August 3, 2016 – Seaside Courier – Congressman Issa and others press DOE on nuclear waste disposal at San Onofre – Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) last weekend submitted comments to the Department of Energy asking for action on the nuclear waste at the decommissioning San Onofre nuclear plant and expressing the need for the department to develop and execute a plan for the storage of the nation’s nuclear waste, according to a press release from his office. Issa responded to the DOE’s invitation for public comment, submitting remarks on how the agency should proceed with a plan that would allow the 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste to be removed from the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station (SONGS), the congressman’s office reported.

August 3, 2016 – Buffalo News – New York no longer needs energy from nuclear plants – New York State is a leader in the energy revolution and has made significant progress in advancing renewable energy to address the climate crisis. However, the recent proposal by the Public Service Commission on the Clean Energy Standard incorporates nuclear energy with an estimated $8 billion subsidy to the nuclear industry to keep uneconomical Ginna and FitzPatrick nuclear power plants open. New York Independent System Operator, the group responsible for meeting state energy needs, has publicly stated we do not need the energy from nuclear plants. Nuclear is also not clean: the extraction process produces over a billion pounds of radioactive mining waste per reactor each year! New York State plants use hundreds of millions of gallons of fresh water daily, causing thermal and radioactive pollution.

August 3, 2016 – Santa Barbara Independent – Diablo Nuclear Plant Faces Threats and Threatens: Part I – The operator of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, PG&E, announced in June that it would close the plant by August 2025. Longtime activist Harvey Sherback wrote this letter, published in two parts and edited by The Santa Barbara Independent, to the state Public Utilities Commission prior to its vote regarding the decision. Part I follows. Open Letter to Michael Picker, president of California Public Utilities Commission; and PUC Members and Staff: The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant (DCNPP) is vulnerable and dangerous from within and without as well as from above and below. The environmental disasters that can be caused by Diablo are truly devastating. In this letter I list some of the many reasons why it’s imperative that we close down the DCNPP as soon as possible.

August 3, 2016 – Public News Service – TENORM in KY Landfills: Loopholes, Questionable Business Practices – Behind the low-level radioactive waste dumped in a Kentucky landfill are regulatory loopholes and questionable business practices, according to state and local documents. Tom FitzGerald, director of the Kentucky Resources Council, obtained correspondence between Kentucky and West Virginia officials, and said it showed that regulators didn’t coordinate. In the confusion, he said, several firms run by the same person dumped “Technologically-Enhanced, Naturally-Occurring Radioactive Materials” from West Virginia and Ohio fracking operations into the Estill County landfill. One company, Advanced TENORM Services, came to light first. “The landfill records in Estill County, which showed a couple of other companies had shipped TENORM waste,” he said, “one being Nuverra, I believe, and another being a Cambrian Services.”

August 3, 2016 – DailyCommercialNews.com – Port Hope Sidebar: Safety first, say Canadian Nuclear Laboratories engineers – Construction of the Port Hope, Ont. long-term waste management facility (LTWMF) will follow tried and true waste-storage practices, albeit with special emphasis on worker and community safety given the nature of the waste, say engineers working on the project. A Port Hope Area Initiative official says numerous tests have shown that the health of Port Hope residents is as good as that of any other community but that protective measures are taken for workers at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories sites “because radiation exposure has the potential to cause a biological effect in living matter.” “This project is not all that unique,” said Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) manager of technical integration Walter van Veen. “These types of landfills, whether it is radioactive material or any type of waste, the types of technologies we are using are pretty common. “As an engineer, and all of the engineers on this project would agree, it is very important that we use reliable techniques. We don’t want to be out there half way and find out that, oh we thought this would work but it’s not working.”

August 3, 2016 – Mirror Daily – NASA’s NuSTAR Telescope Uses its X-Ray Vision on Andromeda – NASA’s NuSTAR telescope has just used its X-ray vision on Andromeda, the closest galaxy to the Milky Way, and the findings were surprising. The spectroscopy telescope discovered 40 X-ray binaries, i.e. highly-energetic pairs of a black hole or neutron star and a stellar neighbor. X-ray binaries are science-worthy because they are considered to be some of the most powerful sources of X-rays in the entire Universe. These objects are believed to release so much energy that they can heat up the interstellar clouds of gas and dust where galaxies form. Scientists have already obtained sharper images of Andromeda’s highly-energetic denizens via NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, but NuSTAR is currently the most accurate spectroscopy telescope the space agency has.

August 3, 2016 – PhysOrg – SLAC receives new mirrors for X-ray laser – Scientists are installing new mirrors to improve the quality of the X-ray laser beam at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The meter-long mirrors are the ultimate in flatness, smooth to within the height of one atom or one-fifth of a nanometer. If Earth had the same surface, the hills and valleys would only vary by the width of a pencil, says Daniele Cocco, engineering physicist and head of the optics group at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), a DOE Office of Science User Facility. Right now, the mirrors are stored in a clean room to avoid dust and prevent damage. Cocco and other engineers only handle the mirrors while wearing gowns, hairnets, masks and gloves. They’re testing the mirrors to see how they will respond to heat and mechanical stress while the beam is running. Both cause tiny deformations on the surface, and even changes as small as half a nanometer can cause big problems.

August 3, 2016 – MNA – Tehran, Moscow mull over boosting nuclear ties – AEOI head and Rosatom’s deputy head have emphasized on expansion of ties to accelerate implementation of joint nuclear projects in Iran. Deputy Director General for International Affairs of Russia’s Rosatom Nikolai Spassky and his accompanying delegation met and talked with Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi today in Tehran. The Russian delegation also held a session with Behrouz Kamalvandi, Spokesperson of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI). Both meetings emphasized close and friendly cooperation between the two countries in various areas of peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

August 3, 2016 – Reuters – Japan agrees second reactor life extension since Fukushima – Japan’s nuclear regulator on Wednesday approved an application by Kansai Electric Power Co Inc to extend the life of an ageing reactor beyond 40 years, the second such approval it has granted under new safety requirements imposed since the Fukushima disaster. The move means Kansai Electric, Japan’s most nuclear-reliant utility before Fukushima led to the almost complete shutdown of Japan’s atomic industry, can keep No. 3 reactor at its Mihama plant operating until it is 60 years old. The regulator granted the first such approval in June to Kansai Electric’s ageing reactors No.1 and 2 at its Takahama plant.

August 3, 2016 – McKenzie County Farmer – County residents taking their concerns over radioactive waste to Bismarck – While driving her school bus, Cathy Omstead has seen blowing radon dust, she said. “I really believe that is one of the biggest problems with having the disposal right there, blowing across the land,” the Tri Township resident said of Indian Hills Disposal Solids Management’s landfill north of Alexander. Omstead lives near the landfill, a site designated for radioactive waste generated from North Dakota’s oilfields. Seven months ago, after state approval, the allowable level of radiation in disposal sites for technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material went from five to 50 picocuries. Omstead and other members of the Citizens Against Increased Radioactive Waste are planning a trip to Bismarck for a state health council meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9 at the state capitol. Four or five people have confirmed they are going. The meeting is a do-over after the Attorney General’s office, Energy Industry Waste Coalition and Dakota Resource Council agreed that the council failed to provide adequate public notice of the meeting. A lawsuit is active against the health council for creating the waste program at the illegal meeting.

August 3, 2016 – The Republic of East Vancouver – Baby Radiation Pandawarmer Market Research Report Now Available at Research Corridor – Research Corridor has published a new research study titled “Baby Radiation Pandawarmer Market – Growth, Share, Opportunities, Competitive Analysis and Forecast, 2015 – 2022”. The Baby Radiation Pandawarmer market report studies current as well as future aspects of the Baby Radiation Pandawarmer Market based upon factors such as market dynamics, key ongoing trends and segmentation analysis. Apart from the above elements, the Baby Radiation Pandawarmer Market research report provides a 360-degree view of the Baby Radiation Pandawarmer industry with geographic segmentation, statistical forecast and the competitive landscape.

August 3, 2016 – Thrasher Backer – Radiation Induced Nausea Vomiting Rinv Market Research Report Now Available at Research Corridor – Research Corridor has published a new research study titled “Radiation Induced Nausea Vomiting Rinv Market – Growth, Share, Opportunities, Competitive Analysis and Forecast, 2015 – 2022”. The Radiation Induced Nausea Vomiting Rinv market report studies current as well as future aspects of the Radiation Induced Nausea Vomiting Rinv Market based upon factors such as market dynamics, key ongoing trends and segmentation analysis. Apart from the above elements, the Radiation Induced Nausea Vomiting Rinv Market research report provides a 360-degree view of the Radiation Induced Nausea Vomiting Rinv industry with geographic segmentation, statistical forecast and the competitive landscape.

August 3, 2016 – Daily Mail – Death rays from space: Bursts of energy from black holes could wipe out life on Earth WITHOUT warning – Releasing more energy in one second than the sun will in its entire ten-billion-year-lifetime, gamma ray bursts are some of the universe’s most powerful phenomena. The energy is released in a focused jet of electromagnetic waves, meaning they can travel billions of light years and still look bright to us on Earth. While all the bursts we see come from distant galaxies, there is a slight chance the same thing could happen much closer to home – and if it does, life on Earth will be wiped out without warning.

August 3, 2016 – The Japan Times – Yamaguchi Prefecture renews license for new nuclear plant project – The Yamaguchi Prefectural Government on Wednesday renewed a license for Chugoku Electric Power Co. to reclaim land for a new nuclear power plant in the western prefecture, surprising and angering local residents opposed to the project. Whether to extend the expired license for landfill work in the coastal town of Kaminoseki for the Kaminoseki Nuclear Power Station had been a pending issue after the eruption of the Fukushima nuclear crisis in 2011 led to the work being halted. The local government, however, decided to grant permission, saying that the plant is positioned “within the country’s energy policy.” Local opposition, however, is likely to prevent a quick restart of work by the utility.

August 3, 2016 – Power Engineering International – Poland announces intent to build nuclear plant – The Polish government is reviving plans to build a nuclear power plant in a bid to diversify its power mix away from coal. “Currently the ministry is preparing a plan to construct the first nuclear unit of around 1 GW, which will be built in the next 10 years,” the ministry said in a staPolish flagtement. “Modern and low-emission coal-fuelled power plants” will remain Poland’s major source of energy, the ministry also said. Poland, which generates most of its electricity from coal, initially launched the project in 2009 but it hit numerous delays due to falling power prices and Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, which drained public support.

August 3, 2016 – Tass – Ukraine transfers money for return of spent nuclear fuel to Russia – Ukraine has transferred the money for the return of spent nuclear fuel from its nuclear power plants to Russia, a source in the Russian nuclear power corporation Rosatom has said. “Ukraine has transferred an advance payment for the return of spent Russian nuclear fuel from its NPPs for recycling,” the source said. Asked about the price, the source said that it matched the world level. He added that similar services were being provided not only by Russian companies, but also by their European counterparts. The first shipment to return Russia’s spent nuclear fuel from Ukraine is expected by the end of summer 2016, the source said.

August 3, 2016 – Environmental Leader – China’s Research Into Thorium Will Have Implications for Nuclear Energy In the United States – Nuclear energy may have hit a rough patch here in the United States but at least overseas and especially in Asia, it is revving up and preparing to go faster than ever before. What’s less known, however, is just what type of nuclear reactors for which China has plans: molten salt reactors that run on thorium. On the periodic tables, thorium rests just two spots away from uranium, which is the prevailing fuel used by today’s nuclear reactors. Once uranium is used as a fuel, it becomes highly radioactive. That waste is then cooled in spent fuel pools before is stored in above-ground, concrete-encased steel caskets. As the world learned from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident, that radioactive material could escape and do a lot of potential harm.

August 3, 2016 – RT – Files linking Britain to Israel’s nuclear weapons go missing from National Archive – Official documents on Britain’s relationship with Israel, including papers on “military and nuclear collaboration” in the 1970s, have disappeared from the National Archives in the last four years. More than 400 records have gone missing from the repository in Kew, southwest London, including a 1947 letter from Winston Churchill and a Home Office document on the 1910 Suffragettes “disturbances.” The Archives reassured the public it is following a “robust” plan to find the lost files. The loss of the documents was uncovered following a BBC freedom of information (FoI) request, which found the last recorded knowledge of the 402 historical dossiers was January 2012. Among them is a Foreign Office file titled ‘Military and nuclear collaboration with Israel: Israeli nuclear armament,’ in which the British government notes Israel’s intention to purchase nuclear weapons.

August 3, 2016 – Metro.us – New York-based clothing company uses fashion to show the filth in the air – These shirts make an environmental fashion statement by reacting to air pollution. A smart clothing line, made by Aerochromics, detects either particle pollution, carbon monoxide or radioactivity. The shirts are fitted with sensors, which activate heat pads to turn the pattern on the shirt from black to white when pollution reaches 60 on the Air Quality Index (AQI). Designer Nikolas Bentel explains how his range of clothing will help save the planet. How did you come up with Aerochromics? I came up with the idea while working in my studio one late night. The main idea was to better equip the public against pollution. Is it really necessary? Pollution does not discriminate against the place it will land or who the person is nearby. Many people do not realize how much pollution is nearby. How do Aerochromics work? These shirts monitor three types of pollution: carbon monoxide, particle pollution and radioactivity. As the user walks into these pollutants, the shirt will change color, thus warning the user of the potential danger they are in.

August 3, 2016 – Union of Concerned Scientists – You Might be Operating an Unsafe Reactor If… – There are currently two empty positions on the five-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). If comedian Jeff Foxworthy were nominated and confirmed to become a Commissioner, you wonder how he would finish the nuclear safety equivalent of his “redneck” routine? You might be operating an unsafe reactor if … This Ending Intentionally Blank The NRC, at least during the last decade of the 20th century and so far in this 21st century, has never seen an unsafe reactor. Not once. The NRC often claims they would shut down an unsafe reactor. Perhaps they would. But they’ve not spotted an unsafe reactor in nearly three decades. They suspected they saw an unsafe reactor about 15 years ago, but changed their mind(s).

August 3, 2016 – Time Warner Cable News – Assemblywoman: Nuclear Isn’t Truly Clean, Safe or Renewable Energy – The Public Service Commission’s decision on clean energy is not sitting well with some state leaders. Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton had written letters to the governor over the past few weeks calling for a move away from nuclear and natural gas infrastructure. She says over the whole life-cycle, nuclear power is not truly clean, safe or renewable energy. That, combined with the recent purchase of the coal-burning Cayuga Power Plant in Lansing, has Lifton worried that there’s not enough commitment toward clean energy. While some are concerned about job loss, Lifton says moving toward green and renewable energy will enable job growth.

August 3, 2016 – Public Citizen – Aging New York Nuclear Plants Do Not Deserve Ratepayer-Funded Handouts – On July 22, Public Citizen filed to become a legal intervenor in a New York state Public Service Commission (PSC) proceeding and filed comments (PDF) opposing the commission’s proposal to provide billions in new, ratepayer-funded subsidies to two corporations that operate an aging fleet of nuclear power plants in the state. Today, the PSC ruled against Public Citizen’s motion. As we stated in our July 22 filing, the zero emission credit (ZEC) is an inappropriate, expensive and unnecessary giveaway to the corporations that own the state’s old nuclear power plants. PSC staff proposed this new ZEC as a subsidy to support some of the state’s old, uneconomic nuclear power plants. Under the state’s deregulation experiment, the out-of-state owners of these power plants earned windfall profits for years when the market was conducive for it. Now that the market has soured for these inefficient facilities, it should be shareholders – not ratepayers – who chip in for clean, affordable and reliable energy.

August 3, 2016 – CNY Central – State approves Clean Energy Standard, bringing more hope for Oswego Co. Nuclear plants – New York State’s Public Service Commission has voted to adopt a plan which makes the future of two nuclear power plants in Oswego County much more optimistic. The commission voted to adopt the New York State Clean Energy Standard, and in doing so outlined a plan to bring the state’s usage of clean energy up to 50-percent by 2030. With that plan also comes incentives for clean energy producers to keep operating or start new endeavors. Members of the commission cited benefits to the environment and keeping jobs as primary reasons to adopt the standard.

August 3, 2016 – Bloomberg News – Exelon, Entergy Nuclear Reactors Win Subsidies From New York – Exelon Corp. and Entergy Corp. have won subsidies totaling about $500 million a year for their money-losing nuclear reactors in New York, the first state to throw such a lifeline to an industry struggling with weak demand and low prices. The state Public Service Commission voted for the funding on Monday as part of a broader plan to spur the development of clean energy. Exelon Corp. said following the decision that it would invest about $200 million in two nuclear plants next year and continue discussions to buy a third from Entergy that is slated to close.
“We’ll immediately invest hundreds of millions of dollars right back into the upstate economy, which will have a long-term positive impact across the state,” Exelon Chief Executive Officer Chris Crane said in a statement.

August 3, 2016 – NJ.com – N.J. reactor back in service after damaged bolts in reactor core replaced – The Salem 1 nuclear plant is back in service after an extended shutdown prompted by the need to replace damaged bolts inside the reactor core, officials said. The reactor began sending out electricity over the regional power grid at 10:26 p.m. Saturday, according to Joe Delmar, spokesman for the plant’s operator, PSEG Nuclear. Salem 2 was taken off-line April 14 for what was expected to be a routine refueling outage lasting about a month, but inspectors found some of the bolts securing the metal liner inside the reactor core — known as baffle bolts — were degraded. In total, 189 of the 832 baffle bolts were replaced, according to PSEG Nuclear and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission which oversees the operation of the nation’s nuclear plants.

August 3, 2016 – Aiken Standard – SRS column displayed a fundamental misunderstanding – Five years ago, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the Japanese coast triggered a massive tsunami, killing 15,000 people, destroying entire towns, and flooding the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. The plant’s safety systems catastrophically failed to withstand the tsunami impacts. The ensuing massive radiation release compelled the authorities to evacuate hundreds of thousands of its citizens. Today most evacuees remain in internal exile, their homeland still too contaminated to return. Neither the 2011 earthquake nor the tsunami were deemed “credible” hypothetical events by the plant designers or its government regulators. They declined to act when faced with scientific and historical evidence and warnings to the contrary.

August 3, 2016 – Nuclear Street – Georgia Power Can Spend $99 Million To Develop New Nuclear Plant – Georgia Power has been granted permission from the state’s pubic service commission to spend as much as $99 million on preliminary site work and licensing for a nuclear power plant in the southwest corner of the state. Georgia PowerCommissioner Stan Wise, who made the motion on behalf of the company, said it made sense to take a pro-active approach to nuclear plant development, as the early site work and licensing alone could take up to seven years. “I refuse to sit on my hands and defer a motion to a future commission,” Wise said.

August 2, 2016 – Omaha World Herald – Omaha VA hospital is officially out of the nuke business; secret reactor had run in the basement for 42 years – Nearly six decades after entering the atomic age with its small-scale research reactor, the VA Nebraska-Western Iowa Health Care System is now officially out of the nuclear business. Effective Monday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission terminated the operating license for the Alan J. Blotcky Reactor Facility, which had run in the basement of Omaha’s VA Medical Center for 42 years. From 1959 until 2001, VA researchers used the reactor primarily for neutron activation of biological samples. It also was used to train operators of the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant. In Omaha, few people even knew it was there.

August 3, 2016 – Public Citizen – Lack of Trust – and a Proposed Dump in Texas – Threaten the U.S. Department of Energy’s Attempt to Restart the Federal High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Program – As it decides what constitutes community consent to a nuclear waste dump, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) should acknowledge its past mistakes, be responsive to public input and disavow attempts by the private sector to site a nuclear waste storage facility in Texas, Public Citizen has told the agency. Public Citizen submitted its comments (PDF) on Sunday in response to the agency’s invitation for public input on how it should go about establishing sites for high-level nuclear waste facilities. Over the past six months, the department has been holding public hearings across the country to solicit public input on and move forward consent-based siting, a new approach to siting nuclear waste storage and disposal facilities.

August 3, 2016 – Los Alamos Daily Post – WIPP Begins Preliminary Work On New Permanent Ventilation System – Preliminary work has begun to determine the feasibility of constructing a new Permanent Ventilation System (PVS) that will include a new filter building and a new exhaust shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). Activities include drilling multiple boreholes and the collection of core samples at various depths. Data collected from the drilling/coring activity will provide information for the building design team on geologic support capacity, seismic design parameters and building foundation design requirements. The design for the new PVS will include a new unfiltered exhaust shaft and a 55,000-square-foot ventilation building installed east of the existing ventilation system.

August 3, 2016 – Tri-City Herald – Fire near Hanford much larger than thought; wind a concern – The estimated size of the fire that burned through Yakima and Benton counties toward the Hanford nuclear reservation has more than doubled to 273 square miles. The fire spread little on Monday, and the perimeter also held steady through Tuesday afternoon, according to the Northwest Incident Management Team assigned to the Range 12 Fire. But once the smoke cleared enough for a helicopter to fly the perimeter of the fire with a global positioning system, a better estimate of the size of the fire was made. Fire officials increased the estimate from 110 square miles to 273 square miles late Monday.

August 2, 2016 – 81 FR 50742-50750 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Applications and Amendments to Facility Operating Licenses and Combined Licenses Involving Proposed No Significant Hazards Considerations and Containing Sensitive Unclassified Non-Safeguards Information and Order Imposing Procedures for Access to Sensitive Unclassified Non-Safeguards Information – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) received and is considering approval of four amendment requests. The amendment requests are for the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant, Unit 1; H. B. Robinson Steam Electric Plant, Unit No. 2; Palisades Nuclear Plant; and Hope Creek Generating Station. For each amendment request, the NRC proposes to determine that they involve no significant hazards consideration. Because each amendment request contains sensitive unclassified non-safeguards information (SUNSI), an order imposes procedures to obtain access to SUNSI for contention preparation.

August 2, 2016 – 81 FR 50694-50695 – DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY – Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Northern New Mexico – This notice announces a combined meeting of the Environmental Monitoring and Remediation Committee and Waste Management Committee of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Northern New Mexico (known locally as the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board [NNMCAB]). The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register. DATES: Wednesday, August 24, 2016, 1:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m. ADDRESSES: NNMCAB Office, 94 Cities of Gold Road, Santa Fe, NM 87506. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Menice Santistevan, Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board, 94 Cities of Gold Road, Santa Fe, NM 87506. Phone (505) 995-0393; Fax (505) 989-1752 or Email: menice.santistevan@em.doe.gov. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of the Board is to make recommendations to DOE-EM and site management in the areas of environmental restoration, waste management, and related activities. Purpose of the Environmental Monitoring and Remediation Committee (EM&R): The EM&R Committee provides a citizens’ perspective to NNMCAB on current and future environmental remediation activities resulting from historical Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) operations and, in particular, issues pertaining to groundwater, surface water and work required under the New Mexico Environment Department Order on Consent. The EM&R Committee will keep abreast of DOE-EM and site programs and plans. The committee will work with the NNMCAB to provide assistance in determining priorities and the best use of limited funds and time. Formal recommendations will be proposed when needed and, after consideration and approval by the full NNMCAB, may be sent to DOE-EM for action. Purpose of the Waste Management (WM) Committee: The WM Committee reviews policies, practices and procedures, existing and proposed, so as to provide recommendations, advice, suggestions and opinions to the NNMCAB regarding waste management operations at the Los Alamos site.

August 2, 2016 – 81 FR 50693-50694 – DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY – Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Paducah – This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Paducah. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register. DATES: Thursday, August 18, 2016, 6:00 p.m. ADDRESSES: Barkley Centre, 111 Memorial Drive, Paducah, Kentucky 42001. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Jennifer Woodard, Deputy Designated Federal Officer, Department of Energy Paducah Site Office, Post Office Box 1410, MS-103, Paducah, Kentucky 42001, (270) 441-6825. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of the Board is to make recommendations to DOE-EM and site management in the areas of environmental restoration, waste management and related activities.

August 2, 2016 – M2 – Chernobyl Might Finally Have A Use That Isn’t Just Being Radioactive – Thirty years after the worst nuclear disaster in human history, Chernobyl is finally being put to use again. If government ministers can get enough funding, the evacuated zone could be turned into a solar and renewable energy park. In 1986, Reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl Power Plant near the city of Pripyat ruptured and exploded, sending a huge amount of radioactive debris and waste into the surrounding area. The Exclusion Zone was the 30km around the power plant and is largely inhabited by wildlife and foliage since. There are about 300 people who refused to leave during the evacuations. Interestingly, flora and fauna have actually flourished in the absence of humans, and people are unlikely to return in the near future. As a result, tourism of the irradiated town is a big source of income for the region. If solar farms can be built in parts of the region, there are hopes that Ukraine can start to farm sunshine as well.

August 2, 2016 – MIT Technology Review – Fail-Safe Nuclear Power – In February I flew through the interior of a machine that could represent the future of nuclear power. I was on a virtual-reality tour at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics in China, which plans in the next few years to build an experimental reactor whose design makes a meltdown far less likely. Inside the core—a superhot, intensely radioactive place where no human will ever go—the layers of the power plant peeled back before me: the outer vessel of stainless steel, the inner layer of a high-tech alloy, and finally the nuclear fuel itself, tens of thousands of billiard-ball-size spheres containing particles of radioactive material. Given unprecedented access to the inner workings of China’s advanced nuclear R&D program, I was witnessing a new nuclear technology being born. Through the virtual reactor snaked an intricate system of pipes carrying the fluid that makes this system special: a molten salt that cools the reactor and carries heat to drive a turbine and make electricity. At least in theory, this type of reactor can’t suffer the kind of catastrophic failure that happened at Chernobyl and Fukushima, making unnecessary the expensive and redundant safety systems that have driven up the cost of conventional reactors. What’s more, the new plants should produce little waste and might even eat up existing nuclear waste.

August 2, 2016 – Consumer Eagle – Perma Fix Environmental Services Inc Has Another Bullish Trade, Fundamental Global Investors Bought Stake! – Fundamental Global Investors filed with the SEC SC 13D form for Perma Fix Environmental Services Inc. The form can be accessed here: 000114420416115749. As reported in Fundamental Global Investors’s form, the filler as of late owns 5.3% or 616,750 shares of the Industrials–company. Perma Fix Environmental Services Inc stake is a new one for the and it was filed because of activity on June 28, 2016. We feel this shows Fundamental Global Investors’s positive view for the stock.

August 2,2016 – Los Alamos Daily Post – LANL Estimate Of $2.9 Billion For ‘Remaining’ Cleanup Leaves Nuclear And Toxic Wastes Behind – The Department of Energy (DOE) has announced that the cost of “Remaining Legacy Cleanup” of radioactive and toxic wastes from more than 70 years of nuclear weapons research and production at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) will cost $2.9 billion through fiscal year 2035, averaging $153 million per year. That cost estimate assumes that the Lab’s major radioactive and toxic wastes dumps will not be cleaned up. Instead they will be “capped and covered,” leaving some 200,000 cubic yards of radioactive and toxic wastes at Area G, its largest waste dump. Those wastes sit in unlined pits and trenches, 800 feet above groundwater and three miles uphill from the Rio Grande (plutonium contaminants have been detected 200 feet below Area G).

August 2, 2016 – Yibada – Black Holes Can Sing? This is the Reason Why They Emit Powerful X-ray ‘Songs’ – Black holes are mysterious, colossal cosmic objects in our universe that can devour stellar gas, dust, planetary objects, and even light and sound due to their powerful gravitational forces. They also emit powerful X-ray bursts known as a cosmic X-ray background that can be described as X-ray “songs” by a choir of a million supermassive black holes. Astrophysicists already know about this cosmic choir however, identifying the source has been very challenging and very elusive. In a new study, NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) X-ray space telescope has gathered new data about these black holes that are emitting high energy X-rays, which has proven to be a crucial step in solving the mystery of the cosmic X-ray background.

August 2, 2016 – Mass Live – Vintage photos: Advertisements from the 1950s – Gieger counters, Edsels and color TV – Some people were watching Sen. Joe McCarthy on television and others were rockin’ around the clock with Bill Haley and His Comets during the 1950s. But it seems everyone was shopping in the 1950s. There were Geiger counters being sold at Sears to would-be uranium prospectors, while Edsel dealerships in Springfield and Northampton were looking for buyers. A look back at newspaper advertisements include fondly remembered restaurants like Vincent’s Steak House in West Springfield or stalwarts like Schermerhorn’s Seafood, then with three locations in Springfield.

August 2, 2016 – MedicalDialogues.in – Mumbai: Medical students exposed to radiation without TLD batches – The thermoluminescent dosimeter (TLD), a radiation detection device, an essential measure for protection for medical staff working with radiation equipments in any hospital, has not been provided for the students of radiology at the Grant Medical College and Sir JJ Group of Hospitals. This shocking revelation came through an RTI which showed that the students in these medical colleges, have been conducting CT scans, X rays and sonographies in the absence of these badges for the past three months. The badges measure high radiation exposure, which can be the cause of cancer in those exposed. Dr Meenakshi Wahane Gajbhiye, HOD of Radiology Department of the college, tried to pass on the blame to AERB, which in its turn stated that it was merely a regulatory body and no way responsible for providing TLD badges. “We conduct regular inspections to ensure hospitals give TLD badges to all its students and employees, as failure to do so is a punishable offence. The first warning is a notice, but if the hospital ignores it, it can be asked to shut shop,” said Dr Sonawane, Head of Radiological Safety Division, AERB.

August 2, 2016 – Renal & Urology News – Survival Outcomes in Gleason 9-10 PCa Similar with Radiation, Surgery – Radiation therapy and radical prostatectomy (RP) offer men with Gleason score 9–10 prostate cancer (PCa) equivalent cancer-specific and overall survival, according to a new study. Findings also suggest that extremely dose-escalated radiation therapy plus androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) might be the optimal upfront treatment for these patients, researchers concluded in a paper published online ahead of print in European Urology. The investigators noted that their study is the largest comparative study of outcomes exclusively for patients with Gleason score 9–10 PCa. The study, led by Amar U. Kishan, MD, of the University of California Los Angeles, included 487 patients with biopsy Gleason 9–10 disease. Of these, 230 underwent external beam radiation therapy (EBRT), 87 were treated with EBRT and brachytherapy (BT), and 170 underwent RP. Most radiation therapy patients received androgen deprivation therapy and dose-escalated radiation therapy.

August 2, 2016 – MesotheliomaHelp.org – IMPRINT May Lead to A “New Lung-Sparing Treatment Paradigm” for Mesothelioma Patients – MesotheliomaHelp has recently reported on two studies showing the benefits of pleurectomy/decortication (P/D) over extrapleural pneumonectomy (EPP) for mesothelioma patients. Now, researchers report that following the surgery with chemotherapy and a novel radiation therapy is safe and resulted in a reduced rate of radiation pneumonitis. Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and MD Anderson tested a newly developed hemithoracic intensity-modulated pleural radiation therapy (IMPRINT) in a clinical trial of 27 mesothelioma patients who had undergone P/D and chemotherapy. The radiation therapy specifically targets the lining of the lung, where the mesothelioma cells are, and reduces the risk of damaging the lung itself.

August 2, 2016 – Newsmaker – Radiation Dose Management Market to Hit 50% CAGR, Driven by Demand of Computed Tomography, Angiography, Fluoroscopy to 2020 – The global market for Radiation Dose is estimated to grow at a high growth rate during the forecast period of 2015 to 2020. This market is mainly driven by the increasing needs to cut radiation dose levels causing chronic diseases, need for regulatory compliance, and need for improved patient safety and for accurate and reliable systems to manage critical radiation dose levels and information.

August 2, 2016 – Business Wire – PetCure Oncology Now Serves Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, and Indiana by Opening Fourth Location – Lakeshore Veterinary Specialists, a 24/7 animal emergency and specialty hospital, is proud to announce the addition of leading-edge radiation oncology services through a partnership with PetCure Oncology at its Glendale, Wisconsin, facility (2100 W. Silver Spring Drive). As a comprehensive veterinary specialty hospital, Lakeshore has offered advanced medical oncology treatments for many years. The partnership with PetCure Oncology allows the team to add on-site radiation therapy, including a revolutionary new option for pets called stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS). Lakeshore is the only private veterinary practice in Wisconsin offering comprehensive cancer care with SRS for pets.

August 2, 2016 – Associated Press – WILDFIRES: Fire burning toward the Hanford nuclear reservation – A wildfire burning toward the Hanford nuclear reservation scorched about 110 square miles of grassland Monday as it spread from Yakima County into Benton County. The blaze, the largest of several wildfires in Central and Eastern Washington, began Saturday on the U.S. Army’s Yakima Training Center and quickly grew in size over the weekend. But fire lines set overnight and low winds Monday are helping to slow the fire’s progression, said Randall Rishe, a spokesman with the Bureau of Land Management. The cause is being investigated. A section of state Highway 24 near Hanford remained temporarily closed Monday morning because of the fire, a state transportation official said. Firefighters were working to stop the fire before it reached the large wildland security zone maintained around a portion of the Hanford nuclear site, the Tri-City Herald reported. Hanford once made plutonium for nuclear weapons and is now undergoing a decades-long cleanup.

August 2, 2016 – Your Nuclear News – Sulzer to supply feedwater pumps for nuclear reactor in China – Sulzer has been awarded a contract for the delivery of main feedwater pumps and start-up feedwater pumps. The pumps will be installed in two nuclear reactors — Hualong No. 1 reactors — in China, owned by China Nuclear Power Engineering Company, Ltd. (CNPEC). Sulzer received this order in May 2016 and will complete the delivery of the equipment by the end of 2019. Sulzer will deliver six high-efficiency main feedwater pumps (HPTd), six booster pumps (HZB), as well as two start-up feedwater pumps (GSG). Electric motors of 11 600 KW and 1400 KW, respectively, will drive the pumps. Sulzer Suzhou, China, will conduct the manufacturing, testing, packaging, installation supervision, and commissioning.

August 2, 2016 – Science Alert – This poor kid literally dropped his phone in a nuclear reactor – A few days ago, a Reddit user had one of the worst summer camp afternoons you can imagine, when he literally dropped his phone into a nuclear reactor. He was visiting the McClellan Nuclear Research Centre in California, stuck his phone over the railing to take a picture of the pretty, glowing water, and, yep, dropped it in. It’s definitely not the worst thing that could happen at a nuclear reactor – and, of course, this is Reddit, so he could be making this story up. But, if it’s true, dropping your phone in any large body of water – especially once as closely guarded as a radioactive research facility – is pretty terrible… and embarrassing.

August 2, 2016 – Construction.ru – Rosatom’s Deputy CEO comments incident at Belarusian NPP – It was a subcontractor’s mistake, which didn’t follow the instruction for cargo slinging, that led to suspension of the reactor’s mounting at the Belarussian nuclear power plant. This is what Rosatom’s First Deputy CEO for Operations Management Alexander Lokshin told in an interview published on the company’s website. He said that the employees of the contractor responsible for the failure had been suspended from work at the Belarusian nuclear power plant’s site and will never be permitted to work at Russian nuclear facilities. Simultaneously, he stressed that the equipment itself and the reactor’s shell hadn’t been damaged. Nevertheless, at request of the customer, Rosatom is ready to replace the shell of the reactor at under-construction Belarussian NPP.

August 2, 2016 – Forbes – New York State Considers Nuclear A Clean Energy – Yesterday, the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) voted to approve a provision within the Clean Energy Standard (CES) that would value the emission-free energy that Upstate New York’s nuclear energy plants provide, finally recognizing that these plants are essential to meeting the state’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030. Since everyone agrees that this goal would be impossible to achieve without retaining the state’s existing nuclear power, this provision was critical.

August 2, 2016 – NDTV – In ‘Contravention Of NSG’, China Continues To Sell Nuclear Reactors To Pak – China continues to sell nuclear reactors to Pakistan, a US think-tank has said, expressing concern over export of nuclear materials in violation of international norms and established procedures. “China has taken significant steps over the past several years to strengthen its export controls. However, Beijing’s decision to continue selling nuclear reactors to Pakistan in contravention of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and its sales of missile technologies to countries of concern earns China a failing grade,” Washington-based Arms Control Association said in its latest report. In its updates report card 2013-2016 ‘Assessing Progress on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament’, it gives China a failing “F Grade” on nuclear weapons related export control.

