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Press
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The following are a few recent news items that involve radiation or radioactivity in some form or another. They are unedited articles or excerpts. Because very few (if any) have been through any form of scientific review, their technical validity and accuracy should not be taken for granted. Please give Integrated Environmental Management, Inc. (IEM) a call if you would like some additional insights. (You may wish to press your "reload" button to be sure you are seeing the most current collection.)
July 2, 2009 - Northumberland Today - Nuke workers face higher cancer rates, study says - A study which looked at cancer rates among Canadian workers concluded nuclear-power workers are 3.8 times more likely to die from radiation-related cancer than nonworkers, but Mayor Linda Thompson says the report does not apply to Port Hope workers. A 30-page report, Exposure to Radiation and Health Outcomes, commissioned by the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, found that chronic exposure to low doses of radiation causes the higher risk. The study of 407,391 nuclear power workers from 15 countries over a 12-year period claims to have found the employees are twice as likely to die from all causes of cancer than the general public because of the extra radiation exposure, the report written by Saskatchewan-based health researcher Mark Lemstra states. In Canada, one of the 15 countries studied, reactor workers are 7.65 times more likely to die from all causes of cancer compared to non-employees, the report stated. The results confirm chronic exposure to low doses of radiation are associated with an excess relative risk of cancer mortality, the study states. The report was presented to the Future of Uranium in Saskatchewan stakeholder conference in Regina last week. According to Lemstra, the report was a compilation of more than 1,700 articles he found in medical databases, reference lists and on the Internet. "Studies reviewed in Port Hope are based over many years which include the actual health of nuclear workers and multiple studies in regards to community members," Thompson said in reaction to the Lemstra report. "Based on the actual health of workers and the community Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and Health Canada conclude the health of Port Hope residents is consistent with the rest of the population of Ontario and Canada. As directed by the Commissioners of the CNSC any new information will be taken into consideration."
July 2, 2009 - ANI - Marie Curie named greatest woman scientist of all time - Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist Marie Curie, who discovered that radiation therapy could treat cancer, has been voted the greatest woman scientist of all time. The Polish-born researcher bagged over a quarter of the votes (25.1 per cent), almost double the votes received by her nearest rival Rosalind Franklin (14.2 per cent), the English biophysicist who helped discover the structure of DNA.Third on the list was Hypatia of Alexandria, played by Rachel Weisz in a recent film about the fourth century Egyptian philosopher. New Scientist magazine conducted the poll of 800 scientists and members of the public, which was commissioned by cosmetics company L’Oreal. At the fourth position was astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell with 4.7 per cent votes. London-born Ada, the Countess of Lovelace, the mathematician who wrote the first computer programmes grabbed the fifth spot in the poll. Austrian physicist Lise Meitner who discovered nuclear fission was sixth in the list, while British chemist Dorothy Hodgkin who pioneered X-ray techniques was at seventh. Then came French-born Sophie Germain, who was one of the world’s greatest mathematicians, followed by American marine biologist Rachel Carson, who pioneered the global environmental movement ninth.
July 2, 2009 - ANI - Chinese nuke power to rise 10-fold by 2020 - China is planning for an installed nuclear power capacity of 86 gigawatts (gW) by 2020, up nearly 10-fold from the 9 gW capacity it had by the end of last year, said two people familiar with the matter. The revised target for nuclear power is part of the government’s efforts to increase the share of alternative energy in the predominantly coal-based energy mix. The goal, which is part of an alternative energy development roadmap covering 2009-20, seeks to have at least 12 gW of installed nuclear power capacity by 2011, the sources said. The plan “will call for the government to accelerate nuclear power development in coastal provinces and autonomous regions, namely Liaoning, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangxi, Jiangsu, Shandong and Hainan,” the sources said.
July 2, 2009 - Canon City Daily Record - EPA commits to review radon emissions; Officials to look at regulations, possible revisions - Environmental Protection Agency officials along with Colorado Citizens Against ToxicWaste hosted a public meeting Tuesday evening to discuss efforts to review regulations surrounding radon emissions. “We are here to help EPA work better through our input,” said CCAT co-chair Jeri Fry. “This is happening here because radon is an issue here.” Reid Rosnick, of the EPA’s Radiation Protection Division in Washington D.C., was in attendance and gave a presentation about the National Emission Standard for Hazardous Air Pollutants Subpart W regulations and the current process for review and possible revision of the regulations. The review process was supposed to take place in 1990; however, Rosnick admitted, the agency let the review fall through the cracks, but the organization has picked it up now. “The state of the science is always changing,” Rosnick said. “We want to make sure that (the regulation) is clear.” Rosnick said the agency has put together a work group with officials from various agency departments and the nation’s regions affected by uranium activity. They have set up a preliminary analytical blueprint that will guide the group through the process. The analysis and revision process is expected to take up to two years and will include review of the original regulation process from 1989, additional analysis and public comment.
July 2, 2009 - JCN Newswire - Panasonic Develops High Efficiency CRT Recycling Technology Using Laser; Responding to Rapid Increase in Recycling CRT TVs in Transition to Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting - Panasonic Corporation and Panasonic Eco Technology Center Co., Ltd. (PETEC) have developed a recycling technology using laser beams to separate the front panel and back part (funnel) of a cathode ray tube (CRT) used in TV sets. This laser-cut technology, which is implemented at PETEC's plant in Hyogo Prefecture, allows for separating CRTs quicker and cleaner than before. With this highly-efficient technology, Panasonic is poised to respond to the increasing demand for recycling used CRT TVs, tons of which are expected to be thrown away as the shift to digital terrestrial broadcasting is scheduled for completion in 2011 in Japan.As different types of glass are used in the front panel and funnel, it is essential to separate them without mixing for recycling. The conventional method uses an electrically heated wire around the joint area of the front and funnel to separate them. However, this method not only requires time for the heating process but causes thermal stress fractures by the local heating, requiring manual corrections to clean the cut surfaces. Panasonic's CRT recycling technology utilizes laser radiation to drastically reduce the processing time with much less manual work, allowing one tube to be processed in 50 seconds, three times faster than the previous method. The laser head of the innovative system has a "surface profiling" function to maintain a constant distance between the focal point and surface of the glass. Coupled with the "radiation energy" control adjusting laser beam light intensity to the circumferential velocity, the system achieves a high quality cut with no mixing between the front and funnel glass.
July 2, 2009 - Des Moines Register - Reconsider dangers of cell-phone towers - The proposed construction by U.S. Cellular of an 85-foot cell-phone tower in the small town of Fairfield has aroused health-related concerns from many residents in recent weeks. In response, the company delayed construction and met with Mayor Ed Malloy, Maharishi University and a town committee, which proposed alternative locations to the proposed site on Depot Street, which is within 1,500 feet of three elementary schools and within 50 feet of residences and offices. U.S. Cellular rejected these alternatives, stating they were "not environmentally suitable to build a tower," and resumed construction. On June 10, Jack Rooney, president and CEO of U.S. Cellular, sent a letter to the editor of the Fairfield Ledger in which he defended this resumption and stated that the tower's radio-frequency levels were "well within the government's acceptable limits." He also wrote that "there is no credible evidence that cell-phone towers pose a risk to people's health." However, a large and growing number of developed countries and thousands of scientists and doctors have come to a contrary conclusion, the credible evidence for which is mounting. We cannot put our heads in the sand, however inconvenient this truth may be.
July 2, 2009 - The Sault Star - SAH copes with isotope shortage - With no prospects of medical isotope delivery next week, Sault Area Hospital plans to do the most it can with a small supplement this week to complete as many diagnostic procedures as possible. "We're going to maximize utilization of activities. We're pretty confident this will take us to, if not (next) Friday, then Thursday," said Joe D'Angelo, manager of diagnostic imaging. The world has been dealing with a shortage of medical isotopes since May, when the nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Ont., was shut down after a heavy water leak was detected. It's not clear when Chalk River, which supplies a third of the isotopes used in cancer and heart scans, will be back online; meanwhile, a reactor in the Netherlands will be down for maintenance beginning in July. SAH expects a supplemental shipment of about 1.5 Curies (Ci), the unit of measurement of isotope activity, representing about 30 per cent of the facility's weekly supply, in addition to the 80 per cent received earlier this week. Because isotopes lose strength over time, D'Angelo said he plans to book as many procedures as possible, on an ad-hoc basis. Radioactive isotopes are injected into patients so radiologists can pinpoint areas of higher radiation and spot changes in the body so they can make more accurate diagnoses in tests such as to diagnose cancer, heart ailments and neurological conditions. CT scans and magnetic resonance imaging can be used instead, but aren't as effective in detecting cancer and other diseases early on. Isotopes are also used in treatment. D'Angelo did not estimate how many extra tests can be done because procedure times vary wildly. "A heart exam could extend into an hour-and-a-half, while a bone can last 20 minutes."
July 2, 2009 - The Week - France's nuclear solution - America gets one-fifth of its power from nuclear power plants. Nuclear is far and away the cheapest and most reliable alternative to carbon-emitting coal. Yet we all know that nuclear energy carries one great big negative: the problem of nuclear waste, the radioactive residue from enriched uranium. Now, suppose there were a solution to this problem? A solution that reduced the amount and the toxicity of nuclear waste by 80 percent or more? That would be useful, right? Well guess what -- it’s doable. Better yet -- it’s done. This week, I visited a facility in Normandy where France reprocesses the water from France’s 58 (soon to be 59) nuclear reactors, as well as waste from reactors in other European Union countries and Japan. Used uranium is removed from reactor cores and chemically manipulated to restore its radioactivity. This process creates new fuels -- and only small amounts of waste byproducts. The process can be repeated a third time and perhaps a fourth. Yet in the United States, where reprocessing was invented, used uranium is simply discarded. The result is highly wasteful: The once-used uranium still retains 96 percent of its energy potential. The result is likewise highly dangerous: That 96 percent potent uranium also retains a corresponding proportion of its toxicity to human life. So why do we not reprocess? The decision was not made by accident. Back in the 1970s, the U.S. made a conscious policy decision to shut down its reprocessing facilities. The decision had nothing to do with energy policy, everything to do with that era’s arms control illusions.
July 2, 2009 - Asbury Park Press - Report on tritium leak at Oyster Creek should be made public - A report on what caused the radioactive tritium contamination at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant should be made public immediately, Ocean County Freeholder John "Jack" P. Kelly said Wednesday. At Kelly's request, Freeholder Director John C. Bartlett Jr. authorized that a letter be sent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on behalf of the entire board calling on the federal agency to release the report at once. Recently, Kelly asked county Planning Director David J. McKeon to contact plant communications manager David Benson to qualify the plant operator's decision to keep the report confidential. "The plant, according to Mr. Benson, believes that the premature disclosure of such information jeopardizes the accuracy and thoroughness of the information provided by plant personnel and regulatory authorities," Kelly said. "And I couldn't disagree more with that evaluation." Kelly said as far as he is concerned the Lacey plant is a quasi-public institution and therefore must be accountable to the public. "This facility has just been relicensed for the next 20 years," he said. "There is concern among some about the safety of the plant in the first place. And what happened, why it happened, how it happened, where the leak was and what the response has been, that is the right of the public to know that. . . . There is no excuse — none that is acceptable — for the plant not to release this." Garry D. Black, 48, of Jackson, rose during the public comment portion of the freeholder meeting to express support for Kelly's statements.
July 2, 2009 - PRInside - Global Nuclear Spent Fuel Storage Market Analysis and Forecasts to 2015 - While the demand for nuclear power generation has been growing worldwide, concerns about spent nuclear fuel management is one of the key sectors that invite the attention of policy makers and industry experts alike. In many countries spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants has been stored in temporary storage facilities such as pool storage. Though the dry storage method has been widely accepted as an efficient mechanism to store spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants, lack of adequate policy planning at a country level regarding long terms storage or reprocessing, continue to be major challenges to the storage cask industry. ‘Global Nuclear Spent Fuel Storage Market Analysis and Forecasts to 2015’ provides an in-depth analysis and forecast of spent fuel storage casks and canisters demand growth trajectory. As the reemergence of the nuclear industry in the global energy arena indicates a significant growth of nuclear power facilities, spent fuel output is expected to increase significantly. The nuclear power industry will witness increasing demand for spent fuel storage equipment as the environmental norms in major nuclear power producing countries demand greater responsibility from the owners and operators in terms of minimizing radioactive pollution.
July 2, 2009 - Daily Sunbeam - Hearing covers plan for incident - State representatives met with the public here Wednesday night for an annual review of the emergency plan which would be put into effect if there were a threatening release of radiation from any of the three nuclear reactors here in the county. Required by state law, the public hearing on the New Jersey Radiological Response Plan gives residents a chance to question or give their comments to the agency representatives responsible carrying out the plan. With the command structure set out in the plan, "the plan essentially does not change" from year to year, according to Patrick Mulligan, manager of the DEP's Bureau of Nuclear Engineering.
July 2, 2009 - Environmental Expert - New independent nuclear regulator proposed - “A new era of world class nuclear power demands that we continue to set world class safety standards.” – Lord Hunt. A single, easily identifiable, body for regulating the civil nuclear energy sector was proposed by the Government today. The new body would combine responsibility for overseeing safety, security and transport of civil nuclear sites and material. Speaking at a nuclear supply chain conference, Energy and Climate Change Minister Lord Hunt said: “The UK’s nuclear regulators are renowned for their technical excellence and effectiveness. This is intended to build on that strength with a modern organisation that is empowered to meet the challenges of changing requirements due to the UK’s new nuclear programme, ageing nuclear power reactors, and the decommissioning of legacy nuclear plants.” The Consultation on the ‘Restructuring of the Health and Safety Executive’s Nuclear Directorate’ was published jointly by DECC and DWP Ministers. Lord McKenzie, DWP Minister with responsibility for health and safety, said: “The restructuring is designed to help deal with a wide range of complex challenges arising from the rapidly changing requirements of the nuclear industry. We are seeking to create a new sector-specific regulator that will meet these challenges and will now be conducting a full consultation with the nuclear industry, the public and other stakeholders to gather their views and take these proposals forward.”
July 2, 2009 - Denver Post - Colorado drilling rigs closing in on '60s nuke site - After decades of controversy, natural-gas drilling rigs are popping up around the 1969 Rulison atomic blast site south of Rifle — a failed experiment in using a nuclear bomb to boost natural-gas production. Under a proposal released last week by the U.S. Department of Energy, drilling with radiation monitoring would be permitted to push closer to the town about 180 miles west of Denver. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has already issued 84 drilling permits within 3 miles of the site, including 11 within a mile. In 2008, Noble Energy Production Inc. drilled 21 wells in the area and is considering drilling within half a mile of the blast zone, the company said. "There may be enough of a buffer," said Judy Jordan, oil and gas liaison for Garfield County, "but without a real assessment of where the contamination is, we are all operating in the dark." State and federal officials say that continuing monitoring has turned up no traces of radioactivity. "We are requiring stringent monitoring on these permits," said David Neslin, the director of the state oil and gas commission. In 1969, as part of the Plowshares Program, which sought peaceful uses for nuclear power, an atomic device was detonated 8,426 feet below Rulison to fracture the rock and boost recovery of natural gas.
July 2, 2009 - The Hindu - Radioactivity of phosphogypsum to be studied - Phosphogypsum may contain radioactive materials such as uranium-238 and radium-226. The AERB has recently issued a safety directive on the use of phosphogypsum. If you visit any fertilizer factory, you may see large quantities of phosphogypsum (PG) in its premises. It is produced when rock phosphate is treated with sulphuric acid. Each ton of phosphoric acid leaves behind nearly five tons of PG. In many countries, the building industry extensively uses PG in producing cement, wallboard, and other building materials. Phosphogypsum is not an innocuous material. Besides many heavy elements, it may contain significant quantities of radioactive materials such as uranium-238 and radium-226. Phosphogypsum produced from imported rock phosphates contains typically activity concentrations of U-238 in the range 0.1-0.2 Bq/g and Ra-226 in the range 0.5-1.3 Bq/g. (Bq is a unit of radioactivity. In a radioactive material having a radioactivity of one Bq, one atom disintegrates every sec). The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has been examining the radiological safety implications of adding phosphogypsum in building and construction materials and in using it in agriculture. Based on the principles followed internationally, the Board has recently issued a safety directive on the use of phosphogypsum.
