronics such as smartphones. The new NIST device might find uses in applications requiring ultra-precise navigation with extreme size, weight and power limits, such as on spacecraft or submarines.

August 24, 2016 – Mumbai Mirror – DOT gets docs to bust phone tower radiation ‘myth’ – To dispel fears that cell phone towers create health hazards for people, the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) got together city-based radiologists and IIT professors to clarify the ‘myth’ surrounding the sensitive issue. Speaking to Mumbai Mirror after a public outreach programme in Mumbai on Tuesday, Telecom Secretary J S Deepak said that the government was set to launch a website to help citizens check radiation levels on a tower-by-tower basis, in exchange for a small fee. Explaining the importance of having fears regarding radiations from telecom towers dispelled, Deepak asked, “How can one expect a top class network without allowing for infrastructure like towers?” He has therefore asked the BMC to treat cellular towers as essential requirements.

August 24, 2016 – Asahi Shimbun – Film focuses on ‘irradiated’ cattle kept alive in Fukushima – For some cattle farmers in Fukushima Prefecture, the thought of destroying their herds is too painful to bear even if they are contaminated with radioactive fallout. A new documentary to be shown here this week records the plight of these farmers, who continue to look after their beef cattle in defiance of a government request to euthanize the animals. “I took on this project because I wanted to capture what is driving farmers to keep their cattle. For all the trouble it is worth, the animals are now worthless,” said Tamotsu Matsubara, a visual director who shot the documentary. Four years in the making, “Hibaku-ushi to Ikiru” (Living with irradiated cattle) is set for its first screening on Aug. 26 at a local community center in the city.

August 24, 2016 – Medscape – Do Cell Phones Cause Cancer? Maybe Yes and No – Does using a mobile phone increase the risk of developing brain cancer? As many times as it has been asked, there is seemingly no simple answer to that question, as studies continue to produce conflicting results. But the answer may lie somewhere in the middle between a yes and a no, according to Dariusz Leszczynski, PhD, adjunct professor of biochemistry, University of Helsinki, Finland. In an article on the Conversation website, Dr Leszczynski poses the intriguing question: What if both views are correct? It could be possible that mobile phone radiation itself does not cause cancer but that long-term exposure increases the risk of developing cancer when other causes are part of the picture.

August 24, 2016 – Daily Pakistan – Pakistan makes a strong pitch for Nuclear Supplier Group’s membership – Pakistan has made a strong case for the country’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a 48-nation body that regulates the global trade in nuclear technology, telling the UN Security Council that the exemplary measures Islamabad had taken to strengthen nuclear safety establish its eligibility credentials. “We expect that a non-discriminatory, criteria-based approach is followed for extending NSG membership which strengthens the non-proliferation regime,” Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi, the Pakistan permanent representative to the UN, said on Tuesday. Speaking in a debate on “non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” said Pakistan had implemented a comprehensive export control regime, participated in the Nuclear Security Summit process, ratified the 2005 amendment to the Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, declared unilateral moratorium on further nuclear testing and reiterated its willingness to translate it into a bilateral arrangement on non-testing with India, all of which established its eligibility to become a NSG member.

August 24, 2016 – Business Tech – You have less than a week to comment on the nuclear plans Eskom tried to hide from you – Civil action group Outa has appealed to South Africans to comment on nuclear procurement plans, which the group says Eskom tried to sneak past the public participation process by gazetting them in a provincial documents. The National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) and Eskom are attempting to license new Nuclear construction sites by ‘hiding’ the notice in the Eastern Cape Provincial Gazette (rather than the National Gazette) and shortening the deadline to below the 30 days, as required by law, Outa said. This move his highly dubious, the group said, as legally, if the public fails to comment on a gazette it is deemed to constitute acceptance of the proposal, and thus cannot easily be challenged legally at a later stage. Eskom applied for a site licence to develop a nuclear reactor/power plant at Thyspunt (near Jeffrey’s Bay) and at the existing Koeberg (Duynefontein) nuclear site.