August 2, 2016 – Ohio.com – Scientists find promising ‘green’ mud for cleaner fracking – There is a promising “green” mud that frackers can use in drilling that reduces radioactive and hazardous waste to below federal guidelines, a new university study says. The State Journal newspaper reports: “West Virginia University researchers studying drilling wastes produced a pair of research wells near Morgantown say they are well below federal guidelines for radioactive or hazardous waste, the university reports. ” … Drilling a horizontal well in the Marcellus Shale produces about 500 tons of rock fragments, known as cuttings. WVU researchers have been studying the radioactivity and toxicity of the drill cuttings, which are trucked on public roads to county landfills. “… scientists found that using the ‘green’ drilling mud BioBase 365 at the well site resulted in all 12 cuttings samples passing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s test for leaching toxicity, allowing them to be classified as non-hazardous for non-radiological parameters like benzene and arsenic.”

August 2, 2016 – Englewood Herald – Controversy puts focus on water-plant sludge – Englewood’s drinking water plant is at the heart of two starkly different stories. According to lead plant operator Ken Kloewer, improperly stored piles of radioactive sediment at the plant are the source of his cancer. City officials, however, assert that the sediment piles, often referred to as sludge, have been properly handled and have never posed a danger to plant employees or neighbors of the Charles Allen Water Filtration Plant, adjacent to Belleview Park at Windermere Street and Layton Avenue. “For 25 years we had meetings about our radioactive sludge,” said Kloewer, 54, who has worked at the plant for 30 years. “Everyone thought it was funny. The city doesn’t give a damn about us.”

August 2, 2016 – PowerMag – Exelon, America’s Leading Nuclear Generator, Keeps the Faith on Nukes – The U.S. nuclear power business is in trouble, and Exelon has six units totaling more than 5,300 MW of dependable capacity on the chopping block. How will the Chicago electricity giant respond? Perhaps by acquiring more nuclear capacity? Chicago-based Exelon Corp., the largest nuclear power generator in the U.S., is facing what could be the greatest challenge in the company’s history. Exelon confronts the potential shutdown of six operating nuclear generating units at four stations, out of a fleet of 23 units at 14 stations across the country. This comes after Exelon essentially abandoned coal, selling off its interests in coal-fired generation. In late 2014, the company unloaded its last minority shares in major coal generation, the Keystone (42%) and Conemaugh (32%) plants in central Pennsylvania, once a significant element in its power mix (see sidebar “Exelon’s Generating Fleet”). RTO Insider newsletter commented, “Exelon once had extensive coal-fired generation but has either sold or retired them over the years as it concentrated on new gas-fired generation and its massive nuclear fleet.”

August 2, 2016 – Aiken Standard – Nuclear Regulatory Committee cites violations at MOX project – In a letter and report this week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission outlined two violations at the already contentious Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, or MOX. The following day, another letter was sent to announce the findings of another investigation into allegations of misconduct at the facility. The investigation came after an October inspection in 2015 found potential safety and construction guideline violations. The inspection report noted issues with ledgers designed to support floor panels in one of the operations areas. According to previous reporting from the Aiken Standard, the NRC noted in the 2015 report that measures to assure that requirements were correctly translated by CB&I MOX Services, the MOX contractor, into design documents were inadequate. Meaning, the ledgers installed weren’t properly checked to be in accordance with the design documents.

August 2, 2016 – Los Alamos Monitor – LANS responds to Irving lawsuit – Attorneys for Los Alamos National Security have responded to a 2016 lawsuit from a Los Alamos National Laboratory employee where he said he was discriminated against because of his age and a prior lawsuit he filed against the company in 2013. The employee filed the new suit in April. Los Alamos National Security is the company that manages and operates LANL. “Defendant (LANL) has discriminated against the plaintiff by subjecting him to a hostile work environment, denying him promotional opportunities and promoting a younger, less experienced individual, interfering with his ability to perform his job duties and by giving plaintiff a negative evaluation and significantly reducing his promotional opportunities and merit raise,” said his attorney, Donald Gilpin, in the lawsuit.

August 2, 2016 – Los Alamos Daily Post – WIPP Mine Rescue Team Wins Field Competition National Championship – The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Blue Mine Rescue Team captured top honors in the field competition at the Metal/Non-Metal National Mine Rescue Championship, topping 36 teams from 18 states, spanning from Alaska to Georgia, who were competing this week in Reno, Nevada. Newmont Mining Corporation from Carlin, Nev., edged out WIPP for the overall national championship.

August 1, 2016 – 81 FR 50570-50571 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS); Meeting of the ACRS Subcommittee on NUSCALE; Notice of Meeting – The ACRS Subcommittee on NuScale will hold a meeting on August 16, 2016, Room T-2B1, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The meeting will be open to public attendance with the exception of portions that may be closed to protect information that is proprietary pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552b(c)(4).

August 1, 2016 – 81 FR 50569 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS), Meeting of the ACRS Subcommittee on Reliability and PRA – The ACRS Subcommittee on Reliability and PRA will hold a meeting on August 15, 2016, Room T-2B1, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The meeting will be open to public attendance.

August 1, 2016 – 81 FR 50568-50569 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS); Meeting of the ACRS Subcommittee on Plant Operations and Fire Protection; Notice of Meeting – The ACRS Subcommittee on Plant Operations and Fire Protection will hold a meeting on August 16, 2016, Room T-2B1, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The meeting will be open to public attendance.

August 1, 2016 – 81 FR 50568 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS); Meeting of the ACRS Subcommittee on AP1000 – The ACRS Subcommittee on AP1000 will hold a meeting on August 18-19, 2016, Room T-2B1, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The meeting will be open to public attendance.

August 1, 2016 – 81 FR 50569-50570 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; Alan J. Blotcky Reactor Facility – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is providing notice of the termination of Facility Operating License No. R-57 for the Alan J. Blotcky Reactor Facility (AJBRF). The NRC has terminated the license of the decommissioned AJBRF at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA or the licensee) facility in Omaha, Nebraska, and has released the site for unrestricted use.

August 1, 2016 – 81 FR 50566-50568 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Pennsylvania State University Breazeale Nuclear Reactor – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is issuing an exemption in response to a letter dated November 6, 2014, from the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). In this letter, Penn State requested an exemption from certain regulatory requirements, which, if granted, would allow Penn State to submit its annual financial results within 180 days after the close of each succeeding fiscal year. The NRC staff has reviewed this request and determined that it is appropriate to grant the exemption, as requested.

August 1, 2016 – Daily Star – Lucky teen inches from death as METEORITE crash lands next to him – Matej Rejfek, 17, had popped outside to lock his garden gate when the lump of rock smashed to the ground with a thud right in front of him. Mr Refjek, who lives in the northern Czech Republic village of Ledce, initially thought someone was throwing stones at him. But then he realised that there was nobody else around and that the small rock had come from the sky. Mr Refjek said: “I realised that it was 1am and it was not very likely that someone would be throwing anything at me. “I picked up the stone and felt that it was warm so that gave me a clue that this could be a meteorite.” He took the rock inside his home and put it inside a plastic bag because he was worried that it might be radioactive.

August 1, 2016 – Homeland Preparedness News – Stolen portable nuclear gauge recovered in Connecticut – HAKS Material Testing Group, a Connecticut-based company, notified the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Wednesday that a portable nuclear gauge reported to be stolen has been recovered. The gauge, typically used for industrial purposes like measuring the density of soil at construction sites, was located by police at a pawn shop in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and reportedly had no damage. A Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection inspector traveled to the shop to inspect and confirm that the gauge was not damaged. The gauge contains small amounts of radioactive material that are shielded within the device when not in use. The gauge was stolen from a technician’s vehicle while it was parked in Bridgeport. The vehicle’s trunk was broken into and the chains securing the gauge in place were cut and removed.

August 1, 2016 – Pravda.ru – Islamic State to explode dirty bomb at Rio Olympics – The Islamic State terrorist group (banned in Russia) plans to use a “dirty bomb” to attack the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Daily Mirror said. According to the publication, UN security experts sent special equipment to Brazil to help prevent the potential threat. it was also said that the IAEA provided portable dosimeters to delegates of the Games. A “dirty bomb” is a radiological weapons consisting of a container with a radioactive isotope (isotopes) and an explosive device. The explosion destroys the container with isotopes and distributes the radioactive substance on a large territory. The size of the bomb may vary depending on the amount of the material it is made of. In addition, Islamic State terrorists published a video threatening to attack Russia. In the video, the terrorists threaten Russian President Putin and the population.

August 1, 2016 – African Review – Nigeria to generate electricity from uranium – In March, the Federal Government had announced that it was working towards generating 4,000 MW of electricity from nuclear sources. Towards this end, experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been invited by the government to conduct a week-long training for nuclear practitioners and security officers on the extraction, exploitation and utilisation of uranium. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the National Training Course on Nuclear Security for the Uranium Extraction Industry in Abuja, the minister of solid minerals development Kayode Fayemi, stated that it was important for Nigeria to exploit available resources in order to meet its power needs.

August 1, 2016 – Zawya – Major plan to check radiation hazards – Saudi Arabia has embarked on a major plan to check hazards posed by radiation at health facilities and ensure adequate safety arrangements to avoid possible danger to lives of health workers and patients. The plan is to generate awareness about dangers of radiation, make radiation safety improvements, enforce regulatory measures, and impart technical knowledge of equipment-related radiation safety features. “The Saudi Food & Drug Authority (SFDA) has teamed up with the Ministry of Interior and has already carried inspections of about 510 health facilities in the Kingdom,” said a statement released by the SFDA.

August 1, 2016 – FrenchTribune.com – Astronauts flying to moon have higher cardiovascular mortality rate than those to ISS – The Earth has the only atmosphere so far discovered to support human life, rest of celestial body are devoid of sources that help sustain life. Same could be said for moon, which unlike the Earth has hostile atmosphere for living beings found on our planet. A study recently published in Scientific Reports asserted that astronauts on moon are fivefold likely to die from cardiovascular disease than astronauts in low-Earth orbit on the International Space Station. Michael Delp, a professor of physiology at Florida State University in Tallahassee and the first author on the paper, explains why this may happen. According to Delp, space radiation travel very fast to moon and damages tissues a lot. This causes more serious damage than caused by any radiation falling on the Earth, where living creatures, including humans are protected because of two factors. First, magnetic field of the Earth deflects majority of the charged particles that enter into our planet via solar system. The field is also known as magnetosphere. But, if in case a charged particle breaks through this magnetic shield, it enters into the atmosphere and dissipates a lot of its energy. That comes as a second line of defense.

August 1, 2016 – WhaTech – Report explores the global radiology oncology surgical robots market 2016: industry insights, review, demand, study and research to 2019 – Market Research announces that it has published a new study Radiology Oncology Surgical Robots Market Shares, Strategy, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2016 to 2022. The 2016 study has 557 pages, 82 tables and figures. Worldwide Radiology Oncology surgical robot markets are poised to achieve significant growth as next generation systems provide a way to improve traditional open surgery and use radiology for cancer surgery. New systems pinpoint the delivery of radiation precisely, eliminating the radiological overdosing that has been such a problem previously, limiting the quantity of radiation that can be delivered.

August 1, 2016 – IPE – Joseph Mariathasan: Rejecting nuclear power is height of folly – UK prime minister Theresa May’s decision to delay a final decision on the Hinkley Point nuclear power station is another stumbling block for nuclear power. Yet it can be argued nuclear power represents an invaluable source of energy that has been misrepresented in the public perception. The Fukushima Daiichi radiation disaster in March 2011 epitomised the problems countries face in their attitudes to nuclear energy. The disaster led to all nuclear plants in Japan being shut down and 100,000 people being evacuated. There was worldwide news coverage and huge blame placed on the operator, TEPCO. Other nations such as Germany panicked and shut down their nuclear power plants, despite the absence of any problems. Subsequent German policy became to cease the use of nuclear energies. Yet, despite the considerable escape of radiation, ranked in the most serious category in the Fukushima Daiichi radiation disaster, there has not been a single death, nor even a single health casualty, attributable to the leak. This, as Oxford professor Wade Allison argues in his book, “Nuclear is for life – a cultural revolution”, calls for an explanation.

August 1, 2016 – Sputnik International – Rosatom Dismisses Rumors of Accident at Belarus’ Nuclear Power Plant – Media claimed that an accident occurred on the night of July 9 at the construction site of Belarus’s first nuclear power plant. “It is wrong to use misleading words like ‘hit the ground’ or ‘fell’ because the reactor was moving toward the ground at a pace below that of a pedestrian,” Rosatom’s First Deputy CEO for Operations Management Alexander Lokshin told reporters. Lokshin said a subcontractor firm was relocating the reactor horizontally some 30 feet within the construction site with a crane when it malfunctioned. The massive cargo was left strapped to the crane for half an hour and tilted slowly to one side until it was handing diagonally from the sling and touched the ground.

August 1, 2016 – Burlington Hawk Eye – China’s nuclear power ambitions sailing into troubled waters – China’s ambitions to become a pioneer in nuclear energy are sailing into troubled waters. Two state-owned companies plan to develop floating nuclear reactors, a technology engineers have been considering since the 1970s for use by oil rigs or island communities. Beijing is racing Russia, which began developing its own in 2007, to get a unit into commercial operation. In China’s case, the achievement would be tempered by concern its reactors might be sent into harm’s way to support oil exploration in the South China Sea, where Beijing faces conflicting territorial claims by neighbors, including Vietnam and the Philippines. Chinese news reports said plans call for deploying 20 reactors there, though neither developer has mentioned the area.

August 1, 2016 – SF Gate – Wildfires burning in Washington, forcing evacuations – A wildfire was burning toward the Hanford Nuclear Reservation after spreading from Grant and Yakima counties into Benton County. The Tri-City Herald reports (http://bit.ly/2abnLmJ ) it was one of several wildfires burning Sunday in Eastern Washington. Those blazes include a 1,000-acre fire that had an undetermined number of residents evacuating a rural area near Prosser Sunday evening. The larger fire burning toward Hanford was estimated to have burned about 94 square miles by early Sunday evening. The paper reported that firefighters were working to stop the fire before it reached the large wildland security zone maintained around a portion of the nuclear site.

August 1, 2016 – Sputnik International – Time to Wake Up? US Nuclear Expansion Might Lead to Catastrophic Consequences – Expansion of US missile defense has become a subject to a vivid debate in the international community and might lead to serious negative consequences if Washington doesn’t rethink its policy. For instance, China has severely protested the decision of the United States to place an advanced missile defense system in South Korea, with experts claiming that the move is likely to further increase tensions between Washington and Beijing. “China strongly urges the United States and South Korea to stop the deployment process of the THAAD anti-missile system, not take any steps to complicate the regional situation and do nothing to harm China’s strategic security interests,” China’s Foreign Ministry said early July, cited by Reuters.

August 1, 2016 – Climate Home – Atomic shambles: UK nuclear plans need urgent rethink – The British government astonished the nuclear industry last week by refusing to go ahead with plans to build the world’s largest nuclear plant until it has reviewed every aspect of the project. The decision was announced hours after a bruising meeting of the board of the giant French energy company EDF, at which directors decided by 10 votes to seven to go ahead with the building of two 1,600 megawatt reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset, southwest England. One director, Gerard Magnin, had already resigned in protest before the meeting, saying the project was “very risky”. All six union members, who are worker directors, said they were going to vote against because they believed that any new investment should be directed at making ageing French reactors safer.

August 1, 2016 – RT.com – UK balks last minute at Hinkley Point nuclear deal with China, Beijing decries ‘suspicious approach’ – Theresa May’s government has backtracked just hours before signing a deal for a China-backed nuclear power station. Beijing state media says the UK is acting irrationally by delaying the project, jeopardizing the hard-won ‘Golden Era’ of China-UK ties. The US$24 billion deal, with France’s EDF as producer of two nuclear reactors and China’s General Nuclear Power Corp as principle investor, has been put on hold, despite Britain having abandoned coal as a source of electricity production. A comment from China’s official Xinhua agency says that while Beijing understands and respects Britain’s decision to reconsider the deal, it cannot understand the “suspicious approach that comes from nowhere to Chinese investment in making the postponement.”

August 1, 2016 – Albany Business Review – Manufacturers oppose proposed $7 billion nuclear power subsidy – Big energy users, including large manufacturers in the state, oppose a plan to subsidize nuclear power plants that could cost as much as $7 billion. New York’s utility regulator is set to consider the proposal on Monday. Nuclear power is seen as a bridge source to help the state achieve higher renewable energy goals. The plan, intended to keep upstate New York nuclear power plants operational, would provide funding based on the social costs of carbon emissions avoided by the plant. The cost in the first two years would be about $1 billion. A staff analysis found those costs are outweighed by economic and environmental benefits valued at $5 billion over the same period.

August 1, 2016 – Independent Online – At what cost nuclear? – A new study by EE Publishers looks at the initial capital cost as well as the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) generated by the proposed 9.6 GW new-nuclear build in South Africa. The EE Publishers study estimates an initial overnight capital cost (including owner’s development costs, but excluding interest during construction) of the 9.6 GW new-nuclear build at $50 billion (R776 billion at a rate of exchange of $1 = R14).

August 1, 2016 – Focus Taiwan News Channel – President demands report on nuclear waste storage on Orchid Island – President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) demanded Monday a report on policymaking about the storage of radioactive waste on Orchid Island, which lies just off the southeast coast of Taiwan and is home to the Tao aboriginal tribe, called the Yami people by the Taiwan government. Tsai issued the directive in a ceremony at the Presidential Office in which she formally issued an apology to Taiwan’s 16 recognized aboriginal tribes on Taiwan’s Indigenous People’s Day. During the ceremony, Yami elder Capen Nganaen urged the government to come up with measures to move radioactive nuclear waste away from Orchid Island.

August 1, 2016 – Free Press Journal – Scientists simulate nuclear explosion of asteroid – In a step that may help protect the Earth from potentially dangerous celestial bodies, scientists have simulated the nuclear explosion of an asteroid in such a way that its irradiated fragments do not fall on our planet. With the help of supercomputer SKIF Cyberia, the nuclear explosion of an asteroid 200 metres in diameter was simulated. “The way we propose to eliminate the threat from space is reasonable to use in case of the impossibility of the soft disposal of an object from a collision in orbit and for the elimination of an object that is constantly returning to Earth,” said Tatiana Galushina, from Tomsk State University (TSU) in Russia. “Previously, as a preventive measure, it was proposed to abolish the asteroid on its approach to our planet, but this could lead to catastrophic consequences – a fall to Earth of the majority of the highly radioactive fragments,” said Galushina.

August 1, 2016 – Sky News Australia – Nuclear waste dump site proposed for SA – A wide ranging community consultation program over a proposal to build a high level nuclear waste dump in South Australia is set to begin. Premier Jay Weatherill will open the first information session in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall on Friday. The consultation program over the proposal to build the nuclear waste dump will go over the weekend while moving to regional centres next week. The consultation includes scale models and interactive displays. The South Australian premier won’t rule out holding a referendum on whether the state should host a proposed nuclear waste dump but says it’s unlikely.

August 1, 2016 – National Geographic – Fukushima in New York? This Nuclear Plant Has Regulators Nervous – Could what happened in Fukushima happen 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of New York City? That’s what many activists and former nuclear regulators fear for the Indian Point Energy Center, a nuclear power plant that has operated in Westchester County for more than four decades. The plant provides a good chunk of the energy needs for the surrounding area, but it has come under fire in recent years for safety and environmental concerns, including its warming of the Hudson River and a recent case of bolts missing in one of its reactors. Two of the plant’s three reactor units are currently operating on expired licenses, with the state of New York having denied parent company Entergy’s extension requests due to suspected violations of the federal Clean Water Act. Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused catastrophic damage to Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and surrounding area, the safety of nuclear energy as a whole has come under even greater scrutiny.

August 1, 2016 – Manitoulin Expositor – Study by OPG on nuclear waste vault near Lake Huron not specific enough, says Nuclear Waste Watch – Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) study of a proposed nuclear waste vault near Lake Huron is not specific enough, says Nuclear Waste Watch. Alerting the federal Minister of the Environment and Climate Change to signals from Ontario Power Generation (OPG) that the utility intends to once more side-step information requirements related to a proposal to bury nuclear waste beside Lake Huron, 50 public interest groups from Canada and the US have sent an open letter to the federal minister with advice and analysis. In response to a letter from the minister dated July 4, the open letter critiques OPG’s outline of its intended approach to responding to the minister’s request for additional information which she had issued in February.

August 1, 2016 – KING5.com – Nuclear worker: ‘Retaliation is very real at Hanford’ – A veteran worker at the Hanford Site says he was harassed, isolated and reassigned to cleaning tasks after he made repeated attempts to bring attention to safety problems in the lab where he works. “Retaliation and harassment is very, very real at Hanford and that’s a fact. I lived it and I’m living it right now,” said Dave Lee, an instrument technician assigned to the 222-S Lab at Hanford. “I’m cleaning closets and I’m replacing filters and if that’s not degrading and retaliatory, explain to me what is.”

August 1, 2016 – Asian Scientist – ‘Smashing’ Radioactive Particles Can Help Clear Nuclear Waste – Scientists in Japan may have found a way to manage nuclear waste more easily, by converting two major radioactive isotopes found in nuclear waste into more easily managed isotopes. Their research was published in the journal Physical Letters B. “Treating the nuclear waste generated by nuclear power plants and other facilities is a major problem around the world. There are two types—minor actinides, which can be dealt with using fission reactions, and fission products, for which more scientific research on nuclear reactions is needed,” said RIKEN chief scientist Dr. Hiroyoshi Sakurai, who is the head of the Radioactive Isotope Physics Laboratory at the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science in Japan.

July 28, 2016 – 81 FR 49690-49691 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Station, Units 2 and 3; South Carolina Electric & Gas Company; Main Control Room Emergency Habitability System Design Changes – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is granting an exemption to allow a departure from the certification information of Tier 1 of the generic design control document (DCD) and is issuing License Amendment No. 49 to Combined Licenses (COLs), NPF-93 and NPF-94. The COLs were issued to South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) (the licensee); for construction and operation of the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Station (VCSNS) Units 2 and 3, located in Fairfield County, South Carolina. The granting of the exemption allows the changes to Tier 1 information asked for in the amendment. Because the acceptability of the exemption was determined in part by the acceptability of the amendment, the exemption and amendment are being issued concurrently.

July 28, 2016 – 81 FR 49695-49698 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – In the Matter of Troy A. Morehead – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a confirmatory order to Troy A. Morehead confirming agreements reached in an Alternative Dispute Resolution mediation session held on June 3, 2016. As part of the agreement, Mr. Morehead has completed and will complete future agreed upon actions within 18 months of the issuance date of the confirmatory order. DATES: The confirmatory order was issued on July 11, 2016.

July 28, 2016 – 81 FR 49691-49695 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – In the Matter of Kyle Lynn Dickerson – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a confirmatory order to Kyle Lynn Dickerson confirming agreements reached in an Alternative Dispute Resolution mediation session held on June 3, 2016. As part of the agreement, Mr. Dickerson has completed and will complete future agreed upon actions within 18 months of the issuance date of the confirmatory order. DATES: The confirmatory order was issued on July 11, 2016.

July 28, 2016 – Grist.org – Chernobyl site could become a solar farm – Chernobyl — site of the 1986 nuclear disaster that sent 10 tons of radioactive material flying and left the surrounding area uninhabitable for the next 20,000 years — isn’t exactly known for sustainability. That, however, could soon change. The Ukraine government is currently seeking investors to build a solar farm in the Chernobyl wasteland. The exclusion zone, 1,000 square miles in size, is off-limits to all but guards and workers, but it does get enough plenty of sun. “The Chernobyl site has really good potential for renewable energy,” Ukraine’s environment minister, Ostap Semerak, told Bloomberg. “We already have high-voltage transmission lines that were previously used for the nuclear stations, the land is very cheap and we have many people trained to work at power plants.”

July 28, 2016 – Blackburn News – Concerned Citizen Calls OPG Nuclear Waste Studies A Sham – A concerned participant in the process to build a deep Geologic Repository (DGR) at Bruce Power is amazed with Environment Minister Katherine McKenna’s response to a plan by Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to look at other sites for nuclear waste burial. In February, McKenna ordered OPG to look at alternate sites before burying low and medium level nuclear waste underground in Kincardine near Lake Huron. In April, OPG responded to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency with a plan to look at other sites through computer simulations, instead of through actual site studies. Port Elgin Lawyer John Mann says this month, McKenna told Northwatch OPG will file it’s response to her request for additional information by the end of the year, and she will then plan the next step.

July 28, 2016 – Business Wire – Studsvik AB: Studsvik completes sale of its Waste Treatment operations to EDF – In accordance with the agreement made in April, Studsvik today completed the sale of its Waste Treatment operations to EDF. A world-wide, long term cooperation agreement in the fields of decommissioning and waste management has also been signed between Studsvik and EDF. After the transaction Studsvik has cash funds of more than SEK 350 million. Under the terms of Studsvik’s bond loan totaling SEK 300 million, SEK 100 million will therefore be repaid in advance in connection with the interest payment to be made in November 2016.

July 28, 2016 – AzoSensors.com – Clemson Scientists to Develop New Sensor and Imaging Technique to Monitor Implant-Associated Infections – Approximately one in 25 patients admitted to a hospital in the U.S. will acquire an infection, leading to a reported 99,000 deaths per year. The majority of these hospital-acquired infections involve bacteria growing on implanted medical devices. These devices include metal plates and rods for bone fracture repairs; artificial knees, ankles and hips; prosthetic heart valves, pacemakers and artificial hearts; and urinary and intravascular catheters. Though infections are rare in most implant surgeries, implant-associated infections are difficult and expensive to cure. “Bacterial colonization of medical implants is a major cause of device failure and often requires device removal coupled with long-term antibiotic treatment,” said Anker, associate professor of chemistry in Clemson University’s College of Science, with a joint appointment in bioengineering. “However, detection is challenging at early stages when the bacteria are localized to inaccessible regions of the implant. Our research will focus on developing sensors that will coat the implant. Then we’ll use X-ray beams to scan the sensors, enabling us to detect and monitor the infection.”

July 28, 2016 – Gadgets360 – Hiroshima Urges Pokemon Go Ban in Memorial – Authorities in Japan’s Hiroshima city on Thursday urged the creators of the highly popular augemented reality game Pokemon Go’s creators to keep its virtual monsters out of memorials to victims of the atomic bomb. In a statement, the authorities said they wanted the monsters removed by August 6, when an annual ceremony is held on the anniversary of the 1945 bombing, BBC reported. It follows a request by the operators of the Fukushima nuclear plant – highly radioactive after its 2011 meltdown – to keep Pokemon out of its plants.

July 28, 2016 – NunatsiaqOnline – “Disappointed” by Ottawa’s decision, Areva suspends Nunavut uranium project – Areva Resources Canada Inc.‘s Kiggavik uranium project is officially suspended, and the company says it has no immediate plans to re-submit a proposal to Nunavut regulators. Earlier this week, the federal government accepted the Nunavut Impact Review Board’s 2015 recommendation, which advised that the project not proceed for the time being due to the absence of a firm start date.

July 28, 2016 – The Globe and Mail – Cameco posts loss on weak uranium prices, impairment charge – Cameco Corp., the world’s No.2 uranium producer, reported a quarterly loss due to weak uranium prices and a charge related to the suspension of its Rabbit Lake operation in northern Saskatchewan. The company posted net loss of $137-million, 35 cents per share, attributable to shareholders for the second quarter ended June 30. This included an impairment charge of $124.4-million.

July 28, 2016 – The Advertiser – SA’s nuclear debate: The myths and facts about radiation and human health – TALK of radiation strikes fear into the hearts and minds of many, conjuring images of death and destruction, or three-eyed fish that glow in the dark. But radiation is all around us, in the cosmic rays raining down on us from space, in the brick walls that house us and the earth beneath our feet. We shudder at the thought of atomic bombs and meltdowns at nuclear power plants, but gratefully accept medical scans, diagnostic tests or radiotherapy to cure cancer. Director of Radiation Oncology at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, Associate Professor Michael Penniment, welcomes the opportunity to talk in “a fairly impassionate, straightforward way”. “We are actually already exposed to radiation just sitting here,” he says.

July 28, 2016 – OpenPR – Cardiovascular Segment to Dominate Medical Laser Systems Market – Transparency Market Research has published a research report to point out the key trends and dynamics impacting the global medical laser systems market. This research report, titled “Medical Laser Systems Market – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2012 – 2018,” details the overall laser systems market with SWOT analysis and Porter’s five forces analysis. These market measurement tools have enabled the research reporters to compile an accurate and exact report charting the trajectory of this market for the coming years. According to the research report, the global medical laser systems market was valued at of US$0.9 bn in 2011 and is expected to reach US$2 bn by 2018, registering a CAGR of 12.50% from 2012 to 2018. The growth of the global medical laser systems market is attributable to the high incidence of age-related ophthalmic disorders, rise in disposable incomes, and an increasing awareness of medical aesthetics.

July 28, 2016 – Malaysiakini – Lynas operation safe, generates only low-level radiation, says minister – The operation of the Lynas project by Lynas Malaysia Sdn Bhd in Gebeng, Kuantan, is safe and does not affect the environment. International Trade and Industry Minister Mustapa Mohamed said he was informed of this in a briefing on the company’s operations. He said the company had been in operation for three years. “Its operations are monitored round the clock and shows to be safe with no increase in radiation readings within one to 20 kilometres from the Lynas plant. “If the allegations on radiation are true, the industrial area in Gebeng will not grow or be the choice of multi-national companies,” he said.

July 28, 2016 – Canada Journal – Exotic White Dwarf strikes companion star with high-energy pulse – Astronomers announced today that they have discovered a new type of binary star, in which a rapidly-spinning white dwarf star sweeps powerful beams of particles and radiation over its companion red dwarf star, causing it to pulse across almost the entire electromagnetic spectrum from the UV to radio. This star system, called AR Scorpii, lies in the constellation of Scorpius, approximately 380 light-years from Earth. The white dwarf is approximately the size of the Earth but contains nearly 200,000 times more mass than our planet, while the red dwarf is only one-third the mass of the Sun; they orbit each other every 3.6 hours. As the white dwarf spins very rapidly, its incredibly strong magnetic field accelerates electrons nearly to the speed of light. As the electrons whip through space, they emit radiation in a beam similar to that of a lighthouse which lashes across the red dwarf every 1.97 minutes. This causes the entire system to seemingly pulse every two minutes. These pulses are so powerful, radio signals are emitted, which has never before been detected in a white dwarf system.

July 28, 2016 – Blackburn News – Bruce Power Mobilizes Ontario Nuclear Supply Chain – Over 200 participants took part in a supplier summit in Kincardine Wednesday, hosted by Bruce Power. Bruce Power and the Independent Electricity System Operator entered into an amended, long-term agreement last December to secure 6,300 megawatts of electricity from the Bruce Power site, through a multi-year investment program. The amended agreement will allow Bruce Power to immediately invest in life-extension activities for Units 3-8 to support a long-term refurbishment program. The program will secure thousands of jobs directly and indirectly from operations, and thousands more throughout the annual investment program.

July 28, 2016 – WXXI News – Wind, nuclear advance as NY moves ahead with energy plan – New York state committed last year to generating half of its energy from renewable sources by the year 2030. Now comes the hard part: figuring out how to do it. Several big decisions in the next few weeks could fill in some of the details about how the state will meet Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s renewable energy standard and decide where New Yorkers will get their energy in the years to come. On Long Island, regulators will soon vote on a plan to authorize the largest offshore wind farm in the United States. In Albany, the state’s Public Service Commission is considering a series of big subsidies for upstate nuclear power plants to allow them to continue operating. Cuomo, a Democrat, directed state energy officials to create a plan to produce 50 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2030. While he’s pushing for big investments in wind and solar energy, he argues that nuclear power should serve as a “bridge” as the state ramps up its use of solar and wind energy, which, along with other renewable sources, now generate about a quarter of the state’s energy.

July 28, 2016 – East Anglian Daily Times – Nuclear safety review satisfied with power station procedures – A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that the station was well prepared in the event of an emergency. The publication follows a three-week review last October by an operational safety team made up of 15 experts from the UK, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, South Africa and the United States. After assessing safety at the plant operated by EDF Energy on the Suffolk coast near Leiston, the team decided that processes were well developed and documented to ensure emergency exercises covered all situations that could arise during emergencies. The report commended the station’s prompt delivery of training on important nuclear leadership principles and behaviour.

July 28, 2016 – Express.co.uk – Go nuclear – it is the best way to keep the lights on … and lower greenhouse emissions – Nuclear power is a proven and reliable low-carbon technology. But many environmentalists believe nuclear reactors are expensive and potentially dangerous, and want investment in renewables, more localised energy systems and power storage technology to cut carbon while securing electricity supplies. The UK’s legally binding targets to tackle climate change by 2050 require slashing carbon pollution from the power sector by 2030. At the same time, electricity demand will be pushed up by switching much of the country’s transport and heating to electric vehicles and heat pumps to cut emissions. One of the attractions of nuclear is that its “lifecycle emissions” – the total amount of greenhouse gas caused by building and running the technology – are very low compared with coal and gas-fired power stations and in the same range as wind power. The Government says new nuclear is “the only proven low-carbon technology” that can provide power continuously, as wind and solar are intermittent.

July 28, 2016 – Economic Times – India seen as responsible nuclear technology country, says Anil Kakodkar – Batting for nuclear energy as key to delivering on the Paris Climate Change Summit commitments, former Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar on Thursday expressed optimism over India being included in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). “We have to negotiate with all countries because international cooperation in technology is always in mutual interest. So I am sure they will come around. Internationally, India is seen as a responsible country with advanced nuclear technology so that advantage has to be leveraged somewhere,” Kakodkar told the media here when asked about China’s opposition to its NSG membership.

July 28, 2016 – The Avertiser – Should South Australia be home to the world’s largest nuclear waste dump? – I’M an environmentalist. I commute by bike to reduce my carbon footprint, I put in a rainwater tank at home to conserve water, I minimise packaging, buy local, loathe gas-guzzling urban 4WDs and energy-ravenous McMansions and … I am 100 per cent, passionately in favour of a nuclear waste repository for South Australia. Because I am an environmentalist. Because to be a true environmentalist means to care about the health of the whole planet Earth, the whole biosphere and everyone and everything that depends absolutely on it. Every possible safeguard should be taken in dealing with these dangerous, deadly materials. And the scientists — scientists mind you, not politicians or profit-driven corporate bully boys — have already told us more than once that the SA Outback is the best, the safest, the most geologically and environmentally stable place on the planet to store the nuclear waste that already exists in stockpiles around the globe. Stockpiles that, by definition, are in far less safe places than we can provide here.

July 28, 2016 – Gizmag – Pattern-changing shirts react to pollution and radiation – As air pollution becomes a bigger concern in communities around the globe, creative ways to detect it are beginning to proliferate. We’ve seen smartphone sensors proposed, as well as portable personal pollution monitors and even backpack-wearing, pollution-monitoring pigeons. Now, a designer out of New York City has released a line of shirts that change to solid black when they are contaminated by pollutants. But they’re not cheap. The shirts, called Aerochromics, have been created by Nikolas Bentel, who refers to himself as an “artist/designer/performance artist.” Bentel worked with the Autodesk Applied Research Lab – the R&D outpost of 3D software maker Autodesk – to develop three different shirts: one that changes in the presence of carbon monoxide, one that changes when particle pollution (like excessive dust) is present, and one that reacts in the presence of radioactivity.