July 2, 2009 - Reuters - New York police expand dirty bomb security - Thousands of additional law enforcement officers within 50 miles of New York City will have access to radiation detectors for dirty bombs and nuclear devices, New York police said on Wednesday. The detectors, including cell phone-sized devices that officers wear on their belts, could help uncover a dirty bomb that might be assembled outside New York and smuggled in, police said at a security conference. New York Police Department officers have used such devices for several years. Police spokesman Paul Browne said thousands of law enforcement officers would be using the devices in areas surrounding New York City, including state police and sheriff's departments in New Jersey and Connecticut. The increase in officers and equipment was being funded by a federal program called "Securing the Cities" that had been allocated $54 million in the past three years, Browne said. Nearly eight years after the September 11 attacks in 2001, New York remains the top target for groups like al Qaeda planning attacks on the United States, police and lawmakers said, and the possibility of a radiological attack on a public transport system remained high. "We know that terrorists come here and we know that they are surveying here," said Captain Michael Riggio of the NYPD counterterrorism division.
July 2, 2009 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - Erwin newspaper applauds NFS contract with NNSA - Here's an editorial from the Erwin Record in Erwin, Tenn., home of Nuclear Fuel Services. The $209 million contract to down-blend 12.1 metric tons of highly enriched uranium was announced in June by the National Nuclear Security Administration. NNSA confirmed that most of the surplus material currently is housed at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge.
July 2, 2009 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - Work shift to be added Sept. 1 at Oak Ridge waste center - An 87-member class of nuclear-waste workers hired with Recovery Act money is undergoing training in Oak Ridge, and Dept. of Energy contractor EnergX said it plans to add a new workshift Sept. 1 to expand operations at the Transuranic Waste Processing Center. DOE's Oak Ridge Manager Gerald Boyd and DOE's environmental management chief Steve McCracken visited with the training class earlier this week and reportedly had one overriding message: safety first, second and third. Tony Buhl, the CEO of EnergX and general manager at the TRU waste processing facility, said many of the new workers do not have previous experience in the nuclear business, and so it's important to establish the safety culture that's expected at a facility where highly radioactive materials are being handled. After they finish their on-the-job training, the new employees will be mixed with veterans on different work shifts at the waste-processing plant off Highway 95 on DOE's Oak Ridge reservation.
July 2, 2009 - Seattle Times - Nuclear power should not be blindly dismissed as part of total energy solution - Passion for an ideal, like totally clean energy, can be powerful and contagious, blindingly so. Such passion has convinced some people we can meet all our future electric-energy needs in the Northwest with nothing more than conservation and renewable energy sources. That utopian dream ignores the necessity for baseload or full-time power sources, including carbon-free nuclear power, to back up intermittent power sources like wind and solar power. Conservation and renewable-energy sources are an essential and responsible part of the answer to our future energy needs; they just aren't the whole solution. While conservation is undeniably the cleanest, fastest, cheapest and best way to offset new power demand, the law of diminishing returns clearly applies. We simply can't conserve our way out of the need for more power to meet future needs. In the Northwest, renewable energy really means wind power, and to a lesser degree solar and biomass — at least until major improvements in wave, tidal, geothermal and other technologies are achieved. The intermittent nature of wind and solar power is a real problem. On-again/off-again power destabilizes the regional transmission grid through dramatic power swings created by changing weather conditions. The challenge of meeting all our power needs with conservation and renewables becomes greater if we commit to electrifying any meaningful portion of our transportation system — an initiative we may have to pursue to meet our state's carbon-emissions targets. Fortunately, organizations like Energy Northwest, successfully operating the state's one nuclear reactor, are working diligently to provide a mix of carbon-free electric-power options to avoid needlessly limiting our options and gambling our economic future in the process.
July 1, 2009 - HealthDay News - Obese Get Higher Doses of Radiation for X-Rays - People who are overweight and obese are usually given higher-than-normal doses of radiation in order to obtain usable X-ray images, even though the long-term effects are unknown, new research contends. "You need to get a certain amount of X-rays to go through the body in order to get an informative image, and excess weight impedes that," explained the study's lead author, Jacquelyn C. Yanch, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. "And there are very few ways around that problem, other than increasing an overweight patient's exposure to radiation to improve the image quality." "Americans have gotten larger on average over the last half-century, and so as a result, our radiation dosages have gone up," she added. "Exposure can be sometimes 20, 30, even 40 times as much for an overweight patient as for a lean person. And in general, we're also getting more exams and more intensive exams."
July 1, 2009 - Reuters - IAEA leadership race narrows to 3 as Belgian quits - The leadership race to succeed U.N. atomic agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei narrowed on Wednesday after Belgium's Jean-Pol Poncelet withdrew his candidacy from a vote diplomats fear could result in deadlock. The governing body of the International Atomic Energy Agency has been struggling for months to agree on a new chief to tackle the spread of nuclear arms capability, with North Korea and Iran top of its list of concerns. Past votes have split down rich-poor lines on the IAEA's 35-nation governing board. Poncelet, 59, a former Belgian deputy premier and now executive at French nuclear group Areva, finished last -- along with Slovenia's Ernest Petric -- among five contenders in a June 9 straw poll. Petric quit the race on Tuesday, Both men cited their withdrawals were aimed at achieving a consensus candidate who could win the vote. However, Petric and many diplomats believe no one in the remaining field looks capable of winning a 2/3 majority in the IAEA's governing board and bridging a schism between developing and industrialized nations over the agency's coming priorities. Thursday's election will be the second since March, when Japanese IAEA Ambassador Yukiya Amano fell one vote short of the 24 needed for victory. Amano remains the favourite but his backing slid to 20 in the test poll.
July 1, 2009 - Green Bay Press Gazette - Wisconsin should lift ban on building nuclear plants - The opponents of nuclear energy in the United States were almost giddy earlier this year when President Barack Obama slashed the budget for a proposed waste storage site in Nevada. Surely, they thought, the inevitable demise of the Yucca Mountain project would end silly talk of splitting more atoms to produce power. They were wrong. While Obama is no fan of the Nevada waste site, and he's certainly not foolish enough to battle Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his home state, he understands the need to maintain — and even expand — America's fleet of commercial nuclear reactors. "Nuclear power represents more than 70 percent of our noncarbon-generated electricity," Obama said during his 2008 campaign. "It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power as an option …" Some of the money shifted from Yucca Mountain has gone toward "next generation" nuclear energy research through the U.S. Department of Energy, which last month awarded 71 grants to U.S. universities — including 10 to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The goal is to design a better nuclear plant, solve waste storage problems (perhaps through reactors that burn their own waste) and to keep dangerous materials out of the hands of terrorists and rogue nations.
July 1, 2009 - Nuclear Engineering International - GLE submits licence application for laser enrichment plant - Plans for the world’s first commercial laser enrichment facility have taken a step forward. Global Laser Enrichment, a business venture of GE, Hitachi Ltd. and Cameco announced on 30 June that it has submitted a licence application for the facility to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). GLE is planning to build an enrichment plant with capacity of three-to-six million separative work units (SWUs) in Wilmington, North Carolina. If approved, the facility could create 300 jobs and more than 500 construction jobs. The NRC needs to docket, or accept the GLE application before it can start the estimated 30-month application review. In January GLE submitted its environmental report for the proposed facility, representing a significant portion of the overall licence application, in an effort to make the process more efficient.
July 1, 2009 - Gizmodo - The Hitler's Stealth Planes That Could Have Dropped a Nuclear Bomb in NYC - Nazis or aliens or Nazi aliens are back and they have invaded Northrop Grumman's top secret grounds in California, where engineers have been testing the surprising anti-radar capabilities of the Horten 2-29 fighter. The results: It could have changed everything. Germany lost the Battle of Britain partly thanks to the British radar. The fat baton-bearing lunatic and chief of the Luftwaffe Hermann Göring turned to the Horten brothers to develop something that would give the German air force superiority. They came up with the most advanced plane of the war, one that surpassed everything else out there by three decades but fortunately never had the time to be produced in any kind of significant numbers: The Horten 2-29, an airplane unlike anything else out there, which—as this reconstruction shows—looks alien in its design. Northrop Grumman's black-op engineers—who usually work in top secret USAF projects like the B-2 Stealth Bomber, Ho 2-29's design heir—analyzed (again?) the remains of the only surviving plane, reconstructed it, and tested its stealth capabilities. It's probably not the first time they have done that, but this time they did it for a National Geographic TV documentary. As it turns out, Hitler had an stealth fighter in the Ho 2-29. Thanks to the use of wood and carbon—which increased its radar absortion—jet engines integrated into the fuselage, and its blended surfaces, the plane could have been in London eight minutes after the British radar system detected it. In comparison, other planes took 19 minutes since detection to target, which gave the RAF fighter enough time to scramble and hunt down the bastards. The Ho 2-29 would have made the interception almost impossible, if at all.
July 1, 2009 - Augusta Chronicle - Contractor takes over cleanup of SRS waste - Its consistency ranges from syrup to salt to peanut butter -- yet its radiation is many times the amount needed to be deadly. Starting today, Jim French is responsible for cleaning it up. "It's a very difficult job, very select in technology and very unique in the experience we need," said Mr. French, the president of Savannah River Remediation, which takes over today as Savannah River Site's high-level liquid waste contractor. The company's 1,765 employees will be working to empty a series of underground tanks at the site's H and F areas that contain 36 million gallons of decaying waste left behind by decades of Cold War nuclear weapons production. "There were originally 51 tanks out there, and in 1995-96 when I was here before, I was involved in closing two," Mr. French said. "That leaves 49." Of those remaining tanks, 22 were made with a single-wall construction technique that has left them vulnerable to leaks. "Because those are the oldest ones and the greatest risk for leaks, we're committed to closing 22 of those tanks in eight years," he said. "That is a huge challenge, and it's much more than what's been done anywhere in the (nuclear weapons) complex."
July 1, 2009 - Cincinnati Enquirer - Nuclear power problems remain - With sadness I read your recent story about Duke Energy's plan for a nuclear plant in Piketon, Ohio, with support from our governor and others. My perception has been that in this time of increasing awareness of the climate crisis, as well as particulate pollution, acid-rain and other problems of coal-generated electricity, many decision-makers appear motivated by fear of shortages (and for the nuclear industry, hunger for big profits) to return to this sleeping dog of nuclear electricity. Despite some improvements in the technology, the following decades-old problems remain: air, water and human contamination from uranium mining, huge up-front construction (and later, decommissioning) costs, lengthy construction times, higher cancer rates and morbidity from other disorders in nearby residents due to routine radioactive releases, the continuing danger of meltdowns as occurred at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and almost at Davis-Besse in Toledo (2002), high vulnerability to terrorist attacks and the still unsolved problem of radioactive waste passed to our descendants for thousands of years. I challenge the assumption that, in a world stressed by many transgressed ecological limits besides CO2 emissions, we must resign ourselves to continually increasing population, consumption and energy demands. I agree with the Sierra Club that conservation and improved efficiency, combined with solar, wind, and other renewable energy technologies is the only sane path for ourselves, our children and the community of life. I for one plan to strive even harder now to unplug from Duke and turn to solar cells and conservation, hopefully accompanied by many of my neighbors.
July 1, 2009 - Northwest Herald - Opt for renewable - A technological revolution in renewable energy, like wind, solar, etc., could eliminate both nuclear power and carbon dioxide gas emissions, affordably and quickly, per physics, Dr. Makijani wrote in “Carbon Free and Nuclear Free, a U.S. energy Roadmap.” “Combining renewable technologies creates reliable electricity and energy entirely from renewable energy,” said Dr. Zerrifi, electricity grid expert, British Columbia University. Six states each have wind energy potential greater than the electricity produced by all 103 U.S. nuclear power reactors. Even if today’s currently installed capacity were doubled, global greenhouse gas emissions would decline only 5 percent, and require one, new large reactor to come online every two weeks until 2030. Impossible. It takes 10 years to build reactors. But proven renewable energy techniques are available now, and can be built, replacing and expanding the energy supply safely and economically. “Dirty, Dangerous and Expensive, The Truth About Nuclear Power,” per Physicians for Social Responsibility, states that nuclear energy production emits radioactivity and risks disasters such as Chernobyl. And nuclear reactors cost $6 billion each and have about a 20-year life span. Choose safe, timely, renewable energy – wind solar, etc. It outperforms nuclear.
July 1, 2009 - Ottawa Citizen - Ottawa names expert panel to find long-term isotope supply - Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt named four members of an expert panel Friday, whom the federal government has asked to find a way for Canada to secure a stable, long-term supply of medical isotopes, used to help diagnose and treat more than two million patients a year. The government also invited formal ``expressions of interest'' from potential isotope suppliers. The operators of research reactors and particle accelerator facilities at McMaster University in Hamilton and at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver are among a handful of Canadian organizations expected to signal their interest. ``While there are no quick or easy solutions to the isotopes shortage, this process will help us identify the very best prospects for future sources of supply,'' Raitt said in a statement. She has asked the panel to complete its final report by Nov. 30. ``I'm not sure how this is helping Canadians in need this summer and in the fall,'' said NDP MP Nathan Cullen. ``Striking a committee and producing a report is what Ottawa does when it doesn't want to act.''
July 1, 2009 - Philadelphia Inquirer - A new charge of malpractice against VA hospital - Barry Lackro was exposed to the notoriously toxic defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam in the early 1970s. He wasn't surprised when he developed prostate cancer in 2004 at age 54, but he took heart that the malignancy was caught early and was highly curable with either surgery or radiation. Today, almost five years later, he not only has terrible complications from his treatment, but also expects the cancer to kill him. Lackro's complex case raises new questions about the quality of prostate-cancer care provided by the Philadelphia VA Medical Center and its contractor, the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Lackro is one of the 92 veterans that the Philadelphia VA admits received too little radiation - or too much - from radioactive brachytherapy seed implants done between 2002 and 2008. What makes Lackro's case unusual, if not unique, is that he opted for brachytherapy after Penn physicians tried and failed to remove his prostate. They aborted the operation because of a complication Lackro says he warned them about. Now, the former Special Forces officer faces bleak treatment choices. His lawyer, Mitchell Paul, has filed a claim against the VA. "I'm angry about what was done to me - and to all of us," Lackro, 59, of Philadelphia, said last week in Paul's Center City office. "When I was an officer, I was concerned about my whole group. I feel the same way now."
July 1, 2009 - Patagonia Times - Renewable energy vs. nuclear energy - The lobby in favor of building an electronuclear plant in Chile claims to need a quick decision. After decades of being on the back burner, all of a sudden the nuclear question is urgent. If ever there was a matter that shouldn’t be rushed - atomic energy is one. Whatever the decision on the introduction of nuclear power may be, it transcends the government. Because, ultimately, the decision should rest with Chile’s people. We shouldn’t allow a presidential candidate to run a generalized kind of campaign, glossing over the nuclear energy issue, and to then – once elected – give a green light to a nuclear energy program. Chile needs to discuss its energy future. There is a great level of consensus that the country must find a new energy sources, competitively priced and that give us long term supply assurances. But opinions differ when it comes to defining where the energy supply should come from. It is only common sense to believe that - first and foremost – only the most abundant, clean and secure resources should be explored. In Chile’s case, the type of energy that best fulfills these criteria is wind power. The Danes have put together an atlas of all the wind currents around the world that they recently unveiled in Copenhagen - and Chile is one of the countries with the greatest supply of wind currents. Tore Wizelius, a leading Swedish authority in wind power, gave me the same recommendation.
July 1, 2009 - Your Defense News - Governments seek to avoid radioactive catastrophe in Central Asia - More than 100 high-level Central Asian country delegates and representatives from international organizations, donors, diplomatic corps and other stakeholders met in Geneva today to develop concrete measures to address the challenge of radioactive waste in Central Asia. Uranium tailing deposits left over from mining during the cold war in Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan contain more than 800 million tons of radioactive and toxic waste. Much of this waste sits in precarious ponds held back by unstable dams and alongside international rivers and watersheds. Overstrained budgets and lack of capacity have prevented these countries from dealing adequately with the problem. UNDP organized the Geneva conference as part of an attempt to identify viable solutions and to prevent an environmental catastrophe. UNDP Administrator Helen Clark said the legacy of nuclear waste and related environmental management issues has a direct impact on human development in the region. “As most of the uranium tailing sites are located in densely populated and natural-disaster prone areas of Central Asia’s largest river basins, they represent a major potential risk to the region’s water supply and the health of millions of people,” said Clark in a statement to the participants of the forum. “Many more are likely to suffer if uranium contamination moves downstream to other areas.”