August 24, 2016 – The Korea Times – Does N. Korea have nuclear suicide-bomber corps? – North Korea’s military is said to have established a “nuclear backpack” corps whose members are trained to infiltrate South Korea to detonate a nuclear bomb. Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported the corps’ establishment on Wednesday, citing unidentified sources in North Hamgyong Province. Details of the unit are unknown and the credibility of sources is questionable. But what if the corps does exist? That means the North’s nuclear weapons technology has advanced to where it can reduce the size of a nuclear bomb to that of a backpack. A miniaturized nuclear weapon could be carried by ground soldiers or loaded onto a long-range missile, which would pose a grave security threat to South Korea and its allies, including the United States. The South Korean government does not believe the North’s nuclear technology has advanced to that level yet. RFA said the corps’ members did not know what the nuclear backpack looks like. “They receive training with three types of fake bombs,” RFA quoted an unidentified source. “The regime is telling the soldiers that backpacks are not designed to detonate nuclear bombs, but to spread radioactive substances over a wide area.”

August 24, 2016 – Newsmaker.com.au – Graphite Electrodes Market to Grow at CAGR of 10.16% to 2020 – Research analysts forecast the global graphite electrodes market to grow at a CAGR of 10.16% during the period 2016-2020. Graphite is a crystalline form of carbon, which is a semimetal and a native element mineral. It is considered as one of the allotropes of carbon, and has distinct structure and properties. Graphite is the highest grade of coal, and has stable form of carbon under standard conditions. It has characteristics of metal and non-metal with high thermal and electrical conductivity. It is highly refractory and chemically inert with less absorption of neutrons and X-rays that enables it to be used as the main material in nuclear applications.

August 24, 2016 – ArabianBusiness.com – Kuwait abandons plan to build nuclear plant – Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) has cancelled earlier plans to obtain a license from the United Nations to build a nuclear power plant. The decision was made after studies proved the projects was too costly and impractical, according to the ministry, reported Kuwait Times. Instead, the ministry said it would invest in alternative projects related to solar energy and wind.

August 24, 2016 – ITV.com – Nuclear police fight for retirement age of 60 – The Civil Nuclear Constabulary has given their statement regarding the High Court ruling, where the Civil Nuclear Police Federation is seeking for the retirement age for its officers to be set at 60. “The Civil Nuclear Police Federation (CNPF) has brought a Judicial Review into whether the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) is a police force as defined under the Public Service Pensions Act 2013. “The Judicial Review will rule on this very specific point of statutory interpretation in relation to the Public Service Pensions Act 2013 and this ruling will provide clarity on the situation, allowing us to continue to develop new pension arrangements for CNC officers in accordance with the Public Service Pensions Act 2013, working closely with relevant government departments and the CNPF.”

August 24, 206 – Science World Report – First Look At USS Independence Shipwreck Photos Taken By Nautilus – The puzzle of the history of World War II is still being discovered with a new underwater study conducted by scientists on Tuesday morning showing a photograph of the USS Independence aircraft carrier. The team made an expedition to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, just 30 miles off the coast of Northern California where the aircraft carrier rests peacefully. They searched for the623-foot-long shipwreck sitting peacefully on Half Moon Bay. The expedition was made available on live broadcast as they travel 2,600 feet under the water. The telecast was open for viewers at nautiluslive.org and ended on Tuesday afternoon, as per the report in Mercury News. The team scanned the ship and confirmed it is safe for humans to get near since it shows negative of any radioactive materials since much of its radioactivity was lost during its early days. They’re very pleased that the ship is submerged below the ocean because water acted as an effective buffer to shield it from any radioactive material. “Any radioactivity will not penetrate water more than an inch or two inches,” Delgado added. He is also among the researchers who unlocked the secrets of The Titanic and plans to pursue a career of exploration and share the wonders of the world as he discovers it.

August 24, 2016 – The Beijinger – Was Your Beijing Sushi Nuked in Japan’s Fukushima Meltdown? – When we read the Economist’s hypothetical piece on a radioactive prawn ending Kim Jong Un, and leading to changes in the geopolitical relations between the two Koreas, we didn’t realize this situation was perhaps more likely than we had previously thought. Or dared to hope. Adding to the list of food scandals in China for us to worry about, there are now warnings of potentially radioactive seafood brought over from China’s most famous historical nemesis: Japan. This week, 14 people were detained in Shandong for smuggling frozen seafood into China, some of it hailing from waters near Fukushima prefecture, the Global Times reported. Seafood imports from the prefecture have been banned by China following the Tōhoku earthquake and resulting nuclear disaster in 2011.