July 28, 2016 – Highlands Today – SFSC graduates new class of radiologic technologists – On July 21, South Florida State College honored five radiography program graduates in a traditional pinning ceremony on the college’s Highlands campus in Avon Park. Those honored were Glenda Hernandez, Beverly Slaughter, Kiara Morales, Angela Salinas, and Heidi South. The graduates had completed SFSC’s Associate in Science degree in Radiography and will soon sit for their national board examinations, aiming to start their careers later this summer. Radiologic technologists work in hospitals and clinics performing diagnostic imaging examinations, such as X-rays.

July 28, 2016 – Newswire – Stolen Radioactive Instrument Found in a Pawn Shop – Nuclear material has been found in a pawnshop after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a warning, FOX61 reports. The commission warned that the instrument for measuring ground radioactivity is radioactive itself and “potentially dangerous radiation exposure.” HAKS Material Testing Group reported that the device was stolen from a technician’s vehicle parked in Bridgeport, Tuesday morning. Same afternoon, Bridgeport police recovered the device from East Coast Pawn in Bridgeport. One person connected to the incident was arrested. The NRC said the stolen measuring device contains small amounts of cesium-137 and americium-241,and is worth about $7,000. It’s “street” value, however, is $0 due to its specific use and danger of misuse.

July 28, 2016 – PhysOrg – Scientists model destruction of an Earth-bound asteroid – Researchers at Tomsk State University (Russia) and colleagues are developing measures to protect the Earth from potentially dangerous celestial bodies. With the help of the supercomputer SKIF Cyberia, the scientists simulated the nuclear explosion of an asteroid 200 meters in diameter in such a way that its irradiated fragments do not fall to the Earth. “The way we propose to eliminate the threat from space is reasonable to use in case of the impossibility of the soft disposal of an object from a collision in orbit and for the elimination of an object that is constantly returning to Earth,” says Tatiana Galushina, an employee of the Department of Celestial Mechanics and Astrometry. Previously, as a preventive measure, scientists proposed to destroy the asteroid on its approach to Earth, but this could result in a catastrophic shower of highly radioactive fragments.

July 28, 2016 – The Advertiser – SA’s nuclear debate: Building a radioactive waste storage facility would take decades – WHAT is required to host a high-level nuclear waste repository in South Australia is best broken into two aspects — a system of tunnels mined deep underground into suitable geology that isolates the waste, and specially designed containers to hold the waste. The depth of the facility — several hundreds of metres — must allay climatic and meteorological issues, such as fire, rises in the sea-level, and erosion. Furthermore, a disposal facility must be situated in stable geological conditions that naturally limit issues around seismic activity and the like. Some geologies are better than others at isolating the radioactive material. For example, in salt and other dry environments there is no groundwater flow.

July 28, 2016 – The Guardian – Flamanville: France’s beleaguered forerunner to Hinkley Point C – On granite cliffs overlooking the Channel is France’s most famous building site. If all goes to plan, by the end of the decade this rocky outcrop will house the biggest and most powerful nuclear reactor in the world. The technology behind the European pressurised reactor (EPR) is meant to be safer than anything that has gone before. But the project is more than three times over budget and years behind schedule, and France’s nuclear safety authority has found weaknesses in the reactor’s steel. And the same model could soon be coming to the English coastline at an even bigger cost. France’s state-controlled energy giant, EDF, is expected to announce on Thursday whether it will go ahead with its investment into the £18bn Hinkley Point C power station in Somerset, where two EPR-style reactors are proposed. EDF is expected to come out in favour of the massive project, despite strong opposition from trade unionist board members, who argue the French government cannot afford it.

July 28, 2016 – The Manufacturer – Cutting the cost of cleaning up nuclear waste – The Nuclear AMRC is working with Sellafield Ltd to cut the cost of making future designs of nuclear waste container boxes, potentially saving hundreds of millions of pounds in decommissioning costs. The clean-up programme at Sellafield and the other sites managed by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) will need tens of thousands of special steel boxes over the next 30 years to safely store and dispose of hazardous nuclear waste. The current design is a standardised three sqm stainless steel box which can be stacked for long-term storage, but cost costing tens of thousands of pounds to manufacture. Sellafield Ltd is driving a project to significantly reduce that cost, and tasked engineers at the Nuclear AMRC to help come up with solutions which could save the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds over the lifetime of the programme.

July 27, 2016 – 81 FR 49273-49274 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) – The ACRS Subcommittee on Fukushima will hold a meeting on August 17, 2016, Room T-2B1, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852. The meeting will be open to public attendance with the exception of portions that may be closed to protect information pursuant to number 5 U.S.C.552b(c)(9)(B).

July 27, 2016 – 81 FR 49279-49280 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Guidance on Making Changes to Emergency Plans for Nuclear Power Reactors – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is issuing Revison 1 to Regulatory Guide (RG) 1.219, “Guidance on Making Changes to Emergency Plans for Nuclear Power Reactors.” This guidance has been updated to clarify how the guidance applies to emergency plan changes at facilities that have certified permanent cessation of operations.

July 27, 2016 – 81 FR 49281-49284 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Southern California Edison Company; San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, Units 1, 2, and 3 – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is issuing a partial exemption from several of the record keeping requirements in its regulations in response to an August 13, 2015, request from the Southern California Edison Company (the licensee). Specifically, the licensee requested that the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, Units 1, 2, and 3, be granted a partial exemption from regulations that require retention of records for certain systems, structures, and components until the termination of the operating license.

July 27, 2016 – 81 FR 49274-49279 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – LaCrosseSolutions, LLC, Dairyland Power Cooperative, La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is issuing exemptions from several of the record keeping requirements in its regulations in response to a request from LaCrosseSolutions, LLC, and the Dairyland Power Cooperative (collectively, the licensee). Specifically, the licensee requested that the La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor be granted a partial exemption from regulations that require retention of records for certain systems, structures, and components until the termination of the operating license. The NRC is also issuing an exemption from the portion of the regulations that requires certain records for spent fuel in storage to be kept in duplicate for the La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation.

July 27, 2016 – 81 FR 49280-49281 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Information Collection: NRC Forms 366, 366A, and 366B, “Licensee Event Report” – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) invites public comment on the renewal of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approval for an existing collection of information. The information collection is entitled, NRC Forms 366, 366A, and 366B, “Licensee Event Report.”

July 27, 2016 – Bridgeport Daily Voice – Radioactive Device Recovered After It Was Stolen From Car In Bridgeport – A potentially dangerous radioactive device stolen from a Bridgeport car Monday night was recovered at a city pawn shop and a suspect was in custody Tuesday afternoon, police said. Bridgeport and state police were still on the scene of the unfolding story at 6 p.m., according to Av Harris, Bridgeport’s director of communications. Police released a surveillance video and asked for the public’s assistance in finding the man they believed stole the device from a car on Douglas Street Monday night or early Tuesday morning. It is unclear whether a tipster directed police to East Coast Pawn on Glenwood Avenue, where it was found.

July 27, 2016 – Information Nigeria – Nuclear Scientists Arrive Adamawa To Inspect Site Of Uranium Radiation – Nuclear-ScientistsScientists from the Nigeria Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NNRA) have arrived Adamawa State to inspect the site of uranium radiation that allegedly killed villagers in Michika Local Government Area. The Commissioner for Solid Minerals, Shanti Sanshi Victoria, yesterday said an expert team from the NNRA, Abuja, had arrived the state to inspect the site of possible radiation. The commissioner, who rejected assertions that radiation killed several people in five villages in Michika, stressed that the outcome of the scientific tests by the experts would provide a clue to the possible health problems in the area as there was still no proven scientific evidence upon which to draw conclusions.

July 27, 2016 – Twinfinite.net – Starbound: How to Get Fuel and Put It in Your Ship – Starbound is all about surviving as you travel across the galaxy, and to do that, you’re going to need plenty of fuel for your ship. Travelling within a star system is free, but travelling between these systems will cost fuel proportional to the distance traveled, with a 500 max cost. There are four sources of fuel within Starbound: Uranium, Solarium, Plutonium, and Liquid Echirus, which replaced Coal as a fuel source a while back. Each of these sources can be mined on planets and moons. Uranium is often on radioactive planets, Plutonium can be found deep beneath the surface of moons, and planets near a hot star are most likely to house Solarium. Liquid Echirus, meanwhile, can be bought at the outpose or found under the surface of a moon. To put fuel into your ship, stand behind the cockpit at the console, and hit E. This will bring up an interface, where you can place your fuel sources then click Fuel to convert them into usable, ship-moving energy.

July 27, 2016 – Dickinson Press – Judge says he won’t dismiss illegal radioactive waste meeting lawsuit – A district court judge said Monday he won’t dismiss a suit against the North Dakota Health Council for holding an illegal public meeting when it approved rules for a new radioactive waste disposal in North Dakota last year. Two environmental groups want the judge to enforce the state’s public meeting laws that were violated when the advisory council to the state Health Department approved the new waste rules last August. The North Dakota Energy Industry Waste Coalition and the Dakota Resource Council say the proper remedy is for the meeting to be held over with proper notice to the public. The Health Council asked the court to dismiss the suit, but South Central District Judge Thomas Schneider denied that motion after hearing arguments last week. Schneider said some facts need to be clarified, including whether anyone was harmed by not having notice and whether they could have made comments at the meeting.

July 27, 2016 – Boston Herald – Firm cited for missing radioactive tool – An engineering firm in Connecticut that admitted a radioactive construction gauge had been stolen from the trunk of a worker’s vehicle was cited by nuclear officials five months ago for violations relating to storage security, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission documents. HAKS Material Testing Group, of Bridgeport, Conn., reported a portable moisture-density gauge missing yesterday after a technician’s truck was broken into and chains holding the tool’s carrying case were cut, NRC officials said. The device contains small amounts of cesium-137 and americium-241 — which were once used in home smoke detectors. NRC officials said when the device holds the 
radioactive materials in a shielded position it is no danger to the public, but if the device is tampered with, the radioactive materials could expose someone to harmful radiation.

July 27, 2016 – EngineerLive.com – Nuclear inspection benefits from new sensor lens – Resolve Optics Ltd reports on increasing demand from the nuclear industry for radiation hard lenses optimised to operate with the latest generation of colour sensors. Mark Pontin, Managing Director of Resolve Optics, commented: “Increasingly the nuclear energy industry has adopted colour CMOS sensors able to withstand the effects of radiation encountered in inspection of radioactive sites. Unfortunately most non-browning glasses traditionally used to produce radiation-hard sensor lenses are yellow tinted which gives colour images acquired by CMOS cameras an unhelpful yellow appearance”. He added “A recent project for a nuclear energy industry operator demonstrates the advances that Resolve Optics has achieved in order to mitigate this problem.” A major European organisation involved in the nuclear energy industry sought a lens for their CMOS sensor that could provide natural colour images while still retaining non-browning performance in environments subject to radiation.

July 27, 2016 – Water Online – Environmental Groups Sue Florida Power Plant For Contaminant Discharges – In a testy back-and-forth, environmental groups in Florida are squaring off with a local power plant for what they claim are violations of the Clean Water Act. The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) and the Tropical Audubon Society recently filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court of Southern Florida, accusing Florida Power and Light (FPL) of allowing a canal cooling system at Turkey Point Power Plant to pollute Biscayne Bay and the Biscayne Aquifer. According to rt.com, some environmental groups have also filed a lawsuit against FPL, saying that the company violated the Clean Water Act by discharging contaminants from the plant, impacting nearby drinking water.

July 27, 2016 – Bloomberg News – France’s Radioactive White Elephant – EDF’s board meets on Thursday to approve the construction of two nuclear reactors in the U.K., which will cost about 18 billion pounds ($23.6 billion). Cosma Panzacchi, a Bernstein analyst, expects EDF to green light the project. He’s probably right, though investors should pray otherwise. Under the terms of a deal struck in 2013, British electricity customers will fund large guaranteed payments to EDF for 35 years in return for the French utility shouldering much of the construction risk for Hinkley Point. Because of lower projections for future wholesale electricity prices these subsidies are estimated to have risen to a staggering 30 billion pounds.

July 27, 2016 – Army-Technology.com – Decision Sciences to supply contraband and threat detection system to US DoD CTTSO – Decision Sciences International has been contracted by the US Department of Defense (DoD) Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO) to supply and install an advanced contraband and threat detection system. Under the $5.26m contract, Decision Sciences will supply and install its multi-mode passive detection system generation 3 (MMPDS GEN3) to help CTTSO to combat terrorism. The contract is Decision Sciences’ third of its type with CTTSO.

July 27, 2016 – Europe & Middle East Outlook – Contamination Expo Series 2016 – The Contamination EXPO Series is a major new European event for professionals working in contamination. With 120 seminars, 200 suppliers, 80 masterclasses and exclusive panel discussions, this exhibition and conference will be the top networking event in the industry’s history, bringing together every party from across six sectors. Each co-located event is committed to providing the latest knowledge, products and innovations to manage all aspects of contamination. The event is free to attend and takes place on the 12-13 October at ExCeL London.

July 27, 2016 – Lexology – Wilson v. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.: Supreme Court of Canada Confirms that Certain Non-Unionized Federal Employees are Entitled to Protection from Dismissal Without Cause – On July 14, 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada (the “Supreme Court”) affirmed that sections 240 to 246 of the Canada Labour Code, R.S.C., 1985, c. L-2 (the “Code”), referred to as the “Unjust Dismissal” provisions of the Code, protect certain non-unionized federally-regulated employees against termination of employment “without cause”. The Supreme Court confirmed that these protections were intended by Parliament to be similar to those enjoyed by the majority of unionized employees in Canada. In many, if not most, circumstances, it will no longer be considered sufficient for a federally-regulated employer to terminate a non-managerial employee’s employment without cause and simply provide that employee with statutory notice of employment termination (or pay in lieu thereof) and severance pay. Under the Unjust Dismissal provisions of the Code, an employee has the ability to challenge his or her termination and the employee, or an inspector investigating the employee’s complaint, has the right to request reasons for the dismissal.

July 27, 2016 – Labmate Online – Is Time Travel Impossible After All? – It’s the basis of countless Sci-Fi film plots, but will time travel ever be possible? We know that there’s no proof of its existence yet. If there were evidence of time travel, we would clearly know about it. Of course, the theory goes that if time travel will exist at any point in the future, we would already know about it, because somebody would travel back in time to tell us. But can we rule it out scientifically? Current theories suggest charge, parity and time are symmetrical. So parity is possible for all atoms, charge is reversible, and time can theoretically move in both directions. CP-symmetry is the product of Charge-symmetry and Parity-symmetry. According to this theory, the make-up of an atom should be unchanged in a mirror image. So a particle and its antiparticle should behave in the same way. However, research has found that some atoms (so far Radium-224 and Barium-144) have an asymmetrical distribution of particles. The protons and neutrons are skewed towards one end of the nucleus – they are pear-shaped. This violates CP-symmetry because there is an uneven mass, which would suggest that the time (T) symmetry may also be violated.

July 27, 2016 – WDAZ – Radon at dangerous levels in 40% of Minnesota homes – Radon is an odorless, colorless gas that comes from soil. It’s the leading cause of lung cancer for non-smokers. The health department says 52% of homes in Clay County have radon numbers higher than what the EPA says is safe. You can get a test kit at city and county health departments, hardware stores, or directly from radon testing labs.

July 27, 2016 – WYFF 4 – Greenville County School District adds system to regulate radon levels in one school – The Greenville County School District has added a ventilation system to monitor radon levels at Buena Vista Elementary School. Spokeswoman Beth Brotherton said the school district conducted a radon test in September 2015, which showed when the HVAC system was operating normally from Monday through Friday 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., it maintained radon levels well below EPA standards. She said the test showed that when the building was unoccupied for extended periods of time and the HVAC was off, radon levels increased slightly but not enough to require corrective action. According to Brotherton, a cost analysis showed that running the HVAC year-round in “occupied” mode was not a long-term, economical solution.

July 27, 2016 – MTV – A Radiation Therapist Has Impersonated Famous Instagram Pics For Charity, And Totally Nailed It – During ‘Dry July’, people usually avoid drinking alcohol for the month to raise money for charity. BUT a group of radiation therapists at Liverpool Hospital are doing something a little bit different. They’re doing a Dry July Shave Off by shaving their heads to raise money for Cancer sufferers. And these guys are raising money for it in the best way ever – by recreating some of the most recognizable celeb shoots and Instagram pics around. Take Mark Udovitch, for example. He’s raising money for the Liverpool Cancer Therapy Centre by impersonating both Kim AND Kendall Kardashian in his very own charity photoshoot. His gf apparently took the photos and was chief stylist and director… and she did a damn good job!

July 27, 2016 – WRVO – Nuclear Regulatory Commission: FitzPatrick had a safe year – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) says the FitzPpatrick Nuclear Power Plant in Oswego County performed safely over the past year. NRC officials say that its staff devoted 4,790 hours reviewing the plant over the past year, but did not finding anything that caused the agency to increase oversight. “They met all of the requirements for our reactor oversight process inspection program for the year, kept them in their licensee response program, so routine inspections — no inspections that would be out of the ordinary,” said Eric Miller, the acting senior resident inspector at FitzPatrick. The positive review for FitzPatrick comes about a month after it had to shut off because a minor equipment failure caused a leak of non-radioactive oil into Lake Ontario.

July 27, 2016 – 3D Printing Industry – Russian nuclear agency builds industrial metal 3D printers! – Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation, Rosatom, has committed to additive manufacturing and the first Russian-made, industrial 3D metal printer will go on sale in 2018. The agency has worked behind the scenes for more than two years and now and revealed the first Russian-made metal 3D printer at the Innoprom industrial trade fair earlier this month in Yekaterinburg. It has a 1000-watt laser, a three-axis scanning system and produces metals at a rate of 15-70cm3/hour. It can also produce parts from titanium, copper, aluminium or iron powders.

July 27, 2016 – Los Angeles Times – Citizen science takes on Japan’s nuclear establishment – As other Tokyo office workers poured into restaurants and bars at quitting time one recent evening, Kohei Matsushita went to the eighth floor of a high-rise for an unusual after-hours activity: learning how to assemble his own Geiger counter from a kit. Hunched over a circuit board, the 37-year-old practiced his soldering technique as Joe Moross, a former L.A. resident with a background in radiation detection, explained how to fit together about $500 worth of components – including a sensor, circuit board, digital display, GPS module, battery and case. “My family has a house near a nuclear power plant,” Matsushita said, explaining his motivation. “I want to take this there and collect data, and contribute to this pool of information.”

July 27, 2016 – Yuba-Net.com – Ultra-High Radiation Coming To Your Drinking Water; EPA Hiding True Impacts and Limiting Public Comment on Radioactive Water Plan – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is in the final stage of implementing a controversial plan to allow vastly greater radioactive contamination in drinking water than permitted by the Safe Drinking Water Act for long periods following release of nuclear materials, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and a coalition of public health and environmental organizations. Compounding concerns are the unusual tactics EPA used to mask the plan’s effects, block commenters from including their identities and hamstring the ability to put documents on the record. Public comments closed yesterday on EPA’s curiously named “Protective Action Guides” (or PAGs) that would dramatically increase allowable concentrations of radioactive material in public drinking water following a radioactive release. The PAGs have been expanded to cover not just large accidents but any release of radioactivity for which a protective action may be considered. They cover the “intermediate phase” after “releases have been brought under control” – an unspecified period that may last for years.

July 27, 2016 – Blue & Green Tomorrow – ‘Stop Hinkley’ Campaign writes to new Secretary of State – The Stop Hinkley Campaign has written to the new Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to ask him to stamp his own mark on energy policy by ditching proposals for a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C. Stop Hinkley Spokesperson Allan Jeffery said: “Now even the financial press says Hinkley Point C has become a laughing stock. The cost keeps rising while the cost of renewables is falling rapidly, and the potential to make savings with energy efficiency is huge. We could replace Hinkley much more quickly and cheaply without the safety fears and without producing dangerous waste we don’t know what to do with”.

July 27, 2016 – World Nuclear News – Approval for Korean repository expansion – Plans to more than double the current capacity of South Korea’s low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste disposal facility at Gyeongju have been approved by the government. Construction of the second phase of the facility is expected to be completed in 2019. The Korea Radioactive Waste Agency (KORAD) announced today that the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy has approved the construction of the second phase of the Gyeongju facility in North Gyeongsang province. Preparatory groundwork for the expansion of the repository will begin soon, KORAD said. However, approval from the South Korean nuclear regulator – the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) – must be obtained before full-scale construction of the new facility can start.

July 27, 2016 – Belfast Telegraph – Electricity price at Welsh power station ‘should be below Hinkley Point deal’ – The Government should negotiate a price for electricity at a planned new nuclear power station in Wales below that agreed for the delayed site at Hinkley Point, according to a committee of MPs. Ministers have agreed a so-called strike price with EDF Energy of £92.50 per megawatt hour (Mwh), or £89.50 if the French giant develops another new reactor in Sizewell, Suffolk. Environment groups have criticised the figure, arguing that renewable energy could be produced much more cheaply. The Welsh Affairs Committee said there was great potential for developing nuclear power in north Wales, with a proposed new power station at Wylfa on Anglesey, as well as at Trawsfynydd. But the MPs said the Government still had more work to do to prove the financial viability of the proposed projects.

July 27, 2016 – Taipai Times – Campaigners call for nuclear plant’s budget to be axed – Campaigners against nuclear power yesterday called on the legislature to slash the maintenance budget for the sealed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) ahead of a special legislative session set to review the budgets of state-run businesses, as they said the budget cut was necessary to phase out nuclear power. A coalition of environmental groups yesterday gathered in front of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei and put up flyers that read: “Scrap the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant” and “Mothballing is unnecessary,” urging lawmakers to block a NT$1.35 billion (US$42.05 million) budget to maintain the unfinished nuclear plant, which was mothballed in July last year following protests.

July 27, 2016 – USNRC Press Release – Nuclear Gauge Reported Stolen in Connecticut; Recovery is Sought‌ – A Connecticut company has notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that a portable moisture-density gauge containing sealed sources of radioactive material has been stolen. HAKS Material Testing Group, of Bridgeport, Conn., reported that the device was stolen early on Tuesday, July 26, from a technician’s vehicle while it was parked in Bridgeport. The vehicle’s trunk was broken into, chains securing the gauge in place were cut and it was removed. The device contains small amounts of cesium-137 and americium-241. The gauge is used to make measurements by projecting the radiation from the two radioactive sources into the ground and then displaying the reflected radiation on a dial on its top.

July 26, 2016 – 81 FR 48857-48858 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Program-Specific Guidance About Possession Licenses for Manufacturing and Distribution – On July 13, 2016, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) solicited comments on draft NUREG-1556, Volume 12, Revision 1, “Consolidated Guidance About Materials Licenses: Program-Specific Guidance About Possession Licenses for Manufacturing and Distribution.” The public comment period was originally scheduled to close on August 12, 2016. The NRC has decided to extend the public comment period to allow more time for members of the public to develop and submit their comments.

July 26, 2016 – 81 FR 48851-48857 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Exelon Generation Company, LLC; Braidwood Station, Units 1 and 2 – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is considering issuance of amendments to Renewed Facility Operating License Nos. NPF-72 and NPF-77 issued to Exelon Generation Company, LLC (Exelon, the licensee) for operation of Braidwood Station, Units 1 and 2 (Braidwood), located in Will County, Illinois. The proposed amendments would revise the maximum allowable technical specification (TS) temperature of the ultimate heat sink (UHS) for the plant. The NRC staff is issuing a final environmental assessment (EA) and finding of no significant impact (FONSI) associated with the proposed license amendments.

July 26, 2016 – The Olympian – Texas radioactive waste company eyes New Mexico site – A West Texas company that treats and disposes of radioactive waste may be ahead of southeastern New Mexico in landing a long-term storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. The Waste Control Specialists signaled this month it wants a spent fuel storage facility at the company’s facility just five miles east of Eunice, New Mexico, the Hobbs News-Sun reports (http://goo.gl/VC3oOA). WCS spokesman Chuck McDonald said the company is asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to begin the environmental review of the site now, a process that could take at least 18 months. WCS sent a letter to the NRC this week asking that the process begin so stakeholder meetings with the public can be held.

July 26, 2016 – Pulse.com.gh – Nuclear weapons roll through Scotland – In the dead of night, convoys carrying nuclear warheads wind their way through Glasgow: up the M74 motorway, over the West Street subway station I pass through on my way to work, across the river Clyde as it flows past my home, past the library and the gym and my dog’s vet surgery, past the best burger van and worst Chinese takeaway, and on to the Faslane naval base just outside the city. Every morning, my city risks waking up to news of a crash or meltdown, of a vast radioactive dust cloud sweeping south, of the slow deaths of thousands from incurable radiation sickness. From Faslane, these missiles are loaded onto submarines that slink out to undisclosed locations off Britain’s coastline, ready to launch their missiles – each one seven times more powerful than the bomb that levelled Hiroshima – on the prime minister’s say-so. And if that ever happens, in error or in earnest, you and I and everyone else on Earth will die as each nuke-toting nation retaliates in a matter of minutes.

July 26, 2016 – Albany Times Union – A hefty nuclear subsidy – In coming weeks, New York’s Public Service Commission will consider a clean energy plan that envisions a laudable goal: to derive half of the state’s electricity from clean, renewable sources. It also includes what can be fairly described as a massive subsidy for nuclear power plants. The state argues that with energy prices low right now, nuclear plants, which provide nearly a third of New York’s electricity, are in danger of closing. The state says it can’t quickly develop enough wind and solar to replace the roughly 37 million megawatt hours nuclear power plants provide. Those plants, advocates note, at least produce no greenhouse gas emissions and provide thousands of jobs. But at what cost? It’s one thing to keep nuclear plants running temporarily while the state transitions to green energy. It’s another to hand nuclear plant operators billions of dollars that could instead be used to move New York that much more quickly to a clean energy future.

July 26, 2016 – FTSE News – Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. (PESI) Updated Price Targets – Recently analysts working for numerous investment brokerages have updated their research report ratings and price targets on shares of Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. (PESI). Recent broker ratings and price targets: 05/11/2015 – Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. was upgraded to “hold” by analysts at Zacks. 03/03/2014 – Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. was upgraded to “hold” by analysts at Thomson Reuters/Verus. Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. has a 50 day moving average of 5.14 and a 200 day moving average of 4.18. The stock’s market capitalization is 51.50M, it has a 52-week low of 3.42 and a 52-week high of 5.64.

July 26, 2016 – Nikkei Asian Review – TEPCO asks for removal of “Pokemon Go” character from nuclear plant – Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. has asked the provider of the popular “Pokemon Go” smartphone game to change settings so that the game’s virtual characters will not appear at a nuclear power plant operated by it, the utility said Tuesday. TEPCO said it has detected at least one Pokemon character within the premises of one of the three TEPCO nuclear power stations it tested. The plants are the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which was crippled in the wake of the March 2011 disaster, and the Fukushima Daini plant, both in Fukushima Prefecture, and the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture. The company declined to say at which plant the character was found so as to prevent possible trespassers. It has also called on plant workers not to play “Pokemon Go” on the premises of the power stations.

July 26, 2016 – PhysOrg – Lonely atoms, happily reunited – The remarkable behaviour of platinum atoms on magnetite surfaces could lead to better catalysts. Scientists at TU Wien (Vienna) can now explain how platinum atoms can form pairs with the help of carbon monoxide. At first glance, magnetite appears to be a rather inconspicuous grey mineral. But on an atomic scale, it has remarkable properties: on magnetite, single metal atoms are held in place, or they can be made to move across the surface. Sometimes several metal atoms on magnetite form small clusters. Such phenomena can dramatically change the chemical activity of the material. Atomic processes on the magnetite surface determine how well certain metal atoms can serve as catalysts for chemical reactions. Scientists at TU Wien (Vienna), together with colleagues from Utrecht University, can now watch single platinum atoms form tiny clusters. Carbon monoxide plays a dual role in this process: It allows single platinum atoms to move and form pairs, and then it holds these pairs together for a long time.

July 26, 2016 – China.org.cn – China’s nuclear power requires rational development – On June 30, Qian Zhimin, general manager of China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), met with Hebei executive vice governor to discuss the construction of the Cangzhou Nuclear Fuel Industrial Park and Haixing Nuclear Power Industrial Park. First built in 2014, the industrial park in Cangzhou, which includes a uranium processing plant, aims to secure a nuclear fuel supply for the country. During a news briefing on Jan. 29 of this year, Pan Jianming, CNNC’s secretary of the board and spokesman, said, “We have already finished the preliminary work, and everything is going smoothly in Cangzhou.” Pan said that the CNNC planned to build two uranium processing plants in the country, with one in Cangzhou, Hebei Province and the other in Guangdong Province, though the specific location has yet to be decided.

July 26, 2016 – Onc Live – Dreicer Addresses Key Questions With Radium-223 in mCRPC – Robert Dreicer, MD Radium-223 dichloride (Xofigo) has proved to be a game-changer in the radiopharmaceutical scene, specifically with the treatment of patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), explains Robert Dreicer, MD.However, even with an encouraging survival benefit in patients with bone-metastatic disease, the agent’s most appropriate use and spot in a sequence with other available agents are still unknown. In an attempt to help answer these questions, ongoing clinical trials are examining the radiopharmaceutical in combinations.One phase III trial is randomizing patients with bone predominant mCRPC to either radium-223 alone or radium-223 with abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) and prednisone.

July 26, 2016 – Healthcare Daily – UT Southwestern Announces Early Collaborative Grants for Heavy Ion Project With UTA – UT Southwestern Medical Center is enlisting the help of UT Arlington professor Dr. Mingwu Jin to bolster its effort to launch the first heavy ion cancer treatment center in the United States. Jin, a physics professor with a background in electrical imaging and radiology, hopes to develop an imaging system that will help doctors see how each treatment is affecting a patient in real time, making it easier to adjust the dosage as needed.

July 26, 2016 – Medical XPress – Markers that cause toxic radiotherapy side-effects in prostate cancer identified – A new study involving researchers from The University of Manchester looked at the genetic information of more than 1,500 prostate cancer patients and identified two variants linked to increased risk of radiotherapy side-effects. Nearly 50% of the 1.1 million men a year worldwide diagnosed with prostate cancer undergo radiotherapy. It is an effective treatment, but between 10 and 50 percent of men suffer from radiotherapy side-effects which can cause long-term problems with urinating or rectal bleeding. It is not known why some men are more susceptible to side-effects and as a result doses are kept low to minimise the risk in all patients – reducing the effectiveness of treatment. The new Radiogenomics Consortium study coordinated from Manchester aimed to identify if there were any genetic markers which could explain this.

July 26, 2016 – Sputnik International – Russia, Turkey Discuss Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant Project – Russia and Turkey have discussed the implementation of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant project, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said Tuesday. “We discussed some investment projects, including the construction of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant. There is some progress here already. The necessary regulatory framework is being finished by the Turkish side. We expect to be able to move forward quite quickly,” Dvorkovich told reporters. In late June, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a letter addressed to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, apologized for the downing of the Russian Su-24 attack aircraft by a Turkish jet in November and extended his condolences to the family of the pilot killed in the incident.

July 26, 2016 – Rand Daily Mail – Why Eskom’s Brian Molefe is pumping up the nuclear propaganda – What Eskom CEO Brian Molefe understands well is that much of the success of doing business in a state-owned company comes down to how well you do at politics. To win at politics, you must use your power well: be unafraid to exercise it and brave enough to push the limits. It’s only by doing so that you become more powerful. As well as this, you need to get the wider public on your side. You need to win the propaganda war. As Eskom prepares to roll back the rise of independent power producers (IPPs) and lay the basis for the nuclear build, the propaganda war is going to be critical. This is because, on the facts alone, Eskom’s central argument — that SA’s energy future is a straight choice between variable and unreliable renewables and reliable base load nuclear — is nonsense.

July 26, 2016 – City AM – EDF staff in last-ditch attempt to derail Hinkley Point – Unions members at EDF launched a last ditch attempt to derail plans to build a nuclear power plant in Britain, amid fears over whether the French utility giant’s balance sheet will be able to withstand the £18bn project. It comes as EDF board members prepare to consider the final investment decision for Hinkley Point C at a meeting on Thursday. EDF works council secretary, Jean-Luc Magnaval, told Reuters the EDF works council had filed a complaint with a Paris court, and a hearing on the case is due to take place 2 August. “We demand a suspension of the decision,” Magnaval said. The UK must replace about 20 per cent of its ageing nuclear and coal power plants during the next 10 years, and Hinkley Point power is integral to keeping the lights on. The project will power six million homes for about 60 years, however its come under fire over its value for money for the tax payer.

July 26, 2016 – Dhaka Tribune – Bangladesh signs credit deal with Russia for Rooppur power plant – Bangladesh has signed a $11.38 billion credit deal with Russia in Moscow on July 26 to implement the Bangladesh’s first ever 2,400 MW nuclear power plant at Rooppur in Pabna. Kamrul Islam bhuiyan, an information officer at the Ministry of Science and Technology confirmed about the deal to the Dhaka Tribune. On July 18, the Russian government approved a deal to loan up to $11.38 billion to build the Rooppur nuclear power plant in Bangladesh.

July 26, 2016 – Union of Concerned Scientists – Nuclear Plant Accidents: Three Mile Island – At 4:00 am on March 28, 1979, workers at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania were preparing to restart the Unit 1 reactor from a refueling outage. The Unit 2 reactor was marking its first anniversary—exactly one year earlier, a nuclear chain reaction had been achieved for the first time. A series of events over the next 135 minutes would end Unit 2’s life and delay Unit 1’s restart for several years. Unit 2 was operating at 97% power when one of the two condensate pumps unexpectedly stopped running. The two feedwater pumps pulled more water from the piping than the single remaining condensate pump could supply. Automatic protective devices tripped both feedwater pumps. The loss of the feedwater pumps caused the water level in the steam generators as steam continued to exit them with little makeup water in return. Protective devices automatically tripped the main turbine and moments later triggered the rapid shut down of the reactor.

July 26, 2016 – OpenPR – Global Nuclear Steam Generator Market 2016 – Areva, Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, Westinghouse Electric, Atomic Energy of Canada – Report On 2016 Global Nuclear Steam Generator Industry provides a deep analysis of the Nuclear Steam Generator market. Global Nuclear Steam Generator Consumption Price, Nuclear Steam Generator Market Size (Volume and Value) and End Users Analysis. In the beginning, (Worldwide Nuclear Steam Generator Market-2016) provides a basic overview of the Nuclear Steam Generator industry including definitions, classifications, applications and Nuclear Steam Generator industry chain structure. The Nuclear Steam Generator market analysis is provided for the international market, which includes Nuclear Steam Generator industry development history, competitive landscape analysis and Nuclear Steam Generator market major regions development status.

July 26, 2016 – The Shillong Times – Uranium mining in Meghalaya – The Uranium issue has come to haunt us yet again. Germane to the debate is that uranium as nuclear scientist Dr Gordon Edwards says is ‘the deadliest metal on earth,’ as is borne out by scientific evidence. Edwards says all uranium ends up as either nuclear weapons or highly radioactive waste from nuclear reactors. In the process of mining uranium naturally occurring radioactive substances, which are among the most harmful materials known to science are liberated. Scientists today believe that nuclear technology never was and never will be a solution to any human problem and that there are alternative ways of generating electricity through water power, wind power, geothermal power, etc. If uranium is to be used for power generation then is solar power not a better and safer option?

July 26, 2016 – The New Yorker – America at the Atomic Crossroads – On July 25, 1946, the United States Navy carried out the fifth detonation of an atomic bomb in history, in a lagoon at Bikini Atoll, in the South Pacific. The device was anchored about ninety feet beneath a barge, and when it exploded it sent up an immense column of radioactive seawater, topped by a flattened white mushroom cloud. The column rose some six thousand feet, then collapsed back into the lagoon, generating a wave that was nearly the height of the Chrysler Building. From the air, the explosion’s shock front could be seen racing across the lagoon toward an armada of ninety mothballed warships—American, German, and Japanese—which were moored nearby. By the time the chaos subsided, eight had sunk and many more had been damaged. The very first nuclear test, a year earlier, was called Trinity, a name that evoked the intellectual mysticism of its chief scientific architect, J. Robert Oppenheimer. The test series at Bikini was given a less esoteric but perhaps more fitting moniker: Operation Crossroads. That was what 1946 was—a crossroads, a year of choices about the character of the postwar, newly nuclear world.