July 1, 2009 - The Guardian - French radioactive waste to double by 2030 - France's highly radioactive waste will more than double by 2030 mainly as spent fuel derived from nuclear reactors mounts up, the French national radioactive waste management agency (Andra) said on Tuesday. Andra draws up every three years an inventory of sites polluted with radioactivity and details quantities per waste category as well as volume forecasts. In 2007, high level waste, the most dangerous category, accounted for 95 percent of French waste radioactivity but only 0.2 percent in volume, it said in the inventory report. A complicated scale lists a wide range of different intensities of radioctive waste. High level waste will rise by 120 percent to 5,060 cubic metres by 2030 out of a total of 2.2 million cubic metres, the Andra report said. The 2.2 million cubic metres itself is twice the 2007 level. "The agency is taking this figure into account for the design and management of its storage centres," Andra said in a statement. It takes hundreds of thousands of years for spent nuclear fuel to become non-radioactive and its storage is becoming a crucial issue as new nuclear reactors are due to come online in coming decades. France has not found permanent underground storage with the capacity to hold the nuclear energy waste already generated and the waste it will generate in the future.
July 1, 2009 - New York Times - Big Alaska Looks to Small Nuclear - In a quest to lower energy prices, some municipalities in the oil-rich state of Alaska are looking to small-scale nuclear power. Galena, a village of 580 people on the Yukon River, has been working for years with energy giant Toshiba to bring a small nuclear power plant to their village. Now a Fairbanks developer, John Reeves, is proposing a somewhat larger plant, designed by Hyperion Power Generation of Santa Fe, N.M., for the Fairbanks area. “In my opinion, it’s the best energy there is,” Mr. Reeves said last week. “No carbon dioxide.” Both projects involve small reactors that would be buried underground and operate for many years without the need for refueling. Toshiba’s reactor, dubbed the 4S for “Super-Safe, Small and Simple,” is designed to produce 10 megawatts of electricity for 30 years without refueling. It would be cooled by liquid metal. (Toshiba is also developing a 50MW version.) Hyperion is promising a reactor that can produce 25MW for five to 10 years and uses uranium hydride as a combination fuel and temperature-moderator. Alaska’s governor supports the concept.
July 1, 2009 - World Nuclear News - Maryland regulator approves Calvert Cliffs 3 - Constellation Energy has received final approval from the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) for a proposed new reactor at its existing Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant. The PSC has issued a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) after completing a comprehensive, 18-month review that included several public hearings. The application for the proposed unit was submitted in November 2007 by Unistar Nuclear Energy (UNE), the strategic joint venture between Constellation and Electricité de France (EdF). The CPCN is required before any construction work can begin. It addresses a range of potential environmental and reliability impacts of the proposed new reactor, including air, water, wetlands, cultural and historic impacts. "This decision serves as another significant milestone in Unistar's efforts to build certainty for our proposed Calvert Cliffs Unit 3," said George Vanderheyden, president and CEO of Unistar. He added, "This is a crucial step in the state regulatory process and demonstrates Maryland's commitment to providing clean, safe, reliable and carbon-free electricity to the region."
July 1, 2009 - USNRC Press Release (06/30/09) - Commission acts on high level waste contention appeals - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 4-0 today to uphold the decisions of three Construction Authorization Boards (CABs) conducting a hearing on the Department of Energy’s application to build and operate a high-level radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The Commission’s decision includes several rulings, including a rejection of most of the NRC staff’s appeal of several admitted contentions, or arguments, as well as the rejection of two Nevada contentions challenging DOE’s managerial competence and institutional integrity. DOE submitted its application June 3, 2008; on Sept. 9, 2008, the NRC staff determined that the 8,600-page application contained sufficient technical information for the agency to docket it and initiate its comprehensive safety review. The NRC announced an opportunity to participate in a hearing in October 2008, and the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel created three CABs to examine the 317 contentions filed by 12 petitioners, including the states of Nevada and California, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and other parties. The Yucca Mountain application, minus some classified portions, is available on the NRC Web site at this address: http://www.nrc.gov/waste/hlw-disposal/yucca-lic-app.html.
July 1, 2009 - Reuters - Three Mile Island reactor renewal has NRC safey OK - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff completed the safety part of the license renewal proceeding for Exelon Corp's (EXC.N) 786-megawatt Unit 1 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power station in Pennsylvania, the NRC said in a release Tuesday. Last week, the NRC completed the environmental part of the license renewal proceeding. The NRC said Exelon has identified actions the company has or will take to manage the effects of aging safety systems during an additional 20 years of operation. The current license for Three Mile Island 1 expires April 19, 2014. A new license would extend the reactor's operating life until 2034. The sister unit at Three Mile Island near the Pennsylvania state capital of Harrisburg created worldwide headlines in 1979 when it partially melted down in the worst U.S. nuclear power accident. The accident made Three Mile Island synonymous with the dangers of nuclear power and helped stop expansion of the U.S. nuclear industry until the recent slow-moving "nuclear renaissance." Exelon, the biggest nuclear power operators in the United States, did not own Three Mile Island at the time of the accident.
July 1, 2009 - Tri-City Herald - Evaporation campaign cut Hanford's radioactive waste - Hanford workers have evaporated enough excess water from radioactive waste in underground tanks to free up space nearly equivalent to a new tank. Washington River Protection Solutions removed 940,000 gallons of condensate from two double-shell tanks with the nuclear reservation's 242-A Evaporator in work completed last week. The Department of Energy contractor is emptying waste from leak-prone single-shell tanks into newer and sturdier double-shell tanks to be stored until the waste can be processed for disposal at the vitrification plant. Space is at a premium in the double-shell tanks. Hanford has about 53 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks, and the double-shell tanks can hold just 28 million gallons of waste. "It's our job to make storage space in the double-shell tanks," Rebecca Raven, the 242-A Facility Operations manager for WRPS, said in a statement. "Without the evaporator, we have no storage space and without storage space we can't retrieve waste from the old single-shell tanks." The evaporator usually is operated twice a year, but this was the first evaporator run since 2007.
June 30, 2009 - WLUC TV6 - SPECT/CT produces 3D images from inside the human body - A new technology has made it possible to detect heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses earlier. It's called SPECT/CT, which stands for Single Photon Emission Computer Tomography/Computer Tomography. Marquette General Hospital has the only SPECT/CT machine in Upper Michigan. While imaging methods like X-ray, CT and MRI provide information about the body's anatomy, the SPECT/CT enables physicians to see both anatomical and biological information in one single scan. It produces 3D images from the inside the human body. "And so we can actually very precisely localize where the areas of question are, and what they would be composed of," said Dr. John Dahlin of MGH Nuclear Medicine. A SPECT/CT scan can detect how healthy a person's vital organs and glands are, and whether or not they are functioning at full capacity. It can also aid physicians in diagnosing tumors, heart problems, even stress factors to the spine and Alzheimer's disease. "This is one of the machines that is going to be spanning the gap to help us over multiple, different areas to be more accurate in our diagnoses," said Dr. Dahlin. With better information says Dr. Dahlin, physicians can more effectively plan a patient's treatment regime, and even reduce the risk of surgical procedures.
June 30, 2009 - Green Chemistry - Green Chemistry: Using Lasers To Detect Explosives And Hazardous Waste - A soldier in a humvee aims a portable device at an abandoned car 50 meters away (more than 150 feet). Pressing a button, a laser in the device fires. She reads a screen, and beckons her patrol to move away quickly. In a lab, a technician is inserting a fragment of a toy into a sample case, inserting it into a machine, and pressing a button. He inserts one fragment after another—each test takes only a few seconds. The paint on some of the toy fragments are testing positive for lead. Another technician, this time at an abandoned industrial facility, is collecting samples of concrete, metal and building materials to bring back to an analysis lab. He's part of a team looking for beryllium contamination. Beryllium is a light metal—number four on the periodic table—that is extremely poisonous to living things. He'll collect hundreds of samples in just a few days. Analyzing each one will require less than a minute. None of these scenes is science fiction anymore. And each one is an example of green chemistry—chemical analysis that is quick and results in no chemical waste generation. The military application can save the lives of soldiers in combat. The other applications can keep our children safe from toys and materials illegally coated with lead paints, and workers from suffering the effects of chemical poisoning.
June 30, 2009 - North Bay Nugget - Nuke plant suspension to hit community hiring - The Ontario government's announcement to suspend construction of two new nuclear reactors at Darlington means a whole rethink" of employment opportunities in this region for years to come, Northumberland County's economic director Dan Borowec says. It certainly will have an impact," he said. The strategy has been that lost manufacturing jobs, like those with the downsizing of General Motors, would be replaced by construction jobs, Borowec said. The anticipated construction employment created with building two new nuclear plants at neighbouring Darlington Generating Station at Bowmanville would have been very, very long term," he noted. With this new marketplace," a new job strategy needs to be developed, Borowec said. Last year, the government said it expected both reactors would be up and running within about a decade. Ontario Energy Minister George Smitherman announced Monday that the only compliant bid, that from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., was billions" too high, although the minister refused to state the actual bid price. According to a published report, construction costs were estimated at about $26.5 billion three years ago. It was a decision that you could see coming," Cobourg resident, local Green energy office manager, and provincial Green Party Deputy Leader Judy Smith Torrie told Northumberland Today about the brakes the provincial government put on the two nuclear plant projects.
June 30, 2090 - HaveeryuOnLine - IGMH resumes X-ray service after brief halt due to lack of developer fluid - Indhira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH) has resumed its X-ray services after temporarily halting the service due to a shortage of the chemical used to develop the film. The hospital resumed the service on Monday night. The CEO of the biggest Government-funded hospital in Maldives, Zubair Mohamed, said that after stopping the service temporarily due to shortage of developer fluid, they had resumed the service around 7:00pm. He also said that they had two X-ray machines but that only one was operational. “Our supplies were exhausted so we had to stop the service,” he said. “However, we were able to procure some emergency supplies from STO.” He also said that the hospital had received numerous complaints from the public due to the interruption of its X-ray services. “This kind of thing shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “But unfortunately it did, and at a time when the other X-ray machine was out of order too.”
June 30, 2009 - 8 Las Vegas Now! - Some Clark County Homes Show High Radon Levels - Testing of homes in Clark County showed that 8 percent of homes have high radon levels. Radon, which is radioactive, is found in soil, rocks and water and is usually found in the soil beneath a home. The radon can enter the house through foundation cracks, plumbing and porous building materials. "You can't predict which homes will have high radon levels," Susan Roberts, Nevada radon program director, said. "Two neighboring homes can have very different radon levels. The only way to know a building's radon level is to test." The University of Nevaa Cooperative Extension and the Nevada State Health Division are urging Nevadans to get their homes tested. You can get a free test kit from your local Cooperative Extension office. The EPA estimates 21,000 people a year in the U.S. die from lung cancer associated with radon exposure.
June 30, 2009 - Next Big Future - Interview of Eric Lerner, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics/Focus Fusion - Mr. Lerner heads the Focus Fusion Society, which is a charitable organization attempting to create focus fusion technology. He believes that his technique is fundamentally superior to Tri-alpha Energy (Colliding beam fusion in the reverse field configuration) and EMC2 fusion (inertial electrostatic confinement/pollywell fusion) because it results in more of the proton-boron fuel being burned. He is confident that this technology could lead to electricity generation at 2 cents per kilowatt hour. We should know if this technology if feasible or not within the next two years. If it is successful as Lerner hopes, this technology could have a profound impact on the world. Question: Tell us about the DB-11 fusion reactor. Answer: We are using a technique which we call focus fusion. This technology involves using dense plasma to burn hydrogen-boron fuel (PB-11). The advantage of this approach is that the reaction does not produce neutrons but rather charged particles. So we get the energy out in the form of moving charged particles which is already electricity. So we don't need to use any turbine, and this dramatically reduces size, costs, and energy requirements. Question: How easy would this fusion reactor be to operate? Would there be any danger of a meltdown, or a terrorist incident with this technology? : The safe and easy operation of this device is one of its selling features. The amount of fuel being burned at any given time is extremely small, so the possibility of uncontrolled release of energy is nil - a misfire will simply cause the device to stop operating. Furthermore the container will be shielded by water and boron-10, which absorbs neutrons. So radioactivity simply isn't an issue.
June 30, 2009 - WorldNetDaily - Public exposed as contagious medical trash routinely trucked across America's highways - Contaminated needles and scalpels, bloodied bandages, body parts, unused prescription drugs, soiled hospital garments, radioactive waste and refuse tainted with infectious disease: These are only a few items that may be discarded on a curbside, abandoned in a nearby lake or piled in a dumpster headed for the local landfill. Some say Americans are simply oblivious to the imminent risk of major hazards and contagions spreading throughout their communities at any given time. Former Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., grew concerned about medical waste hauling after Sept. 11. He told WND that 15 years ago, the nation's hospitals incinerated much of the infectious waste on site. However, the Environmental Protection Agency mandated strict guidelines for incinerators after concerns about air pollution, forcing most hospitals to hire truck drivers to haul medical waste away. "What happened was that most hospitals and most doctors' offices started going off site because they had no other way of treating it on site," Pombo said. "So this industry was born that picked up medical waste and took it to a centralized site. Those centralized sites are sometimes several hundred miles away from the doctor's office or the hospital where they're picking this stuff up."
June 30, 2009 - The Northern Light - A case study of why nuclear waste site is bad idea for region - Having spent 35 years supervising geophysical survey crews for mineral exploration I'm by no means your tree-hugging environmentalist. But a nuclear depository in my back yard, not on your life. Back in Denver, Colorado in the mid-eighties, I was involved at arms-length with a senior government geologist studying the Yucca Mountains for a new depository. Out of nine preliminary locations in the United States, the Nye County, Nevada location was chosen.Not for it's ideal geology but for its remoteness, lack of residents and a dirt poor county status. In and around 1995, micro fractures were found in the bedrock with no plan B, millions spent in high-tech research, and the reports and data buried under hundreds of reports. The survey results re-surfaced or were "leaked" and the legal battles began amid accusations of fraud, data manipulation and outright fabrication. As of 2003. the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Depository is on hold but not cancelled. Mining uranium is safe; it has naturally occurring radon gas which is controlled by diluting the gases to an acceptable level with air. Man-made enriched uranium, on the other hand, is deadly with radioactivity. It has an extremely long life as it decays. The fuel rods, encased in lead with a cement casket, once buried cannot be checked, repaired if damaged or leaking, let alone be moved. The radioactive fuel rods will outlast human life on this planet. Short-term financial gain for a permanent problem? Bad decision.
June 30, 2009 - Ventura County Star - Recycled radiation; Oversight, incentives needed - Admittedly, it sounds like bad science fiction, but long-term exposure to such products as diverse as reclining chairs, common kitchen utensils and tableware, elevator buttons and construction steel could be a long-term health hazard. That’s because radioactively tainted metal is increasingly turning up in common consumer goods and industrial products, thanks to widespread use of radioactive isotopes, increased recycling in the United States that sometimes inadvertently processes them and imports of metal products from countries like China that have a relaxed attitude toward consumer safety. And there are reports that exporters in China, India, the former Soviet bloc and some African nations are taking advantage of the fact that the United States has no regulations specifying unacceptable levels of radiation in imports. The health hazards — for the time being — are perhaps not great, but as one official said, “There is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial.” But as Scripps Howard News Service’s Isaac Wolf found out, following extensive interviews, Freedom of Information requests and access to databases, although the possibility of risk to the public is widely acknowledged, in our highly regulated society there is no federal agency or body of regulation specifically charged with protecting Americans from radioactively tainted products.
June 30, 2009 - New York Times - Oncologist Defends His Work at a V.A. Hospital - The radiation oncologist whom regulators accuse of mishandling scores of radioactive seed implants at the Philadelphia veterans’ hospital told a Congressional panel on Monday that while he “could have done better” with some implants, his patients over all received effective treatment for their prostate cancer. “I did not believe our procedures were botched,” said the physician, Dr. Gary D. Kao, who no longer treats patients at the veterans’ hospital or its affiliated hospital run by the University of Pennsylvania. “I’ve always acted in the best interest of the patients.” Speaking publicly for the first time, Dr. Kao said at the hearing at the Veterans Affairs hospital here that he was not a “rogue physician” and that his academic credentials — he has a Ph.D. to go with his medical degree — and an absence of malpractice lawsuits underscored that point. He said he was voluntarily appearing before the committee, led by Senator Arlen Specter, Democrat of Pennsylvania, to “correct some very serious false allegations in recent publications about me, most notably The New York Times.” The Times reported last week that investigators for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and V.A. officials had identified Dr. Kao as the doctor who did all but a handful of what they said were 92 substandard seed implants out of 116 cases over more than six years. In some cases, most of the tiny metal seeds ended up in other organs.
June 30, 2009 - Philadelphia Inquirer - A new charge of malpractice against VA hospital - Barry Lackro was exposed to the notoriously toxic defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam in the early 1970s. He wasn't surprised when he developed prostate cancer in 2004 at age 54, but he took heart that the malignancy was caught early and was highly curable with either surgery or radiation. Today, almost five years later, he not only has terrible complications from his treatment, but also expects the cancer to kill him. Lackro's complex case raises new questions about the quality of prostate-cancer care provided by the Philadelphia VA Medical Center and its contractor, the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Lackro is one of the 92 veterans that the Philadelphia VA admits received too little radiation - or too much - from radioactive brachytherapy seed implants done between 2002 and 2008. What makes Lackro's case unusual, if not unique, is that he opted for brachytherapy after Penn physicians tried and failed to remove his prostate. They aborted the operation because of a complication Lackro says he warned them about.
June 30, 2009 - 1888 Press Release - MyRadiationSign.com Sells High Quality Labels And Signs For Radioactive Materials - Radiation signs play an important part in making workers and visitors alert about the presence of dangerous radiations and radioactive materials. These signs warn people to keep themselves protected from exposure to radiation and contamination. The radiation signs need to be put up at places like schools, research labs and hospitals so that people at these places take necessary precautions to safeguard themselves against harmful effects of radiations. The radiation signs can either be used indoors or outdoors which effectively mark radiological control boundaries and doors. Radiation signs also instruct and warn people to keep away from restricted areas where radioactive materials are stored. MyRadiationSign.com is a leading online source of high quality radiation signs and labels for radioactive materials which can be bought at competitive prices. These signs can be efficiently used for labeling of drums, nuclear wastes and storage areas. Some popular radiation signs available at the website are 'Caution Radioactive Materials', 'Danger Radioactive Material', 'Caution Radioactive Material Do Not Open', 'Radiation: Radioactive Waste prohibited Down Drain', etc. The radiation signs supplied by MyRadiationSign.com come with lamination which protects them from hazardous chemicals and harsh weather. They are also manufactured from premium quality materials like aluminum, laminated plastic and laminated vinyl which makes them highly durable. The radiation signs provided by the website feature bright colors as well as bold, concise and clear text which make them highly visible even from distance. These signs are intricately designed by professionals and are very eye-catching due to their unique designs.
June 30, 2009 - KJRH - Radioactive material sometimes lost - "It's not every day that you meet someone that says I'm into heavy metal," joked Melinda Mulcare. She works at S & S Metals, a family-owned scrap metal yard. Keeping the business going, means keeping some metals from ever getting in, especially those that are radioactive. Mulcare uses a device that detects radiation over metal. Here in Oklahoma, old oil pipes can became radioactive. If radioactive material ends up at S & S Metals, it can't send the pipes onto the steel mill for processing because it will be rejected. If radioactive material does end up at the scrap metal yard, Mulcare runs into another problem, finding a place to put it. In fact, a 2NEWS investigation found the closest place to take radioactive material is Andrews, Texas, that's more than 500 miles away. There's also a place in Utah and Tennessee. The Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality says it will help dispose of nuclear waste, but admits since the government doesn't track radioactive material, it doesn't always know where it ends up. "Occasionally sources get lost," said Mike Broderick with DEQ. The DEQ says the feds have improved tracking since 9-11 and are looking at improving it more, but DEQ admits, the recent improvements have overwhelmed the system. "It may be a good idea to extend it further, but we need to think about what we're doing and evaluate how what we've got works first," said Broderick.
June 30, 2009 - Associated Press - Central Asia to clean up radioactive waste - Officials from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan say they have agreed to work together in cleaning up millions of tons of radioactive waste left over from uranium mining during the Cold War. Igor Chudinov, prime minister of the Kyrgyzstan, says the four countries signed a declaration to set up common programs to deal with the problem of radioactive and toxic waste in the region. The U.N. says Central Asia, which was the biggest supplier of uranium to the former Soviet Union, still holds more than 800 million tons of radioactive and toxic waste. It says the waste is a threat to the environment and damages people's health. Representatives of the four countries signed the declaration in a meeting with U.N. agencies in Geneva Monday.
June 30, 2009 - Agence France Presse - Canada suspends new nuclear reactor construction - Ontario, Canada's economic hub, announced Monday the suspension of its plan to build two new nuclear reactors, citing concerns about vendor Atomic Energy Canada Limited's viability, and pricing. The provincial government said AECL's bid to build the two new nuclear power plants at its Darlington station, 43 miles (70 kilometers) east of Toronto, by 2018 was the only one to meet its terms and objectives. The project was to be the first step in the modernization of Ontario's aging nuclear fleet. France's Areva and Westinghouse Electric Company, a subsidiary of Japan's Toshiba, had also bid on the project in February. But, in the end, none of the proposals presented "suitable" longterm energy costs for the province, Ontario Energy Minister George Smitherman said. As well, "uncertainty regarding the company's future prevented Ontario from continuing with the procurement at this time," he said.
June 30, 2009 - Augusta Chronicle - Nuclear storage at Yucca is mistake - I have read a letter to the editor to The Augusta Chronicle dated June 13 ("Clearing up nuclear misconceptions"). As a scientist who has reviewed the Yucca Mountain Project license application, which was submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it is incomplete. My conclusion is based upon review of the scientific literature, Department of Energy documents and presentations to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board meetings. One of the most important questions is whether nuclear canisters will corrode as time progresses. The Department of Energy concluded that the nuclear waste canisters would not corrode as time progresses. While the state of Nevada presents contradictory data showing corrosion of the canisters, this has raised serious scientific questions as to what this he cumulative effects of radiological and non radiological contaminants that may enter groundwater over time. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission found deficiencies in the license, and requested that the Department of Energy to submit a supplement to the environmental impact statement on the cumulative amount of radiological and nonradiological contaminants that may enter groundwater and the environment over time. The license application did not adequately discuss the potential health risks associated with interaction between heavy metals and radionuclides. Therefore, it is my scientific opinion that the license application is incomplete and deficient, unless otherwise scientifically proven. Dr. Jacob Paz, Las Vegas.
June 30, 2009 - Augusta Chronicle - DOE officially announces it won't push SRS reprocessing plan - The U.S. Energy Department made official today its plan to scrap a Bush administration initiative that could have brought a major nuclear fuel reprocessing facility to South Carolina. Economic developers, however, say the cancellation of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership—published in today’s Federal Register— doesn’t mean Barnwell County and Savannah River Site won’t win a similar venture in the future. “At this point, GNEP, as a concept, is dead, but the issue of what do do with this material isn’t,” said Danny Black, president of the Barnwell-based SouthernCarolina Alliance, a regional economic development consortium. The GNEP program, unveiled in 2006, was a broad plan to reprocess spent commercial nuclear fuel to maximize its efficiency, reduce waste volume and prevent its exploitation for nuclear weapons. Two of the 11 sites proposed for such reprocessing centers were in South Carolina, and both of those sites remain strong contenders for future projects, Mr. Black said. “Now you have 11 sites around the country that have all been vetted and analyzed to the n’th degree for reprocessing, storage, all those kinds of things,” he said. “Those sites are still very valuable for that purpose.”
June 30, 2009 - Oak Ridge Observer - ORNL welcomes record number of summer interns - A record number of undergraduate and graduate students at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are learning firsthand about science and technologies that could change lives. This summer ORNL is host to 361 student interns, according to Cheryl Terry, program manager for Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. Internships are designed to support intellectual and professional development, complement academic programs and encourage careers in science and technology. Over the last 60 years, thousands of students have benefited from the partnership between the Department of Energy and ORISE that seeks to give young students hands-on experience working with some of the world's greatest scientists. "Mentors host students to prepare them for careers in science," Terry said. "The partnership with ORISE helps ORNL and the Department of Energy help develop future scientists and engineers." While the number of interns has varied over the years, Terry noted that ORNL has never surpassed the 300 mark. Last year the number of interns was 298; in 2007 the number was 238 and in 2006 ORNL hosted 226 students.
June 30, 2009 - San Antonion Business Journal - CPS staff recommending nuclear option - CPS Energy staff is recommending that the public utility pursue an expansion of the South Texas Project (STP) nuclear power plant as it seeks to satisfy the greater San Antonio area’s long-term energy needs. The cost of expanding STP to include two additional reactors, each capable of generating 1,350 megawatts of electricity, would run somewhere between $10 billion and $13 billion, according to CPS Energy interim General Manager Steve Bartley. “Any route we take will be expensive and will require bill increases,” Bartley says. “We believe all methods of producing electricity will cost more as time goes on, so we are looking for the best way to slow cost escalation as much as possible and retain Greater San Antonio’s position as having the lowest energy bills among the nation’s 20 largest cities.” Bartley says it is better to pay some of that cost sooner to avoid having to pay much more in the long term.
June 29, 2009 - KBOI News - Partner in Proposed Nuke Plant Goes Out of Business - A startup that was part of a proposed nuclear plant in Idaho is calling it quits. In 2008, Alternate Energy Holdings said it was teaming up with Powered Corp. to develop nuclear reactors. However, a Powered spokesperson told the Securities and Exchange Commission last week he's done, and Alternate Energy's Martin Johncox in Boise says his company had already decided Powered wasn't the right fit. An anti-nuclear group, the Snake River Alliance, says this is just the latest instance where an Alternate Energy partnership has sputtered.
June 29, 2009 - Ithaca Journal - Hundreds visit Cornell labs during open house - Sylvan Danenfeld, 10, of Ithaca said science is his favorite subject. "I like science," Danenfeld said. I like it because there are so many different concepts no one will ever be able to know them all. But if you pick one you like you can really learn a lot about it." Danenfeld was one of hundreds of people from children to grandparents who took the opportunity Saturday to visit Cornell's Wilson Synchrotron Open House. Lora K. Hine, director of educational programs for Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-Based Sciences and Education (CLASSE), said that this was the third year the lab had been made open to the public for a chance to see close up and in a hands-on way what goes on within the facility. Hine said that the open house began in 2005 to coincide with the World Year of Physics and proved to be so popular the facility decided to make it an annual event. "We had more than 700 people," Hine said. "We didn't really know what the interest level was going to be like. There are always a lot of people from the Ithaca area and maybe they've heard a little about what we do here, but I think people are curious and they want to come here and check it out and really see what goes on here." Hine went on to explain that for 40 years the mission of the synchrotron and its associated facilities has been to look at sub-atomic particles and essentially collide them at speeds approaching the speed of light and study the matter created by these collisions.
June 29, 2009 - Jamaica Observer - The truth about ultrasound scanning; Is there more to it than 'is it a girl or boy'? - Ultrasound has been used in obstetrics to look at babies for over 30 years. The word 'ultrasound' refers to sound waves at a frequency greater than the human ear can appreciate. The ultrasound probe that is placed on your belly sends out these sound waves which are reflected from your baby back to the machine. The computer in the machine then forms an image of your baby which you see on the screen. No harmful effects from ultrasound to babies have been found. Unlike X-rays, no radiation is used. Sound waves can increase body temperature but this is significant only for prolonged exposure times. Beyond determining the sex of your baby, ultrasound is used throughout the pregnancy by your obstetrician to better manage your pregnancy. Many women do not remember their last menstrual period which is what doctors usually use to determine how many weeks pregnant you are. The most accurate time to determine the baby's age with ultrasound is during the first trimester (up to 13 weeks). Other uses during this time are to confirm your baby is alive and well especially if you have been bleeding, and to identify twin pregnancy and ectopic pregnancy (pregnancy outside of the uterus). As women age, their ovaries which makes the eggs needed to form babies are more likely to make eggs with abnormal chromosomes (genes). The most common chromosomal problem that can occur is Down's syndrome (trisomy 21). By measuring the thickness of the skin at the back of the baby's neck between 11 and 13 weeks of pregnancy, we are able to tell if the baby is at increased risk of having Down's syndrome as these babies have a greater measurement than normal. This is called nuchal translucency measurement.
June 29, 2009 - Canon City Daily Record - Radon emission rate increases as Cotter impoundments dry - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in conjunction with Colorado Citizens Against ToxicWaste and Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action, will hold a public meeting Tuesday. A review of radon emission regulations for uranium mill tailings impoundments will be discussed. The meeting will be from 6-9 p.m. Tuesday at Quality Inn and Suites, U.S. 50 and Dozier Avenue. Uranium milling produces large quantities of tailings placed in impoundments. ISL uranium mines utilize evaporation ponds, as well, and are being considered for compliance under these regulations. Tailings contain large amounts of radium, and therefore, they emit large quantities of radon. Radon is a dangerous radioactive gas, and it attaches to dust particles. The National Emission Standard for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) Subpart W is the radon emission standard for operating uranium mill tailings. Over 20 years ago, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was recommending that the limit or standard be set at 2 picocuries per square meter per second. Instead, EPA set the limit at 20.
June 29, 2009 - Examiner - 12 myths of pregnancy busted - There are many myths about pregnancy out there from the old gypsies’ wivestale if a pregnant woman sits either on a covered knife or fork it will determine the gender of the baby. Another one that I’ve been told was that if a woman occasionally splashed her abdomen with water while wearing clothes that is an indication that she may be pregnant. Some of these have a bit of truth to them while others are just that, wivestales. Myth # 1- You can determine the gender of the baby of the position of intercourse it was conceived in. Fact- There is a 50/50 chance that your baby is going to be a boy or a girl. You can blame the gender of the baby on the father. What determines the gender of the baby is if a sperm carrying a y-chromosome (boy) or an x -chromosome (girl) reaches the egg first. No sexual position can determine that. Myth # 8-While you are pregnant you should avoid x-rays, microwaves, cell phones and computers. Fact- If you need a chest x-ray the radiation effect is minimal to the baby. The same exposure the fetus gets from the expecting mother getting a chest x-ray is the same exposure everyone gets by taking several commercial flights. There is no evidence supporting that anyone will be effected by radiation by using the microwave, cell phone and computer. This includes your unborn child.
June 29, 2009 - Bernama - Malaysia Can Start Small With Nuclear Power Programme - Malaysia's nuclear power programme can start with a small nuclear power plant as a power demonstrator reactor before larger and more cost-competitive plants are built, the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry said Monday. "This was the approach taken by Japan, which started with a power demonstration reactor generating only 13 megawatts of electricity from 1963 to 1982 before building 53 larger plants with capacities of between 340 and 1,300 megawatts," said deputy minister Fadillah Yusof. "Despite being the only country in the world that has suffered the devastating effects of nuclear radiation, nuclear energy now supplies almost 30 percent of Japan's total electricity requirements," Fadillah said. He represented the minister Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili in delivering the opening keynote address at International Nuclear Conference 2009, which is being held at the Putra World Trade Centre here from today until July 1. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said Malaysia was keen to emulate South Korea in developing a small-scale nuclear reactor for power generation as it was more economical. This, he said, was because South Korea had an edge over other countries in terms of technology for small-scale nuclear reactors with 40 percent of the country's power needs coming from various types of nuclear reactors.
June 29, 2009 - Globe and Mail - Reactor design puts safety of nuclear plants into question - Canadian nuclear safety regulators say they have underestimated the seriousness of a design feature at the country's electricity-producing reactors that would cause them to experience dangerous power pulses during a major accident. If reactors are not shut down quickly, their ability to keep radioactivity from escaping would be put to the test, according to an internal commission document. The document says Canada's seven nuclear stations, which all use Candu technology, have a feature known as “positive reactivity feedback,” in which their atomic chain reactions automatically speed up if the water pumped into the reactors to cool them leaks, one of the worst accidents possible at a nuclear station. If reactors aren't immediately shut down during this type of incident, positive reactivity leads to a quick snowballing in the pace of nuclear reactions, which in turn could cause potentially damaging overheating. The fear is that with a large loss of coolant, such overheating could put the nuclear facilities' containment features – the concrete domes and other protective mechanisms around reactors that are the last-ditch defences to stop the spread of radioactivity into the environment – to a dangerous test. The commission is monitoring the problem closely because positive reactivity could lead to “severe core damage and early challenge of containment integrity if not arrested in time” during a severe loss of coolant accident, the document said. The discovery prompted the regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, to warn that it may have to order nuclear power plants to run at less-than-full power indefinitely to compensate for what it deems less-safe conditions at the stations, according to the document.