July 26, 2016 – Space Daily – World’s most sensitive dark matter detector completes search – The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter experiment, which operates beneath a mile of rock at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in the Black Hills of South Dakota, has completed its silent search for the missing matter of the universe. Today at an international dark matter conference (IDM 2016) in Sheffield, U.K., LUX scientific collaborators presented the results from the detector’s final 20-month run from October 2014 to May 2016. The new research result is also described with further details on the LUX Collaboration’s website.

July 26, 2016 – Korea Joonang Daily – Seoul plans for nuclear waste site – The government finalized its plans to choose a site to store high-level radioactive waste within 12 years and to construct a facility in 36 years. In a meeting at the Seoul Government Complex on Monday, Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn announced specifics for the project. The government said there are 36 nuclear power plants operating in Korea and each facility will run out of space for storage as early as 2019. The prime minister said safety issues of people and environment are top priorities in considering new construction.

July 26, 2016 – Nature World News – Russian City Called ‘Graveyard of the Earth,’ Closed Off to Visitors – The 1970 film “China Syndrome” shocked the world about the crippling effects of nuclear accidents. However, for one city in Russia, residents lived in such conditions where nuclear accidents were a norm. Contaminated water and poison berries plague Ozersk, dubbed as the “Graveyard of the Earth.” For the 100,000 citizens living in Ozersk, life was bountiful even in times when the rest of Russia crawled through poverty. Tucked in the Ural Mountains, residents of Ozersk had plentiful sources for food, lived in private apartments, sent their children to well-regarded schools, and had access to great healthcare. Yet, there is a downside to living in the place called “Graveyard of the Earth.” According to a report by the Guardian, water is contaminated, berries and mushrooms are poisoned, and the children are sick. City 40, another name for the city of Ozersk, was the site of Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons program.

July 26, 2016 – Environment360 – Sticker Shock: The Soaring Costs – German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2011 decision to rapidly phase out the country’s 17 nuclear power reactors has left the government and utilities with a massive problem: How to clean up and store large amounts of nuclear waste and other radioactive material. The cavern of the salt mine is 2,159 feet beneath the surface of central Germany. Stepping out of a dust-covered Jeep on an underground road, we enter the grotto and are met by the sound of running water — a steady flow that adds up to 3,302 gallons per day. “This is the biggest problem,” Ina Stelljes, spokesperson for the Federal Office for Radiation Protection, tells me, gesturing to a massive tank in the middle of the room where water waits to be pumped to the surface. The leaking water wouldn’t be an issue if it weren’t for the 125,000 barrels of low- and medium-level nuclear waste stored a few hundred feet below. Most of the material originated from 14 nuclear power plants, and the German government secretly moved it to the mine from 1967 until 1978. For now, the water leaking into the mine is believed to be contained, although it remains unclear if water has seeped into areas with waste and rusted the barrels inside.

July 25, 2016 – 81 FR 48464 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Sunshine Act Meeting – DATE: July 25, August 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 2016. PLACE: Commissioners’ Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. STATUS: Public and Closed. Week of July 25, 2016 Tuesday, July 26, 2016 9:00 a.m. Meeting with NRC Stakeholders (Public Meeting) (Contact: Denise McGovern: 301-415-0681) This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address–http://www.nrc.gov/. Thursday, July 28, 2016 9:00 a.m. Hearing on Combined Licenses for Levy Nuclear Plant, Units 1 and 2: Section 189a. of the Atomic Energy Act Proceeding (Public Meeting) (Contact: Donald Habib: 301-415-1035) This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address–http://www.nrc.gov/. Week of August 1, 2016–Tentative There are no meetings scheduled for the week of August 1, 2016. Week of August 8, 2016–Tentative There are no meetings scheduled for the week of August 8, 2016.

July 25, 2016 – Sonoma County Gazette – Nuclear Power and Health – Climate change, potentially the biggest health issue of our time, is upon us, and efforts have begun to limit the release of greenhouse gases. The most important steps at this point are going to involve transitioning away from burning fossil fuels as our primary energy source. That will mean leaving large oil and coal reserves in the ground and finding renewable energy sources. After a long hiatus due to safety concerns and huge cost over-runs, nuclear power has reappeared on the list of options. What are the health risks from nuclear power? Unfortunately, this topic will take two columns to cover. This month, I will discuss the current status of nuclear plants and some issues about our contact with radiation. Next column will discuss how this exposure affects human health.

July 25, 2016 – Scoop.co.nz – Mururoa Nuclear Veterans Group Reply to Radiation Report – The Mururoa Nuclear Veterans Group (MNVG Inc) has unequivocally rejected the findings of last year’s report commissioned by Veteran Affairs and undertaken by Crown research agency Environmental Science and Research Ltd (ESR) which was released in October 2015. After a year long consultation with Mururoa veterans, a reply to the ESR authored “The Pilaster Deployment: A Radiological Review” report has been compiled and sent to the Right Honourable Craig Foss, Minister of Veterans Affairs, the Right Honourable Phil Goff, Labour Spokesperson on Veterans Affairs and Jackie Couchman, Head of Veterans Affairs New Zealand. As stated in the reply, “The majority of the members of the MNVG … do not believe the Minister’s issues which are outlined in a letter to (former President) Wayne O’Donnell dated 26 August 2015 have been met and the report severely clouds the areas of concern”.

July 25, 2016 – PRNewswire – Department of Health Distributing Free Potassium Iodide on August 4 to Pennsylvanians Near the State’s Five Nuclear Power Plants – The Department of Health will offer free potassium iodide, or KI, tablets Thursday, August 4, to Pennsylvanians who are within 10 miles of one of the state’s five nuclear power plants. “KI tablets are an important part of emergency preparedness plans and go kits for residents who live or work within 10 miles of a nuclear facility,” said Secretary of Health Dr. Karen Murphy. “KI can help protect the thyroid gland against harmful radioactive iodine when taken as directed during certain radiological emergencies. It’s important to remember that you should only take KI when told to do so by the governor or state health officials.”

July 25, 2016 – Tass – Iran may join international thermonuclear experimental reactor project – Iran may join the international project for the creation of the ITER reactor (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), which is being built in the French town of Cadarache, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Ali Akbar Salehi is quoted by the IRNA agency on Monday. “ITER has 27 members comprising European Union countries, the US, Russia, China, India, South Korea and Japan and during recent visit the grounds were prepared for Iran to join the plan,” he said. The Islamic Republic of Iran is the only country in west Asia to be admitted in the project and all parties with good knowledge on capabilities of the Iranian experts are to welcome it, Salehi said, according to IRNA.

July 25, 2016 – TheLocal.it – Turin could slash Wi-Fi over ‘radiation’ concerns – Turin is planning to cut back on Wi-Fi in state schools and government buildings over concerns that radiation might damage people’s health. The plans were outlined last week as the city’s new new Five Star Movement (M5S) mayor, Chiara Appendino, presented her council’s five-year political plan. “We’re aware that we need to consider electromagnetic radiation when we speak about pollution,” reads page 23 of the council’s programme. “We would like to take all precautions necessary and ask all public structures to work to reduce the volume of emissions and while guaranteeing connectivity for citizens.” Details of the plans emerge just days after Appendino hit headlines for her proposals to reduce citizens meat consumption over he next five years, by teaching the benefits of a vegan or vegetarian diet in Turin’s schools.

July 25, 2016 – Sputnik UK – Russia Lays Down Nuclear-Powered Ural Icebreaker at Baltic Shipyard – The Arktika, the first project 22220 class ship and the first nuclear icebreaker to be fully built in modern-day Russia, was successfully launched at the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg on June 16. The second ship, the Sibir, was laid down at the shipyard in May 2015. “We are laying the icebreaker ahead of schedule, since the Ural was supposed to be laid down approximately two months later. But it is fundamentally important that the impetus gained by the plant and the team engaged in the construction of new icebreakers is maintained,” Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of Rosatom that ordered the icebreaker, said at the keel-laying ceremony.

July 25, 2016 – ConstructionWeekOnline.com – South Korea inks $920m deal for UAE reactors – State-owned Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) signed a $920m deal with Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) to operate four nuclear reactors, currently under construction, in Barakah in Abu Dhabi. It is the first time for the firm that has been providing nuclear components and construction services to be in charge of maintenance and operation of a nuclear operation overseas. Based on the agreement signed, KHNP will dispatch a total of 3,000 employees to the UAE until 2030 – about 210 every year – starting May, next year. They will be responsible for the operations of four advanced power reactor (APR)-1400 nuclear reactors that are under construction as part of UAE’s project to build its first nuclear power station.

July 25, 2016 – Forbes – British Nuclear Power Stations May Be Too Big A Risk For French EDF – French state-controlled power group EDF is set to hold a supervisory board meeting on July 28 to decide whether to go ahead or not with a project to build and operate two nuclear power stations at Hinkley Point in Britain. It might be wise to call the 22 billion euro investment off due to the many risks and the weak financial situation of the power group that also needs to phase out and replace ageing stations in France. The project has already cost more than two billion euros and two initial partners have dropped out – Britain’s Centrica and French nuclear power station builder Areva . Areva, in financial dire straits, is facing serious problems with the construction of EPR stations in Finland and in France.

July 25, 2016 – PhysOrg – Linear deutron and light ion accelerator successfully tested in Dubna – The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research has successfully launched a new linear deuteron and light ion accelerator developed in MEPhI for the NICA collider. The injector successfully accelerated a beam at the design energy of 5 MeV/nucleon. The development of the linear accelerator started in 2011, seeking to inject protons, polarized deuterons and light ions into the collider NICA, which is under construction. Its will replace a high-voltage electrostatic pre-injector, developed more than 40 years ago, with a modern accelerator capable of spatially uniform quadrupole focusing. The project is being realized by a team of specialists from JINR, MEPhI and Kurchatov Institute. After two years of construction, the Russian Federal Nuclear Center – VNIITF (Snezhinsk) has made the accelerator cavity. Kurchatov Institute has also developed and built a high-frequency supply system. The physical start-up of the new accelerator was conducted in December, 2015.

July 25, 2016 – Islington Gazette – A trip to Chernobyl: a haunting tour of Ukraine’s radioactive crumbling ghost town – I first went to Kiev, the elegant 19th Century capital of Ukraine, 15 years ago and saw the Chernobyl Museum. That was 15 years after the nuclear disaster when several blasts brought down Reactor No. 4 of the nuclear power plant. It was the 20th Century’s gravest technological catastrophe with 50 million curies (Ci) of radioactivity released into the atmosphere. Four hundred and eighty five villages and towns were wiped out. The number of people dead is still uncalculated. Now, 30 years after the disaster, you can go into the toxic wasteland that is the ‘radio active exclusion zone’ but not alone. You have to join a tour. And so I did, travelling with nine others, to the Zone 60kms north of Kiev. We went through various checkpoints (12 in all) and through contamination machines to check radiation exposure.

July 25, 2016 – Kallanish Energy – Radiation, toxicity levels low at WVU’s Marcellus research wells – Drilling wastes from two research wells in northern West Virginia are well below federal guidelines for radioactive and hazardous wastes, Kallanish Energy reports. Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute at West Virginia University, presented those findings last week from the Marcellus Shale Energy and Environmental Laboratory at the Appalachian Basin Technology Workshop in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, the university announced. Ziemkiewicz and his research team have been studying solid and liquid wastes that are produced in shale drilling from the two wells near Morgantown. That includes drill cuttings, muds and produced water. Drilling a horizontal well in the Marcellus Shale will generate about 500 tons of rock known as cuttings. Cuttings that exceed a federal transportation limit of 2,000 pico curies per gram require special permitting and handling because that waste is classified as low-level radioactive.

July 25, 2016 – Times Leader – Talen Energy to lay off 53 workers at nuclear power plant in Salem Township – Talen Energy will be eliminating 53 positions at the Susquehanna Power Plant, according to company officials. Todd L. Martin, manager of media relations for Talen Energy, confirmed the layoffs Friday, saying the company sent a “staffing plan” letter to the leadership of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1600, in Allentown, on Thursday. The company is laying off more than 131 “excess” employees at three plants — Susquehanna in Salem Township, Montour Power Plant in Washingtonville and Brunner Island in York County — and an office in Allentown.

July 25, 2016 – New City Patch – Jaffee Opposes NY Nuclear Plant Subsidy Plan – Assemblymember Ellen Jaffee (D-Suffern) has sent a letter to the Public Service Commission (PSC) calling the latest proposal to give nuclear power plants nearly $8 billion in taxpayer subsidies “unacceptable, largely out of public view, and in undue haste.” The PSC plan includes subsidies for upstate nuclear power plants including the FitzPatrick plant, which its owner Entergy plans to shut down by the end of the year because it is losing money. See all the documents connected to the PSC’s Motion to Implement a Large-Scale Renewable Program here. The comment period ends July 22. Jaffee is Chair of the New York State Assembly Committee on Oversight, Analysis and Investigation and a member of the Committee on Environmental Conservation.

July 25, 2016 – Los Angeles Times – Review ‘Indian Point’ sagely examines the nuclear power debate from all sides – In a world where unabashed advocacy documentaries are thick on the land, Ivy Meeropol’s expert “Indian Point,” an evenhanded look at the issues surrounding nuclear power, is a welcome exception. With no end in sight to global energy demands, questions about nuclear’s place as a possible solution become increasingly urgent, with anger and rigidity on all sides of the issue often the end result. Taking a different approach, Meeropol, whose work includes 2003’s excellent “Heir to an Execution,” examines New York’s controversial Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant from multiple points of view, including the perspectives of its advocates, its enemies, the people who work inside it and the public servants who are in charge of regulation. One of more than 100 American nuclear facilities currently operating, Indian Point is especially controversial because of its location in Westchester County, just north of New York City.

July 25, 2016 – NJ.com – What if there were a nuclear plant emergency and you didn’t know? – What if there’s an emergency at a nearby nuclear power plant that requires you to take action but you are never informed? That was the fear expressed by speakers this week during the state’s annual review of the plan that would be put into action in case of a large-scale accident at one of New Jersey’s four nuclear reactors. “The deteriorating telecommunications infrastructure throughout in South Jersey will have a disastrous impact in executing this plan,” said Barbara Stratton who lives in Stow Creek Township in Cumberland County within the 10-mile emergency planning zone around PSEG Nuclear’s Artificial Island generating complex. Without reliable service how would a person in harm’s way receive a call alerting them of an emergency, she asked.

July 25, 2016 – New Mexico Pollitical Report – Lowered deadline standards on new nuclear cleanup plan worries some – Criticism of a controversial new agreement between the state and the federal government on how to clean up legacy waste in and around Los Alamos National Laboratory often has one thing in common—deadlines. Most agreements between states and the federal government to clean up nuclear waste have fixed deadlines set for benchmarks. If the federal Department of Energy misses one of these deadlines, it can then be sanctioned and penalized by the state. “The Department of Energy hates penalties,” Scott Kovac, a research and operations director with Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said in an interview. “A deadline might shake out some funding from its budget.”

July 25, 2016 – Salt Lake Tribune – Utah court ruling kills environmentalists’ appeal, OKs Green River nuclear plant – A court ruling, unless appealed, has removed the final state hurdle for a Utah company planning to build a nuclear power plant near Green River, putting the fate of the $20 billion project in the hands of federal regulators. The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed Thursday an earlier court ruling allowing Blue Castle Holdings’ plan for a nuclear site in Emery County to continue. The unanimous opinion affirms the 7th District Court’s 2013 ruling that the company’s bid would not overly tax the river by diverting water to cool a pair of nuclear reactors. The decision nullifies an appeal from the environmental advocacy group HEAL Utah, which contended that Blue Castle Holdings’ nuclear site would significantly reduce water levels for the Green River, adversely affecting wildlife and the public welfare.

July 25, 2016 – KING 5 Seattle – AG files emergency action to force end to Hanford safety ‘crisis’ – Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Wednesday filed an emergency legal motion to force improvements in worker safety at the Hanford Site, the 586-square-mile former plutonium production facility. Ferguson called the action “as serious as it gets.” The motion for injunctive relief asks a federal judge intervene in the operations at the site to protect workers from continued exposure to toxic chemical vapors. It names as defendants the U.S. Department of Energy and Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), the private company that manages the nuclear waste storage tanks at Hanford.

July 25, 2016 – San Luis Obispo Tribune – Diablo Canyon engineers work hard to keep plant up to date – As a proud engineer at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, the Mothers for Peace commentary (“Diablo Canyon is not needed, SLO Mothers for Peace says,” July 15) on our supposedly outdated and not-needed plant struck a cord. The MFP stated that they value our professional well-trained work force; then go on to say that the plant is outdated, aged, damages the ocean and is not adequately designed. Does anyone really believe we would allow this condition to exist? All I know is that we work tirelessly to maintain our plant in like-new condition — monitoring conditions and continuously upgrading and replacing equipment well before it reaches end of life.

July 25, 2016 – San Diego Union-Tribune – Pro-nuclear green group: Bring back San Onofre – It may be a long shot, but a pro-nuclear environmental organization based near San Luis Obispo wants to bring the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station back to life. “I think it can happen if we’re allowed to make our case,” said Gene Nelson, government liaison for Californians for Green Nuclear Power, which contends that nuclear power is essential for the state to meet its clean energy targets in the coming years. But can San Onofre, which has not produced electricity since January 2012 and is well into the third year of a 20-year decommissioning process, realistically get back up and running? “I’ve heard from far too many people (who say), ‘Once we’ve flipped the switch, it’s irreversible,’” Nelson said. “I don’t think that’s true.” CGNP’s members see the recent decision by the California Public Utilities Commission to reopen the controversial $4.7 billion San Onofre settlement as a potential opening.\

July 25, 2016 – San Diego Union Tribune – Wjy San Onofre’s nuclear waste stays on the beach – Some 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste at the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is all stored up with no place to go. The plant has not produced electricity since January 2012 for the nearly 19 million people served by Southern California Edison, the majority owner of the facility, and San Diego Gas & Electric, which owns 20 percent. Edison officials overseeing the plant’s decommissioning have set a target date of the end of 2032 to remove nearly every remnant of the generating station, which hugs the Southern California coastline at the northern tip of San Diego County in Camp Pendleton. The operative word is “nearly” because, in all likelihood, the waste — also called spent fuel or used fuel — will stay behind for years to come, stranded until a long-term solution is reached on what to do with it.

July 25, 2016 – Huffington Post – There are good reasons for California to phase out nuclear power – Of course California, like the USA, like Germany, like the European Union and like the whole world, needs carbon-free electricity. Global warming and the resulting consequences do not stop at borders; they are global. And these global and devastating consequences and their costs are the second part of a bill which we were given years and even decades ago and which we thought we had paid a long time ago – the second part of our electricity bill and that of our parents and grandparents. In contrast to renewable energies, electricity generation leaves something behind which has to be disposed of – not buried in rock but blown invisibly into the atmosphere: CO2, which warms our climate and triggers catastrophic (weather) events. Just imagine if CO2 were not odourless. Would we really have disregarded the potential of renewable energies to such an extent for decades? Would not more people have stood up and demanded another type of power generation? California needs carbon-free electricity, but not from nuclear power stations. That is why it is good and right that PG&E plans to finally decommission the 2-gigawatt Diablo Canyon nuclear power station by the end of 2025.

July 20, 2016 – 81 FR 47005-47006 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Update to Transcript Correction Procedures – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is amending its regulation that governs the correction of official transcripts for agency adjudicatory proceedings. The current regulation has not been substantively updated since it was adopted in 1962 and the NRC’s internal procedures have evolved since that time to incorporate technological development. The NRC is not soliciting public comment on this change because the change is limited to an agency rule of procedure and practice that does not affect the rights and responsibilities of outside parties.

July 20, 2016 – 81 FR 47181-47182 – NUCLEAR WASTE TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD – Board Meeting; August 24, 2016–DOE Work on Integrating Different Canister Designs for Storage and Disposal of SNF – Pursuant to its authority under section 5051 of Public Law 100-203, Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act (NWPAA) of 1987, and in accordance with its mandate to review the technical and scientific validity of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) activities related to implementing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board will meet in Washington, DC on August 24, 2016, to review DOE activities related to integrating the management and disposal of the many different designs of canisters for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) that are currently in service and under development. The meeting will be held at the Westin Washington, DC City Center Hotel, 1400 M Street NW., Washington, DC 20005, 202-429-1700. A block of rooms has been reserved for meeting attendees at a rate of $149.00 per night. Reservations may be made by phone: (888) 627-9035 or online: https://www.starwoodmeeting.com/events/start.action?id=1512302524&key=12331FD9. Reservations must be made by Monday, August 1, 2016, to ensure receiving the meeting rate. On-site parking at the hotel is available for an overnight rate of $59 or a daily rate of $28.00. The meeting will begin at 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday, August 24, 2016, and is scheduled to adjourn at 5:00 p.m. Among the topics to be discussed at the meeting are descriptions of the canister types currently used and being developed for storing and transporting SNF and HLW, DOE’s efforts to create an integrated program for managing and disposing of SNF and HLW canisters, and nuclear industry perspectives on DOE’s efforts to develop standardized canisters for commercial SNF. The meeting agenda will be available on the Board’s Web site: www.nwtrb.gov approximately one week before the meeting. The agenda may also be requested by email or telephone at that time from Davonya Barnes of the Board’s staff.

July 20, 2016 – 81 FR 47159-47160 – DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY – DOE/NSF High Energy Physics Advisory Panel – This notice announces a meeting of the DOE/NSF High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP). The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of these meetings be announced in the Federal Register. DATES: Friday, August 12, 2016; 12:00 Noon to 3:00 p.m. ADDRESSES: Teleconference. Instructions for access can be found on the HEPAP Web site: http://science.energy.gov/hep/hepap/meetings/ or by contacting Dr. John Kogut by email at: john.kogut@science.doe.gov or by phone: (301) 903-1298. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: John Kogut, Executive Secretary; High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP); U.S. Department of Energy; SC-25/Germantown Building, 1000 Independence Avenue SW., Washington, DC 20585-1290; Telephone: 301-903-1298. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of Panel: To provide advice and guidance on a continuing basis to the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation on scientific priorities within the field of high energy physics research.

July 20, 2016 – The Guardian – ‘The graveyard of the Earth’: inside City 40, Russia’s deadly nuclear secret – “Those in paradise were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.” (From the dystopian novel We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1924) Deep in the vast forests of Russia’s Ural mountains lies the forbidden city of Ozersk. Behind guarded gates and barbed wire fences stands a beautiful enigma – a hypnotic place that seems to exist in a different dimension. Codenamed City 40, Ozersk was the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear weapons programme after the second world war. For decades, this city of 100,000 people did not appear on any maps, and its inhabitants’ identities were erased from the Soviet census. Today, with its beautiful lakes, perfumed flowers and picturesque tree-lined streets, Ozersk resembles a suburban 1950s American town – like one of those too-perfect places depicted in The Twilight Zone.

July 20, 2016 – Daily Caller – Dangerously Aging US Nuke Plants Desperately Need Repairs – Department of Energy officials put off $39.4 million worth of maintenance on aging facilities used for enriched uranium processing and storage, a government watchdog reported Tuesday. Making the situation even more dire at the historic Oak Ridge, Tenn., plant is the fact that a replacement facility won’t be finished until four years after the existing building life-cycles are exhausted, according to the Energy Department’s inspector general (IG). The new complex also won’t support all the necessary functions the old buildings provided. Officials worry the decaying facilities represent a serious health threat to the plant’s employees and nearby civilians.

July 20, 2016 – Calgary Herald – Local medical imaging company expands into oil and gas sector – A Calgary company whose mobile technology allows doctors to make diagnoses on the go is expanding into other sectors, including oil and gas. Calgary Scientific Inc. — best known for its Resolution MD viewer, which allows doctors to view medical images on mobile devices — is entering a “new growth phase” with a focus on branching into new industries. Dave Waldrop — executive vice-president, sales and marketing — said that after more than a decade in the medical space, Calgary Scientific is promoting other applications for its technology. “Medical imaging is how Calgary Scientific got started,” Waldrop said. “But what we found out is that the underlying technology that we used to build the Resolution MD product can be applied in other markets.”

July 20, 2016 – Renal & Urology News – Chest X-Rays May Miss Pulmonary Metastases in T1a RCC Patients – For patients treated for T1a renal cell carcinoma, chest X-rays have low diagnostic yield for detecting pulmonary metastases, according to a study published in the August issue of The Journal of Urology. Noah E. Canvasser, MD, from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and colleagues examined the usefulness of chest X-rays for T1a renal cell carcinoma surveillance. A total of 258 patients with T1a renal cell carcinoma were treated with partial nephrectomy, radical nephrectomy, or radio frequency ablation, with surveillance follow-up. Demographics, pathological findings, and surveillance records were identified during retrospective chart review. The incidence of asymptomatic pulmonary recurrences diagnosed by chest X-ray was the primary outcome.

July 20, 2016 – PhysOrg – X-ray studies could help make LIGO gravitational wave detector 10 times more sensitive – Scientists from Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are using powerful X-rays to study high-performance mirror coatings that could help make the LIGO gravitational wave observatory 10 times more sensitive to cosmic events that ripple space-time. The current version of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, called Advanced LIGO, was the first experiment to directly observe gravitational waves, which were predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago. In September 2015, it detected a signal coming from two black holes, each about 30 times heavier than the sun, which merged into a single black hole 1.3 billion years ago. The experiment picked up a similar second event in December 2015. “The detection of gravitational waves will fundamentally change our understanding of the universe in years to come,” says Riccardo Bassiri, a physical science research associate at Stanford’s interdisciplinary Ginzton Laboratory.

July 20, 2016 – Southernminn.com – MDH: Three out of five Rice County homes contain ‘dangerous’ radon levels – A new interactive map from the Minnesota Department of Health shows that radon levels in Rice County are much higher, on average, than in other parts of the state. The map and the data with it show that 60 percent of homes tested for radon in Rice County saw levels equal to or greater than 4 pCi/L (picocuries per liter). That means three of every five homes in the county likely contain dangerous levels of radon gas, according to MDH definitions.

July 20, 2016 – Nature World News – Alert! Fracking May Trigger Asthma Attacks – Hydraulic fracturing, an industrial process that involves breaking rock formation deep underground to extract fossil fuels, has gained a lot of controversy over the past years because of its reported negative impacts on the environment and human health. Aside from increasing the levels of toxic radon, contributing to earthquake occurrences and contaminating drinking water, the process, more known as “fracking,” has also been associated with increased levels of air pollution. In line with this, a new study revealed that it can also worsen asthma attacks. Published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, the study was conducted by the researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

July 20, 2016 – Space Daily – Fallout Fungi From Chernobyl Flee Earth on ISS Radiation Study Mission – Fungi found growing in the fallout from the world’s worst nuclear disaster are to be sent into space. Samples from eight different types of fungi taken from the Chernobyl exclusion zone are ready for take-off to the International Space Station (ISS). Now these fungi are pretty special; after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986, when the reactor was struck by a power surge causing a nuclear melt down, the area around the site was turned into wasteland, leaving all living organisms and wildlife soaked in radiation – apart from several species of fungi which appeared to thrive. The fungi, which poked through the soil at the nuclear site in Ukraine are giving scientists hope that they could “produce new compounds that could be used as radiation therapy molecules,” according to Kasthuri Venkateswaran (Venkat for short), senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), as reported by Motherboard.

July 20, 2016 – PhysOrg – Active tracking of astronaut rad-exposures targeted – Radiation is an invisible hazard of spaceflight, but a new monitoring system for ESA astronauts gives a realtime snapshot of their exposure. The results will guide researchers preparing for deep-space missions to come. A key element of the new system launched to orbit with Monday’s Falcon 9 launch to the International Space Station, ensuring it is in place for ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet’s November mission to the Station. As a general rule, radiation exposure increases with altitude – people living on mountains receive more than those at sea level, while airline crews receive a small but noticeable additional dose. Astronauts in orbit receive still more radiation – they are officially classed as radiation workers. The individual dose for the whole flight is carefully measured by keeping a dosimeter on their body, to keep their career exposure within safe limits. “While sophisticated, these dosimeters are passive,” explains Ulrich Straube, radiologist and flight surgeon at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany.

July 20, 2016 – Street Insider – Pluristem Therapeutics (PSTI) Announces Participation in Radiation Injury Treatment Network’s Meeting – Pluristem Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: PSTI) announced its participation in the Radiation Injury Treatment Network’s meeting titled, “Medical Management of Radiation Casualties: Where Research and Usage Meet”. The meeting, which took place on July 18-19, 2016, was organized jointly by the Radiation Injury Treatment Network and the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Racheli Ofir, Ph.D., Pluristem’s Vice President of Research & Intellectual Property, shared her expertise in studying the treatment of Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) in a variety of animal models.

July 20, 2016 – PhysOrg – Scientists develop a minimally traumatic and inexpensive ceramic laser scalpel – Scientists from MIPT and their colleagues have developed a compact and powerful ceramic-based laser with applications in minimally traumatic and inexpensive laser surgical scalpels, and also for cutting and engraving composite materials. The results of the study have been published in Optics Letters. Today, lasers are in consumer electronics devices, medicine, metallurgy, metrology, meteorology, and many other areas. Lasers are created by stimulated emission in an active medium, which could be a gas, liquid, crystal, or glass. The wavelength of a laser and the efficiency of converting energy into radiation are both dependent upon the parameters of the active medium. Ivan Obronov, a researcher at MIPT, and his colleagues used a ceramic obtained from compounds of rare-earth elements – lutetium oxide with added thulium ions (Tm3+:Lu2O3). It was the thulium ions that enabled the ceramic to generate laser radiation.

July 20, 2016 – New York Post – Burrito saunas are the latest wacky health trend – Detoxers usually avoid burritos— at least the carb-bomb kind. But over the past year, celebs have flocked to LA’s Shape House, a so-called “urban sweat lodge” that wraps its VIP clients in infrared sauna blankets that eerily resemble the Tex-Mex staple. Selena Gomez credits the heated wraps, which promise to banish toxins, with softening her skin, while “Orange Is the New Black” cast members have met there for sweats. Now, the trend has hit the East Coast.

July 20, 2016 – The Japan Times – In first, Tepco admits ice wall can’t stop Fukushima No. 1 groundwater – The much-hyped ice wall at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has failed to stop groundwater from flowing in and mixing with highly radioactive water inside the wrecked reactor buildings, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. has admitted. Tepco officials also said at a meeting of the Nuclear Regulation Authority in Tokyo that it is not the utility’s ultimate goal to shut out groundwater with the ice wall, which has been built around the four damaged reactor buildings at the plant. Tuesday’s announcement was apparently the first time the utility publicly said it is technically incapable of blocking off groundwater with the frozen wall.

July 20, 2016 – Michigan Capitol Confidential – Shivering in the Dark? Sierra Club Opposes 91 Percent of Michigan Electricity – The Sierra Club environmental organization opposes the three sources of energy responsible for 91 percent of the electricity generated in Michigan. It has been outspoken in its stance against the use of natural gas, coal and nuclear power to generate electricity for Michigan households and businesses. Michigan generates 32 percent of its electricity by burning coal and another 32 percent comes from nuclear power plants. Natural gas accounts for another 27 percent of electricity generation. Wind and solar account for less than 7 percent of net electricity generation in this state. “The Sierra Club opposes, or is pushing to phase out, over 90 percent of the energy resources that we depend on for our lives and well-being,” said Jason Hayes, the director of environmental policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

July 20, 2016 – Daily Star – Fears for MASSIVE Turkey H-bomb stash after four-day power cut – MAJOR concerns that a huge pile of US nukes sitting in a Turkish airbase could be snatched by Turkey rebels or ISIS have got world leaders rattled. The fears were raised over the stash of nukes after a Turkish airbase saw its power cut for FOUR days as carnage took over the streets. Incirlik Airbase – 70 miles from the Syrian border – is home to NATO’s largest nuclear weapons storage facility and the base for US’ anti-ISIS operations. It’s home to fifty B-61 bombs. Just one bomb could kill 4,000 and injure 4,000 more in the first 24 hours of detonation. Detonating fifty at the same time would release a massive killer radioactive cloud that would cause mass devastation.

July 20, 2016 – Blackpool Gazette – Fylde coast nuclear team’s distinction – Westinghouse’s Springfields site at Salwick has been awarded the Order of Distinction Award from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. This is the 16th consecutive year that the company’s enhanced safety culture and safety improvements have been recognised by RoSPA. RoSPA and the Order of Distinction Award are internationally recognised achievements for operations in 24 industry sectors including construction, healthcare, transport and logistics, engineering, manufacturing and education. The award offers organisations the opportunity to prove their ongoing commitment to raising safety standards and to celebrate success.

July 20, 2016 – The Conversation – As nuclear power plants close, states need to bet big on energy storage – Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) recently started the process of shutting down the Diablo Canyon generation facility, the last active nuclear power plant in California. The power plant, located near Avila Beach on the central Californian coast, consists of two 1,100 megawatt (MW) reactors and produces 18,000 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity a year, about 8.5 percent of California’s electricity consumption in 2015. It has been, up until this point, the single largest electrical generation facility in the state. Looming over the imminent closure of Diablo Canyon is California State legislative bill SB 350, or the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015. The act is a cornerstone of the state’s ongoing efforts to decarbonize its electricity grid by requiring utilities to include renewable sources for a portion of their electrical generation in future years. The mandate also requires utilities to run programs designed to double the efficiency of electricity and natural gas consumption.

July 20, 2016 – IndiaTimes – This Backwaters Paradise In Kerala Is One Of The Most Radioactive Towns In The World! – When one brings up the topic of radioactivity, out thoughts immediately go to either Chernobyl or Fukushima. While nuclear disasters were to be blamed for their release in the atmosphere, there are elements present in the ground that put us in danger in the face of constant exposure. India’s no stranger to this exposure. A small municipality in Kerala known as Karunagappalli has been privy to this vulnerability for a while now. Constantly facing high radiation, Karunagappalli’s exposure can be attributed to the presence of monazite in the soil that carries traces of 8-10 percent Thorium. Experts believe that the allowable limit of exposure sits at 5 milligrays of radiation; exceed that and one can fall prey to its harmful effects with prolonged exposure. Radiation levels in Karunagappally varied between 0.32 to 76 milligrays per year across 12 panchayats, according to The Hindu report. Radioactive exposure depends on both short-term and long-term time frames as well as short and long distances. While some cases of leukemia and cancer have been reported in Karunagappalli, the erosion of monazite into the beach sand is too hard to ignore.

July 20,2 016 – US News & World Report – The Myth of the Nuclear Renaissance; The game is already over for nuclear energy – Desperate times for the nuclear industry call for desperate rhetoric. Hence the reach, once again, for “renaissance,” even though the facts support no such thing and the industry itself dare not even resurrect the mythological moniker. With nuclear power priced out of the market – not only by natural gas but, more importantly for climate, by renewables – die-hard nuclear proponents are dressing up old reactors in new propaganda. Sodium-cooled, fast and even small modular reactors are all designs that have been around – and rejected – for decades. Sodium-cooled reactors are prone to fires, explosions and super-criticality accidents. A rapid power increase inside the core of such a reactor could vaporize the fuel and blow the core apart. Far from “walk away safe,” these on-paper designs have not been submitted to the kind of rigorous “all scenarios” testing that could definitively designate them as meltdown proof.