June 29, 2009 - MarketWatch - Studsvik board member suspected of insider tradingExplore related topics - Studsvik /quotes/comstock/22u!e3:o-svik-sek (SE:SVIK 60.00, -0.75, -1.23%) , which provides services to the nuclear power industry, said Monday that the prosecutor at the Swedish National Economic Crimes Bureau has applied to institute proceeds on suspected insider trading against Jan Barchan, a member of the group's board. Studsvik said the investigation centers on a transaction that took place in August 2006. The prosecutor asserts that when carrying out the transaction, Barchan had knowledge of an order that was later made public in a press release. Studsvik said that Barchan believes himself to be innocent, but doesn't intend to participate in the work of the board while the court processes the case.
June 29, 2009 - Life Science Leader Magazine - Covance Announces Integrated Radiolabeled Clinical Pharmacology Studies - Covance Inc. today announced its integrated radiolabeled clinical pharmacology studies in compliance with Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidance on Metabolites in Safety Testing (MIST). Recent MIST guidance requires earlier human absorption, metabolism and excretion (AME) testing in support of Investigative New Drug/Clinical Trial Application (IND/CTA) submissions. “Integrated human AME services are designed to help reduce the time and cost of drug development by integrating clinical pharmacology AME study conduct and data management services with bioanalytical chemistry and drug metabolism,” said Robert Kochan, PhD, clinical pharmacology, Covance. “Our integrated service capabilities developed by our team of experts has made us the industry leader in integrated AME testing as we recently completed our 130th AME study.” The results of AME studies provide essential information about the disposition of a drug by direct characterization of the compound’s pharmacokinetics and information related to AME characteristics. Stringent data requirements for AME studies demand experienced radiochemical and chemical analysis services to obtain definitive metabolite disposition data in humans.
June 29, 2009 - ANI - Biofuels may be used to clean up Chernobyl badlands - Belarus, a country affected much by the fallout of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, is planning to grow biofuels to make its soil fit to grow food again within decades rather than hundreds of years. The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear reactor accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. It is considered to be the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history, resulting in a severe release of radioactivity following a massive power excursion that destroyed the reactor. A 40,000 square kilometre area of south-east Belarus is so stuffed with radioactive isotopes that rained down from the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power station in 1986 that it wont be fit for growing food for hundreds of years, as the isotopes wont have decayed sufficiently. But now, according to a report in New Scientist, Belarus is planning to use the crops to suck up the radioactive strontium and caesium and make the soil fit to grow food again within decades. This week, a team of Irish biofuels technologists is in the capital, Minsk, hoping to do a deal with state agencies to buy radioactive sugar beet and other crops grown on the contaminated land to make biofuels for sale across Europe. The company, Greenfield Project Management, insists no radioactive material will get into the biofuel as only ethanol is distilled out. In distillation, only the most volatile compounds rise up the tube. Everything else is left behind, said Basil Miller of Greenfield.
June 29, 2009 - OpEdNews - Revolutionary Thorium Reactor ; The most environmentally beneficial power source on earth - There are many so-called "Generation IV" nuclear reactor designs being studied to replace the world's aging fleet of light water nuclear power plants. Light water nuclear reactors use ordinary H2O to moderate nuclear fission, for cooling, and to create steam for running turbines. All of the newer reactor designs have clear advantages over the old light water standard. China and South Africa are rapidly perusing meltdown proof pebble bed reactor technology, and the Idaho National Laboratory is experimenting with prismatic block reactors, reported to be even more efficient and stable. Most of the proposed new designs represent evolutionary improvements, but the LFT (liquid fluoride thorium) reactor design is truly revolutionary. LFT reactors are an earth friendly power source that solves all of the major problems associated with nuclear power. LFT reactors transform thorium into fissionable uranium-233, which then produces heat through controlled nuclear fission. The reactor only requires input of uranium to kick-start the initial nuclear reaction, and as the uranium can come from spent nuclear fuel rods, LFT reactors will inevitably be used as janitors to clean up nuclear waste. Once started, the controlled nuclear reactions are self-perpetuating as long as the reactor is fed thorium. As the fuel is a molten liquid salt, it can be cleansed of impurities and refortified with thorium through elaborate plumbing, even while the reactor maintains full power operation. This reduces reactor downtime and increases total yearly energy output.
June 29, 2009 - KYW News Radio - Senate Takes Up Prostate Cancer Treatments at VA Hospital - A US Senate committee is examining a series of botched prostate cancer treatments at Philadelphia's VA hospital. News reports have described 92 cases over six years where a doctor at the Philadelphia VA Hospital bungled prostate cancer treatments -- implanting radioactive seeds with too much or too little radiation, or even placing them into the wrong organs (see previous story). Senator Arlen Specter and the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee was holding a hearing on the issue on Monday at the VA hospital. South Jersey congressman John Adler was also taking part: "This doctor failed. His peers at the hospital failed. The supervisors at the hospital failed. The VA system failed, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission failed. And these 92 patients who had botched procedures would be much healthier if they'd gotten just the decent medical care they expected when they walked into the VA Hospital." The program was shut down a year ago. So far there's no evidence any veterans died from any mistreatment.
June 29, 2009 - NanoWerk - Weighing a single atom with carbon nanotubes - How can you weigh a single atom? European researchers have built an exquisite new device that can do just that. It may ultimately allow scientists to study the progress of chemical reactions, molecule by molecule. Carbon nanotubes are ultra-thin fibres of carbon and a nanotechnologist’s dream. They are made from thin sheets of carbon only one atom thick – known as graphene – rolled into a tube only a few nanometres across. Even the thickest is more than a thousand times thinner than a human hair. Interest in carbon nanotubes blossomed in the 1990s when they were found to possess impressive characteristics that make them very attractive raw materials for nanotechnology of all kinds. “They have unique properties,” explains Professor Pertti Hakonen of Helsinki University of Technology. “They are about 1000 times stronger than steel and very good thermal conductors and good electrical conductors.” Hakonen is coordinator of the EU-funded CARDEQ project which is exploiting these intriguing materials to build a device sensitive enough to measure the masses of atoms and molecules. A carbon nanotube is essentially an extremely thin, but stiff, piece of string and, like other strings, it can vibrate. As all guitar players know, heavy strings vibrate more slowly than lighter strings, so if a suspended carbon nanotube is allowed to vibrate at its natural frequency, that frequency will fall if atoms or molecules become attached to it. It sounds simple and the idea is not new. What is new is the delicate sensing system needed to detect the vibration and measure its frequency. Some nanotubes turn out to be semiconductors, depending on how the graphene sheet is wound, and it is these that offer the solution that CARDEQ has developed.
June 29, 2009 - Herald Times Reporter - Emergency crews pass nuclear site evaluation - Manitowoc and Kewaunee county emergency staffers earned high marks Friday for performances in a three-day on-site evaluation by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Federal Emergency Management Agency. "The exercise test provided an adequate test of the licensee's radiological emergency planning at the Kewaunee Nuclear Station," said Robert Jickling, senior emergency preparedness inspector for the NRC. Staff was monitored in 233 areas and one area of concern. Counties have 60 days to correct responses, he said. Every activity that Manitowoc and Kewaunee staffers selected was performed correctly, he said. These exercises ensure the plant can implement emergency plans and procedures to protect the health and safety of the public, Jickling said. "It was a successful exercise where they demonstrated their capabilities appropriately, and one minor finding was demonstrated early in the scenario that did not impact on-site or off-site personnel," Jickling said. The NRC's inspection report will be available in 30 days from their public information office and from the NRC's Web site.
June 29, 2009 - Des Moines Register - Recognize contribution of nuclear-power plants - At a time when there is reason for concern about our energy needs and their economic and environmental consequences, it's worth noting an optimistic trend: The performance of nuclear-power plants, including the Duane Arnold plant in Iowa, has shown extraordinary improvement over the years. Last year, an astonishing 16 of the nation's 104 nuclear plants achieved capacity factors that were greater than 100 percent. The unit with the fourth-highest rating was Duane Arnold, at 103.6 percent, one of the most efficiently operated nuclear plants in the world. This data comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and what's striking about it is that for the past decade the average capacity factor of U.S. nuclear plants has been about 90 percent, meaning that plants have been running about 90 percent of the time. By comparison, the capacity factor of coal plants is about 70 percent; natural gas-fired plants, 40 percent; wind turbines, 30 percent; and solar arrays, 20 percent. Here in Iowa, the reliability of the Duane Arnold plant around the clock, day after day, has allowed for maximum use of nuclear power, which is cheaper to produce than electricity from coal or natural-gas plants and doesn't pollute the air or spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Capacity factor is the ratio of electricity produced in a given time period to the maximum that could be produced in that period at full-rated power. Summer conditions, when plant cooling systems are least efficient, are used to determine the rated power level. But in cold weather, many power plants produce more electricity than their summer rating and, as a result, their capacity factor can top 100 percent.
June 29, 2009 - Los Angeles Times - Howard Hughes and the atomic bomb - At the center of a desolate valley in the middle of Nevada, more than a dozen miles from the nearest paved road, one of the few signs of human activity is a rusty steel well casing that juts oddly out of the desert floor. Nobody lives here, but it has a name: the Central Nevada Test Area. It was once a hub of scientific activity. Today, it is an abandoned outpost of the Cold War. MapIn the lore of the nuclear arms race, the Central Nevada Test Area has occupied a special place of mystery. Only one test was ever conducted there, and even for aficionados, the reasons have never been entirely clear. Amid the emptiness, an 8-foot-tall cylinder bears a message to future generations from Glenn T. Seaborg, once chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. "Project Faultless January 19, 1968: A nuclear detonation was conducted below this spot at a depth of 3,200 feet," reads a brass plaque on the casing. The explanation of its purpose is terse: "The device, with a yield of less than one megaton, was detonated to determine the environmental and structural effects that might be expected should subsequent higher yield underground nuclear tests be conducted in this vicinity." At the bottom of the vertical shaft, there's a load of radioactive rubble. "No excavation, drilling and/or removal of materials is permitted without U.S. government approval within a horizontal distance of 3,300 feet from the surface ground zero," the plaque warns visitors. Just why the government detonated a bomb here is even more puzzling given that the sprawling Nevada Test Site was already set up officially for nuclear testing about 100 miles south.
June 27-28, 2009 - Webmuenster took the weekend off.
June 26, 2009 - Agence France Presse - France may sell stake in nuclear group Areva - France may sell 15 percent of nuclear energy group Areva to strategic investors in Asia and the Middle East and elsewhere, and is preparing a capital increase, a newspaper report said on Friday. The Financial Times said the government was considering selling part of the company, a jewel in France's nuclear-power generation industry, to raise two billion euros (2.8 billion dollars) to help finance development of the group. Citing people with knowledge of the situation, the FT said Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), Areva's Japanese partner, was set to take a stake in the French company. MHI told AFP that it was prepared to study an offer to buy some of Areva if such an offer were made. The French governemnt was also in talks with sovereign wealth funds such as Mubadala of Abu Dhabi, the FT said, adding that Areva needed between eight billion and 10 billion euros by 2012 to fund its investment programme.
June 26, 2009 - Salt Lake Tribune - Radioactive appeal; Court case should buy Congress time - Utah v. EnergySolutions is going into overtime. State officials will join a pair of regional radioactive waste compacts to appeal a dangerous U.S. District Court decision that opened the door to EnergySolution's Tooele County dump to low-level radioactive waste from Italy. For the sake of Utah's burgeoning tourism industry and the nation's nuclear power industry, hopefully the ball will bounce our way. The state, in correspondence filed with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission this month, announced its intent to appeal the court ruling that stripped radioactive waste compacts of their ability to regulate privately-owned disposal facilities within their bounds. That decision, if it stands and Congress fails to forbid radioactive waste imports, could turn Utah into the world's dumping ground. Utah also asked the NRC to delay a decision on EnergySolutions' license application to import waste from decommissioned Italian nuclear power plants until the lawsuit is settled. It would be the logical thing to do, erasing scenarios in which Italian waste would become orphaned on our shores, or EnergySolutions would be required to remove the materials from its Utah dump and ship them back to Italy. EnergySolutions, which filed the lawsuit after the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-level Radioactive Waste Management voted to ban the Italian waste, takes a different tack. It has asked the NRC to act on its licensing request, which was set aside pending the original court ruling. The company claims the issue has been "resolved" and a successful appeal is only a "remote possibility."
June 26, 2009 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - K-25 cleanup ramps up - Thousands of truckloads of debris have already been hauled from the site as demolition of the historic K-25 plant continues to pick up pace. Bechtel Jacobs Co., the Department of Energy's environmental contractor, is heading the massive demolition project and currently focusing efforts on the west wing of the mile-long, U-shaped building. Since demolition began in December, workers and their heavy equipment have knocked down 10 of the 27 units of the west wing, Bechtel Jacobs spokesman Dennis Hill said. The total length of the wing was 2,266 feet, of which 770 feet (or about 35 percent) has been demolished, he said. "We have shipped over 3,000 truckloads of debris" to the Department of Energy's landfill for contaminated cleanup wastes, Hill said. At the time of its construction during World War II, K-25 was the world's largest building under one roof. The gaseous diffusion operation separated the isotopes of uranium and concentrated the fissionable U-235, providing most of the bomb-grade material for the nation's Cold War nuclear arsenal.
June 26, 2009 - Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Stolen moisture meter could prove harmful - The Environment Protection Authority says a stolen moisture meter could expose people to harmful levels of radiation. The meter, used for measuring moisture content in soil, was stolen from a rural property in Berri. The authority says it contains a radioactive element which could be released if the meter is handled incorrectly. Anyone who finds the orange instrument is asked to contact police immediately.
June 26, 2009 - News.gov.hk - Radioactive substances go missing - A medical supply company has informed the Department of Health today a pack of iodine-125 seeds went missing when it was transshipped through Hong Kong from Shanghai by China Eastern Airlines on June 23. Global Medical Solutions reported a package containing 60 iodine-125 seeds in two lead containers could not be located at the airport for re-export today. It has reported the case to the Police. The iodine-125 seeds were encapsulated and sealed in accordance with international safety requirements. Their total radioactivity is 818 MBq and is unlikely to cause significant adverse health effects in case of accidental exposure. Anyone who find the package should not open it and should report to the Police immediately. Those who possess or use radioactive substances in Hong Kong must have a licence under the Radiation Ordinance, while importers are controlled by the Import (Radiation) (Prohibition) Regulations.
June 26, 2009 - Philadelphia Inquirer - Doctor in Phila. VA prostate controversy takes leave - The University of Pennsylvania radiation oncologist at the center of the controversy about the Philadelphia VA Medical Center's prostate cancer program has taken a leave from Penn's medical school. Gary D. Kao "asked for a leave of absence" and it was granted yesterday, said Susan E. Phillips, senior vice president of the Penn health system, in response to The Inquirer's questions about the doctor's status. Kao also will voluntarily attend a hearing at the Philadelphia VA hospital on Monday to answer questions about the program, his lawyer, Jack Gruenstein, said. Gruenstein declined to comment about the leave yesterday. Sen. Arlen Specter (D., Pa.) has scheduled the hearing on the brachytherapy program for 10 a.m. in the Third Floor Multipurpose Room at the hospital, 3900 Woodland Ave. Although the Department of Veterans Affairs has been in the spotlight over the suspended program and safety violations, the scandal has implications for Penn's reputation. The VA facility is on the edge of the Penn campus, and the agency contracted with Penn physicians, who performed the brachytherapy procedures on veterans. The facility is also a teaching hospital for Penn medical residents. Last year, after questions were raised about the program, Kao voluntarily limited himself to laboratory work. Penn has said he was involved in treating most of the 92 veterans whose radiation care was substandard. The procedures occurred from the program's start in 2002 to its suspension in mid-2008.
June 26, 2009 - Australian Broadcasting Corporation - French Polynesia rejects nuclear compensation - The courts in French Polynesia have rejected nearly half of the nuclear compensation claims filed by former workers of France's nuclear testing site in the Pacific. COONEY: Of the eight cases appealing for compensation in the court in French Polynesia, five were brought by the families of former workers who had died, alledgedly from illnesses related to the radiation they'd been exposed to during the tests. But Roland Oldham, the President of Association Muroroa E Tatou, which represents former test site workers says Ethe court has only ruled on one case, finding in favour of the three older children of one former worker. OLDHAM: It is a very bad bad joke, one million franc. COONEY: That's pacific franc. OLDHAM: Yes for the children. COONEY: That's about 11-thousand dollars US per child OLDHAM: Yeah that's right. COONEY: Of the remaining 7 cases, three have been dismissed from the court. Two of those are surviving test site workers. The other four have been admitted by the court, and the people represented in those cases, will have to undergo further, court approved testing, to find out if the illnesses they claim to be suffering from, or which led to the death of their spouse, or parent, can be linked to the testing. Nic Maclellan is a Researcher and Journalist focussing on Pacific issues, and is the co author of "After Muroroa, France in the South Pacific". He says from reading the judgment it's clear those whose cases have been disallowed, were unable to prove they worked on the tests. MACLELLAN: They also highlight the difficult problem facing former Muraroa workers who worked there between the 1960's and 1990's to provide the documentary proof that's needed in this sort of legal challenge. The Americans have a system where they automatically recognise that people with certain types of illness should be compensated, in the French case and in the British case we've just seen before the High Court, it's up to the veterans.
June 26, 2009 - Phoenix Star - Nurses go NIMBY on isotopes - This week's performance by the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) at the uranium development consultations was almost worthy of sympathy. But pity might be more fitting. SUN opposes nuclear power generation in Saskatchewan. Fair enough -- they're not alone. But the nurses stretched logic to the breaking point when also nixing a smaller research reactor to develop medical life-saving isotopes. The nurses, along with the left-wing think-tank Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, commissioned a 30-page, non-peer reviewed paper written by a local social activist researcher. The paper, entitled Exposure to Radiation and Health Outcomes, is a predictable anti-nuke piece suggesting all manner of dire health effects attributable to nuclear generating facilities. And there are the obligatory mentions in the paper to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in the Second World War, the 1970s Three Mile Island core meltdown and the Soviet disaster at Chernobyl in 1986. The researcher even helpfully suggests, citing a New York Times story on cost overruns, that a Saskatchewan nuclear reactor "might actually cost $20 billion," more than double the current projected cost of a two-unit power generator.
June 26, 2009 - LiveMint.com - Kerala to conduct studies on health hazards of mobile towers - Kerala government will undertake a study to identify whether mobile towers cause any kind of health hazards to the people living in the surrounding areas. “Considering the concern among people about mobile towers, government would conduct a study into this,” state law minister M Vijayakumar said in the state Assembly today. Vijayakumar was replying to a calling attention motion moved by K K Shaju of Janadhipathiya Samrakshna Samithi. The minister, however, said as per the present studies there was no evidence to show that mobile towers directly caused health hazards. “Studies have also found that the radiation level from mobile towers is much less than that emanates from televisions and FM radios,” Vijayakumar said. Raising the issue, Shaju said people feared about various health hazards reportedly caused by the mobile towers and also wanted the government to conduct a scientific study in this regard. Meanwhile, local self governance minister Paloli Muhammedkutty told the Assembly that the government was also mulling a proposal to issue licence to erect mobile towers to only those service providers who would agree to share the facility with local bodies.
June 26, 2009 - MarketWire - RAE Systems To Exhibit Gas Detection Products At American Society Of Safety Engineers Conference And Exposition - RAE Systems Inc. (NYSE Amex: RAE), a leader in delivering innovative sensor solutions to serve industrial, energy, environmental, and government safety markets worldwide, will exhibit the company's leading personal, portable, wireless and fixed gas detection solutions at booth #1617 at Safety 2009 Professional Development Conference and Exposition being held at the Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas, on June 28-30, 2009. The conference is hosted by the American Society of Safety Engineers. More than 4,000 safety, health and environmental professionals and 400 exhibitors are expected to attend. "This conference gives us the opportunity to showcase our solutions for OSHA-compliant confined space entry, refinery and chemical plant safety as well as remote toxic gas and hazardous materials response solutions," said Ryan Watson, RAE Systems' vice president for Americas sales. "Our single user interface and fast calibrations stations offer complete solutions to our many industrial safety users."
June 26, 2009 - Glenwood Springs Post Independent - Garfield County commissioner still thinks DOE not doing its job - Federal energy officials are sticking to their guns as far as using privately drilled gas wells to test for radioactivity near the Rulison nuclear blast site. And Garfield County Commissioner John Martin still thinks the U.S. Department of Energy is forcing private firms to act as “guinea pigs” in the risky business of exposing workers to potential radiation poisoning, and refusing to compensate landowners for their inability to exploit their mineral rights for profit. In a letter to Martin from David Geiser, acting director of the DOE's Office of Legacy Management, which oversees the Rulison site, the agency declared that its approach to further gas drilling near the blast site is the “best strategy” for protecting the public's health and safety while still allowing “energy companies and mineral leaseholders to achieve their respective goals.” That approach is outlined in a newly released draft management plan, known as the Rulison Path Forward, which is now available for public inspection as the agency seeks public comment on its provisions. The plan echoes feelings expressed by DOE representatives earlier this year, in a story printed on April 8 in the Post Independent.
June 26, 2009 - News Blaze - National Poll: Americans Split on Safety of Nuclear Energy - "Americans are split about whether nuclear power is safe or not, and many people have specific security concerns about nuclear power. The two dangers that concern a majority of Americans are the problems with radioactive waste storage, a top criticism of nuclear power, and possible plant meltdowns," says Dr. Josh Klein, assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Sacred Heart University. A majority of Americans (58.4%), however, indicated that nuclear energy's radioactive waste is a danger that humans will face for thousands of years to come. Over one-third of respondents, 36.8%, expect the number of nuclear weapons to increase worldwide as a result of building more nuclear power plants. Poll respondents did consider other energy sources as significantly more safe than nuclear energy. A large majority, 94.6%, saw wind energy as very or somewhat safe. This was followed by river and tidal energy (80.0%), geothermal energy (68.5%), fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas (56.1%), and biofuels (55.6%). While over half of those surveyed, 53.6%, were concerned about the danger of future nuclear energy plant meltdowns, nearly the same percent (54.2%) suggested that nuclear power plants will be safer in the future because of newer technologies making plants meltdown-proof. And, 36.8% did not see a proliferation of nuclear weapons because nuclear energy and nuclear bombs utilize significantly different technologies.
June 26, 2009 - Environmental Protection - GEH Proposes Recycling Nuclear Fuel - As the White House and U.S. Congress create a new national strategy for managing used nuclear fuel, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) is encouraging lawmakers to support the research and development necessary for recycling nuclear fuel, according to a June 18 press release. Lisa Price, a GEH senior vice president, briefed lawmakers at a House Science & Technology Committee meeting on the company's proposed Advanced Recycling Center (ARC). As the only nuclear reactor vendor that is majority-owned by a U.S. company, GEH is offering the ARC, which would put U.S. technology to work to improve economic prosperity through job creation, enhance national security, help curb greenhouse gas emissions, and provide an opportunity to regain the historical U.S. leadership position in nuclear science and technology. The ARC—comprised of a "PRISM" sodium-cooled reactor, combined with an electrometallurgical or dry nuclear fuel recycling facility—is being evaluated by the U.S. Department of Energy and Congress as the government considers a new long-term strategy for used nuclear fuel.
June 26, 2009 - Fulton Sun - Safety system concern at nuclear plant - A special investigation is underway to find the reason behind the failure of a piece of a safety system last month at the Callaway Nuclear Plant. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced Monday that a team of inspectors is looking into a problem that was found with a secondary feedwater pump at the plant May 25 that has raised concern about that backup safety precaution. "In routine testing that pump didn't start automatically, but we did determine that it could have been started manually," Ameren UE spokesman Mike Cleary said. "It was technically inoperable and we don't know when it failed between the previous test on May 4 and May 25. "We don't exactly know what happened, what went wrong, and hopefully this investigation helps find out why." While the pump was quickly fixed after being discovered, a team of investigators -- including resident inspectors from the Callaway plant and the Cooper nuclear plant in Brownville, Neb. -- will now spend several days at the Callaway plant to determine why. It will review the circumstances related to the problem, what Ameren deemed to be the root cause and the impact it had on the availability and reliability of plant safety systems.
June 26, 2009 - American Chronicle - Idaho, Montana downwinder bill reintroduced; Would compensate victims from Nevada testing in 1950s and 60s - All four Senators representing Idaho and Montana are sponsoring new legislation that would make residents of the two states eligible for a federal government program that compensates people who lived in affected areas downwind of the Nevada Test Site during periods of atmospheric nuclear testing during the 1950s and 60s. Under the legislation, those victims would be compensated if they contracted cancer or other specified compensable diseases following the testing. The bipartisan legislation introduced today, S. 1342, would amend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to include all of Idaho and Montana. "The victims of this testing have waited years for just compensation and the cruel irony is that the federal government has postponed this action for so long that many aren´t living to see this bill passed," Idaho Senator Mike Crapo said. "This is the third time we have introduced this legislation. It is of national importance and we hope we can expand the scope of the program because there are literally victims throughout the country." Idaho Senator Jim Risch added, "We have to make this right. Research shows that radioactive elements impacted citizens in Idaho at that time. They deserve help for the health effects they have suffered. We must not delay any longer in getting this done."
June 25, 2009 - Houston Chronicle - Consortium fighting nuclear plant project seeks costs analysis - The groups fighting the expansion of the nuclear South Texas Project want detailed comparisons of costs to produce the same power with renewable resources. They think such an analysis should be complete before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers granting a license for the multibillion-dollar plan to build two more reactors outside this Matagorda County community southwest of Houston. A consortium of environmental groups made the request to a panel of judges with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on Wednesday, during the second and final day of hearings over the project’s permit application. “The default position of the applicant is to go to a large, centralized generating unit and make the assumption that all others are inadequate,” said attorney Robert Eye, who is fighting the expansion. Instead, Eye said those pushing the South Texas Project should be required to look at plans like the one presented in San Antonio last year by Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. Makhijani argued that San Antonio could meet its future energy needs with a combination of renewable energy and conservation and forgo the nuclear project. South Texas Project attorney Steven Frantz said that such alternatives were looked at and found lacking because, in the case of wind, the power is intermittent. “We have shown the wind itself is not capable of producing base load power. That ends the story right there,” said Frantz. “Conservation doesn’t produce power at all.”
June 25, 2009 - Beaver Dam Daily Citizen - Randolph to test school for radon - The Randolph School board approved hiring professionals to test the district's schools for radon. Superintendent Greg Peyer said that one of the school's science classes conducted tests for radon and discovered that some rooms have high levels. He said that access tunnels under the schools used for maintenance have dirt floors, which may contribute to higher radon levels. Peyer said there are multiple rooms in the 1942 portion of the elementary/middle school building, and one or two rooms at the high school.
June 25, 2009 - Reuters - Radiation not needed in common childhood cancer - Children can be treated for a common form of childhood leukemia without bombarding the brain with radiation, reducing the risk that they will suffer additional tumors and thinking problems, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. They said chemotherapy injected into the blood and the fluid that bathes the brain and spinal cord produced results that were just as good. "We believe children with ALL (acute lymphoblastic leukemia) do not need to get cranial irradiation preventively, which is different from what some centers recommend," Mary Relling of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, who worked on the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Radiation was once a routine therapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common form of childhood cancer. It is still given to 20 percent of the 3,400 youngsters in the United States who are diagnosed with ALL each year in the hopes of preventing a relapse. But the treatment can cause second cancers, stunted growth, hormone imbalances and cognitive deficits. In the new study, Relling and colleagues found 86 percent of the 498 children given aggressive chemotherapy survived, cancer-free, for five years.
June 25, 2009 - OhMyGov - The $2 billion radiation detectors that shouldn't be (but are anyway) - A report by the Government Accountability Office has revealed that a $2 billion radiation monitor being tested by the Department of Homeland Security not only yields little benefit for the American public, but that DHS has not even tested the equipment properly. The equipment, known as advanced spectroscopic portal radiation (ASP for short, somehow), is designed to help Customs and Border Protection detect smugglers importing nuclear material into the United States. However, tests have shown that the new technology does not significantly improve Customs and Border Protection’s nuclear detection efficiency – certainly not to the tune of $822,000 per machine. Preliminary testing showed that ASP performed well: it surpassed the current system in its ability to detect radiation and prevent false alarms that hinder commercial activity. (The current system is known as PVT, for polyvinyl tolulene, if you're scoring at home.) So far, so good. But GAO claims that the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO), the Homeland Security office whose mission is fairly self-evident from its name, didn’t bother using the proper data. In fact, the whole testing process was flawed from the start. At the start of experiments, DNDO allowed contractors to involve themselves in the testing process. Although these contractors were removed at GAO’s insistence, there still appeared to be a bias towards the radiation detector in DNDO tests. In comparing the ASP to PVT, Homeland Security neglected to use data from an improved version of PVT, which overstated the difference between the two.
June 25, 2009 - Dow Jones - EDF: Has Dropped Court Case Against Striking Nuclear Workers - French utility Electricite de France SA (EDF.FR) has dropped a court case aimed at getting striking employees at its nuclear power stations back to work as there are signs the strike is abating, a spokeswoman for the company said Thursday. "Taking account of the resumption of work observed on the ground following the recent implementation of managerial measures at certain nuclear plants, EDF has desisted," from the legal procedure, the spokeswoman said. EDF envisages another legal case designed to take note of any "irregularity" in strike action during maintenance and fuel-recharging operations at certain plants, and to seek redress for the damage done, she said. EDF has warned that strike action over pay had disrupted maintenance operations at some nuclear sites to the extent that France could suffer power shortages if the summer is a hot one. EDF has sent letters to workers requesting they make sure critical maintenance work takes place, the spokeswoman said when asked about the managerial measures the company has launched. Several hundred of 19,000 workers at nuclear sites are on strike, she said.
June 25, 2009 - Sudbury Star - Why the silence on the use of PET scans? - The Ministry of Health has yet to respond to a preliminary report arising from the Ombudsman's office regarding Ontario's position on positron emission tomography scanning in clinical medicine. For years, they have refused to address the inquiries from individuals such as myself, world class experts, and provincial and federal professional associations of scientists and physicians. What are they trying to hide? In April 2005, the most senior member of the PET steering committee accused George Smitherman, then minister of health, of blocking PET because of cost concerns and that government members of the committee were denying data supporting PET. No response. In May 2007, the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine passed three unprecedented motions, one of which declared the Ontario PET trials unethical. No response. What sorts of questions were put to the MOH? The ministry is using a research tool called the Health Technology Assessment, or HTA. This tool has never been validated as a method of investigating the role of diagnostic equipment such as PET or CT scans in disease. The results of HTA analysis depends on what politicians want to hear. France used the HTA and installed 75 PET scanners. Health Ministry 'experts' used the HTA on the same research data and concluded that PET was of no use in humans. No response to questions about the use of the HTA. Before the start of the Health Ministry PET lung cancer trials, for all intents and purposes, PET scanning had become the world standard of investigation of most lung cancer patients. Ethical research on humans demands subjects are informed about the experiment, what alternatives are available and the status of, in this case, PET scanning. In the Health Ministry trial, half of the lung cancer trial subjects were denied access to a PET scan. They were not informed of the world consensus on the role of PET in lung cancer. Why?
June 25, 2009 - Springfield News-Leader - Anti-nuclear activists to visit today - On Thursday, The Proposition One Non-Radioactive Nuclear Review, a traveling multimedia troupe that educates the public on the dangers of all things nuclear, will make a stop in Springfield as part of a 30-city summer disarmament tour, tour contact Jay Marx and local contact Midge Potts said in a news release. Potts, a local grass-roots activist, will be hosting the event at the Magic Bean Coffee House, 940 S. National. Prior to their evening presentation, the Proposition One crew will join the grass-roots demonstration in support of disenfranchised Iranian voters at 5 p.m. on the corner of National Avenue and Grand Street near the Missouri State campus. “I am looking forward to being able to expose area residents to the knowledge, experience, and wisdom of these patriots who have spent their lives working to end the nuclear nightmare and to truly begin to bring peace on Earth,” said Ms. Potts. “This is a good oportunity for us to open up a dilaogue in the Ozarks as to whether or not it is necessary for the United States to continue spending hundreds of Billions of dollars in maintaining a nuclear arsenal that remains at over 5,000 warheads.” The troupe is headed by legendary Washington, DC, peace activist Ellen Thomas, who spent 18 years on vigil in front of the White House, and in 1993 helped coordinate the successful DC ballot initiative for Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion. “We use entertainment, stories, songs and film to educate people on everything you ever wished you didn’t need to know about nuclear weapons from Alpha particles to X-rays, from Americium to Yellowcake, from Alamogordo to Zimbabwe and from ambivalence to di-Zaster (or Nuclear Zero),” says campaign coordinator Jay Marx.