July 20, 2016 – National Review – Democrats Ignore Inconvenient Math on Nuclear Power – The party’s platform ignores the reality that wind and solar aren’t enough. The Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia, doesn’t start until July 25, but a look at the party’s draft platform reveals one fact: Democrats remain hopelessly unserious when it comes to greenhouse gases and climate change. To be sure, the platform contains plenty of phrases that aim to inspire voters, including references to income inequality, “greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street,” and the need to protect civil rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights, LGBT rights, and so on. While the Democrats are right to favor voting and civil rights for everyone, including women, transgendered people, and homosexuals, they are intolerant of any heterodoxy on the issue of nuclear energy and its pivotal role in the effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The draft platform includes 24 mentions of the word “nuclear,” but that word is never followed by “energy” or “power.” Instead, it’s followed by words like “annihilation,” “weapon,” and “warhead.” It’s as though the Democrats have pledged to ignore America’s single largest and most reliable source of low-carbon electricity.

July 20, 2016 – Worcester Business Journal – Marlborough co. handling nuclear plant auction – Marlborough’s Concentric Energy Advisors will be in charge of auctioning off the Tennessee Valley Authority’s incomplete Bellefonte Nuclear Plant near Hollywood, Ala., by this October. Concentric was retained to manage the auction of Bellefonte after the TVA Board declared the plant to be a surplus property and authorized its sale in May. The 1,600-acre facility currently contains two unfinished nuclear units, plus a number of supporting structures, including transmission switchyards, warehouses and parking lots, suitable for a variety of industrial, commercial or residential uses, according to a release from TVA. According to the Associated Press, the property has been appraised at $36 million.

July 20, 2016 – OSU Press Release – Ohio State University to receive $10M for nuclear waste disposal research – The Ohio State University is among four sites around the country chosen for new research centers by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today. The Center for Performance and Design of Nuclear Waste Forms and Containers (WastePD) will receive $10 million over the next four years, and will be the first of DOE’s 36 Energy Frontier Research Centers nationwide to be headquartered in the state of Ohio. WastePD’s goal will be to “accelerate the scientific breakthroughs needed to support the DOE’s environmental management and nuclear cleanup mission” through “basic research aimed at assisting with the cleanup of hazardous waste that resulted from decades of nuclear weapons research and production during the 20th century,” DOE announced today.

July 20, 2016 – Herald Palladium – Palisades places security workers on leave – Nearly two dozen security workers at the Palisades nuclear power plant are on paid leave after inconsistencies in fire inspection records were found last month. Plant owner Entergy placed the workers on leave while it investigates the allegations, plant spokeswoman Val Gent said Monday. One of the workers’ duties is to do routine checks to look for any possible signs of fire. While she did not go into specifics on the allegations, Gent said “the bottom line is that we cannot tolerate employees stating they completed a task when they didn’t, and we are obligated to fully investigate any such instances.” “Fire (checks) are just one tool in our defense in-depth fire protection program, which includes fire prevention, fire detection and fire suppression,” Gent said.

July 20,2016 – PNNL Press Release – “Dream Team” chosen to study basic science of nuclear waste – A more thorough understanding of the chemistry of radioactive waste is key to treating this unwanted byproduct of winning World War II and the Cold War. To accelerate the scientific breakthroughs needed to support the Department of Energy’s cleanup mission, four new Energy Frontier Research Centers have been formed. Energy Secretary Moniz announced Monday that up to $40 million dollars will go to fund the four centers for up to four years. DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will lead one center called IDREAM, which stands for Interfacial Dynamics in Radioactive Environments and Materials.

July 20, 2016 – KSBY – PG&E preparing study on decommissioning of Diablo Canyon Power Plant – With Diablo Canyon Power Plant set to shut down in nine years, Pacific Gas and Electric is now studying just how to go about decommissioning the plant. “We are going to take our time and do this right and put together an effective and safe decommission plan,” said Blair Jones, a spokesperson for PG&E. Part of the plan is coming up with a way to fund the shutdown. A taxpayer trust fund is currently at about $3 billion, but shutting down the plant is expected to ring up a tab of nearly $4 billion.

July 20, 2016 – Cal Coast News – Diablo Canyon closure the result of failed energy policies – If you live anywhere on the Central Coast, you’re aware by now that on June 21, PG&E announced it will not seek relicensing of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant when the licenses expire in 2024-2025. It’s my opinion this is a direct result of years of failed energy policies in the state of California. PG&E in it’s announcement acknowledged that it will be unable to meet the renewable mandates by the state and had no other choice but to abandon nuclear energy production for a malaise of renewables. Just like that, 10 percent of the state’s energy supply will be gone. Coupled with the closure of San Onofre, California will be nuclear free having lost 20 percent of it’s electricity supply, not counting the additional lost energy from coal and other sources by way of state mandates. To build the equivalent of a 2200-megawatt nuclear plant, a solar farm would require more than 20,000 acres, and a wind farm more than 100,000 acres. By contrast, Diablo Canyon is able to produce that much power and more on a footprint of 545 acres.

July 19, 2016 – 81 FR 46972-46973 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Information Collection: NRC Form 314, Certificate of Disposition of Materials – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) invites public comment on the extension of Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) approval for an existing collection of information. The information collection is entitled NRC Form 314, “Certificate of Disposition of Materials.” The NRC Form 314 is submitted by a materials licensee who wishes to terminate its license. The form provides information needed by the NRC to determine whether the licensee has radioactive materials on hand which must be transferred or otherwise disposed of prior to expiration or termination of the license.

July 19, 2016 – 81 FR 46970-46972 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Guidance for Closure of Activities Related to Recommendation 2.1, Flooding Hazard Reevaluation – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is issuing the final Japan Lessons-Learned Division Interim Staff Guidance (JLD-ISG), JLD-ISG-2016-01, “Guidance for Activities Related to Near-Term Task Force Recommendation 2.1, Flooding Hazard Reevaluation; Focused Evaluation and Integrated Assessment.” The JLD-ISG provides guidance and clarification to assist operating power reactor licensees and holders of construction permits under the NRC’s regulations with the performance of the focused evaluations and revised integrated assessments for external flooding.

July 19, 2016 – 81 FR 46917-46918 – DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY – Excess Uranium Management: Effects of DOE Transfers of Excess Uranium on Domestic Uranium Mining, Conversion, and Enrichment Industries; Request for Information – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is preparing for a potential new Secretarial Determination covering transfers of uranium for cleanup services at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant and for down-blending of highly-enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium (LEU). This RFI solicits information from the public about the uranium markets and domestic uranium industries, and the potential effects of DOE transfers in the uranium markets and possible consequences for the domestic uranium mining, conversion and enrichment industries. DOE will consider this information as part of its analysis to determine whether its transfers would have an adverse material impact on the domestic uranium mining, conversion, or enrichment industry.

July 19, 2016 – 81 FR 46916 – DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY – Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Oak Ridge Reservation – This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Oak Ridge Reservation. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register.` DATES: Saturday, August 6, 2016, 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. ADDRESSES: Tremont Lodge, 7726 East Lamar Alexander Parkway, Townsend, Tennessee 37882. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Melyssa P. Noe, Alternate Deputy Designated Federal Officer, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, P.O. Box 2001, EM-942, Oak Ridge, TN 37831. Phone (865) 241-3315; Fax (865) 241-6932; E-Mail: Melyssa.Noe@orem.doe.gov. Or visit the Web site at www.energy.gov/orssab. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of the Board is to make recommendations to DOE-EM and site management in the areas of environmental restoration, waste management, and related activities.

July 19, 2016 – Newsworld India – Radiologists Not At Higher Risk Of Radiation-Related Mortality – While older radiologists faced increased risk of dying from radiation-related causes like cancer, those who graduated from medical school after 1940 do not face such risk any more, says a study. The findings point to the success of efforts to reduce occupational radiation doses over the past several decades, the researchers said. “Most of the findings of increased risk were in the earlier radiologists,” said study co-author Martha Linet, senior investigator at Radiation Epidemiology Branch at National Cancer Institute in the US. “We do feel there is evidence that decreases in dose in the United States and other countries seem to have paid off, reducing risks in recent graduates,” Linet noted.

July 19, 2016 – Domain-b – US sets up 4 research centres to study basic science of nuclear waste – A more thorough understanding of the chemistry of radioactive waste is key to treating this unwanted byproduct of winning World War II and the Cold War. To accelerate the scientific breakthroughs needed to support the Department of Energy’s cleanup mission, four new Energy Frontier Research Centers have been formed. Energy Secretary Moniz announced Monday that up to $40 million dollars will go to fund the four centers for up to four years. DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will lead one center called IDREAM, which stands for Interfacial Dynamics in Radioactive Environments and Materials.

July 19, 2016 – Breaking Energy – Students Designed A Robot To Handle Nuclear Fuel – Cheers erupted from an audience peering over plywood walls into a mock-up hot cell, the shielded environments scientists use to inspect spent nuclear fuel. The robot inside had successfully moved a mock radioactive sample from a transport box, out of its containers, into an examination instrument, and then back again. It was a satisfying ending to a nine-month-long project for four Idaho State University (ISU) mechanical and nuclear engineering students interning at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The goal of their project? To design a robotic system as a demonstration project for INL engineers. If the students’ feasibility study was successful, lab engineers could design a similar system to handle radioactive materials for analysis at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC). The MFC is a testing center for advanced technologies associated with nuclear energy power systems, especially new types of fuel.

July 19, 2016 – WWMT – More Palisades nuclear plant security workers expressing worry – Several security officers placed on leave at one of the country’s oldest nuclear reactors say they’re being treated as scapegoats by plant management. This comes after the Newschannel 3 I-Team first uncovered an active investigation at the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station revolving around what plant officials describe as “fire tour anomalies.” “I’m on paid leave right now, and I have been for almost a month,” said one of the plant workers, agreeing to speak with Newschannel 3’s I-Team on the condition of anonymity. “Now the company [Entergy] lawyer is asking us questions, saying the NRC will be speaking with us…and that we could be criminally liable,” the worker added.

July 19, 2016 – ScienceBlog – MIT scientists find weird quantum effects, even over hundreds of miles – In the world of quantum, infinitesimally small particles, weird and often logic-defying behaviors abound. Perhaps the strangest of these is the idea of superposition, in which objects can exist simultaneously in two or more seemingly counterintuitive states. For example, according to the laws of quantum mechanics, electrons may spin both clockwise and counter-clockwise, or be both at rest and excited, at the same time. The physicist Erwin Schrödinger highlighted some strange consequences of the idea of superposition more than 80 years ago, with a thought experiment that posed that a cat trapped in a box with a radioactive source could be in a superposition state, considered both alive and dead, according to the laws of quantum mechanics. Since then, scientists have proven that particles can indeed be in superposition, at quantum, subatomic scales. But whether such weird phenomena can be observed in our larger, everyday world is an open, actively pursued question. Now, MIT physicists have found that subatomic particles called neutrinos can be in superposition, without individual identities, when traveling hundreds of miles. Their results, to be published later this month in Physical Review Letters, represent the longest distance over which quantum mechanics has been tested to date.

July 19, 2016 – Florida Trend – Florida State receives $10 million for nuclear research center – Florida State University will receive $10 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to create a new Energy Frontier Research Center that will focus on accelerating scientific efforts needed to support nuclear waste cleanup. The center will focus on developing technologies for recycling nuclear fuel and cleaning up Cold War-era weapon production sites. It will be led by Thomas Albrecht-Schmitt, the Gregory R. Choppin Professor of Chemistry at FSU. “Science underpins every mission of the Department of Energy,” said Cherry Murray, director of DOE’s Office of Science. “These new Energy Frontier Research Centers will provide a foundation of basic science for a top priority of DOE — tackling environmental cleanup of hazardous waste from nuclear weapons research and production. “These projects bring together talent and leadership from top scientists to solve problems through scientific discovery.”

July 19, 2016 – AllAfrica – Nigeria: Govt Sets Up Plan to Generate Electricity From Uranium – The federal government Monday disclosed that it was already making efforts to generate electricity from nuclear materials, particularly through the exploration, exploitation and utilisation of uranium. It said to achieve this it has invited experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to conduct a one week training for nuclear practitioners as well as security officers in the country on the extraction, exploitation and utilisation of the substance. The Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, said at the opening ceremony for the national training course on nuclear security for the uranium extraction industry in Abuja, that it was important for Nigeria to exploit available resources to meet her power needs.

July 19, 2016 – The Technews – Atom-sized storage could be the future of storing information – Today, we are in a need of a new storage paradigm that will actually take up less space than the current data centers. Albeit being the highly organized version of data storage solutions, data centers consume a vast amount of space and energy. However, re-writable atomic memory could be a possible solution to this problem. Researchers from the Delft University of Technology in Netherlands just announced their atomic-level breakthrough in data storage. In order to store the data, their experiment involves zooming up to the atomic arrangement of Copper Chloride (CuCl2). They placed the copper chloride powder on a copper surface and heated it at 300-degree Celsius till the evaporation of the powder, which formed a grid-like structure of the chlorine atoms. The imperfect 8×8 atom grid contained vacancies between the atoms, which are vital to the existence of atom-based storage. Each pair of missing (vacancies) and filled in atoms is interpreted as a bit (0 or 1) by a scanning tunneling microscope (STM).

July 19, 2016 – Lethbridge Herald – The Alberta Women’s Radium Fund – The Women’s Institutes of Alberta, one time associated with the United Farmers of Alberta, had a hand in the everyday life of Albertans since being organized in 1909. Their community service included contributing to the work of the Red Cross during the First World War, the 1918 influenza, and drought during those years. They organized exhibits showcasing Alberta-grown products, handicrafts and held yearly conventions for all of the branches within the provincial and federal institutes. It was at the 1936 district convention held in Lethbridge that District 4 of the Women’s Institute in southern Alberta resolved to hold a fundraising drive to assist the medical field. Dr. Stuart Rose, radiologist at the Municipal and St. Michael’s Hospitals, had addressed the convention and delegates heard about the high cost of radium treatment for cancer. A resolution was put forth to campaign for funds to secure a supply of radium. There was a unanimous agreement and the Southern Alberta Radium Association was formed. Organized by the director of District 4, Mrs. Lottie Thompson, and supported by representatives of 28 branches of the Women’s Institute, including Lethbridge, members set out to raise $5,000 to purchase a quantity of radium during the depression years. Between the years 1938-1944, over $2,763.90 was used to buy 109 mgm of radium which was kept at the Galt Hospital. The radium was available to any radiologist giving treatments at no cost to the patient.

July 19, 2016 – Science World Report – Chernobyl Fungi Onboard The Space X’s Dragon Could Protect The Human Space Travelers From Radiation – The Space X Dragon capsule, which was launched on Monday, carried 8 species of fungi that were collected at Chernobyl. According to scientists, these fungi could be helpful in protecting the human space travelers from the destructive radiation of space. Clay Wang, a pharmacologist and his colleagues had chosen 8 species of fungi, which were found living in the Exclusion Zone directly in the ruined power plant and some of them were from outside of the Exclusion Zone. The two species namely the Cladosporium sphaerospermum and the Cladosporium cladosporioides grow toward radiation favorably. The researchers hope that radiation on the space will stimulate good changes in the group of microorganisms, according to Popular Science.

July 19, 2016 – Dayton Business Journal – Forbes says this is the ‘best-performing company’ in Ohio – Forbes has published a new feature on the “Best Performing Company in Each State.” The magazine “tracked the total return of every public company between June 8, 2015, and June 8, 2016, excluding companies that have been trading for less time.” The analysis was based on data from FactSet. In Ohio, the top performer was ViewRay Inc., with a total return of 3,700%. The Cleveland-based company (Nasdaq: VRAY) designs, manufactures and markets the MRIdian radiation therapy system. ViewRay isn’t just the best performer in Ohio, it posted the best rate of any company on the list.

July 19, 2016 – Baystreet.ca – Advanced Medical Isotope Corporation Provides an Intellectual Property Update – Advanced Medical Isotope Corporation (or “AMI”) (OTC: ADMD), a late stage radiation oncology focused medical device company today provided an update on its intellectual property including trademark expansion in international markets. AMI continues to aggressively pursue trademark and patent protection for its brachytherapy products in anticipation of international product introduction. The Company has trademarked its leading cancer treatment under the RadioGel(TM) device trademark across the globe. The mark recently received registration in Hong Kong and Singapore. The mark has been allowed in the United States, and is registered under WIPO (World International Property Organization) in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea and the European Community (28 countries). It is also registered in the non-WIPO countries of Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand and is pending in China and Indonesia. The RadioGel(TM) device trademark registration includes multiple product classes in many of these countries.

July 19,2 016 – First Post – As Kudankulam nuclear reactor turns operational, it’s time for PMO to cede control of sector – Every couple of months, an article appears in the Indian media that launches a broadside against the country’s civilian nuclear establishment. In principle, this would not be a bad thing if they were accurate and focussed critiques that revealed flaws in the the way India manages its nuclear energy sector. However, most authors seem content to smear the nuclear conclave hoping that even the appearance of any impropriety would be enough to imply wrongdoing and scandal. To be fair, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) does little to endear itself to the public. Despite its under-publicised yet generous public outreach, the organisation remains unduly secretive and often promises far more than it can deliver. The scientists at NPCIL are undoubtedly capable — their technical excellence has been recognised several times by international bodies ever since India began to allow international inspection of its nuclear facilities pursuant to the India-US nuclear deal in 2008.

July 19, 2016 – The Cerbat Gem – Mallinckrodt PLC (MNK) Given “Buy” Rating at BMO Capital Markets – Mallinckrodt PLC logoMallinckrodt PLC (NYSE:MNK)‘s stock had its “buy” rating restated by equities research analysts at BMO Capital Markets in a report released on Tuesday. They presently have a $84.00 price target on the stock. BMO Capital Markets’ target price points to a potential upside of 32.91% from the company’s current price. Several large investors have recently made changes to their positions in MNK.

July 19, 2016 – RT – Russia to sell nuclear fuel to US – A subsidiary of Russia’s nuclear corporation Rosatom has signed its first contract with a US nuclear power plant operator to supply Russian nuclear fuel. “We believe in this project. We know how to make nuclear fuel; it has successfully operated in Western European nuclear power plants. We are not entering the American market with empty hands,” said Rosatom CEO Sergey Kirienko. He added Rosatom is working in collaboration with GE-Hitachi and has already signed a contract to send a pilot batch of Russian nuclear fuel to the US. According to Kirienko, Rosatom sees the importance of the alliance and will provide all the necessary technical details to successfully complete the licensing process with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It has been reported the two countries had agreed to create a joint company to promote Russian nuclear fuel at US nuclear power plants.

July 19, 2016 – Science World Report – Russia Is Developing Hypersonic Stealth Nuclear Space Bomber, Report Says – New reports suggest Russia is developing a first of its kind hypersonic stealth nuclear bomber which can launch nuclear missiles in the space. The hypersonic PAK-DA strategic bomber will be fast enough to travel anywhere in the world within two hours of time. The prototype of the bomber aircraft is currently under development and is expected to be ready to take flight in 2020, following successful engine tests. The PAK-DA test engine is expected to get exhibited at the International Military Technology Forum “Army 2016” which is scheduled to be held in Moscow from September 6 to September 11.

July 19, 2016 – The Hill – Cancel the plutonium fuel factory – Twenty years ago, in the Clinton Administration, both of us helped launch a program to build a factory to turn the excess plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons into fuel for nuclear reactors. At that time, the full life-cycle cost estimate to make this plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel was expected to be less than $2 billion dollars. Now, however, with official cost estimates ballooning to over $30 billion, it is clear that the project has become too expensive. It is time to stop throwing good money after bad and pursue cheaper alternatives that will serve our national security better. The Obama administration has proposed to cancel this boondoggle and pursue a “dilute and dispose” alternative that would simply mix the plutonium with inert materials to make it more difficult to recover and dispose of it as waste. Current estimates suggest this alternative would cost dramatically less, since it is much simpler and would not require building new facilities (though the diluted plutonium would ultimately have to fit in an existing nuclear waste site in New Mexico or wait for the establishment of a new repository). Unfortunately, Congress is debating legislation that would force the administration to keep funding the MOX factory – largely as a pork barrel project for South Carolina.

July 19, 2016 – Brattleboro Reformer – Closed nuke’s plan to ship radioactive water raises concerns – The closed Vermont Yankee nuclear plant will be mothballed for decades before it is dismantled and its radioactive components are shipped off. But already, plans by the plant to ship hundreds of thousands of gallons of radioactive water to a Tennessee processing facility are raising concerns. It’s a situation being played around the country as aging nuclear plants begin to close. Nearly all are expected to stand dormant for up to 60 years while their radioactivity diminishes and their decommissioning funds grow. But early in their retirements, huge amounts of contaminated water will need to be shipped off for processing.

July 19, 2016 – The Bulletin 225 – It’s in region’s interests to help Millstone compete – In the wake of recent nuclear plant closures and in anticipation of others, leaders and regional players have been fretting about the potentially severe consequences if Millstone Power Station in Waterford were to shut down. There is no imminent threat that that will happen. But after Vermont Yankee shuttered in 2014 and with the planned closure of Massachusetts’ Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station looming in just three years, many are understandably concerned about the viability of the industry. Dominion Resource, the owner and operator of Millstone, this year lobbied the Legislature for a measure that would have allowed the plant to bid on long-term energy contracts, mitigating volatile wholesale auction pricing. The measure passed the Senate but died in the House.

July 19, 2016 – Counter Punch – The Indian Point Nukes: a Disaster Waiting to Happen – “Indian Point” is a film about the long problem-plagued Indian Point nuclear power plants that are “so, so risky—so close to New York City,” notes its director and producer Ivy Meeropol. “Times Square is 35 miles away.” The plants constitute a disaster waiting to happen threatening especially the lives of the 22 million people who live within 50 miles from them. “There is no way to evacuate—what I’ve learned about an evacuation plan is that there is none,” says Meeropol. The plants are “on two earthquake fault lines,” she notes. “And there is a natural gas pipeline right there that an earthquake could rupture.” Meanwhile, both plants, located in Buchanan, New York along the Hudson River, are now essentially running without licenses. The federal government’s 40-year operating license for Indian Point 2 expired in 2013 and Indian Point 3’s license expired last year.

July 19, 2016, Associated Press – New group wants SC to stop passing on nuclear plant costs – A group of small businesses, community leaders and environmental groups is asking state regulators to stop letting South Carolina Electric & Gas pass all the costs of two nuclear plants under construction on to ratepayers. The two new plants in Jenkinsville are years behind schedule, and cost at least $4 billion more than first thought. SCE&G is now asking the state Public Service Commission for its ninth rate increase since 2009 to pay for the plants — this one to pay off an additional $846 million in increased costs. “We have to stop giving SCE&G a blank check,” said Frank Knapp, president of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce.

July 19, 2016 – Alamagordo Daily News – Tularosa Downwinders hosting candlelight vigil today – The Tularosa Basin Downwinders are hosting a candlelight vigil today in memory of those who lost their lives from the aftermath of the first atomic bomb test at the Trinity Site. Trinity Site is where the first atomic bomb was tested at 5:29:45 a.m. Mountain War Time on July 16, 1945. The 51,000 acre area was declared a national historic landmark in 1975. Catholic Bishop Oscar Cantu will lead the prayer and bless the cancer survivors and those living with cancer during the candlelight vigil at 7 p.m. at the Tularosa Little League Field on La Luz Ave. west of Tularosa. Tularosa Downwinders spokeswoman Tina Cordova said the Downwinders are asking cancer survivors and those living with cancer to fill out health surveys between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. at the Tularosa Public Safety building, 609 Saint Francis Drive, today.

July 19, 2016- KING 5 Seattle – Touring B reactor at Hanford nuclear waste site – Hanford is America’s most contaminated nuclear waste site, but how did it get that way? The tours given by the Manhattan Project (now in partnership with the National Parks Service) might not answer that question directly, but gives you insight into the largest construction project in US history. I took a tour of B reactor, one of nine on the site. I thought that I would be bored, as I’m no nuclear physicist, and we would have two hours to explore the site. It was the only one of three tours that fit within my schedule, and I was determined to learn more about the site that is now causing so many to get sick.

July 18, 2016 – 81 FR 46716 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Advisory Committee on the Medical Uses of Isotopes: Meeting Notice – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will convene a teleconference meeting of the Advisory Committee on the Medical Uses of Isotopes (ACMUI) on August 10, 2016, to discuss the draft report of the ACMUI Germanium-68/Gallium-68 (Ge-68/Ga-68) Generators Subcommittee. The report will include the subcommittee’s comments on the draft Ge-68/Ga-68 Generators licensing guidance. Meeting information, including a copy of the agenda and handouts, will be available at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/acmui/meetings/2016.html. The agenda and handouts may also be obtained by contacting Ms. Sophie Holiday using the information below. DATES: The teleconference meeting will be held on Wednesday, August 10, 2016, 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Public Participation: Any member of the public who wishes to participate in the teleconference should contact Ms. Holiday using the contact information below. Contact Information: Sophie Holiday, email: sophie.holiday@nrc.gov, telephone: (301) 415-7865.

July 18, 2016 – 81 FR 46716-46718 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Board of Regents of the University of California, Irvine Nuclear Reactor Facility – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a renewal of Facility Operating License No. R-116, held by the Board of Regents of the University of California (the licensee) for the continued operation of its University of California, Irvine Nuclear Reactor Facility (UCINRF) for an additional 20 years.

July 18, 2016 – Niagara Today – DEC releases North Avenue spoils pile radiation readings – Mayor Paul Dyster and his senior planner had to answer continued questions last week about the potential danger posed by a pile of contaminated soil from the city’s recent train station construction that remains on North Avenue. “Is it safe?” Niagara Falls City Councilman Ken Tompkins asked at a meeting last week. “Where it sits right now, is it safe?” Dyster said “it is,” and reiterated comparisons to the material found beneath Lewiston Road in 2010 that state Department of Environmental Conservation staff deemed not a threat to public health, which DeSantis cited when he declared the pile “perfectly safe” nearly three weeks ago. Representatives of the DEC told the Gazette on Thursday that analysis near the fence line of the 915 North Ave. site “determined no levels exceeding natural background values,” or naturally occurring radiation levels.

July 18, 2016 – Japan Today – New documentary questions Japan’s use of nuclear energy – Documentary filmmaker Yoshitaka Nitta has made a movie based on a question he has asked himself since the nuclear meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi plant in March 2011. The question is “Why does Japan insist on reactivating nuclear power plants despite the worst nuclear accident in its history?” In the movie titled “Atom and Peace—Ruiko, Nagasaki Prayer,” Ruiko Matsunaga, a 24-year-old elementary school teacher in the city of Nagasaki in southwestern Japan, travels from Aomori to Fukushima Prefecture in northeastern Japan and then back to Nagasaki, visiting places where there is “peaceful use of nuclear energy.”

July 18, 2016 – The TeCake – NASA deep space exploration is in threat as reserves of plutonium 238 depletes – NASA uses plutonium-238 to send the spacecraft’s off to space which seems to make the curiosities about the space world disappeared, and we now have a lot of information about most of the planets. But what if the fuel runs out? Plutonium-238 is obtained as the by-product while making the nuclear weapons. Its radioactive decay makes it a superfuel and there is no replacement found. Nuclear fission systems are too heavy, solar power is too weak and chemical batteries don’t last long. As it decays it gives out enough energy to generate electricity and keep the expensive parts of the spacecraft warm in cold and dark region of space. Voyager 1’s journey would not have been possible without this fuel which left on a 5 years mission to explore Jupiter and Saturn and after thirty six years today, it is still exploring covering more than 19 billion kilometres. Voyager 1 is expected to keep running till 2025 when it will finally run out of three batteries filled with plutonium-238.

July 18, 2017 – Cosmos – How much radiation damage do astronauts really suffer in space? – Space is a really inhospitable place to live – there’s no breathable air, microgravity wastes away your bones and muscles and you’re subjected to increased doses of radiation in the form of high-energy charged particles. These can cause damage to the cells in your body by breaking up the atoms and molecules that they’re made of. But what are these sources of radiation and exactly how much is an astronaut on the International Space Station exposed to over the course of a six-month stay? With the latest expedition about to return to the safety of planet Earth on June 18, I thought I’d have a look at the data to find out. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration monitors the levels of radiation at low Earth orbit using the instruments on board five polar orbiting environmental satellites. These orbit the Earth every 101 minutes. Since the Earth rotates underneath them, this allows us to build up a pretty comprehensive view of the space radiation at similar altitudes to the ISS every day. By flying the space station through the radiation map each day, we can work out the total amount of radiation astronauts receive.

July 18, 2016 – DOTMed.com – ACR updates manual on contrast media to address gadolinium concerns – ACR has updated its manual on contrast media to include the FDA’s statement on the use of gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs) for the approximately 30 million patients who receive doses for MR exams each year. The industry has recently discovered that GBCA can reside in the brain tissue of patients who received multiple doses over their lifetime. In response, the FDA published a safety alert in July 2015 stating that it was investigating the risk of GBCA deposits. There have been no reports to date that show that the deposits are associated with neurotoxicity, even among GBCAs with the highest rates of deposition. But until the clinical effects are fully understood, the safety and tissue deposition potential of all GBCAs will be evaluated.

July 18, 2016 – AzoOptics.com – Scientists Use New X-Ray Laser Experimental Station to Study Nature of Hemoglobin – A new X-ray laser experimental station at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory recently welcomed its first research group, scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Members of the Berkeley Lab’s Yachandra/Yano research team ran the inaugural experiment from July 1 to 4. They used the X-ray laser to develop new spectroscopic tools, with an initial focus on studying an enzyme in blood known as hemoglobin. Hemoglobin allows oxygen to be carried around our bodies and gives red blood cells their distinctive color. In contrast, Macromolecular Femtosecond Crystallography (MFX) is blaze orange, following the LCLS tradition of personalizing each instrument at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), a DOE Office of Science User Facility. LCLS is a hard X-ray free-electron laser that fires in pulses just a few millionths of a billionth of a second in length, offering a look at chemistry on the natural timescales of reactions.

July 18, 2016 – Sputnik International – Iran’s Atomic Agency Refutes Reports on Purchase of Bulgarian Old Reactors – Earlier in July, media reported about plans of Sofia and Tehran to conduct a deal on purchasing “secondhand” reactors for the needs of Iranian nuclear power plant in southwestern city of Bushehr. “This claim is completely false since nuclear reactors cannot become ‘secondhand’ to begin with,” Salehi said, as quoted by the Iranian Mehr news agency. At the same time he added that Bulgaria wanted to sell the equipment it had after the cancellation of project on construction of two reactors with Russia’s Rosatom state-owned nuclear energy corporation. The Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant started operating in 2011 and reached full capacity the following year.

July 18, 2016 – Northeast Today – Meghalaya Remembers Legendary Freedom Fighter U Tirot Sing Syiem on 181st Death Anniversary – The Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) remembered legendary Khasi freedom fighter U Tirot Sing Syiem on his 181st death anniversary in functions held across the state. At a function held at the Madan Iewrynghep at Laitumkhrah in Shillong, the KSU used the occasion to draw attention to the issue of uranium mining in the state which the union is opposed to. The KSU felt that the confrontation faced by the state today is parallel to challenges faced by the Khasi freedom fighter from Hima Nongkhlaw in his quest to gain freedom from British rule.

July 18, 2016 – Sputnik International – IAEA Visit to Russian NPP to Promote State’s Nuclear Industry – The International Atomic Energy Agency’s visit to the two nuclear enterprises will take place on July 19-21 at the initiative of Russia’s Rosatom state-owned nuclear energy corporation, and is set to become the fourth such visit to Russian nuclear enterprises. The Beloyarsk power station is the only plant in the world using the innovative sodium-cooled BN-600 and BN-800 fast breeder reactors. The BN-800 reactor was connected to the power grid in early 2016 and is expected to start commercial operations later in the year.

July 18, 2016 – Star News – Heed dangers of radon, health officials advise – Radon is an issue of concern in Minnesota. Tested properties in three-fourths of Minnesota counties — including Sherburne and Wright — have shown high average radon levels, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. Radon is an odorless, colorless gas that occurs naturally in soil. It is the leading cause of lung cancer among nonsmokers. MDH has launched a new online tool to help residents get a more accurate picture of radon levels in their counties. The agency has created the new interactive county radon maps and charts using five years of data from 2010 to 2014 with more than 86,000 properties tested. To see the new tools, go to https://apps.health.state.mn.us/mndata/radon.

July 18, 2016 – Silicon Republic – Russia claims to be working on a nuclear bomber spacecraft – Russia and Vladimir Putin are making some international leaders rather anxious with news that the country is developing a new spacecraft capable of firing nuclear missiles at targets down on Earth. Since the end of the Cold War, the nuclear bomber aircraft has been gradually turned over to conventional weapons with the reality that there can be little justifiable reason to use them in modern conflicts. However, according to the Russian state-owned website Sputnik News, the country is now looking into space as a means of creating a terrifying drone-like spacecraft that will fly above the Earth’s atmosphere and deliver nuclear payloads on targets below. The experimental aircraft being developed by the Russian Strategic Missile Forces Academy (SMF) is similar in design to the Boeing X-37 craft being developed in the US. This highly-advanced craft would be remotely controlled on the ground and would deliver payloads to space to the International Space Station (ISS) and beyond, much like the Space Shuttle of old.

July 18, 2016 – Enformable – New film about Indian Point nuclear power plant provides insights about regulating the nuclear industry – “Indian Point” is a film about the long problem-plagued Indian Point nuclear power plants that are “so, so risky—so close to New York City,” notes its director and producer Ivy Meeropol. “Times Square is 35 miles away.” The plants constitute a disaster waiting to happen threatening especially the lives of the 22 million people who live within 50 miles from them. “There is no way to evacuate—what I’ve learned about an evacuation plan is that there is none,” says Meeropol. The plants are “on two earthquake fault lines,” she notes. “And there is a natural gas pipeline right there that an earthquake could rupture.” Meanwhile, both plants, located in Buchanan, New York along the Hudson River, are now essentially running without licenses. The federal government’s 40-year operating license for Indian Point 2 expired in 2013 and Indian Point 3’s license expired last year. Their owner, Entergy, is seeking to have them run for another 20 years—although nuclear plants were never seen as running for more than 40 years because of radioactivity embrittling metal parts and otherwise causing safety problems.

July 18, 2016 – Associated Press – Closed nuke’s plan to ship radioactive water raises concerns – The closed Vermont Yankee nuclear plant will be mothballed for decades before it is dismantled and its radioactive components are shipped off. But already, plans by the plant to ship hundreds of thousands of gallons of radioactive water to a Tennessee processing facility are raising concerns. It’s a situation being played around the country as aging nuclear plants begin to close. Nearly all are expected to stand dormant for up to 60 years while their radioactivity diminishes and their decommissioning funds grow. But early in their retirements, huge amounts of contaminated water will need to be shipped off for processing. It’s a reminder that even as the benefits of nuclear power fade in memory in regions where plants are closing, the retired reactors will remain an environmental and public safety challenge for decades to come.

July 18, 2016 – Power-Technology.com – JFN receives contract for Mitsubishi’s Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan – UK-based decommissioning and remote handling company James Fisher Nuclear (JFN) has secured a new high-value contract from engineering company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI). Under the contract, JFN will be responsible for developing the latest technology to sample radioactive debris sitting below reactor cores at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Okuma, Japan. JFN’s nuclear business director Bertie Williams said: “For some time JFN has been regarded as an industry leader in this field and this award shows our expertise and experience is recognised and valued worldwide.

July 18, 2016 – CapeCod.com – Pilgrim Requests Extension from NRC for Post Fukushima Order – The owner of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, Entergy, is seeking an extension from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to comply with a post Fukushima order for its boiling-water reactor to have reliable hardened containment vents. The vents are designed to remove combustible gases after an accident to prevent explosions seen at Fukushima. The plant is asking for an extension through December 31, 2019 so a permanent plant modification would not be needed as the plant is set to close by June of 2019. “The plant does have a limited operational timeframe going forward, but our mandate is to make sure that the public is going to be adequately protected,” said Neil Sheehan, an NRC Spokesman.