June 25, 2009 - The Tennessean - Nuclear energy issue needs intelligent, accurate debate - I appreciate that The Tennessean recognizes the importance of debate on the issue of a new generation of nuclear power plants and that this was the topic on the June 19 editorial page. However, some of the statements of the proponents deserve corrections and response. Gerry Calhoun wrote that nuclear power opponents want "to take us back 200 years." This simply is not true. Rather, we are looking to move forward to a sustainable future. Uranium, like fossil fuels, is a finite resource. Mr. Calhoun is misinformed about breeder reactors. There are no operating commercial breeder reactors anywhere on Earth. Their designs never even contemplated using spent fuel rods as fuel. This plutonium-driven technology is extremely problematic. The Japanese spent more than $11 billion on the Monju breeder, which operated for a short period at low power before a sodium leak and fire shut it down. The French Superphenix was plagued with problems during its operational life. Several countries are continuing to experiment with breeders, but this is far from a proven power source. Before we even think about building breeder reactors, we must understand the properties of plutonium. It is a very dangerous substance. It is easily fashioned into nuclear weapons. We should be extremely wary of it. Expensive and dangerous spent fuel processing is the primary source of plutonium. This processing results in large releases of radionuclides into our biosphere. The Iranians and North Koreans are enriching uranium, not plutonium as Mr. Calhoun inaccurately stated, for their nuclear weapons programs.
June 25, 2009 - Desert Sun - Giant load inches onward - Dozens of people pulled off the shoulder of Dillon Road in Desert Hot Springs on Wednesday for a closer look at a 150-ton nuclear reactor cap. The cap, on an extra-big rig that began its trip in Long Beach on June 14, made its way through Palm Springs early Wednesday morning and parked just west of Palm Drive. “I got a barber shop. I closed down just to look at it,” said Robert Sammut, 43, of Desert Hot Springs. Sammut posed in front of the nuclear cap while a bystander snapped a couple of photos. “The name ‘nuclear,' that's what brought me out,” said Mary Williams, also of Desert Hot Springs. “I'm not afraid to stand next to it. I thought I would be.” Tom and Laura Eppler of Desert Hot Springs weren't that impressed with the hulking piece of equipment. They were more interested in what was moving all that tonnage. Laura Eppler, camera in hand, walked under and around the 283-foot rig, shooting pictures from all angles, marveling at the sheer size of the machinery.
June 25, 2009 - Las Vegas Sun - Healing a sick system; Failure to oversee safety in prostate cancer program latest problem for the VA - In 2005 an Air Force retiree went to the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs hospital for what should have been a routine prostate cancer treatment. Doctors were to insert 79 radioactive seeds into his diseased prostate. For about 10 months after the procedure, everything went well for the Rev. Ricardo Flippin. Then he developed a terrible pain in the bowel, which left him bedridden. After doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong, Flippin traveled to Ohio State University’s hospital. There, doctors found the problem: radiation damage in his rectum. Doctors in Philadelphia had botched the procedure to treat Flippin’s prostate cancer. The seeds were apparently inserted incorrectly, and it wasn’t the only time that happened. In the six years that the Philadelphia VA hospital offered the treatment, the team of doctors performing the procedure erred in 92 of 116 cases. The New York Times reported Saturday that the VA admitted to its obvious failure to supervise the doctors. Unlike at other hospitals, doctors were not required to have their records reviewed by their peers. The team was not very experienced with the procedure and performed procedures even though a critical piece of equipment was broken. The broken machine was designed to show whether the radiation was, as in Flippin’s case, threatening healthy tissue. The VA has since suspended use of the treatment in Philadelphia. It has also shut down the treatment in Cincinnati and Jackson, Miss., because of similar problems, although on a smaller scale.
June 25, 2009 - Platts - NFS, Wesdyne awarded $209 million downblending contract - Nuclear Fuel Services and Wesdyne International will blend down and store 12.1 metric tons of surplus US highly enriched uranium under a $209 million contract announced June 23 by DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration. NNSA said in a statement that about 220 metric tons of low enriched uranium will be produced from the HEU between 2009 and 2012, with a market value of more than $400 million. NFS and WesDyne will be compensated with "a fraction" of the LEU, NNSA said. The rest will be stored to provide fuel supply assurance for utilities that participate in DOE's mixed-oxide fueL program to disposition surplus plutonium from US weapons programs by irradiating it as reactor fuel, it said.
June 25, 2009 - Republican-Eagle - We must address nuclear waste - In the coming weeks, Congress will be reviewing a national energy tax known as “cap and trade,” legislation proposed by the president that will attempt to raise federal revenue and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This irresponsible proposal will drive up the price of everyday goods, strain the economy, reduce jobs, and impose a significant cost increase on every Minnesotan who dares to turn on a light. Last week, I joined many House Republicans in introducing the “American Energy Act,” sweeping energy reform based on an all-of-the-above solution for America’s energy independence. This legislation, of which I am a co-sponsor, offers more affordable energy, more well-paying jobs, energy independence, and a cleaner environment - in ways that do not raise costs for you and your family. Of particular interest to Red Wing community residents, the American Energy Act provides a long-term solution for spent nuclear fuel. The legislation allows the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to finish its review of the Yucca Mountain repository without political interference and repeals its 70,000 metric ton limitation, letting science and technology dictate how much the repository can safely hold. The bill also provides for recycling of spent nuclear fuel, thereby decreasing the demand for storage space at Yucca Mountain and amounts accumulating at sites across the country, including the Prairie Island nuclear plant. The NRC would have two years to establish a process to license such recycling facilities. Storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in an isolated, militarily secure location, in a facility designed for permanent storage, may not be the ideal solution, but it is better than leaving it where it sits: near our communities and families. The American Energy Act would be an important step toward one day removing the nuclear waste from Goodhue County once and for all.
June 25, 2009 - Longview Daily News - Without alternative plan, U.S. can't afford to abandon plans for Nevada nuclear wastes dump - A group of 25 House members is pushing back against a politically inspired attempt to abandon construction of a national nuclear waste repository near Yucca Mountain in Nevada. In a letter sent to Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week, the lawmakers pointed out that there is no “Plan B” for the safe disposal of the nation’s radioactive waste. The group urged the energy secretary to seek additional funds for the project in order to keep it on track for completion by 2020. This bipartisan effort to bring the Obama administration and congressional leaders to their senses is encouraging, though we doubt it will have the desired effect. President Obama mined for electoral votes in Nevada with a pledge to block construction of the nuclear waste dump. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has been committed to scuttling plans to build this national repository in his home state for many years. Obama, Reid and other political opponents of the project have long known there is no alternative plan. That’s apparently not a concern to them. The House members signing last week’s letter cannot afford that complacency. They are from states with a big stake in getting this national repository built, states with large of amounts of nuclear waste waiting for shipment to Yucca Mountain. Six of Washington state’s nine representatives signed the letter. Their chief concern is Hanford nuclear reservation in southeastern Washington, one of the Department of Energy’s Environmental Management (ME) cleanup sites. Other authors of the letter represent Idaho, South Carolina and Tennessee — all with EM cleanup sites. As these House members wrote to Secretary Chu, “Without viable repository program to provide a reliable means of disposition, spent fuel and high-level waste will become stranded, and the sites themselves will become de facto repositories.” Those sites would become facto repositories without the security and long-term safety provided by the national repository being constructed near Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.
June 25, 2009 - Daily Californian - Protesters Demonstrate Against Demolition of Lab's Bevatron - The A number of residents held a press conference in Downtown Berkeley Tuesday evening to protest the demolition of a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory building known to contain radioactive materials. Concrete shielding blocks in the Bevatron, the lab's 180-foot particle accelerator, became mildly radioactive during the past 40 years of use. Residents voiced concerns in front of Old City Hall that transporting these materials may affect the health of Berkeley residents and cause damage to roads. "This is extremely irresponsible and is being done totally in the face of public safety," said Zachary RunningWolf, a Native American elder who helped organize the press conference. Lab spokesperson Paul Preuss disagreed with the protesters, saying only a small portion of the materials is radioactive and transport poses little risk. "Nothing goes out of here that is not handled in a way that meets all state and federal regulations regarding radioactivity," Preuss said. "You would get more radiation getting your teeth X-rayed than you would from a truck passing."
June 25, 2009 - Associated Press - Study: New radiation detectors not worth the cost - The government shouldn't buy more of the new radiation detection machines it's been developing to look for smuggled nuclear materials at ports, a report from the National Research Council says. The new machines are only marginally better at detecting hidden nuclear material than monitors already at U.S. ports, but would cost more than twice as much, says the report released Wednesday. The Homeland Security Department, which oversees the development and deployment of the new machines, has already spent $235 million on them and could spend more than $1 billion. The new report echoes concerns raised by Congress and the Government Accountability Office about the government's next generation radiation detectors. Instead of purchasing more of the new machines, the government should deploy the devices it already has to ports and test them there, said the research council, part of the National Academy of Sciences. Rep. Brad Miller, chairman of a House subcommittee that is scheduled to hear testimony about the machines Thursday, said it's time to slow down. "We need to put the brakes on this program and thoroughly test and validate these new radiation monitors before we waste taxpayer money on a system that doesn't enhance our security," said Miller, D-N.C.
June 25, 2009 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - High Flux Isotope Reactor ready for restart - The High Flux Isotope Reactor is ready to be restarted Wednesday morning, following a productive maintenance period and refueling, ORNL's Ron Crone said today. "We got all the work done we wanted to and also were able to do a few more things on the experimental side," Crone said during a brief interview at Oak Ridge National Lab. Crone, the research reactors director, said, "We're making progress on two new cold neutron guides in the Guide Hall. In the next year, those instruments should be back in the program." At HFIR, there are 15 research instruments in different stages of development, nine of which are operational at this time, Crone said. The ORNL reactor was shut down June 6 for refueling. The time was used for some "corrective maintenance," including work on diesel generators and some additiional work on HFIR's cold source, Crone said. The restart is scheduled for Wednesday morning. It will begin with a 2 1/2-hour run at 10 percent power for experiments associated with the lab's neutron-activation analysis facility., Crone said. After that, the reactor will go to full power (85 megawatts), he said.
June 25, 2009 - Associated Press - 12 tons of bomb-grade uranium to be made into fuel - The government on Tuesday ordered 12 tons of bomb-grade uranium converted into commercial reactor fuel as backup in case another source of fuel from weapon ingredients is delayed. The highly enriched uranium, already declared surplus for the nation's nuclear arsenal, will come from the vast storage vaults at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge. The material will be converted or "down-blended" at the Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Erwin, Tenn., into about 220 tons of low-enriched uranium suitable for commercial reactors. The work will begin this year and be completed in 2012. The uranium will be shipped to Westinghouse Electric Co.'s Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina and held in reserve for utilities contracting for reactor fuel from a plutonium mixed-oxide processing plant being built at the Savannah River Site. The $4.8 billion mixed-oxide facility at Savannah River is scheduled to open in 2016. The program is on time to this point, officials said. But "should there be a delay down the line in fabricating the stuff, the low-enriched uranium (from Nuclear Fuel Services) could be used to assure fuel supply" to participating utilities, said National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Damien Lavera. The low-enriched uranium is "the fallback, the backup plan," he said.
June 25, 2009 - Tri-City Herald - Inelegant inaction by Obama on Yucca - As we have seen with his handling of some bailout funds and with the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, President Obama has not allowed his presidency to become a prisoner of his campaign. At least not entirely. But there is at least one exception, where sticking by his campaign promise is stifling economic and energy progress in this and 38 other states. Candidate Obama gave nuclear power only an "on second thought" consideration, and that tepid support was chilled by his campaign pledge to end the Yucca Mountain project. Maybe Yucca Mountain isn't the perfect solution to store nuclear wastes from Hanford, other Department of Energy sites and the nation's commercial nuclear power plants, including Energy Northwest's reactor in north Richland. But it doesn't have to be perfect, only safe. Billions of public dollars have been spent on scientific research aimed at answering the safety question. By the time the licensing process is completed, the nuclear repository likely will be the most thoroughly studied engineering project in history. Absent any valid technical reasons to stop it, progress on the national repository ought to continue without political interference. So why is Yucca Mountain's completion as a nuclear repository off the table as a site for storing nuclear waste? This storage is a promise made by the U.S. government to its people, who include the investors in nuclear power plants and power users who have been paying for a repository.
June 24, 2009 - San Antonio Express-News - Foes unroll list of 28 objections to nuke-plant - When NRG Energy submitted its application to the federal government to build two new nuclear power plants in this coastal town, it didn't account for the possibility the plant could be rammed by a large passenger jet. As of March, planning for such a horrendous event is required for new nuclear reactors. The fact that it was left out of the initial application is among 28 objections being voiced by a coalition of local residents and Austin-based environmental groups fighting the reactors. Those groups are arguing their case to a panel of judges with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board at a two-day hearing Tuesday and today. The hearing is their shot at influencing the federal permitting process. They're hoping at least one of their objections prompts the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to open a formal investigation into the proposed permit, slowing and possibly even killing the process of approving the nuclear plant. “The number of flaws is an indication of just how many problems we and our experts have found with the application,” said Tom Smith of the consumer advocacy and environmental group Public Citizen.
June 24, 2009 - UPI - Sen. Bennett calls for more nuke plants - Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, says the future of U.S. energy is in building more nuclear plants. Bennett said Monday at a hearing he organized in Washington, attended only by Republicans, that the country must build at least 100 more nuclear plants by 2030, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. There are now 104. "It's been my experience and my position ... that one of the driving forces behind America's economic growth has been our access to cheap energy," Bennett said. "If we're going to survive in the kind of economy we want, we need to have access to cheap energy." Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said that if President Obama supports Iran using nuclear energy he should support it in the United States. Several experts invited to the hearing, all advocates of nuclear power, suggested the problem of nuclear waste will not be a major one. Ted Rockwell, a fellow at the American Nuclear Society and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, said the waste can be safely stored in ceramic jars.
June 24, 2009 - Star Phoenix - True public will must decide call to build reactor - Jim Harding, the retired environmental studies professor who has been leading the campaign to squelch any attempts to expand the uranium industry in Saskatchewan, is talking tough these days. Hot on the heels of a Globe and Mail feature story on Premier Brad Wall's provincial and national popularity, the anti-nuke enthusiast is warning the premier that he'll face the wrath of the people if the government advances a proposal to make Saskatchewan the national centre of excellence in nuclear research and a source of medical isotopes. "We have an election in two years and if this government tries to ram this through, people won't forget it when they go to the polls," Mr. Harding told the Toronto paper. Premier Wall, who seems well versed in former British prime minister Harold Wilson's observation that a week is a long time in politics, consistently has been circumspect about all the national media attention over his popularity and over his campaign promise to add value to Saskatchewan's uranium industry.
June 24, 2009 - North Lake Tahoe Bonanza - Small fee for radon tests beginning in July - It's odorless, colorless and tasteless. It kills more people than secondhand smoke, drunken driving, drowning or home fires. It's radon, and it could be in your home. Radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas created by the decay of uranium, can seep into homes through foundation cracks, plumbing and utility openings. Once trapped in a home, it can accumulate to harmful levels and cause lung cancer. Since 2003, 166 homes in Incline Village and nine homes in Crystal Bay have been tested for radon, according to records reported to the Nevada Radon Education Program. Of those, 30 percent of the Incline homes and 44 of the Crystal Bay homes showed elevated radon levels. About 26 percent of homes tested statewide (4,990) showed elevated levels. Incline Village and Crystal Bay's higher levels may be due to the area's mountainous and granitic nature, said Susan Roberts, program director of the Nevada Radon Education Program. “It makes it very important to make sure that your family is safe and that your house does not have elevated radon levels,” Roberts said.