July 18, 2016 – KEPR TV – DOE: Demo and cleanup date for Hanford plutonium plant pushed back 1 year – There’s a change to the demolition and cleanup of the Plutonium Finishing Plant, the most hazardous facility on the Hanford site according to the Department of Energy, (DOE.) After reconsideration, the DOE determined that the September 30th finish date can’t be met. Officials say unaccounted-for hazards have pushed the finish date back by a full year. The new deadline is now set for September 30, 2017. The Plutonium Finishing Plant at Hanford produced two thirds of the nation’s plutonium stockpile.

July 18, 2016 – Tri-City Herald – Whistleblowers recount retaliation by Department of Energy – Hanford has not bothered to implement a pilot project intended to provide more protection for whistleblowers going up against contractor lawyers paid for by the Department of Energy, Sen. Clair McCaskill of Missouri said Thursday. It was one of many ways DOE has failed to hold its nuclear contractors accountable, according to a highly critical Government Accountability Office report. The report found only two violation notices have been issued against contractors in the past 20 years. “All the words that the (Department of Energy) proclaims about wanting to have a strong safety culture, a safety-conscious work environment and that it has zero tolerance for retaliation are a pretense,” whistleblower Sandra Black said at a news conference on Capitol Hill, her voice shaking with emotion.

July 14, 2016 – 81 FR 45504-45505 – DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health (ABRWH or Advisory Board) – In accordance with section 10(a)(2) of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463), and pursuant to the requirements of 42 CFR 83.15(a), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), announces the following meeting of the aforementioned committee: Times and Dates: 8:15 a.m.-5:00 p.m., Mountain Time, August 9, 2016; 8:15 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Mountain Time, August 10, 2016. Public Comment Time and Date: 5:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.*, Mountain Time, August 9, 2016. Place: Residence Inn by Marriott, 635 West Broadway, Idaho Falls, Idaho 83402; Phone: (208) 542-0000; Fax: (208) 542-0021. Status: Open to the public, limited only by the space available. The meeting space accommodates approximately 100 people. The public is also welcome to listen to the meeting by joining the teleconference at USA toll-free, dial-in number, 1-866-659-0537 and the pass code is 9933701. Live Meeting Connection: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/cdc/join?id=M3QDP7&role=attend&pw=ABRWH; Meeting ID: M3QDP; Entry Code: ABRWH. Background: The Advisory Board was established under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000 to advise the President on a variety of policy and technical functions required to implement and effectively manage the new compensation program. Key functions of the Advisory Board include providing advice on the development of probability of causation guidelines which have been promulgated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as a final rule, advice on methods of dose reconstruction which have also been promulgated by HHS as a final rule, advice on the scientific validity and quality of dose estimation and reconstruction efforts being performed for purposes of the compensation program, and advice on petitions to add classes of workers to the Special Exposure Cohort (SEC).

July 14, 2016 – Sci/Tech Times – Reconstructing the first atomic bomb test from a chunk of scorched earth – If the CSI family of television shows has blunted your appetite for impossibly omniscient crime scene analysis, consider the real, and very serious, science of nuclear forensics. If someone flouts the ban on nuclear weapons testing, we want to know as much about it as possible. And the resources backing that effort are substantial. Seismic waves betray the occurrence of underground tests, and air samples grabbed soon afterward can contain the radioactive proof. But both are transient, and even radioactivity at the site of the explosion can fade too quickly to be of much use. A group of researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have demonstrated a new technique than can reveal the potency of the bomb from the debris—even decades after the fact.

July 14, 2016 – New Times – Nuclear storage is inadequate – As Chris McGuinness wrote in “Wasted forever,” July 7, tons and tons of extremely radioactive nuclear waste will remain right here on our coast for an insanely long time. What the article failed to mention, however, is that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the U.S. allows operators to store the nuclear waste in vulnerable and inadequate 1/2- to 5/8-inch thick canisters instead of the thick (10- to 20-foot) casks that are used in most of the rest of the world, including Japan, Germany, France, and other nations. Why? Because they’re cheaper. It’s as if the nuclear industry here were being run by Montgomery Burns of The Simpsons. Except, it’s not at all funny. What makes it scarier is that these canisters cannot be inspected (even on the outside), repaired, maintained, or monitored prior to a radiation release. Oh, and ours happen to be getting blasts of ocean air while sitting on cement pads in a seismically active area.

July 14, 2016 – MedGadget – X-ray Teleradiology to Remain Largest Segment by Modality in Western Europe Teleradiology Market – According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research “Teleradiology Market – Western Europe Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2015 – 2023”, the teleradiology market in Western Europe was valued at US$ 305.8 Mn in 2014 and is projected to reach US$ 1443.7 Mn in 2023 at a CAGR of 18.5% from 2015 to 2023. The teleradiology market in Western Europe has been segmented based on modality. X-ray, ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and nuclear imaging are major types of teleradiology services provided in Western Europe. The X-ray teleradiology segment held the largest share of the market in 2014 and is likely to maintain its leadership position during forecast period from 2014 to 2023.

July 14, 2016 – Optics.org – Westinghouse to test laser printing for nuclear components – The US Department of Energy (DOE) is funding a number of photonics-related projects designed to help commercialize promising new technologies for the energy industry – with laser additive manufacturing, Raman analysis and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) all winning backing. Last month the DOE announced that it was supporting 54 energy projects across numerous major US research facilities with a total $16 million through its “technology commercialization fund”. The nuclear power specialist Westinghouse Electric said that one of the funded projects in which it is involved will look to develop a laser 3D printing technique to make metal components.

July 14, 2016 – EnviroReporter.com – Critics question safety of Boeing’s Santa Susana Field Lab hikes – Eighteen demonstrators with vivid placards lined the roads into the Santa Susana Field Laboratory [SSFL] April 23. They were protesting lab owner Boeing’s “Nature Walk Earth Day Celebration” through the so-called 1,143-acre Southern Buffer Zone [SBZ] of the former Rocketdyne lab. Two Protesters April 23 2016“BOEING EARTH DAY FRAUD” and “TURN BACK! Toxic Trails AHEAD” greeted startled hikers arriving in cars at the entrance to the 2,850-acre lab at the top of Woolsey Canyon in the Simi Hills. “SSFL MAKES ME SICK” and “Don’t Let BOEING Fool You” were not exactly what the trekkers expected judging from their shocked faces passing by. Some may have been mystified by one sign that read “MELTDOWN ZONE AHEAD.” The former rocket testing and nuclear research complex has suffered at least three partial meltdowns since the 1950s, one worse than Three Mile Island in radiation spewed into the environment. Little did the walkers know that their hike would take them through much of the drainage of two confirmed nuclear-contaminated areas that are the subject of a decades-long cleanup costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

July 14, 2016 – aaj.tv – Selfies can make you age faster – It is bad news for all the selfies addicts out there, as this habit may cause damage to your skin and appearance and worst make you look older. And how that, one could ask is all thanks to the electromagnetic radiation and light emitted form smartphones, which dermatologists says can damage the skin, promote wrinkles and simply speeds up the ageing process. According to The Summit Express, the startling revelations were made by dermatologists at the Facial Aesthetic Conference and Exhibition in London. Dr. Simon Zoakei, the Medical Director of the Linia Skin Clinic, said people who take a lot of selfies should worry about the dangers of such activity, because the radiation emitted from electronic devices is of different wavelengths, making one’s regular sunscreens and ordinary creams simply ineffective. “Even the blue light we get from our screens can damage our skin,” said Dr. Zoakei.

July 14, 2016 – Japan Times – Iodine jelly to be handed out to infants living within 30 km of nuclear plants – The Cabinet Office said it will soon start distributing iodine jelly to infants living within 30 km of nuclear power plants in a bid to protect their thyroids from possible radiation exposure in the event of a nuclear disaster. According to the office, about 110,000 infants qualify for the iodine jellies. There are 21 prefectures where the 30-km radius applies. In addition, infants living within three other prefectures — Kanagawa, Osaka and Okayama — which have nuclear fuel processing facilities are also part of the initiative. Some local governments have been distributing iodine tablets to all residents for over three years, including in a tablet form for infants that would have to be crushed and mixed with syrup in the event of an accident. But to date this had not been in an iodine jelly form.

July 14, 2016 – Optics & Photonics – Plasmonic Lasers Get a Sharper Focus – Lasers based on coherent surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs)—subwavelength oscillations of electrons that are excited when incident light hits a metal-dielectric interface—hold promise for ultraminiaturized, chip-scale optics, and also as a possible platform for terahertz quantum cascade lasers (QCLs). But there’s a catch: SPP lasers, precisely because of their subwavelength apertures, tend to have divergent radiation patterns, making it tough to produce a sharp, directional beam. Now, a research team led by Sushil Kumar of Lehigh University, Penn., USA, has devised an “antenna feedback” scheme that reportedly can provide single-mode operation and strong, highly directional far-field coupling in such SPP lasers, bringing them “closer to practical applications” (Optica, doi: 10.1364/OPTICA.3.000734). The team’s work includes a proof-of-concept terahertz QCL based on the scheme that, according to the study, achieved the narrowest beam yet reported for such a QCL.

July 14, 2016 – Syracuse.com – ‘Nuclear is an unsafe bridge to clean energy and one not worth the risk’ – Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s sleight of hand of a proposed green energy designation for nuclear power is an environmental farce and an obvious effort to avoid closure of the aging nuclear plants in New York state, specifically FitzPatrick and Nine Mile. The only number they clearly haven’t considered in their calculation is the cost of an accident. These plants are now being run long past their intended life span of 40 years. (Nine Mile Unit 1 is the second-oldest plant in the country.) They routinely emit radiation. (Remember the NRC’s statement, “There is no safe exposure to radiation.”) The metal is embrittled, assumptions about “leak before break” are questionable at best, and regulations about firewalls were changed to allow for the materials that failed meet their initial standard. There are no redundant safety features for the waste pools, and on it goes.

July 14, 2016 – Daily Beast – Russia Is Building a Nuclear Space Bomber – The Russian military claims it’s making progress on a space plane similar to the U.S. Air Force’s secretive X-37B robotic mini-shuttle. That in itself isn’t terribly surprising or even, for the United States, particularly worrisome. Lots of governments and even private companies are working on space planes that can launch from rockets or runways, boost into orbit for a period of time then return to Earth for quick refurbishment and re-use. The tech is pretty basic. But alone among space-plane developers, the Kremlin is proposing to arm its space plane. With nukes.

July 14, 2016 – BBC News – Hinkley Point ‘still worth the cost’ as price tag soars – The government remains committed to building a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset, the new chancellor has said. Philip Hammond’s vow came despite the rising potential cost to the government of the electricity it will produce, according to the National Audit Office. He said Hinkley was vital to a strong economy and still worth the cost. The new power station was initially supposed to cost just £6bn, but has more recently been estimated at £18bn. As part of the 35-year deal signed with France’s EDF in 2013 to build the plant in Somerset, the government agreed to pay £92.50 for each megawatt hour of electricity. Wholesale energy prices have fallen since that price was agreed, which meant the government must now make up the difference.

July 14, 2016 – Fox News – First anniversary of Iran nuclear deal marred by massive cheating – Expect the Obama administration to take more victory laps this week by claiming Iran has complied with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal that reaches its first anniversary on July 14. However, recent press reports paint a very different picture, one that confirms its critics’ worst fears: massive Iranian violations of the agreement. In an annual security report issued this month, German intelligence said Iran made a clandestine effort last year to acquire illicit nuclear technology and equipment from German companies at a “quantitatively high level,” and that “it is safe to expect that Iran will continue its intensive procurement activities in Germany using clandestine methods to achieve its objectives.” A German intelligence agency reported 141 clandestine Iranian attempts to acquire nuclear and missile technology in 2015 versus 83 in 2013.

July 14, 2016 – Politico – Kerry: Iran nuclear deal has ‘made the world safer’ – Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday heaped praise on the nuclear deal between Iran, the United States and five other powers on the occasion of its one-year anniversary, remarking that it has “lived up to its expectations” and “made the world safer.” “As of today, one year later, the program that so many people said will not work, a program that people said is absolutely doomed to see cheating and be broken and will make the world more dangerous has, in fact, made the world safer, lived up to its expectations and thus far, produced an ability to be able to create a peaceful nuclear program with Iran living up to its part of this bargain and obligation,” Kerry said in Paris before attending a parade for Bastille Day.

July 14, 2016 – Reuters – Hungary says shuts reactor at Paks nuclear plant due to malfunction – Hungary temporarily shut a reactor at the Paks nuclear power plant on Thursday due to a malfunction of control equipment, the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority said. The reactor, which automatically stopped due to the malfunction, remains safe, it said in a statement on its website. It could come back online at about 1000 GMT on Friday, said Antal Kovacs, a spokesman for the plant.

July 14, 2016 – International Business Times – Nuclear weapon details exempted from RTI query ambit – Citizens will no longer be allowed to any information about nuclear weapons stockpile or details on their testing through an RTI application after the Strategic Forces Command was added to the list of 25 organisations excluded from the purview of the RTI Act, except for information pertaining to corruption or human rights allegations. The Strategic Forces Command (SFC) has responsibility of the process of delivering nuclear weapons and warheads in the event of a planned strike and as per protocol initiates instructions to the Nuclear Command Authority that works under the command of the prime minister.

July 14, 2016 – Briston Herald Courier – Nuclear reactor operating again after steam prompts shutdown – Officials say a nuclear reactor in southwestern Michigan that was shut down after a rupture released steam is back in operation. Cook Nuclear Plant spokesman Bill Schalk tells The Herald-Palladium (http://bit.ly/29GJy3O ) that the Unit 2 reactor was returned to power on Tuesday. Indiana Michigan Power has said the steam was not radioactive but it damaged a wall at Unit 2 early on July 6 in Bridgman. There were no injuries. Inspectors from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission were investigating. Cook’s Unit 1 reactor wasn’t affected.

July 14, 2016 – Investigative Post – Schumer to EPA: assess radioactive hotspots – U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer on Wednesday called on the federal Environmental Protection Agency to “move into a higher gear” and conduct a comprehensive assessment of radioactive hotspots in Niagara County and Grand Island. Schumer was responding to an Investigative Post story last week that reported the government has failed to address some 60 properties previously determined to contain elevated levels of radiation. “What I hope will happen next is the EPA will investigate, they’ll find out how many hotspots there are, what their level of radioactivity is, if they present a danger and then we’ll ask them if they do to present a plan to remediate,” Schumer told Investigative Post.

July 14, 2016 – Financial Times – Nuclear waste: keep out for 100,000 years – We are in a red metal cage bumping slowly down a mineshaft to our destination, half a kilometre under the ground near the small town of Bure in eastern France. Above us are yellow fields of oilseed rape. Below is the maze of reinforced concrete tunnels that, if it wins final approval from the French government, will from 2025 be the last resting place for the most destructive and indestructible waste in history. This is the €25bn deep geological storage facility for France’s high and medium-level radioactive waste, the residue of more than half a century of nuclear power. When the work here is finally finished, no one must ever take this journey again or, at least, not for 100,000 years. France is the world’s largest exporter of electricity and the world’s most committed nuclear nation, with 58 reactors producing 75 per cent of the country’s power. As a result, it also produces enough toxic radioactive waste every year to fill 120 double-decker buses (about 13,000 cubic metres worth, or 2kg a year for every French person). The challenge at Bure is not only to build a massive dump for radioactive trash but also to guard it from human intervention for an impossible amount of time — more than 4,000 human generations.

July 14, 2016 – Nuclear Energy Insider – US reactor closures raise urgency of new decommissioning rules – A recent spate of early U.S. plant closures has increased the need for a swift implementation of new decommissioning regulations which match post-operation risk profiles, industry experts said. Challenging power market conditions have prompted a surge in early plant closure announcements in recent months. Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) said it will close its 484 MW Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska by the end of 2016 and Exelon has decided to retire its 1.1 GW Clinton and 1.9 GW Quad Cities facilities in Illinois, in 2017 and 2018. California’s Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) announced June 21 it would shut down its Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant by 2025. Nuclear operators are optimizing spending in response to difficult market conditions and the industry has called for improvements to regulations for post-shutdown operations in order to reduce costs.

July 14, 2016 – Morning Consult – Why Does Nuclear Energy Account For Less Than a Fifth of Our National Energy Mix? – Even though the United States has more nuclear-electricity generating units than any country in the world, nuclear power makes up less than 20 percent of our nation’s energy fuel. It’s the only baseload power source with zero air pollution and the ability to run around the clock. We’re also on the verge of making nuclear fuel completely renewable by pulling uranium from seawater. So why isn’t a power source that’s incredibly clean, with low ongoing fuel costs, cornering our domestic energy market? According to a 2015 International Energy Agency study, nuclear energy offered the lowest level cost of electricity (LCOE) across 22 surveyed countries. But there’s a catch. That’s only the case using a 3 percent discount rate for capital. As the cost of financing nuclear power projects increases, they understandably become less competitive energy options. At a 7 percent discount rate, the median LCOE of nuclear is competitive with coal, and at 10 percent, it is higher than both coal and natural gas.

July 14, 2016 – Daily Caller – Nuclear Agency Brags About Duping Washington Post Reporter – The federal agency in charge of maintaining America’s nuclear weapons stockpile gave a well-choreographed sham tour of their facilities to a senior Washington Post reporter, and then bragged about their ruse in an internal email. When Dana Priest toured a laboratory of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in 2012, she was treated to “a serious rope-a-dope” by the administrators and lab directors, according to an internal NNSA email obtained by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO). “Yeh [sic], Ms. Priest was subject to a serious rope-a-dope by Neile [Miller, NNSA Principal Deputy Administer] and the Lab Directors,” an unnamed NNSA official reported internally in an email.

July 14, 2016 – Associated Press – Vermont nuclear plant owner wants to ship radioactive water – The owner of the closed Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is seeking to ship hundreds of thousands of gallons of radioactive water to an Idaho processing facility. The Rutland Herald (http://bit.ly/29vczkt ) reports that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is evaluating responses from Entergy Nuclear after asking the company earlier this year to provide more details on a plan to dispose of 200,000 gallons of radioactive water. The plan calls for the water to be disposed in a torus, a large structure located at the bottom of the reactor core that holds 1.1 million gallons of water.

July 14, 2016 – Pittsburgh Business Times – FirstEnergy moves toward full ownership of Beaver Valley second unit – FirstEnergy Corp. doesn’t completely own the second unit at the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station, but the company is taking measures for full ownership by next June, the Beaver County Times reported. Ohio Edison has a 21.6 percent leased interest in Unit 2 and Toledo Edison has 18.2 percent, leases that expire on June 1, 2017. FirstEnergy has already acquired the rights to those ownership interests, Neil Sheehan, a spokesman with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told the newspaper. FirstEnergy is striving for NRC approval for the changes by April 14.

July 14, 2016 – Associated Press – Virginia group says new nuclear plant would be boondoggle – A consumer group says if a new $19 billion nuclear plant in Virginia were built it would be one of biggest ratepayer ripoffs in the history of producing electricity. The Virginia Citizens Consumer Council filed a comments Tuesday with state regulators arguing that Dominion Virginia Power should stop spending money on a potential new nuclear power plant because it will unfairly burden the company’s customers while enriching its investors. Dominion has not committed to build the new plant, known as North Anna 3, but plans to have spent at least $647 million by next year preparing for a potential build. The company says ratepayers will benefit from having the option to build a reliable, long-lasting and carbon-free power source.

July 14, 2016 – Louisiana Record – Man alleges he was exposed to radioactive material on jobsite – A man claims that his work exposed him to radioactive materials that could have damaged his health. George Almeida filed a suit against Chevron USA Inc., ConocoPhillips Co., Shell Oil Co., Shell Offshore Inc., Swepi LP, Devon Energy Production Co. LP, Marathon Oil Co., BP Products North America Inc., BP America Production Co., Atlantic Richfield Co., Oxy USA Inc., Intracoastal Tubular Services Inc., Packard Pipe Terminals LLC and OFS Inc. in the 24th Judicial District Court on June 8. According to the claim, the plaintiff was employed by AMF Tuboscope from 1978 to 1991, during which time he completed various tasks, including visiting and working at a number of pipe-cleaning facilities. While working at the facilities, the plaintiff alleges was caused to breathe in radioactive dust which was released in the cleaning process. The suit further states that the plaintiff was caused great physical damages, including an increased risk of cancer.

July 14, 2016 – The Oak Ridger – Alexander: Energy bill supports research at ORNL – U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) released the following statement today after voting to allow the Senate to begin negotiations with the House of Representatives to resolve differences between the two chambers’ broad, energy policy bills to bolster the United States’ competitive advantage and put the country on a reasonable path to create clean, cheap, reliable energy. “I am glad the Senate voted to begin working with the House of Representatives to negotiate a comprehensive energy bill that will help the United States create clean, cheap, reliable energy innovation to spur our free enterprise system. The Senate bill would reauthorize energy programs in the America COMPETES Act and would increase funding authorizations for the Department of Energy to double funding for basic energy research over the next 10 years – which would include funding for research done at our national laboratories, including at Oak Ridge National Laboratory,” Alexander said.

July 14, 2016 – NBC Chicago – Several Security Guards at Nuke Plant Along Lake Michigan Placed on Leave Amid Scrutiny from Federal Regulators – A nuclear power plant on the shores of the Chicago area’s largest source of drinking water is facing scrutiny from federal regulators over its fire protection practices. NBC 5 Investigates has learned the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Covert, Michigan, has placed some of its security officers on paid administrative leave as a result, pending completion of an internal investigation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it identified an issue with fire tours at Palisades while conducting routine inspections. According to an NRC spokesperson, inspectors had questions about the tours and began looking further into the issue.

July 14, 2016 – Midwest Energy News – Nuclear advocates eye former coal plant sites for small reactors – As coal plants around the country close, utilities, elected leaders and local residents are all wondering and debating how to deal with the sites. Some plants are being retrofitted to burn natural gas. Others are being torn down, with redevelopment ideas including condos, parks, solar farms, big box stores or breweries. Jeff Terry, a physics professor and nuclear energy expert at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has another vision for these sites, including the former site of the State Line coal plant near his hometown in northwest Indiana. He’d like to see nuclear reactors. Specifically, small modular reactors, or SMRs, nuclear plants with a capacity of 300-600 megawatts or less that are prefabricated and can be shipped around the country on trucks or trains.

July 14, 2016 – Los Alamos Daily Post – In Memoriam – Dr. Abraham (Abe) Van Luik – The Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) workforce is saddened by the recent loss of Dr. Abraham (Abe) Van Luik. Abe was a key member of the CBFO team and was well respected at DOE and in the international community. Abe led the CBFO International Repository Science Program. His work included contributions to coordinated research and sharing of results through bilateral and multilateral cooperation. Interacting with several international organizations, he supported the DOE Office of Environmental Management and Nuclear Energy radioactive waste management program plans and international exchanges for developing and operating geological repositories.

July 14, 2016 – Ruidoso News – Two events Saturday honor Trinity fallout survivors; Ruidoso participants sought – The Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium is hoping to attract participants from Ruidoso to a pair of events Saturday designed to draw attention to the ongoing health effects of the first atomic explosion more than 70 years ago. Bishop Oscar Cantu of the Diocese of Las Cruces will lead prayers at a candlelight vigil starting at 8 p.m. at the Tularosa Little League field on La Luz Avenue in West Tularosa and deliver a blessing for those who have died or still suffer from cancers believed to have been caused by fallout from the Trinity blast. “The event is beautiful actually and very touching,” said Tina Cordova, co-founder of the Consortium. “It is hard to hear all the names read out loud. We estimate it will be over 600 names this year of those who have passed away.”

July 14, 2016 – Idaho Falls Post-Register – Feds plan Boise nuclear waste meeting – The U.S. Department of Energy is hosting a public meeting Thursday in Boise to gather input on how to deal with the country’s growing stockpile of nuclear waste. The Boise stop is part of an eight-city national roadshow that DOE officials began in March. It will include presentations by top DOE officials, Idaho nuclear experts, and include opportunities for public input. The department is developing a “consent-based siting process” that it hopes will lead to finding a locally accepted location where it can bury the nation’s growing amount of spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste.

July 14, 2016 – Pahrump Valley Times – Commissioner provides county’s voice at Yucca hearing – Nye County Commissioner Dan Schinhofen traveled to Washington, D.C. for a hearing on Thursday to give the county a voice on the issue of Yucca Mountain. Schinhofen said county officials believe in “the integrity of the scientific review process for the Yucca Mountain repository,” adding, “We want to see the federal government follow the law.” Schinhofen was the lone local voice to testify to the Congressional Subcommittee on the Environment and Economy on Yucca Mountain during a hearing titled, “Federal, State, and Local Agreements and Economic Benefits for Spent Nuclear Fuel Disposal.” The hearing comes during the latest effort to revive the project in legislation in the House that would allot the U.S. Department of Energy $150 million to continue an application process to license Yucca Mountain as a nuclear storage facility.

July 14, 2015 – KKOH Reno – Money Approved To Fight Yucca Mountain Dump – Nevada’s “State Board of Examiners” has approved another 2.5 million dollars to keep pushing back against the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump. This extends a 7.5 million dollar contract for Egan and Associates, a Virginia law firm. This follows another congressional hearing last week about nuclear waste storage. Governor Brian Sandoval says we must be vigilant and aggressive in opposing Yucca Mountain. He says this money is well spent.

July 13, 2016 – 81 FR 45312-45314 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Physical Security Hardware–Inspections, Tests, Analyses, and Acceptance Criteria – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is soliciting public comment on draft NUREG-0800, “Standard Review Plan for the Review of Safety Analysis Reports for Nuclear Power Plants: LWR Edition,” Section 14.3.12, “Physical Security Hardware–Inspections, Tests, Analyses, and Acceptance Criteria.” The NRC seeks comments on the draft section revision of the standard review plan (SRP) concerning inspections, tests, analyses, and acceptance criteria (ITAAC) related to physical security hardware (PS-ITAAC).

July 13, 2016 – 81 FR 45311-45312 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Protection Against Extreme Wind Events and Missiles for Nuclear Power Plants – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is issuing Revision 2 to Regulatory Guide (RG) 1.117, Protection Against Extreme Wind Events and Missiles for Nuclear Power Plants.” This RG describes an approach that the NRC staff considers acceptable for identifying those structures, systems, and components of light water cooled reactors that should be protected from the effects of the worst case extreme winds and wind-generated missiles, so they remain functional.

July 13, 2016 – 81 FR 45308-45309 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Program-Specific Guidance About Possession Licenses for Manufacturing and Distribution – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is revising its licensing guidance for possession licenses for manufacturing and distribution. The NRC is requesting public comment on draft NUREG-1556, Volume 12, Revision 1, “Consolidated Guidance about Materials Licenses: Program-Specific Guidance about Possession Licenses for Manufacturing and Distribution.” The document has been updated from the previous revision to include information on safety culture, security of radioactive materials, protection of sensitive information, and changes in regulatory policies and practices. This document is intended for use by applicants, licensees, and the NRC staff.

July 13, 2016 – 81 FR 45309-45311 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Information Collection: Policy Statement for the “Criteria for Guidance of States and NRC in Discontinuance of NRC Regulatory Authority and Assumption Thereof By States Through Agreement,” Maintenance of Existing Agreement State Programs, Request for Information Through the Integrated Materials Performance Evaluation Program (IMPEP) Questionnaire, and Agreement State Participation in IMPEP – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) invites public comment on the renewal of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approval for an existing collection of information. The information collection is entitled, “Policy Statement for the `Criteria for Guidance of States and NRC in Discontinuance of NRC Regulatory Authority and Assumption Thereof By States Through Agreement,’ Maintenance of Existing Agreement State Programs, Request for Information Through the Integrated Materials Performance Evaluation Program (IMPEP) Questionnaire, and Agreement State Participation in IMPEP.”

July 13, 2016 – 81 FR 45311 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Request for a License To Export High-Enriched Uranium – Pursuant to Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) 110.70 (b) “Public Notice of Receipt of an Application,” please take notice that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has received the following request for an export license. Copies of the request are available electronically through the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System and can be accessed through the Public Electronic Reading Room link http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm.html at the NRC Homepage. A request for a hearing or petition for leave to intervene may be filed within thirty 30 days after publication of this notice in the Federal Register (FR). Any request for hearing or petition for leave to intervene shall be served by the requestor or petitioner upon the applicant, the office of the General Counsel, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555; the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555; and the Executive Secretary, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC 20520.

July 13, 2016 – KKOH AM 780 – Money Approved To Fight Yucca Mountain Dump – Nevada’s “State Board of Examiners” has approved another 2.5 million dollars to keep pushing back against the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump. This extends a 7.5 million dollar contract for Egan and Associates, a Virginia law firm. This follows another congressional hearing last week about nuclear waste storage. Governor Brian Sandoval says we must be vigilant and aggressive in opposing Yucca Mountain. He says this money is well spent.

July 13, 2016 – Midwest Energy News – Nuclear advocates eye former coal plant sites for small reactors – As coal plants around the country close, utilities, elected leaders and local residents are all wondering and debating how to deal with the sites. Some plants are being retrofitted to burn natural gas. Others are being torn down or redeveloped for a host of uses including condos, parks, solar farms, big box stores or breweries. Jeff Terry, a physics professor and nuclear energy expert at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has another vision for these sites, including the former site of the State Line coal plant near his hometown in northwest Indiana. He’d like to see nuclear reactors. Specifically, small modular reactors, or SMRs, nuclear plants with a capacity of 300 megawatts or less that are prefabricated and can be shipped around the country on trucks or trains.

July 13, 2016 – Idaho Statesman – Vermont nuclear plant wants to ship radioactive water to Idaho – The owner of the closed Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is seeking to ship hundreds of thousands of gallons of radioactive water to an Idaho processing facility. The Rutland Herald (http://bit.ly/29vczkt ) reports that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is evaluating responses from Entergy Nuclear after asking the company earlier this year to provide more details on a plan to dispose of 200,000 gallons of radioactive water. The plan calls for the water to be disposed in a torus, a large structure located at the bottom of the reactor core that holds 1.1 million gallons of water.

July 13, 2016 – E&T Magazine – Nuclear reactor construction falls to zero globally in 2016 – Construction starts for new nuclear reactors fell to zero globally in the first half of 2016 as the atomic industry struggles against falling costs for renewables and a slowdown in Chinese building. The last time there were no new reactors started over a full year was in 1995, according to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016. The number of reactors under construction is in decline for a third year, with 58 being built by the end of June, down from 67 reactors at the end of 2013, the report said. The latest figures highlight the struggles the nuclear sector is facing after the Fukushima atomic disaster in Japan five years ago, as higher costs and delays take their toll while other sources of energy become cheaper.

July 13, 2016 – Axis of Logic – UK refusing to help clean up Iraq after raining down radioactive shells – Britain has no intention of cleaning up its deadly radioactive legacy in Iraq or even monitoring the terrifying impact depleted uranium (DU) shells will have on the population in the future, it has been claimed. Writing in the Ecologist on Tuesday, Doug Weir, who is coordinator of the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW), says that hidden within the Chilcot report is a previously classified military document setting out the UK’s rejection of any duty to cleanse Iraq of DU of unexploded ordnance (UXO). “In it, the clearance of unexploded ordnance and DU is considered and the Ministry of Defence [MoD] argues that it has: “… no long-term legal responsibility to clean up DU from Iraq” Weir writes.

July 13, 2016 – Sputnik International – Rosatom Set to Develop Technology of Advanced Nuclear Fuel Production – Russia’s atomic energy corporation Rosatom is planning to develop a technology of new nuclear fuel production before the end of the year, the company said Wednesday in its annual report. “The experimental-industrial technology of the dense nitride uranium-plutonium fuel will be developed in 2016,” the report said. The dense nitride uranium-plutonium fuel has the largest levels of fuel depletion, thermal conduction and compatibility with liquid metal coolant.

July 13, 2016 – Westword – Colorado’s Superfund Sites Stretch From Silverton to East Colfax Avenue – On Monday, the Navajo Nation formally endorsed a Superfund cleanup of contaminated mines in southwestern Colorado – including an Environmental Protection Agency-caused spill at the Gold King Mine site that released millions of gallons of contaminated water into the Animas River last August, tainting land stretching from Silverton down to Arizona. Many other past and present Superfund sites are tougher to spot, including the Denver radium sites. Radium, once thought to be a miracle cure for cancer, was big business in Denver before the industry went belly up in the 1920s. Years later, all that remained of the industry were the 65 properties around Denver contaminated with radioactive material, which an EPA official discovered in the late ’70s. Soil at the sites was contaminated with radium, thorium and uranium, the radioactive decay of which produces radon gas, according to a Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment report.

July 13, 2016 – PhysOrg – Hot electrons detected at solid-liquid interfaces – As seen in diverse applications, such as the refinement of petrol, their use in batteries and fuel cells for electric cars and to aid in the cleanup of hazardous agricultural waste, a variety of catalysts are in constant development to fulfill economic and environmental demands. To maximize the catalytic reaction, a great deal of research effort is made to reveal its mechanism. As a key to understanding catalysis, hot electrons are of great interest in the field. The IBS team led by group leader PARK Jeong Young, reported the direct detection of hot electrons generated at a solid-liquid interface during an exothermic reaction on the surface of metal-semiconductor nanodiodes. This is the first time a research team has succeeded in detecting hot electrons in a liquid interface.

July 13, 2016 – Radiation Therapy News – FDA approves MRI-guided focused ultrasound device to treat tremor – The FDA published the approval of the first focused ultrasound device for the treatment of essential tremor in people who did not respond to treatment. Magnetic resonance (MR) images are taken by ExAblate Neuro during application of focused ultrasound to kill the brain cells which are considered to cause this tremor. “Patients with essential tremor who have not seen improvement with medication now have a new treatment option that could help them to avoid more invasive surgical treatments,” said Carlos Peña, who is the director of the division of neurological and physical medicine devices at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “As with other treatments for essential tremor, this new device is not a cure but could help patients enjoy a better quality of life.”

July 13, 2016 – SiliconIndia – Indian Scientist To Head Germany-Based Group Of Nuclear Physicists – Noted Indian physicist Sibaji Raha has been elected as the first chairman of the Joint Scientific Council of the GSI and the upcoming FAIR facility in Germany for exploring the nature of matter and the evolution of the universe. The Department of Science and Technology had recently shared the development via Twitter. “Prof Sibaji Raha, Bose Institute #Kolkata elected Chair of Jt Inter’ional #Scientific Council of GSI & FAIR #Germany,” a tweet said.

July 13, 2016 – WWAY TV 3 – Damaged pump motor causes Brunswick Nuclear Plant alert – Officials at the Brunswick Nuclear Plant Tuesday night issued an alert after a pump motor was damaged, according to a release. They said the alert was declared just after 8:30 p.m., and it was over just after 9:15 p.m. Officials said an alert is the second of four nuclear emergency classifications. They said the classification is used to describe conditions that require emergency response agencies to be in a heightened state of readiness. They said the unit, one of two at the plant, was reduced to about 70% power because of the damage.

July 13, 2016 – Novinite – Bulgaria’s Socialists Demand Restart of Belene Nuclear Project – Lawmakers of Bulgaria’s biggest opposition party BSP have called on Parliament for a reversal of a 2012 decision that brought the Belene Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) project to an end. “We extend a hand and put all of our expert potential to work to solve the problem,” the Bulgarian National Radio quotes Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) MP Tasko Ermenkov, who oversees energy issues. Ermenkov is referring the dilemma facing Bulgaria after an arbitration ruling that forces it to pay EUR 550 M to Russian company Atomstroyexport over the suspension of the Belene project. Transferring the sum, it will also receive in return a nuclear reactor and other equipment produced by Atomstroyexport for the plant’s purposes.

July 13, 2016 – Dow Jones Business News – Entergy in Talks to Sell FitzPatrick Nuclear Plant in New York to Exelon – Entergy Corp. said Wednesday that it is in talks to sell its FitzPatrick nuclear power plant — an 838-megawatt facility it had flagged for sale last year — to Exelon Corp. “The discussions with Exelon are consistent with Entergy’s commitment to consider any viable option that would allow FitzPatrick to remain in operation,” the company said. Entergy’s decision to sell the FitzPatrick facility follows news that it would close its Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Massachusetts by mid-2019. In addition to a more competitive environment and lower power prices it is bring in, the company has cited regulatory challenges and public policies that it says disadvantage nuclear plants.

July 13, 2016 – Niagara Gazette – City needs to answer ‘spoils pile’ questions – It’s time for some more detailed answers where the so-called “spoils pile” on North Avenue is concerned. What’s known is that the area contains material identified as radioactive by the contractor hired to construct the new North End train station. What’s still not clear is the level of radiation found in the materials at the site. The spoils pile has been surrounded by fencing, but that fencing was bowled over at some point and the plastic tarp covering the soil was allowed to become tattered. Residents and members of the media have rightly questioned whether the material poses a threat to public health.

July 13, 2016 – Northeast Today – Uranium Mining in Meghalaya: Why denying permission could benefit all – There has been a lot said on the issue of uranium mining which has been a bone of contention for most states who have tried to bring it forth. This has been clearly seen in Meghalaya which is still disputing whether it would be a good idea or not. There are numerous reasons as to why environmental groups react negatively to the idea of uranium mining. Here are a few ‘must know’ facts about Uranium Mining.

July 13, 2016 – Mo4ch – ‘Underground Chernobyl’: French parliament OKs nuclear waste facility despite protests – A controversial project of an underground facility storing the most hazardous nuclear waste in France has been recently approved by the parliament. Opponents of the law have already called the project an “underground Chernobyl.” On Monday, the National Assembly adopted the project of a nuclear waste landfill site, named Cigeo (Industrial Centre for Geological Disposal) in the town of Bure, eastern France. The site will be a part of Meuse/Haute Marne Underground Research Laboratory run by the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (Andra). The laboratory conducts studies of the geological formation in order to evaluate its capacity for deep geological repository of radioactive waste. Andra has repeatedly stated that the deep geological storage project is designed to ensure long term management of France’s radioactive waste.

July 13, 2016 – Daily Energy Insider – Fertel fights for nuclear energy future – Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) President and CEO Marvin Fertel asserted that nuclear energy was key in supporting the increasing demand for electricity at the recent North American Leaders’ Summit in Ottawa, Canada. “When we look out, we see the electrification of America being the frontier we’re moving into, whether it is in transportation or it’s in industrial processes with robots, or it’s what’s been done to the Savannah port, where you’ve made everything electric driven,” Fertel said. “We’re going to use more electricity down the road. We’re going to have very stringent carbon requirements as time goes by, and we see nuclear energy as absolutely critical to helping our country, our economy and our people. Losing current plants that are really good performers is just absurd.”

July 13, 2016 – Business Wire – Westinghouse Awarded $8 Million by DOE to Advance Nuclear Technology – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected Westinghouse Electric Company and its research partners to receive $8 million in research awards over the next three years to fund a series of projects. The awards support Westinghouse research in a number of areas including the area of self-powered wireless sensors and laser-based 3D printing.

July 13, 2016 – WTNH 8 – Connecticut lawmaker pushes nuclear waste bill – The legislation is important to people in Courtney’s district, which includes the former home of the Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant. The Stranded Nuclear Waste Accountability act of 2016 would help communities cover any losses they’ve racked up associated with the storage of nuclear waste. In a statement, Courtney says in part that ‘we cannot allow small communities and municipalities across this country to fall into financial distress because of the congressional gridlock which is holding up the establishment of a federal nuclear waste storage facility’.

July 13, 2016 – World Nuclear News – New York State sets out subsidy proposals – The New York Department of Public Service has put forward a proposal to help preserve New York’s upstate nuclear power plants by valuing their zero-emissions attributes based on the social cost of carbon. The department estimates that the state will realize $5 billion in benefits in the first two years alone if the proposal is implemented. Earlier this year the State of New York Public Service Commission ruled that non-carbon-emitting generation resources including nuclear power plants must be included in the state’s Clean Energy Standard (CES) portfolio. It also directed that the CES must include a support mechanism for upstate nuclear power plants at risk of closure for economic reasons. The Department of Public Service’s proposal sets out such a support mechanism. The Public Service Commission has invited the public to comment on the proposal, published on 8 July. The deadline for written comments is 18 July.

July 13, 2016 – Syracuse.com – NY needs a carbon tax, not nuclear subsidies, to cut emissions – There is no way for New York state utility ratepayers to determine whether the subsidies being proposed for Upstate nuclear plants are justified based on their alleged climate benefits based on what is being published in the media (“NY regulators propose generous Upstate nuclear subsidies,” July 9, 2016). However, some additional research and “back of the envelope” calculations based on the proposed subsidies presented in The Post-Standard and GHG emissions that are avoided from natural gas-fired power plants (the predominant source of electric energy in New York state) as reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration suggest that the subsidies proposed by the Public Service Commission amount to approximately $29/ton CO2 emissions avoided in the first year, rising to almost $50/ton in years 11 and 12.

July 13, 2016 – Oswego County Today – Barclay Applauds Public Service Commission’s Proposal to Assist Nuclear Energy – Assemblyman Will Barclay released the following statement today (July 11) after the Public Service Commission proposed to value nuclear as a clean energy source. “I applaud the state Public Service Commission for proposing to financially assist upstate nuclear power plants. Without this assistance, there is a high probability that our nuclear power plants would shut down. Such a scenario would result in tremendous job losses for Central New York, jeopardize New Yorkers access to electricity that is cleanly and efficiently generated, and increase electricity costs over the long run. The PSC should be commended for proposing an innovative and forward thinking proposal and for recognizing that to do nothing is not a viable strategy in addressing New York state’s electricity needs.”

July 13, 2016 – Business Wire – Upstate Energy Jobs Coalition Applauds PSC for Proposal to Support Upstate Nuclear Power Plants in Clean Energy Standard – The Upstate Energy Jobs Coalition (UEJ), a group including elected representatives, business leaders, organized labor, education institutions, economic development organizations and community leaders, today voiced their support for the New York Public Service Commission’s (PSC) latest responsive proposal detailing the nuclear provision within the Clean Energy Standard (CES), a measure introduced by Governor Andrew Cuomo that mandates 50 percent of all electricity consumed in New York by 2030 come from clean and renewable energy sources. The PSC proposal, issued on July 8th, properly values upstate nuclear plants for their contributions to the state’s clean energy goals. “Governor Cuomo and the PSC deserve to be recognized for issuing a proposal that would keep our upstate nuclear energy plants open, and in doing so, allow the state to meet its clean energy goals” “Governor Cuomo and the PSC deserve to be recognized for issuing a proposal that would keep our upstate nuclear energy plants open, and in doing so, allow the state to meet its clean energy goals,” said L. Michael Treadwell, CEO of The County of Oswego Industrial Development Agency. “The PSC’s findings are in line with the independent findings of the Brattle Group and the Navigant Group that affirm that the value of keeping New York’s upstate nuclear plants operating is substantial and far outweighs any costs associated with the program.

July 13, 2016 – Associated Press – Officials: Nuclear plant shuts down abruptly after restart – New Jersey’s Salem 2 nuclear reactor shut down shortly after it came back in service after a generator indicated there might be a problem. PSEG Nuclear spokesman Joe Delmar tells NJ.com (http://bit.ly/29v0O94 ) the plant had begun sending electricity to the regional power grid at 6:35 a.m. Monday, but automatically shut down again at 1:50 p.m. The cause of the shutdown at the Lower Alloways Creek plant is under investigation.

July 13, 2016 – CBS Chicago – Dold Proposes Fund To Reimburse Zion For Storing Nuclear Waste – An Illinois congressman has proposed legislation to compensate north suburban Zion for it years of storage of nuclear waste at a long-shuttered power plant. The Zion Nuclear Power Station closed in 1998, but a plan to permanently store nuclear waste from Zion and other nuclear plants at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has stalled, so U.S. Rep. Bob Dold has introduced a plan to reimburse communities like Zion. “We are, right now, currently storing a significant amount of spent nuclear fuel just a few hundred yards away from the greatest natural resource we have in our area, and that is the Great Lakes,” Dold said. Under his proposal – which Dold said has bipartisan support – Zion would get $15 million per year for up to seven years to make up for lost property taxes on the site, which still can’t be redeveloped.

July 13, 2016 – Illinois Public Radio – Nuclear Plant Closures – One of the two nuclear power generating facilities slated to shut down without state help has taken another step toward decommissioning. The Quad Cities Nuclear Generating Station has notified the owner of the power grid it supplies energy through that it will be shuttering the plant. The notice is one more step in Exelon’s plans to shut down both the Quad Cities plant and the Clinton Nuclear Generating Station in central Illinois. State Rep. Bill Mitchell, R-Forsyth, said keeping the Clinton and Quad Cities power facilities open would save hundreds of jobs. “This would be an absolutely devastating impact to the local economy in central Illinois,” he said. Mitchell said the plant closures would increase all Illinoisans’ electric bills.

July 13, 2016 – Monticello Times – Xcel Energy, employees celebrate 45 years at Monticello nuclear plant – Employees at the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant celebrated an important industry milestone last week with plenty of commemorative cake. Xcel Energy marked the 45th anniversary date of commercial operations at the plant June 30 by serving up 14 half-sheet cakes in three flavors that were created by Blue Egg Bakery in Elk River, said Communications Consultant Margaret Church. “We couldn’t bring in full sheets because they were too heavy and would crack.” The celebration also included a banner signing; individual employees inscribe their power-production monikers with the year they started working at the plant, Church said. “We had a really nice event,” she said. “It was wonderful to hear all of the stories people shared about their years here.”

July 13, 2016 – Tri-City Herald – Challenging year ends well for Richland nuclear power plant – The Columbia Generating Station ended its fiscal year in June tallying up the second-highest generation since it began operating in 1984, despite its most challenging 12 months in recent years. The nuclear power plant near Richland, operated by Energy Northwest, generated 9.6 million megawatt hours of electricity, just short of the 9.7 million megawatt hours generated two years ago. The refueling outage that started in May 2015 was a primary contributor to the near-record production year, said Brad Sawatzke, Energy Northwest chief nuclear officer. Not only was a third of the plant’s fuel replaced, as is done every other year, but workers used the shutdown of the plant to install a new feedwater flow meter, which measures the amount of water flowing through the reactor core. The more water that can be used, the greater potential power output.

July 13, 2016 – Las Vegas Review-Journal – 10 things we’d take in exchange for Yucca Mountain – Harry Reid has told me — repeatedly — that Yucca Mountain is dead. It’s fenced off, shut down, closed up, an empty hole in the ground that’s the site of one of the biggest wastes of federal money in the nation’s history. Then again, a House subcommittee was debating the issue last week, pondering whether to spend $150 million on a license application for the supposedly dead nuclear waste repository. The usual suspects said the usual things, but one congressman’s comments stood out. Rep. Mark Amodei said that while he didn’t think Nevada should be singled out as the only place to deposit nuclear waste in the country, Nevadans should take those nuclear lemons and make some glow-in-the-dark lemonade. “Nevadans should use this as an opportunity to dictate the terms of the repository under the best conditions for our state,” Amodei said. Now before Reid accuses Amodei of wanting Nevada to be a big, old, ugly nuclear whore, let’s actually pause for a moment to consider what we might be able to get in exchange for playing host to Yucca Mountain. Here’s a partial list:

July 13, 2016 – Daily Energy Insider – Nevada stakeholders voice input on Yucca Mountain nuclear disposal site – In a hearing held last week on “Federal, State and Local Agreements and Economic Benefits for Spent Nuclear Fuel Disposal,” the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Environment and the Economy Subcommittee heard statements from Nevada stakeholders concerning a repository for spent nuclear fuel at the Yucca Mountain site. “Nevadans deserve to have honest brokers in their federal government, and they deserve to hear the unbiased, scientific results that all of their hard-earned dollars funded,” U.S. Rep. Cresent Hardy (R-NV) said. Testimonies at the hearing discussed the impact of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the adequacy of funding provided to the state of Nevada and future infrastructure needs connected to the disposal facility.

July 12, 2016 – 81 FR 45138-45140 – DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY – National Nuclear Security Administration; Amended Record of Decision for the Continued Operation of the Y-12 National Security Complex – The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a separately organized agency within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is amending its July 20, 2011, Record of Decision for the Continued Operation of the Y-12 National Security Complex (2011 ROD) (76 FR 43319) to reflect its decision to implement a revised approach for meeting enriched uranium (EU) requirements, by upgrading existing EU processing buildings and constructing a new Uranium Processing Facility (UPF). Additionally, NNSA has decided to separate the single-structure UPF design concept into a new design consisting of multiple buildings, with each constructed to safety and security requirements appropriate to the building’s function. This revised approach is a hybrid of two alternatives previously analyzed in the 2011 Final Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement for the Y-12 National Security Complex, DOE/EIS-0387 (Y-12 SWEIS). The scope of this Amended ROD is limited to actions which have been found necessary to sustain Y-12’s capability to conduct EU processing operations in a safe and secure environment. Those actions are also addressed in a Supplement Analysis (SA) (DOE/EIS-0387-SA-01), issued by NNSA in April 2016. All other defense mission activities and non-defense mission activities conducted at Y-12 under the alternative selected for implementation in the 2011 ROD are outside the scope of this decision. As a result of preparing the SA, NNSA has determined that no further National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis is needed to support this Amended ROD.

July 12, 2016 – Chicago Tribune – House bill would compensate Zion for storage of ‘stranded’ nuclear waste – U.S. Rep. Bob Dold, R-Ill., has introduced a bill that would compensate Zion and other communities that have served as storage facilities for nuclear waste. Exelon’s Zion Nuclear Power Station has housed about 1,020 metric tons of used nuclear fuel since it closed in 1998, according to a news release from Dold. In 2002, it was determined the fuel would be moved to the Yucca Mountain storage facility, which has not yet opened. Dold said Zion is one of 13 communities across the country storing nuclear fuel from a closed power plant. The Stranded Nuclear Waste Accountability Act would compensate Zion more than $15 million annually for seven years, an expiration date Dold said he hopes will push elected officials to find a long-term solution.

July 12, 2016 – Northumberland Today – Ground broken on storage mound in Port Hope – The Port Hope Area Initiative joined with its governmental and corporate partners last week for the official ground breaking on the construction of the storage mound at its long-term low-level radioactive waste-management facility. This occasion marked the start of construction of the first cell of the engineered above-ground mound where historic low-level radioactive waste will be safely stored for hundreds of years, the PHAI press release said.

July 12, 2016 – IConnect007 – Supercomputers Fire Lasers to Shoot Gamma Ray Beam – Ever play with a magnifying lens as a kid? Imagine a lens as big as the Earth. Now focus sunlight down to a pencil tip. That still wouldn’t be good enough for what some Texas scientists have in mind. They want to make light even 500 times more intense. And they say it could open the door to the most powerful radiation in the universe: gamma rays. Comic book readers might know about gamma rays. The Incredible Hulk was transformed from mild scientist into wild superhero by gamma rays from a nuclear explosion. The real gamma rays form in nature from radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus. Besides hazardous materials, you’d have to look in exotic places like near a black hole or closer to home at lightning in the upper atmosphere to find natural forces capable of making gamma rays. Scientists have found that gamma rays, like the Hulk, can do heroic things too — if they can be controlled. Hospitals now eradicate cancer tumors using a ‘gamma ray knife’ with surgical precision. The rays can also image brain activity. And gamma rays are used to quickly scan cargo containers for terrorist materials.

July 12, 2016 – Times & Star – Nuclear submarine waste is not going to Sellafield – Campaigners are celebrating the news that large amounts of radioactive waste from nuclear submarines will not be heading to West Cumbria. The Ministry of Defence has announced that the Sellafield site will not be selected from a shortlist to store intermediate-level waste from 27 soon-to-be-dismantled Royal Navy subs. Both Copeland Council and the West Cumbria Sites Stakeholders Group (WCSSG), which scrutinises the nuclear industry locally, had objected to Sellafield being chosen, claiming that the move would have produced “no benefits for the site or the local community”. Capenhurst, in Cheshire, has instead been named as the MoD’s preferred site.

July 12, 2016 – Mid-Hudson News – Radioactive chemical found in Washington Lake – There are apparently more than just PFOS and PFOA contaminants in Washington Lake, Newburgh’s main water supply. City Manager Michael Ciaravino revealed at Monday night’s city council meeting that a radioactive chemical has also been found in the lake. “What I have learned is that when you cut granite, certain radioactive emissions occur in the granite. There is one called strontium, which has been detected in previous water samples,” he said. “We have asked the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to examine the relationship between this granite cutting concern and some of the other contaminants that have yet to be identified in our drinking water.”

July 12, 2016 – RnR Market Research – Global Nuclear Decommissioning Market 2016 Analysis and Forecast to 2020 – According to the nuclear decommissioning market report, a key growth driver is the worldwide shutdown of older reactors. At times, the upgradations asked to run the reactors tend to be too expensive to keep the reactors working. This normally is the case with older nuclear reactors that are already nearing the end of their lifetime. The research analyst predicts the global nuclear decommissioning market to grow at a CAGR over 2% during the forecast period. The global nuclear decommissioning market analyst says continuing trend which will have a positive impact on market growth is international cooperation to ensure nuclear safety. The dependence on nuclear power plant is reduced over a period owing to the disasters such as Fukushima and Chernobyl. Organizations such as the IAEA, the OECD’s NEA, and the commission of the European communities share the experience, technology, and the knowledge about decommissioning among various countries.

July 12, 2016 – Associated Press – Workers at some Hanford tanks stop in dispute over vapors – A coalition of labor unions on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state stopped work Monday at some of the radioactive waste tank farms because of health concerns over chemical vapors. The Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council issued a “stop work” order at the double-walled tanks that contain dangerous wastes from the past production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. Dave Molnaa, president of the council, said workers are demanding that they be supplied with bottled air when they perform work at any of the tank farms. Currently, bottled air is required only when working among the older, single-walled underground tanks where most of the vapor episodes have occurred.

July 12, 2016 – AzoOptics.com – The T1030sc thermal imaging camera from FLIR Systems offers a unique combination of top performance, accuracy and a wide array of advanced features – The T1030sc features a rich set of hardware, software, and optical innovations each tailored to take advantage of its extraordinarily sensitive 1024 X 768 HD-IR detector. High fidelity images are created using FLIR’s OSX™ Precision HDIR optics which features a precision ultrasonic autofocus capability. The combination of the high resolution detector and the variety of OSX lenses available allow users to view problems from longer distances and with greater accuracy, promoting better safety and more efficient workflow. The T1030sc offers a thermal sensitivity of < 20 mK (NETD), more than twice the industry standard and wide temperature operating ranges with calibrations up to 2000°C. Its FLIR OSX™ Precision HDIR Optical System features an ultrasonic drive, ambient temperature drift compensation, and parasitic radiation protection. July 12, 2016 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - Provision wins certificate of need battle for Dowell Springs radiation center – For more than four years, Provision Radiation Therapy has treated patients in the Dowell Springs medical complex off Middlebrook Pike — while various courts considered whether the practice was fulfilling a valid need in the area. Now the Tennessee Court of Appeals has affirmed Provision’s state-granted certificate of need, overturning a 2014 Davidson County Chancery Court decision that reversed the state’s decision to grant the certificate of need to the center, legally “East Tennessee Radiation Therapy Services” and owned by the nonprofit Provision Trust. Provision applied for the original certificate of need to install a linear accelerator in August 2011; it was granted in December 2011, and the center began treating patients in August 2012.

July 12, 2016 – City A.M. – EDF takes big bite out of Chinese wind energy developer – Embattled French utility giant EDF has taken a majority stake in UPC Asia Wind Management. The firm’s renewables unit, EDF Energies Nouvelles, paid an undisclosed amount for a stake in the Chinese company which develops and builds wind projects. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that EDF is selling its coal trading operation, which helps supply coal-fired power stations across Europe. It follows earlier reports that the company was mulling a sale of its British gas and coal plants to invest more in nuclear energy.

July 12, 2016 – Wales Online – Developers of Wylfa Newydd nuclear station have a ‘desire’ to use the local supply chain and workforce – The joint venture behind the development of Wylfa Newydd has said there is a “desire” to use the local supply chain and workforce. Horizon Nuclear Power contracted Menter Newydd as the joint venture created to help deliver its lead nuclear build project on the Island. Comprising Hitachi Nuclear Energy Europe, Bechtel Management Company, and JGC Corporation (UK) it boasts a wealth of experience and expertise in nuclear construction.

July 12, 2016 – Defense World Net – India To Lease Second Akula-Class Nuclear-Sub From Russia – India has agreed to lease a second Akula-class nuclear powered submarine Nerpa from Russia. “India agreed to lease a project 971 submarine which will be withdrawn from the Russian Navy,” Sputnik cited an unnamed source as saying to Kommersant Tuesday. The official confirmation about the lease of second nuke submarine even though speculation is rife about India seeking another one from Russia after the success of INS Chakra, the Akula Class submarine that has been on lease from Russia for ten years came up only in February this year. “The hull of the submarine is ready but it has to be refurbished as per Indian needs after the talks are concluded,” Russian Ambassador to India Alexander M Kadakin had said.

July 12, 2016 – Union of Concerned Scientists – Nuclear Plant Accidents: Fermi Unit 1 – Jorge Agustin Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, also known as George Santayana, wrote that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Disaster by Design/Safety by Intent #39 described the partial meltdown of the reactor core at the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) in California. Workers at the Fermi Unit 1 reactor in Michigan must have remembered this accident pretty well, since they duplicated almost every key aspect of it just seven years later. So, perhaps a companion to Santayana’s point is “Those who remember the past are condemned to repeat it, unless they take steps to prevent it.” Had SRE’s owners copyrighted their accident script, Fermi Unit 1’s owner would probably have had to mail them a royalty check.

July 12, 2016 – Sputnik International – Operator of Japan’s Takahama Nuclear Plant to Fight Court-Mandated Shutdown – Kansai Electric Power, operating Takahama nuclear power plant in western Japan, vowed on Tuesday to appeal a court ruling ordering the shutdown of two reactors at a higher court. Earlier in the day, Otsu District Court upheld its March decision to shut down Reactors 3 and 4, in what was the first such ruling against an operating power plant. “We will make an all-out effort to claim and substantiate the safety of Units 3 and 4 of Takahama Nuclear Power Station…after reviewing the details of the [court] decision statement and subsequently filing a petition or objection to Osaka High Court without delay,” the operator’s statement read.

July 12, 2016 – WTNH – Connecticut lawmaker pushes nuclear waste bill – Connecticut congressman Joe Courtney is part of a bi-partisan group of house lawmakers to introduce a bill to help communities that are struggling with the cost of storing what’s known as ‘stranded nuclear waste’. The legislation is important to people in Courtney’s district, which includes the former home of the Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant. The Stranded Nuclear Waste Accountability act of 2016 would help communities cover any losses they’ve racked up associated with the storage of nuclear waste.

July 12, 2016 – Crain’s – New Yorkers express fears of Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant at documentary screening – The start of a two-week-long Lincoln Center film screening of Indian Point, a documentary about the controversial nuclear power plant in Buchanan, N.Y., gave New Yorkers an opportunity to share their concerns about their safety five years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. The film offers a look inside the power plant, located 35 miles from midtown Manhattan on the Hudson River. In addition to speaking with several anti-nuclear advocates, director Ivy Meeropol gained unprecedented access inside the highly guarded plant for her 94- minute documentary. On July 8, Meeropol and the film’s subjects, including Indian Point senior control room operator Brian Vangor and activists Roger Witherspoon, Marilyn Elie and former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Gregory Jaczko answered New Yorkers’ anti-plant questions after the first screening of the film at Lincoln Center’s 85-seat Howard Gilman Theater. The film will have five showings daily until July 21.

July 12, 2016 – Portland Mercury – A New Lawsuit Says Covered Water Reservoirs Will Poison Portlanders – As the city moved ever closer to shutting down its open air drinking water reservoirs in recent years, lots of opponents offered a steady refrain: They argued the shift to covered reservoirs would result in the harmful gas radon being released via Portlander’s tap water. Now, with the reservoirs formally disconnected from the water system, those claims are poised to get a day in court for the first time. Scott Fernandez, a credentialed microbiologist who’s long railed against closed reservoirs, has sued to get the reservoirs at Washington Park and on Mt. Tabor back into use—or at least disrupt their demise. In a 10-page complaint [PDF] filed last week, Fernandez argues the city is trespassing against him by potentially forcing radon—a radioactive gas and carcinogen—into his home. And he argues the city’s causing a public nuisance by doing the same thing citywide.

July 12, 2016 – KVEW-TV – Hanford cleanup continues after more than 25 years – The site has completed 1,614 milestones, but has about one hundred more projects to finish. Of the finished cleanup projects, 25 percent were completed on or ahead of schedule. One of the most important projects is removing about 7,000 gallons of highly radioactive sludge in a basin near the Columbia River. The Maintenence and Storage Facility is testing the equipment that will be used to vacuum and transfer those waste particles in 20 large vessels. “The hardware that you see that we’ve walked-through today is on schedule to be pumping sludge within two years,” said Neal Sullivan during a tour of the site. Last week the employees were able to test the equipment and practice retrieving material. “While we were confident that it would work the proof is in the pudding and so we actually did that, we moved the simulant,” said Sullivan.

July 12, 2016 – World Nuclear News – Nuclear is strategic imperative for USA, says NEI – Preserving existing nuclear capacity and preparing to build large amounts of new nuclear capacity in the next decade are strategic imperatives for the USA, the Nuclear Energy Institute has told the US Department of Energy. The NEI called for reforms to electricity markets and a systematic effort to create the conditions necessary to deploy advanced reactor technologies in comments submitted to the DOE, as it prepares the next instalment of its Quadrennial Energy Review (QER). “A continuing, growing contribution from nuclear energy is essential to produce needed baseload electricity at stable prices and to sustain reductions in emissions of carbon and other pollutants,” it said. The QER process was established by presidential memorandum in 2014 and aims to engage federal agencies and outside stakeholders while enabling federal government to translate policy goals into a set of analytically based, integrated actions for proposed investments over a four-year planning horizon. The first QER, published in 2015, examined the USA’s infrastructure for energy transmission, storage, and distribution, including liquid and natural gas pipelines, the electricity grid, and transport links. The second instalment will focus on the electricity system to produce a set of findings and policy recommendations to help guide modernization of the grid and ensure its continued reliability, safety, security, affordability, and environmental performance in the period to 2040. It is due to be released later this year.

July 12, 2016 – US News and World Report – The New Nuclear Renaissance – There has been a groundswell of activity and investment in recent years surrounding advanced nuclear reactors. A dynamic group of nuclear engineers and scientists are chasing the future – and racing against China and Russia – to develop innovative reactor designs. These technologies hold enormous promise to provide clean, safe, affordable, and reliable energy, not just for our country, but for the world. These innovators have a vision for the future, and they charge ahead backed by more than $1 billion in private capital. The future of nuclear energy is bright. Some would argue that we have been here before. In 2005, Congress passed incentives to encourage a “nuclear renaissance” amid high natural gas prices. The industry stood ready to build a large number of modern light-water reactors, improved versions of existing nuclear technology. But reality fell short of expectations and the result was only five new nuclear plants, with a price tag of $8 billion to $10 billion each. Now, in an age of low-cost natural gas, it is becoming harder for the nearly 100 existing reactors to compete.

July 12, 2016 – PRNewswire – Americas Set to Dominate Spent Nuclear Dry Storage Cask Market, Surpassing $1 Billion by 2020 – The market for spent nuclear dry storage casks in the Americas is set to rise from $602.5 million in 2015 to over $1 billion by 2020, as the region continues to generate the highest demand for nuclear fuel storage globally, according to Spent Nuclear Fuel Dry Storage Casks, Update 2016 – Global Market Size, Market Volume, Market Share and Key Country Analysis to 2020 research report now available with RnRMarketResearch.com. Complete report on spent nuclear fuel dry storage casks market spread across 164 pages supported with 58 data tables and 46 figures is available at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/spent-nuclear-fuel-dry-storage-casks-update-2016-global-market-size-market-volume-market-share-and-key-country-analysis-to-2020-market-report.html.

July 12, 2016 – Niagara Gazette – City officials consulting with DEC on excavated material piled on North Avenue – Questions remain about the strength of radioactivity identified by city contractors in a pile of excavated material waiting for disposal on North Avenue. The Niagara Gazette sought answers from city hall after an Investigative Post story this week identified similarly described “gravel”-like radioactive material at a minimum 60 properties in Niagara County and Grand Island. Requests to identify how far above typical background radiation levels the pile tested were not answered by city officials. Senior Planner Thomas DeSantis and Alan Nusbaum, the city’s environmental assistant in DeSantis’ office, said they were not the “appropriate” people to speak to the matter. “The city will be consulting with the Mr. Thomas Papura, environmental tradition specialist with the DEC on Monday,” DeSantis said on Friday.

July 12, 2016 – Scranton Times-Tribune – Other nuke meltdown costly – We’re now getting an idea of just how expensive shutting down a nuclear power plant like Three Mile Island can be. According to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts, Pacific Gas & Electric’s plan to shutter California’s last nuclear plant by 2025 would cost $15 billion if all of its output is replaced with solar-produced electricity at current prices. PG&E says it will rely heavily on solar energy, along with conservation, in place of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. The news of its planned closing came even though a new study showed that the shutdown of California’s other nuclear plant, San Onofre, triggered a sharp increase in electricity costs and a spike in carbon emissions.

July 12, 2016 – Modesto Bee – Treatment of some veterans is radioactive – I am an “Atomic Veteran.” This is now an official veteran status conveyed both by Congress and the Department of Defense. Impressed? Well, don’t be envious, because it is definitely not something I would wish upon my worst enemy. Our military branches have been extremely careless over the years and have exposed many servicemen and -women to unnecessary and undisclosed hazards, in many cases related to radiation and nuclear fallout.

July 11, 2016 – 81 FR 44898 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Sunshine Act Meeting Notice – DATE: July 11, 18, 25, August 1, 8, 15, 2016. PLACE: Commissioners’ Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. STATUS: Public and Closed. Week of July 11, 2016 There are no meetings scheduled for the week of July 11, 2016. Week of July 18, 2016–Tentative Thursday, July 21, 2016 9:30 a.m. Briefing on Project Aim (Public Meeting) (Contact: Janelle Jessie: 301-415-6775) This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address–http://www.nrc.gov/. Week of July 25, 2016–Tentative Tuesday, July 26, 2016 9:00 a.m. Meeting with NRC Stakeholders (Public Meeting) (Contact: Denise McGovern: 301-415-0681) Thursday, July 28, 2016 9:00 a.m. Hearing on Combined Licenses for Levy Nuclear Plant, Units 1 and 2: Section 189a. of the Atomic Energy Act Proceeding (Public Meeting) (Contact: Donald Habib: 301-415-1035) This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address–http://www.nrc.gov/.

July 11, 2016 – Corvallis Gazette-Times – Depleted uranium at Wah Chang refinery led to decades of health woes – The ATI metals refinery in Millersburg — still widely known by its former name, Wah Chang — plays a crucial role in the U.S. nuclear energy industry, producing highly purified zirconium to contain the radioactive uranium that powers many of the nation’s civilian nuclear reactors as well as those that drive the Navy’s nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. But for two years in the early 1970s, Wah Chang played a role in the darker side of America’s nuclear history: reprocessing depleted uranium for the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Most workers at the Albany area plant were never told about the uranium on the site or warned to take any extra precautions. But, according to a government analysis, hazardous levels of residual radiation from that depleted uranium remained on the site for nearly 40 years after the reprocessing job was done — and hundreds of Wah Chang employees paid for it with their health. Some may have paid with their lives.

July 11, 2016 – The Examiner – Calls for Indian Pt. Closure, Pipeline Halt Outside Cuomo’s House – Advocates of renewable energy held an early Sunday evening vigil outside of the New Castle residence of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. They called for the construction to cease on the Spectra AIM Pipeline and for Indian Point nuclear power plant to be closed. About 100 renewable energy advocates held a vigil outside Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s home early Sunday evening urging the governor to take immediate steps to shut down three projects and facilities they argue accelerate climate change. The roughly hour-long interfaith vigil attracted opponents of Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, the Spectra AIM Pipeline being built through northern Westchester that would transport natural gas derived from hydraulic fracturing and the CPV power plant in Orange County that is under construction.

July 11, 2016 – Tri-City Herald – Practice makes perfect for moving Hanford’s radioactive sludge – A large, but little-used Hanford building has taken on a second life, smoothing the way for the challenging task of removing radioactive sludge from underwater containers near the Columbia River. The K West Basin, where the sludge is stored, and the 28,000-square-foot Maintenance and Storage Facility, or MASF, are on opposite ends of Hanford. But MASF, built to support the defunct Fast Flux Test Facility, has been reconfigured to duplicate key areas of the K West Basin and its newly built annex for safely removing sludge from the basin. “We actually built a basin in this building,” said Neal Sullivan, director of the CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. sludge treatment program, during a tour of MASF. “It was a concrete floor.”

July 11, 2016 – Eurek Alert – Observing the Pauli Exclusion Principle by Slowly Colliding Atomic Clouds – University of Otago physicist Niels Kjærgaard and his team have used extremely precisely controlled laser beams to confine, accelerate and gently collide ultracold atomic clouds of fermionic potassium. This allowed them to directly observe a key principle of quantum theory, the Pauli Exclusion Principle. This principle predicts a forbidden zone along a meridian of the spherical halo of scattered particles, which the Otago experiments indeed unveiled.

July 11, 2016 – Greenville Daily Reflector – Greene County schools test negative for radon – Greene County’s schools have tested negative for radon. One of the few school systems in the state to conduct radon testing, Greene County Schools partnered with the county health department in the 2015-16 academic year to test six of its facilities. Radon is a radioactive, colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that occurs naturally as a decay product of radium. Radon seeps from ground soil, generally in rocky regions. “High radon levels leave people at risk for lung cancer just as much as second-hand smoke,” Michael Rhodes, director of the Greene County Health Department, said.

July 11, 2016 – Motherboard – Radiation From Ancient Supernovae May Have Given Evolution an Astrophysical Push – According to new research by astrophysicists at the University of Kansas, Earth’s early biology was tested repeatedly by fierce gusts of cosmic wind originating from twin supernovae some 300 million light-years from Earth. For weeks, the night sky may have glowed with eerie blue light while Earth’s animals received radiation doses equivalent to roughly one CT scan for every creature living on land or in shallower water. The cosmic rays would have been enough to ionize the planet’s troposphere, possibly contributing to a minor mass extinction linked to global cooling. The group’s work is published in Monday’s issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters. As noted by the paper’s lead author, physicist Adrian Melott, the findings were unexpected. “I was expecting there to be very little effect at all,” he offered in a statement. “The supernovae were pretty far way—more than 300 light years—that’s really not very close.”

July 11, 2016 – Jagran Josh – Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant attains criticality – Kudankulam Nuclear Power PlantThe second reactor of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) attained criticality at 8.56 PM on 10 July 2016. On commencing the First Approach to Criticality (FAC) on 8 July 2016 by withdrawing the control rods from the reactor, boron dilution started a few hours later to allow neutron concentration to go up, which eventually led to the criticality of the reactor. The KKNPP had submitted its reports to the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) and received the nod for criticality after the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change experts inspected the second unit. They submitted their report to the Supreme Court.

July 11, 2016 – Baystreet.ca – Advanced Medical Isotope Corporation Partners with Versant Medical Physics and Radiation Safety – Advanced Medical Isotope Corporation (or “AMI”) (OTC: ADMD), a late stage radiation oncology focused medical device company today announced that it has partnered with Versant Medical Physics and Radiation Safety company to provide dosimetry expertise to support development of the Company’s brachytherapy devices. Versant, a provider of comprehensive medical physics consulting services, will provide AMI with expert scientific and technical support on dosimetry, which is the calculation and assessment of the radiation dose received by the human body, for AMI’s medical devices.

July 11, 2016 – Daily Mail – Owners of Greenham Common’s nuclear bunkers hope to swap mushroom clouds for mushrooms – It was once used to house the West’s deadly arsenal of nuclear weapons, but the new owners of Greenham Common’s bunkers are hoping to swap mushroom clouds for mushrooms. The site hit the headlines in the 1980s when hundreds of women blockaded the RAF base in protest at the storage of US cruise missiles there, with many chaining themselves to its fence. Now Flying A Services, which bought the site in 2002, is hoping to rent out the bunkers to raise money to develop a Cold War museum. Property agent Quintons is searching for occupiers for the six bunkers at the former RAF station near Newbury, Berkshire, in a bid to bring in £500,000 per year.

July 11, 2016 – ENPI-info.eu – Nuclear safety in Armenia: EU presents results of stress test – The European Nuclear Safety Regulation Group has published the results of the stress test peer review exercise conducted in Armenia in June 2016 by a team of 10 EU experts. The exercise was requested from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy by the Armenian authorities. The EU experts studied Armenia’s National Report on nuclear safety presented by the country’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority following similar nuclear stress test it conducted in 2015. The findings of the EU experts can be found here. After the Fukushima accident in 2011, the EU has been a world leader in carrying out comprehensive risk and safety assessments (stress tests) of its nuclear power reactors, the European Nuclear Safety Regulation Group report said. In 2011, three Eastern Partnership Countries (Armenia, Belarus and Ukraine) expressed their willingness to undertake on a voluntary basis comprehensive risk and safety assessments (‘stress tests’), taking into account the specifications agreed by the European Commission and the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) on 24 May 2011, the report added.

July 11, 2016 -Kyodo News Service – Opponent of nuclear power elected governor of Kagoshima – Anti-nuclear advocate Satoshi Mitazono was elected governor of Kagoshima Prefecture on Sunday, beating incumbent Yuichiro Ito, who agreed to the resumption of reactors at a power plant in the prefecture. “I want to make Kagoshima a prefecture that takes on challenges with a positive mindset,” Mitazono, 58, said Monday. The former TV Asahi commentator ran as an independent backed by the main opposition Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party, as well as some conservatives who typically support the ruling Liberal Democratic Party but were opposed to the incumbent.

July 11, 2016 – Herald Express – Children affected by Chernobyl nuclear accident have visited South Devon for recuperation break – CHILDREN whose lives have been affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986 have been given the opportunity to visit Devon for one month, with the hope of increasing their life expectancies by three years. The children from Belarus, which suffered from the fall-out caused by the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, will be staying with host families in Devon for a month thanks to British charity, Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline.

July 11, 2016 – Orlando Sentinel – Retired nuclear worker fascinated by silent films – Richard St. Amant recalled that the single year he went to college was a good one. “It taught me that college was not for me,” said St. Amant, 77. “I went on to other types of endeavors.”
He worked at Detroit Edison for 40 years in power plants — conventional and nuclear. He retired as a shift supervisor and moved to The Villages, where he says his creative right brain caught up with the more logical left. St. Amant has been sharing his interest in the silent film era through power-point presentations, and then there’s the eight musicals he has produced in The Villages.

July 11, 2016 – BT.com – William presents awards in nuclear submarine’s ‘bomb shop’ – The Duke of Cambridge has presented newly qualified submariners with their Dolphin awards – in a nuclear submarine’s “bomb shop”. William, commodore-in-chief, submarines, last week privately toured HMS Artful, an Astute class submarine, the most advanced and powerful attack sub operated by the Royal Navy. The warship, commissioned earlier this year, had returned to the UK following a successful trial period in the western Atlantic. While on board the vessel in the Clyde estuary last Tuesday, the Duke presented 14 newly qualified submariners with their Dolphins, marking their passing of rigorous classroom and sea-based assessments, followed by a stringent examination board.

July 11, 2016 – Defense News – Russia Offers India Nuclear Aircraft Carrier – Russia has offered its nuclear aircraft carrier, dubbed “Storm,” to India for purchase, a senior Indian Navy official said. The offer comes as India and the US discuss the transfer of technology for India’s future nuclear aircraft carrier, the INS Vishal. A diplomat with the Russian Embassy confirmed that a Russian team visiting India last week made the offer. Krylov State Research Center (KSRC), a Russian shipbuilding research and development institute, is designing the carrier, also known as Shtorm or Project 23000E.

July 11, 2016 – Presna Latina – India Actives New Nuclear Reactor to Generate Electricity – The second unit of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu state, was successfully activated, today announced installation sources. The reactor went into operation at 20:56 local time on Sunday, told IANS news agency the director of both stations, H.N. Sahu. According to plans, the goal is to connect the reactor to the national distribution network of electric power in a period from four to six months. Like the first reactor, already in operation, the new unit will have a generating capacity of 1,000 megawatts.

July 11, 2016 – On Line Opinion – Bill Gates and other billionaires backing a nuclear renaissance – Let’s for a second imagine a world without nuclear energy. That’s a tough one but let’s try. No nuclear bombs, of course, no Chernobyl and Fukushima, no worries about Iran and North Korea. A wonderful world, maybe? Probably not, because without nuclear energy we would have burned millions more tons of coal and billions more barrels of oil. This would have brought about climate change of such proportions that what we have today would have seemed negligible. Nuclear energy and uranium, which feeds it, are controversial enough even without any actual accident happening. Radioactivity is dangerous. Nobody is arguing against it. When an accident does take place, the public backlash is understandably huge. What many opponents of uranium forget to mention, however, are the benefits of nuclear energy and the fact that the statistical probability of serious accidents is pretty low. They focus on the “What if?” and neglect the other side of the coin. But let’s try to see both sides of the issue.

July 11, 2016 – Oracle Dispatch – Why the reactor from Indian Point was closed? – The reasons for closing the reactor are unknown. It was very unexpectedly. Westchester County has two reactors with nuclear energy in the Energy Center of Indian Point. One of them was recently closed. It was shut down just after the workers began to test the electrical systems this Wednesday. The owner of this plant is the Entergy Corp. It released an official statement just after Unit 2 closure. The spokesperson of the Corp, Patricia Kakridas has assured the press that employees do not need any medical attention and there was no radioactivity noticed. The reactor was closed by its own automatically system at 9.30 in the morning. The main mystery is this reactor is programmed to do that only if there is something unexpected happening. The spokeswoman confirmed that there is an investigation, and experts are trying to understand the reason of shutdown. It was unplanned, according to official data. And it is the first closure for this reactor in 2016 year. However, during 2015 year, Unit 3 reactor has three shutdowns during a year. Each time it has different causes.

July 11, 2016- Earth Island Journal – New Documentary Investigates Nuclear Power from New York to Fukushima – Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest that the “past is prologue.” In an irony of history, a filmmaker whose grandparents were so-called “atomic spies, and the only American civilians electrocuted by the US government during the Cold War, is now trying to shutdown a nuclear power plant in New York. Ivy Meeropol is the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed for espionage on June 19, 1953 for allegedly passing A-bomb secrets to the Soviets. She is the daughter of Michael Meeropol, who — after his parents’ death — was adopted by songwriter Abel Meeropol, composer of the 1936 anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit” famously sung by Billie Holiday and the pro-integration song “The House I live In.” Ivy Meeropol previously directed 2004’s Heir to an Execution, an extremely personal HBO film that examined the case of the Rosenbergs, whose contentious electrocution took place at New York’s Sing Sing prison — only 10 miles from the nuclear Indian Point Energy Center. The Brooklyn-born, Massachusetts-raised Meeropol’s absorbing, incisive, new documentary Indian Point investigates this 1960s-built nuclear power facility, which sits just 35 miles north of New York City and is currently working to relicense two of its reactors. It also probes the 2012 ousting of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s chairman, Gregory Jaczko, who was accused of bullying and intimidating employees, plus the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, triggered by a 2011 earthquake and tidal wave that caused meltdowns and the release of radioactive isotopes at the Japanese nuclear power plant.

July 11, 2016 – Vineland Daily Journal – COMMENTARY: Nuke plants at risk, and that hurts climate – America’s nuclear plants are at risk. In 2013, the U.S. had 104 operating nuclear plants. Since then, a dozen have closed or announced plans to shut down. These productive nuclear plants are not closing because they’re old or unsafe, but rather for economic reasons. If we don’t act, and nuclear plants continue to close, the consequences will be significant for the economy, for customers and for the environment. Fortunately, we in New Jersey have a chance to respond before it’s too late for our nuclear fleet, which provides almost half of the state’s energy.

July 11, 2016 – Quad City Times – Exelon notifies grid operator of impending closure – Bill Stoermer, communications manager for Exelon’s Quad-Cities Generating Station near Cordova, talks in June about the company’s announcement that it will move forward to shut down the Quad-Cities and Clinton, Illinois, nuclear plants, given the lack of progress on Illinois energy legislation. Exelon Generation announced Thursday that it has formally notified grid operator PJM Interconnection of its plans to retire the Quad-Cities Generating Station in Cordova on June 1, 2018. The step is the latest of several procedural notifications that Exelon is required to make prior to closing the Quad-Cities and Clinton, Ill., nuclear stations. The notification comes two weeks after Exelon formally notified the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its decision. After a long campaign of warning the plants could be retired prematurely without legislative reform, Exelon announced June 2 it decided to close the nuclear plants given the lack of progress on the proposed Illinois legislation.

July 11, 2016 – Carlsbad Current-Argus – Exercise at WIPP provides realistic training – Waste Isolation Pilot Plant personnel were put to the test on June 22, when a day-long exercise simulated an underground fire and radiological release. The annual exercise was overseen by more than 100 external evaluators who assessed the performance of WIPP Safety Management programs, a news release from the Department of Energy said. More than a dozen federal, state and local organizations participated, including the Department of Energy Headquarters Emergency Management Team, the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security, the Eddy County Emergency Operations Center, Carlsbad Medical Center and the Carlsbad Fire Department.

July 11, 2016 – Telluride Daily Planet – County readying comments on uranium ablation – The San Miguel County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday met with opposing sides in a debate over a new uranium processing technology that could be used at mines in the county. The county is readying comments on possible regulation of the new technology, called ablation, to be submitted to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment by July 22. County attorney Steve Zwick said the CDPHE is considering six options for regulating the uranium ablation technology. The first would defer regulation to the state Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety; Zwick indicated the county likely would not recommend that option. The other five options represent varying degrees of CDPHE oversight of the technology.

July 11, 2016 – Post Register – New contractor sets cleanup priorities at nuclear facility – For Fred Hughes, it’s déjà vu. Hughes, president of cleanup contractor Fluor Idaho, recently began his fourth tour living and working in eastern Idaho. His stints at the U.S. Department of Energy’s desert site began in the mid-1980s, working for a U.S. Navy contractor. He returned in the 1990s to manage several waste facilities, only to leave and return again in the early 2000s to oversee construction of a facility known as the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project. Now Hughes, 61, is back once more to lead the entire $1.4 billion cleanup operation that employs roughly 1,700. Fluor’s responsibilities combine what was previously handled by two government contractors — Idaho Treatment Group and CH2M-WG Idaho, or CWI. The work includes everything from cleanup of toxic and radioactive contamination to managing and watching over spent nuclear fuel.

July 11, 2016 – Los Angeles Times – Edison calls settlement that left consumers on hook for $3.3 billion reasonable – Southern California Edison on Thursday warned that its customers could face higher costs related to the shuttered San Onofre nuclear plant if regulators overturn a settlement agreement. In an 80-page filing with the California Public Utilities Commission, Edison argued that the agreement reached over San Onofre’s closure should stand based on past legal precedent involving other settlement agreements and the normal process of closing power plants. The utility’s filing was its first detailed response to an order that could lead to full reconsideration of the settlement agreement, which left consumers on the hook for $3.3 billion to permanently close the nuclear plant in 2013.

July 11, 2016 – Business Wire – Nuclear Plant Settlement Ensures that SCE Customers Do Not Pay for Mitsubishi’s Faulty Steam Generators – The settlement of the San Onofre nuclear plant closure appropriately requires that Southern California Edison customers do not pay for failed equipment provided by Mitsubishi that prompted the closure, SCE said in a filing today with the California Public Utilities Commission. “We believe this public process will allow interested parties to review the settlement and confirm for themselves that it should stand” SCE’s submittal responds to a May 9 ruling to reopen the record of the San Onofre settlement reached in 2014 by SCE, San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and consumer, environmental and labor advocates. “We believe this public process will allow interested parties to review the settlement and confirm for themselves that it should stand,” said Ron Nichols, president of SCE. “This process also gives SCE an opportunity to demonstrate our continued commitment to openness and transparency.”

July 7, 2016 – 81 FR 44333 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS), Meeting of the ACRS Subcommittee on Plant Operations and Fire Protection; Notice of Meeting – The ACRS Subcommittee on Plant Operations and Fire Protection will hold a meeting on July 28, 2016, at the U.S. NRC Region II Office, 245 Peachtree Center Avenue NE., 8th floor, Salon A, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-1257. The meeting will be open to public attendance. Visitors wishing to attend that meeting must report to the NRC Security Desk on the 8th floor.

July 7, 2016 – 81 FR 44335 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Tennessee Valley Authority, Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, Unit 2 – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has granted the request of the Tennessee Valley Authority (the licensee) to withdraw its license amendment application dated December 15, 2015, for a proposed amendment to Facility Operating License No. NPF-96 issued to the licensee for operation of the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant (WBN), Unit 2. The proposed amendment would have revised Technical Specification (TS) 3.6.12, “Ice Condenser Doors.”

July 7, 2016 – 81 FR 44333-44334 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Reno Creek In Situ Uranium Recovery Project in Campbell County, Wyoming – By letter dated October 3, 2012, AUC LLC (AUC) submitted an application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a new source and byproduct materials license for the proposed Reno Creek In Situ Uranium Recovery (ISR) Project (Reno Creek ISR Project) proposed to be located in Campbell County, Wyoming. The NRC is issuing for public comment a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (Draft SEIS) for the Reno Creek ISR Project. The Draft SEIS is Supplement 6 to NUREG-1910, “Generic Environmental Impact Statement for In Situ Leach Uranium Milling Facilities.”

July 7, 2016 – 81 FR 44301 – DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY – Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Savannah River Site – This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Savannah River Site. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register. DATES: Monday, July 25, 2016, 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Tuesday, July 26, 2016, 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m. ADDRESSES: New Ellenton Community Center, 212 Pine Hill Avenue, New Ellenton, South Carolina 29809. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: James Giusti, Office of External Affairs, Department of Energy, Savannah River Operations Office, P.O. Box A, Aiken, SC 29802; Phone: (803) 952-7684. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of the Board is to make recommendations to DOE-EM and site management in the areas of environmental restoration, waste management, and related activities.

July 7, 2016 – 81 FR 44300-44301 – DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY – Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Northern New Mexico – This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Northern New Mexico. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register. DATES: Wednesday, July 27, 2016, 1:00 p.m.-5:15 p.m. ADDRESSES: Santa Fe Community College, Jemez Complex, 6401 Richards Avenue, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87508. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Menice Santistevan, Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board (NNMCAB), 94 Cities of Gold Road, Santa Fe, NM 87506. Phone (505) 995-0393; Fax (505) 989-1752 or Email: Menice.Santistevan@em.doe.gov. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of the Board is to make recommendations to DOE-EM and site management in the areas of environmental restoration, waste management, and related activities.

July 7, 2016 – PhysOrg – Quantum processor for single photons – “Nothing is impossible!” In line with this motto, physicists from the Quantum Dynamics Division of Professor Gerhard Rempe (director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics) managed to realise a quantum logic gate in which two light quanta are the main actors. The difficulty of such an endeavour is that photons usually do not interact at all but pass each other undisturbed. This makes them ideal for the transmission of quantum information, but less suited for its processing. The scientists overcame this steep hurdle by bringing an ancillary third particle into play: a single atom trapped inside an optical resonator that takes on the role of a mediator. “The distinct feature of our gate implementation is that the interaction between the photons is deterministic”, explains Dr. Stephan Ritter. “This is essential for future, more complex applications like scalable quantum computers or global quantum networks.”

July 7, 2016 – MacIver Institute – Renewable Energy Mandates Come Up Short On Economic Promises – Do renewable energy mandates foster new industry and create waves of high-tech jobs, as many advocates claim? New research debunks this claim, indicating that the mandate’s costs far outweigh its benefits. The new research, “Evaluating the Costs and Benefits of Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards,” was conducted by University of Wyoming professor Dr. Timothy Considine, who evaluated 12 separate states with a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), including Wisconsin. The research describes the direct cost of the RPS to the Wisconsin electricity industry and therefore to electricity consumers. Wisconsin’s RPS forces consumers to pay higher electricity costs – $474 million in 2016 alone. By 2025, the increased cost paid by Wisconsinites attributable to the RPS is projected to increase to almost $500 million. Increased electricity rates caused by renewable energy mandates also result in approximately $1 billion in lost economic activity in Wisconsin each year. Job losses attributable to the RPS are 7,000 to 10,000 jobs below employment levels without RPS mandates, even after factoring in the meager number of new “green” jobs.

July 7, 2016 – Reuters – U3O8 Corp- MOU signed for Argentina nuclear power plant construction – Says minister of energy and mines has committed to fund upgrades to eleven nuclear medicine facilities in Argentina. Says committed to providing uranium required to fuel nuclear component of argentine government’s clean energy initiative. U3O8 Corp says memorandum of understanding has been signed regarding financing and construction of Argentina’s 4th and 5th nuclear power plants.

July 7, 2016 – Las Vegas Review-Journal – Sandoval letter underscores state’s Yucca Mountain opposition to House subcommittee – Gov. Brian Sandoval on Wednesday reiterated Nevada’s steadfast opposition to the construction of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain ahead of a hearing Thursday on the project in Washington, DC. “My position, and that of the state of Nevada, remains unchanged from my previous letters to this committee in May 2015, and January 2016: the state of Nevada opposes the project based on scientific, technical and legal merits,” Sandoval said in his letter to the House Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy. “Furthermore, as set forth in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, only the governor is empowered to consult on matters related to the siting of a nuclear waste repository,” he said.

July 7, 2016 – Associated Press – Michigan nuclear plant closes unit after steam release – A rupture released steam at a nuclear power plant in southwest Michigan, forcing a utility to shut down one of the two units. Indiana Michigan Power says the steam was not radioactive, but it damaged a wall at the Cook Nuclear Plant Unit 2 early Wednesday in Bridgman. There were no injuries. The utility says there were no other complications and “all equipment responded appropriately.” Repair estimates are being made. Cook’s Unit 1 was not affected and is operating at 100%. Inspectors from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission are investigating the incident.

July 7, 2016 – Maine News Online – Lost JAXA X-ray Satellite beams back Data on Perseus Galaxy Cluster – Earlier, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) reported that its X-ray satellite Hitomi is no more in touch with mission controllers. The agency, that time, also revealed that it has succeeded in scraping some data collected by the satellite. It managed to explore the Perseus Cluster, a cluster of galaxies with a supermassive black hole at the center. Findings by Hitomi allowed researchers understand the role of a black hole in the formation of a galaxy. The satellite succeeded in measuring the gas motion in the galaxy’s center with unprecedented precision. It was over 50 times better than devices in the past, as per astronomy professor Andrew Fabian from University of Cambridge in England. Data from the satellite hints that the galaxy at the center of the cluster must be much brighter and with much higher stellar mass, added Fabian, a researcher in an international team led by JAXA.

July 7, 2016 – Yahoo News – Iran’s Parchin Particles: Why Should Two Mites of Uranium Matter? – Two specks of uranium might determine whether or not the Iran nuclear deal succeeds or fails. “The Obama administration has concluded that uranium particles discovered last year at a secretive Iranian military base likely were tied to the country’s past, covert nuclear weapons program,” the Wall Street Journal reported last month. The International Atomic Energy Agency first disclosed the discovery in a footnote to a key report last December. The IAEA dismissed the matter, saying that the number of particles was too small to prove a connection to illicit activities. The U.S. government, however, has capabilities that may exceed those of the IAEA.

July 7, 2016 – PTI – France submits fresh plan for six nuclear plants in Jaitapur – France has given a fresh techno- commercial proposal for building six atomic reactors in Jaitapur even as it again raised concerns over India’s civil liability law and sought “same level of protection” which are available for companies at the international level. An Electricite de France (EDF) team, comprising senior officials, is currently holding talks with the Ministry of External Affairs and Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIl) on setting up of these plants. “We have raised our concerns over the liability issue. France is a party to Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage. We want similar binding conditions in the Jaitapur contract.

July 7, 2016 – Public News Service – Troubling Questions Arise About Radioactive Frack Waste Company – The paper trail of a company that dumped West Virginia radioactive frack waste into Kentucky landfills is raising serious questions. This spring, regulators cited Advanced TENORM Services for dumping the low-level radioactive waste in two municipal landfills. Not long after, the company disabled its website and moved its formal physical address to the West Liberty Public Library. But Tom FitzGerald, director with the Kentucky Resources Council, said state records show Cory Hoskins, who runs the company, is also connected to at least one other firm involved in a similar situation at a separate state landfill. “Cory Hoskins is also working in Ohio and has a couple of different company names,” he said. “How much other stuff, these elevated levels of radionuclides, ended up in our landfills?”

July 7, 2016 – Climate Home – Can nuclear really deliver 25% of global electricity by 2050? – The nuclear industry is celebrating breaking records that have stood for a quarter of a century − but a new update on its successes still fails to disperse the clouds over its future. Ten new nuclear reactors came on line last year worldwide, and more new reactors are being built than at any time since 1990. According to the report by the World Nuclear Association (WNA), there were 66 power reactors under construction across the world last year, and another 158 planned. Of those being built, 24 were in mainland China. In what it promises will be an annual update of the industry’s “progress”, the WNA presents a rosy picture of the future of the industry, which it hopes will produce ever-increasing amounts of the world’s power.

July 7, 2016 – The Korea Bizwire – Nuclear Protest Gone Wrong? – Victims lie on the ground at a busy public square in front of Busan Station. Among them are radioactive waste barrels and men in hazmat suits removing bodies. Fortunately, their were no real casualties, as the scene was the result of an unconventional flash mob. Members of Greenpeace and Korea’s leading opposition party, the Minjoo Party of Korea, arranged a flash mob Thursday afternoon, protesting the latest government approval of two additional nuclear reactors – Shin Kori No. 5 and No. 6 – at a current nuclear power plant in the southeastern coastal town of Gijang, Busan. At the moment, 23 nuclear reactors are in operation in Korea, providing the country with about 30 percent of its electricity supply. The new reactors will bring the total in South Korea to 30, including those currently under construction.

July 7, 2016 – World Nuclear News – REMIX fuel pilot testing starts at Balakovo reactor – Russia has started pilot testing of its new type of nuclear fuel, REMIX, at unit 3 of the Balakovo nuclear power plant. Rosenergoatom said on 1 July the unit is being loaded with a number of fuel elements containing the fuel, and that the use of REMIX “will increase the efficiency of uranium use in the nuclear industry”. Development of REMIX (from Regenerated Mixture) fuel is part of state nuclear corporation Rosatom’s strategy to enable better use of recycled uranium and plutonium on an industrial scale in pressurized water reactors. All four units at Balakovo are of the Russian V-320 PWR design. Rosatom has said the ultimate aim of REMIX is closure of the nuclear fuel cycle by minimising Russia’s accumulation of used nuclear fuel.

July 7, 2016 – EurActiv.com – Easy target for terrorists: Armenia’s Metsamor nuclear plant – The recent ISIS attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport hints at an alarming trend in which highly strategic areas are increasingly being targeted by international terrorist groups. A similar attack had taken place at Belgium’s Zaventem Airport a few months before, which revealed that ISIS may have been planning an operation at Belgian atomic plant. While nuclear terrorism was a remote threat during the 9/11 attacks, with al-Qaeda originally wanting to target nuclear power facilities, it is becoming a dangerously feasible possibility that ISIS followers could lunch a successful strike. One such potential target finds itself at the very borders of the EU: the Metsamor nuclear power plant, in Armenia. The dangers it incurs are multiple: The lack of a cooling mechanism makes the outdated nuclear centre an easy target; the continuous smuggling of radioactive material by jihadists increases the risk of producing a dirty bomb; the uncontrolled zone of the Armenian-occupied territories of Nagorno-Karabakh are used to dump radioactive waste, which could leak or be dispersed as a result of terrorist action.

July 7, 2016 – Japan Times – Japan Atomic Power to join Hitachi’s nuclear plant business in Britain – Japan Atomic Power Co. will join Hitachi Ltd.’s nuclear power plant business in Britain, informed sources said Thursday. The two companies will soon sign a cooperation agreement to make Japan Atomic Power the first Japanese power supplier to take part in an overseas nuclear power plant business in full scale. Japan Atomic Power will become part of a project to build nuclear reactors in Britain, which is undertaken by Horizon Nuclear Power Ltd., a Hitachi unit in Britain, possibly engaging in licensing procedures for reactor construction.

July 7, 2016 – Harvard Press – BOH requires radioactivity testing of new wells – The Board of Health has expanded the regulation for water quality testing on all new and altered wells to include a “gross alpha screen,” which detects the presence of radioactive particles and determines whether further testing is needed for uranium or radium. The new requirement comes in the wake of a recent U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study that identified areas in Harvard that are at increased risk for low-level radioactivity in water from bedrock wells. The USGS uranium risk map identifies a zone on the western side of a line that runs northeast to southwest, passing almost directly through the center of Harvard. The probability that uranium levels will be higher than the standard for public drinking water in that zone is between 4.8 and 13 percent.

July 7, 2016 – Rockland County Times – Indian Point Unit 2 Automatically Shut Down Again – Indian Point Unit 2 automatically and safely shut down Wednesday around 9:30 a.m. The automatic shutdown occurred at the same time technicians were testing electrical systems that are designed to automatically shut down the reactor if needed, Entergy said. The exact cause is under investigation. There was no release of radioactivity and no effect on public or worker health or safety, the energy company said in a press release. Equipment operated as designed and control room operators responded as expected during the shutdown.

July 7, 2016 – The Atlantic CityLab – The Uncertain Future of Nuclear Power in the U.S. – Nuclear plants still generate nearly 20 percent of electricity in the U.S., but that looks likely to change over the next few years. Thanks to plummeting oil and gas prices and rising safety concerns since the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster, more and more nuclear power reactors in the West are on their way to being decommissioned. Season 2 of Van Alen Sessions, presented by Van Alen Institute with The Atlantic and CityLab, wraps up with a trip inside the Pilgrim Nuclear Reactor in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The plant is now officially scheduled for shutdown in 2019, which has locals struggling with a range of issues: impending economic turmoil, toxic waste storage, and the dilemma of meeting lower emissions standards while letting go of the zero-carbon footprint of nuclear energy.

July 7, 2016 – The Atlantic – The End of a Nuclear Power Plant – Pilgrim Nuclear Reactor in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is scheduled to close down in 2019. It won’t be alone—because of increased concerns over the safety of these plants and decreased gas prices, many will struggle to stay open in the United States. In this short film, locals who work in the plant reflect on the effects of the impending closure.

July 7, 2016 – Reuters – BWX Technologies says a court ruled in favor of BWXT parties in a case alleging that they owed royalties on commercial nuclear contracts – On June 30, Virginia Supreme Court ruled in favor of BWXT parties in case alleging owed royalties on commercial nuclear contracts Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Bengaluru Newsroom: +1-646-223-8780).

July 7, 2016 – Michigan Live – Bridgman’s D.C. Cook nuclear plant steam line ruptures – A steam line rupture in the turbine building at D.C. Cook Nuclear Plant Wednesday morning damaged a wall in the plant’s Unit 2 turbine building, but has had no effect on the nuclear reactor or public safety, authorities said. Viktoria Mitlyng, senior public affairs officer for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Chicago area office, said the steam pipe rupture happened on the secondary, non-nuclear side of the plant, where the the turbine is located. “As far as we know no one was hurt” in the pipe rupture, Mitlyng said. The incident happened at 12:38 a.m. Wednesday, July 6. The steam line that ruptured was fairly large, she said. She was not immediately sure the extent of damage to the turbine room wall.

July 7, 2016 – Los Alamos Daily Post – Nuclear Testing, War Crimes And Native Sovereignty Topics At Summer School For Advanced Research – Summer is a season full of diverse colloquia and seminars at the School for Advanced Research. Through July, the public is invited to attend colloquia presented by the 2016 class of Summer Scholars, and a lecture by and reception for Indigenous Writer-in-Residence Kelli Ford in August. The Summer Scholar Colloquia schedule began Wednesday, June 29 with “Guys Like Me: Six Wars, Six Veterans for Peace,” presented by Michael Messner, Professor, Department of Sociology and Gender Studies, University of Southern California. Dr. Messner discussed that, in this time of apparently permanent warfare, U.S. men continue to return home from wars—many with physical and psychological injuries. Yet little scholarly attention is paid to the veteran whose combat experience results in a commitment to peace.

July 7, 2016 – Albuquerque Journal – DOE secretary promotes research collaboration at UNM – U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz kicked off a day-long forum on energy innovation Tuesday at the University of New Mexico attended by scientists, researchers and private investors from across the Southwest. The Southwest Regional Energy Forum is aimed at sharing information about regional advances in materials science that can improve renewable energy technology and accelerate its deployment. In particular, participants hope to build closer collaboration among themselves and between the public and private sectors to bring more innovative technologies to market. It’s part of a national U.S. Department of Energy effort to promote collaboration around the country that draws on the strengths and opportunities unique to different regions.

July 7, 2016 – Deseret News – BLM weighs uranium mine expansion in southeast Utah – A now idled uranium mine could increase its physical footprint by more than tenfold under a proposed expansion under review by the Bureau of Land Management. The Daneros Uranium Mine in southeast Utah, once called the Denison Mine, would supply mined uranium ore to White Mesa, the country’s only operating, conventional uranium processing mill. The mill is about 60 miles north of the mine and a few miles outside of Blanding. On Tuesday, the federal land management agency extended the public comment period on an environmental assessment until Aug. 1, based on requests from multiple groups.

July 7, 2016 – Public News Service – Feds Head to Idaho for Meeting on Nuclear Waste – The U.S. Department of Energy will hold a meeting next week at the Boise Centre downtown to come up with a process for getting consent from local communities before siting new nuclear waste facilities. Idaho’s nuclear-watchdog group is having workshops tonight and Thursday to help the community prepare. Beatrice Brailsford, nuclear program director for the Snake River Alliance, said the Gem State already stores nuclear waste at the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls and repeatedly has rejected new nuclear waste. “For decades, we have been the host state for waste that is supposed to go someplace else at some point,” she said, “but our experience has been that interim storage and permanent storage are, so far, pretty much one and the same.”

July 7, 2016 – Idaho State University – Idaho State University interns design robot for nuclear fuel facility – Cheers erupted from an audience peering over plywood walls into a mock-up work cell. The robot inside had successfully transported a surrogate radioactive sample from an inter-facility transfer box, out of its transfer containers, into an examination instrument, and then back again. It was a satisfying ending to a nine-month-long project for four Idaho State University (ISU) mechanical and nuclear engineering students serving internships at Idaho National Laboratory. One of those students, Larinda Nichols, served a prior INL internship, which included attending design meetings for future post-irradiation examination (PIE) work. From that, Mitchell Meyer, the lab’s director of characterization and advanced PIE, assigned Nichols a senior project to demonstrate the use of robotics in instrument cells.

July 7, 2016 – Tri-City Herald – WSU to start radiochemistry training program with DOE help – Washington State University in Pullman will launch a new training program in radiochemistry with the help of a Department of Energy grant. The nation has a growing demand for scientists trained and educated to understand radiochemistry, the chemical study of radioactive elements, according to DOE. DOE is contributing up to $3 million for a five-year program to train graduate students. Workers are needed both for complex scientific and technical work to advance environmental cleanup work at Hanford and other DOE cleanup sites and also to help the United States maintain global leadership in the next generation of safe nuclear energy, according to DOE.

July 7, 2016 – Tri-City Herald – Feds release plan to clean up highly radioactive building by Richland – The Department of Energy is proposing a seven-year plan to clean up a highly radioactive waste spill under a building at Hanford near Richland. A public comment period on the plan, focused on the removal of the 324 Building, started this week and will continue through Sept. 9. A public meeting is planned at 5:30 p.m. Aug. 24 at the Richland Library. “This is an important project,” said Stephanie Schleif, the transition project manager for the Washington State Department of Ecology. “Ecology is pleased to see DOE moving forward on the 324 Building.” Washington Closure Hanford was working toward a legally binding deadline for DOE to have the building down in the fall of 2013.

July 7, 2016 – Utility Dive – Critics wary as California regulators prepare to reopen San Onofre nuclear settlement case – Initial comments are due tomorrow at the California Public Utilities Commission, as regulators try and determine how best to move forward following revelations of ex parte communications surrounding the settlement to close the San Onofre nuclear plant, KPBS.org reports. Southern California Edison (SCE) closed the plant after radioactive steam leaks were discovered in 2012, and a deal shouldered consumers with $3.3 billion in closing costs. Critics say those costs should have been borne by shareholders, and following discovery of secret meetings between utility officials and regulators, they may get another chance to make their case.

July 7, 2016 – San Diego Union-Tribune – Nuke plan diverts billions from climate change – Last month, California’s largest utility unveiled a deal with environmental groups to scrap Diablo Canyon, the state’s last nuclear power plant, by 2025. Regulators may get details later this month. The idea seems absurd, given the state’s campaign to combat climate change. Replacing the nuke’s output — cheap, zero-carbon power for 1.7 million homes — can only hurt the planet, as well as cost consumers billions of dollars that could otherwise go toward displacing fossil fuels. So the only way to understand the merits of scrapping a working nuke is to appreciate the upside for certain politicians, as well as the potential financial windfall for Diablo’s owner, Pacific Gas & Electric.

July 7, 2016 – Las Vegas Sun – Shame on Nevada leaders who sell out on Yucca Mountain – Some politicians in Congress are grasping at the fantasy of gaining control of Yucca Mountain so their states’ expended-but-still-lethally radioactive nuclear power plant fuel rods can be dumped in Nevada. Their strategy, which will be aired during a congressional hearing Thursday on Capitol Hill, is to persuade Nevada politicians to betray their constituents and allow the use of Yucca Mountain’s frail geology as a tomb for the most deadly material known to man. This, in exchange for a bag of gold coins. More specifically, they are once again floating the notion that if Nevada politicians green-light the use of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository — something we have fought for 30 years — they’ll give us something in return: a north-south interstate highway, perhaps, or research money for UNLV.

July 6, 2016 – 81 FR 43959-43961 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Consideration of Rulemaking To Address Prompt Remediation of Residual Radioactivity During Operation – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is seeking additional input from the public, licensees, Agreement States, non-Agreement States, and other stakeholders on the need for potential rulemaking to address prompt remediation of residual radioactivity during the operational phase at licensed material sites and nuclear reactors. The NRC has not initiated a rulemaking, but is gathering information and seeking stakeholder input on this subject for developing a recommendation to the Commission regarding the need for further rulemaking. To aid in this process, the NRC is requesting comments on the issues discussed in Section II, “Specific Questions,” in the Supplementary Information section of this document. Additionally, the NRC will hold a public Webinar and host a public meeting to facilitate the public’s and other stakeholders’ understanding of these issues and the submission of comments.

July 6, 2016 – 81 FR 44054-44055 – NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION – Standard Review Plan for Renewal of Specific Licenses and Certificates of Compliance for Dry Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is issuing NUREG-1927, Revision 1, “Standard Review Plan for Renewal of Specific Licenses and Certificates of Compliance for Dry Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel.” The NUREG provides guidance to the NRC staff for the safety review of renewal applications for specific licenses of independent spent fuel storage installations (ISFSIs) and certificates of compliance of spent fuel dry storage systems.