June 24, 2009 - New York Times - Radiation Reality: Poisoned to Be Cured - My radiation therapy for prostate cancer ended in late January, but I still think about it a lot and am still trying to put it in some kind of perspective. The radiation is no longer working on my body, but it preys on my mind. The thing that sticks with me most is how industrial the whole process is. Even the phrase “salvage radiation” – used because the radiation came after surgery to remove my prostate – reinforces that sense of the industrial. Each day, as I lay in the TomoTherapy Hi-Art machine, tens of thousands of narrow beamlets were aimed at my pelvis: 200 centigrays of radiation for 340.5 seconds. All this was on my mind this week as I read a New York Times article about medical mistakes involving radioactive seed implants for men with prostate cancer. Radiation therapy (of any kind) denies the cliché that we patients battle cancer. We are merely the battlefield, where the oncologists and the disease do their down-and-dirty work. All you can hope for is that you don’t get caught in the middle of any friendly fire. You understand right away that the big red emergency kill switches throughout the TomoTherapy room are your friend.
June 24, 2009 - Northumberland Today - W-Fivewins award for 'junk journalism' - Folks in Port Hope were upset last November when the CTV show W-Five aired what has been termed "an outrageous bit of junk journalism" by the Financial Post. They awarded their first Media Rubber Duck Award to CTV and its investigative journalism show, W-Five. The Post article claimed that last November W-Five "visually dropped an atom bomb on Port Hope", implying in the episode, What Lies Beneath, that residents were suffering from nuclear fallout that was making people sick. The Post claimed W-Five dropped "junk science reports and scaremongering speculation" that made Port Hope out to be a nuclear-laced community whose waters and grounds were polluted, with elevated levels of uranium said to have been found in urine samples, that were linked to elevated death rates and diseases of the "lung, brain/sinus, esophageal, lip, bone and colorectal" variety. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) issued a comprehensive review of all the environmental and health issues surrounding Port Hope earlier this year. The synthesis of more than 40 studies gave Port Hope a clean bill of health. Port Hope asked CTV to retract the W-Five episode last November, but was refused. Malcolm Fox, executive producer of W-Five, claims What Lies Beneath did not investigate any kind of science pertaining to radiation and health, so they didn't deserve the Rubber Duck Award for Junk Science. "In fact, the program reported on divisions within the community and the differences of opinion held by some residents regarding the effects of the town's nuclear industry. Both sides of this issue were fairly presented," Fox wrote in his reply to thePost.
June 24, 2009 - News-Herald Opinion - An ion Perry nuke plant - Down in Ohio south of Columbus, Duke Energy's proposed Piketon Nuclear Power Plant could be the state's third such generator 20 years of light-up time from now. Piketon would follow FirstEnergy's nuke plants on the Lake Erie fission shoreline of Port Clinton in Huron County and North Perry Village in Lake County. The latter two are often praised in glowing terms by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Atomic Energy Commission. But the infusion of both existing plants could be expired and defused by Piketon's towering rise for maybe $11 billion. With no nuke plants in Port Clinton or North Perry by that time, what would empower the air conditioning, lamp, stove and electricity in Northeast Ohio in the 2020s? Well, uh, currently speaking, such power could remain only as aging coal-generated smokestacks lumped together in Painesville and Eastlake in Lake County and in Cleveland, etc., for Cuyahoga County. But consider the NRA-lit fusioning implosive power of a mushroom plant of a North Perry tower sprouted out of Lake Erie as a "boiling water reactor," or BWR. Sound like enough confusion? The Perry plant was built for $6 billion decades ago. It is what the NRC calls "one of the largest thermal BWRs in the United States" as the reactor pumps boiling water from the lake. The plant is there in a 10-mile evacuation route in Lake, Geauga and Ashtabula counties around the village site. The still-safe nuke plant isn't as resonant as the atomic bomb bursts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
June 24, 2009 - Houston Chronicle - Reactor foes question application - When NRG Energy submitted its application to the federal government to build two new nuclear power plants in this coastal town, it didn’t account for the possibility the plant could be rammed by a large passenger jet. As of March, planning for such a horrendous event is required for new reactors. The fact that it was left out of the initial application is among 28 objections being voiced by a coalition of local residents and Austin-based environmental groups fighting the reactors. Those groups are arguing their case to a panel of judges with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board at a two-day hearing that continues Wednesday. They’re hoping at least one of their objections sticks and prompts the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to open a formal investigation into the proposed permit, slowing or possibly even killing the approval process. “The number of flaws is an indication of just how many problems we and our experts have found with the application,” said Tom Smith of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. Included in arguments Tuesday were issues dealing with the potential impact of global warming on the water supply the plants need for cooling, the potential of the plants to pollute the groundwater with radioactive tritium and the lack of a long-term solution for storing spent nuclear fuel.
June 24, 2009 - Times Herald-Record - Used fuel stuck inside reactor at Indian Point - The Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan needs special permission from the federal government to shuffle around some highly radioactive used fuel in an unprecedented manner. In a meeting last week with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, plant officials explained their dilemma: Reactor Unit 3 is almost out of storage space for spent fuel — large rods of plutonium and uranium that have lost their juice but not their hazard. To keep operating, the plant needs to hoist that fuel out of the pool and move it to a longer-term storage site on the property. Problem is: there's no room inside the building for a crane large enough to lift the fuel. The waste is, for all intents and purposes, stuck inside. How did this happen? "When they built these fuel storage buildings in the '70s, they installed cranes that could handle about 40 tons," said Jerry Nappi, spokesman for Indian Point. "The thinking was that it was more than enough capacity to take the fuel out at small intervals." Then the plan was to turn it over to the federal government for permanent storage in a repository. But no national dump exists, and plans to build one are stalled indefinitely. Meanwhile, storage pools at many nuclear plants are near capacity. With no place to ship their waste, nuclear companies nationwide are devising ways to store used fuel on site.
June 24, 2009 - Grand Junction Free Press - Officials want to take a closer look at Rulison blast site - Garfield County officials believe the best way to gauge the Rulison nuclear blast site's potential danger is to get in close and drill, inside the half-mile boundary set by the U.S. Department of Energy as the closest that drilling should be allowed. But the DOE has yet to respond to the idea, which was first suggested to a federal official more than a year ago. The Rulison blast site is where, in 1969, the U.S. Department of Energy detonated a 43-kiloton atomic device at a depth of 8,426 feet in an effort to free up deeply buried fields of natural gas and oil. The blast, which took place about 30 miles west of Glenwood Springs, was hailed as a potential peaceful use for nuclear energy. The blast produced less gas than expected when it fractured the sandstone formations, though, and the gas that was produced was unusable because it was radioactive, and the contamination could not be removed. The Garfield County commissioners, along with several Colorado congressmen, recently asked the DOE to determine how close drillers can come safely to the radioactive cavern created by the blast. Judy Jordan, the county's liaison to the oil and gas companies, noted that “the DOE seems ... real comfortable with doing a lot of modeling without any empirical data” obtained directly from tests at the site. “That's not how we approach things from a public-health protection standpoint,” she added, referring to Garfield County's preference for testing at the site to determine how far radioactive materials might have migrated from the blast chamber itself, which Jordan said is about 350 feet across.
June 24, 2009 - Tri-City Herald - Inelegant inaction by Obama on Yucca - As we have seen with his handling of some bailout funds and with the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, President Obama has not allowed his presidency to become a prisoner of his campaign. At least not entirely. But there is at least one exception, where sticking by his campaign promise is stifling economic and energy progress in this and 38 other states. Candidate Obama gave nuclear power only an "on second thought" consideration, and that tepid support was chilled by his campaign pledge to end the Yucca Mountain project. Maybe Yucca Mountain isn't the perfect solution to store nuclear wastes from Hanford, other Department of Energy sites and the nation's commercial nuclear power plants, including Energy Northwest's reactor in north Richland. But it doesn't have to be perfect, only safe. Billions of public dollars have been spent on scientific research aimed at answering the safety question. By the time the licensing process is completed, the nuclear repository likely will be the most thoroughly studied engineering project in history. Absent any valid technical reasons to stop it, progress on the national repository ought to continue without political interference. So why is Yucca Mountain's completion as a nuclear repository off the table as a site for storing nuclear waste? This storage is a promise made by the U.S. government to its people, who include the investors in nuclear power plants and power users who have been paying for a repository. Now a bipartisan congressional delegation, led by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., and joined by others from our state, including Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Democratic Reps. Norm Dicks, Jay Inslee, Rick Larsen and Brian Baird, are pressing for an answer.
June 24, 2009 - Gather - Support Nuclear Cleanup, Not Obsolete Fighter Jets - This week, the House Armed Services Committee made a decision that might seem commonplace in our highly-militarized nation: they shifted money around in the budget to fund the purchase of F-22 fighter jets. However, this is no ordinary decision. They want to take $322 million away from the fund to cleanup dangerous nuclear waste in order to pay Lockheed Martin for these planes. It gets worse. The Pentagon doesn’t even want these fighter jets because they were designed for use in a conflict with the Soviet Union. The US military already has 187 F-22s, which are viewed by many inside and outside of the military as obsolete and wasteful. Taking money away from the cleanup process underway at some of the nation’s nuclear weapons sites is inexcusable. Radioactive waste continues to cause harm to the environment and people in the surrounding communities. For example, in Hanford, Washington, barrels of highly radioactive waste are leaking into the ground and the water table. We as a nation cannot afford to continue ignoring the urgent need to clean up the mess left behind by nuclear weapons production. The US military budget is already at the highest level in history. To pad this bloated budget, especially at the expense of vital environmental cleanup, is shameful.
June 24, 2009 - Business Lexington - The Nuclear Option; As a new nuclear plant is proposed within miles of Kentucky, the commonwealth bars consideration of building one here - Less than 25 miles north of the Kentucky line on US 23, government and energy officials with strong ties to the commonwealth announced plans for a new power plant that when complete would provide carbon-free electricity to 1.5 million homes — including some possibly in Kentucky — even though building this type of power plant is forbidden by Kentucky law. Under a 1984 act of the legislature, state lawmakers placed a moratorium on the construction of any nuclear power plants in the state until a federal high level waste facility such as Yucca Mountain was available to store spent nuclear waste. And while the prohibition is still on in Kentucky, other states are moving forward with plans to bring the much maligned energy source of the '70s and '80s back to life in an era when CO2 emissions are coming under threat of taxation due to environmental concerns. "You have to be almost a Neanderthal today to deny the fact that human activity is involved in global warming," said Ohio Governor Ted Strickland who, along with fellow UK graduate and Duke Energy CEO James Rogers, announced plans for the new 1,600-megawatt nuclear power plant along the Scioto River in Piketon, Ohio. "Nuclear power does not solve the problem of global warming but I think it should be a part of the answer," said Strickland, who spent around a decade in the Bluegrass receiving an undergrad degree in history from Asbury before attending the Asbury Theological Seminary and UK for postgraduate work.
June 24, 2009 - Courthouse News Service - Radioactive Waste Disposal - The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, in the Chihuahuan Desert, outside Carlsbad, New Mexico, is facing recertification by the Environmental Protection Agency as meeting agency standards for internment of radioactive waste, and the EPA requests public comment. This year marks the second time the WIPP will face EPA certification since it began disposal operations in March 1999. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant uses a continuous miner to carve disposal rooms out of the Permian Salt Formation, nearly a half mile below the surface where the rags, uniforms, tools and other radioactive waste generated by the nation's defense-related nuclear program are to be stored, forever. The Salt Formation acts as a natural barrier to the plutonium contaminated waste, and the area is free of underground rivers and significant seismic activity. The WIPP is operated by the Department of Energy through Washington TRU Solutions, a waste disposal contractor.
June 24, 2009 - Deseret Morning News - Utah appeals ruling on Italian nuclear waste - State attorneys officially filed notice of their appeal of a federal court ruling which said EnergySolutions Inc. falls outside the regulatory purview of the Northwest Interstate Compact. The appeal of the May ruling had been anticipated for weeks, in light of U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart's decision that dealt a blow to the state and compact's efforts to block EnergySolutions' plan to import low-level radioactive waste from Italy. The waste, intended for disposal at the company's 439-acre facility in Tooele County's west desert, would occupy 4.3 acres of the total site and is no more "hot" than waste the site currently accepts, company officials have said. Still, vehement opposition by the state, watchdog groups and the compact led to the federal court battle that played out this year in a set of two separate rulings by Stewart, delivering victory to EnergySolutions on both fronts. First, in February, Stewart agreed with the company's contention that it is not considered a "regional disposal facility" envisioned by the U.S. government when it created regional compacts to exercise oversight of those type of sites. Second, Stewart then had to decide if the compact's regulatory controls still extended to facilities outside of that classification and to waste generated outside a compact's regional boundaries.
June 24, 2009 - MIT Technology Review - A nuclear expert on life after Yucca - In 1982, the U.S. government formally accepted the dirty job of finding a place to dispose of highly radioactive nuclear waste, including spent reactor fuel, which will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. Five years later, Congress directed the U.S. Department of Energy to begin seriously investigating a single site--Yucca Mountain, NV--as a permanent geological repository. But earlier this year, with 60,000 metric tons of spent fuel clogging storage facilities at power plants, the Obama administration announced that it would cut Yucca's funding and seek alternatives. Allison Macfarlane, a geologist at George Mason University and the editor of Uncertainty Underground: Yucca Mountain and the Nation's High-Level Nuclear Waste, is a leading technical expert on nuclear-waste disposal who recently sat on a National Research Council committee evaluating the Department of Energy's nuclear-power R&D programs. She spoke with David Talbot, Technology Review's chief correspondent, about the future of nuclear waste--and what it means for the future of nuclear power. TR: You are known as a Yucca critic. Does this mean you oppose nuclear power? Allison Macfarlane: Not at all. From the point of view of climate change, we absolutely, definitely need nuclear power. TR: Only last year, the Bush administration filed the necessary application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct Yucca. Now Obama's energy secretary, Steven Chu, says Yucca is "off the table." Is it really unsuitable? AM: Yes. The area is seismically and volcanically active. More significantly, the repository would have an oxidizing environment--meaning materials there would be exposed to free oxygen in the air. Neither spent nuclear fuel nor canister materials are stable in such an environment in the presence of water. The United States is the only country that is considering a repository in an oxidizing environment.
June 24, 2009 - Huffington Post - Internal Memo: Nuclear Power Company Could Make A Billion A Year From Climate Change Law - Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power company, stands to rake in roughly an extra $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year if the House climate change bill passes, according to the company's own estimates. The House is expected to vote on the bill on Friday. A memo produced for Exelon by Bernstein Research, and obtained by the Huffington Post, reports that Exelon CEO John Rowe recently told a gathering of investors and senior executives that the energy bill "will add $700 to $750 million to Exelon's annual revenues for every $10 per metric ton (MT) increase in the price of CO2 allowances." Prices will range between $15 and $18 per metric ton, the report estimates, "implying a positive earnings impact of $1 to $1.30 per share." Exelon, with a major presence in Illinois, was an early backer of President Barack Obama's. "Barack has one of his biggest supporters in terms of funding, the Exelon Corporation, which has spent millions of dollars trying to make Yucca Mountain the waste depository," then-rival Sen. Hillary Clinton noted in a debate in January 2008 in Nevada, a charge PolitiFact deemed "mostly true," noting that in fact Obama, like Clinton, did not in fact support the Yucca Mountain project.
June 23, 2009 - Earth Times - German six-year-olds cause alarm with atomic reactor game - The emergency services in a north-western German town were placed on high alert after two six-year-olds built a toy atomic reactor complete with radioactivity warning signs, the police said on Tuesday. The two boys in the town of Oelde had set up bits of computer casing on the pavement and attached a radioactivity warning sign downloaded from the internet, before heading home for a rest. When the kids reappeared to play with their toy reactor, the surrounding area had been sealed off. Emergency alerts were issued on the radio, warning neighbours not to leave their homes after a passer-by had spotted the suspicious contraption on Monday evening. The fire brigade eventually gave the all-clear, after they failed to detect a radioactive reading. The children's parents had initially assumed an emergency drill was underway. When they read on the internet about the actual cause of the deployment, they confessed to the police that their young sons had caused the alarm.
June 23, 2009 - New York Times - Radiation Treatment: Tell Us Your Stories - Sometimes radioactive treatments for cancer damage healthy body parts. This week, a New York Times article revealed a series of mistakes involving radioactive seed implants used to treat men with prostate cancer. Federal investigators are looking into flawed implants at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs hospital and other V.A. hospitals, including hospitals in Jackson, Miss., and Cincinnati. Have you been treated with radioactive seeds or another form of radiation therapy? Did you have unexpected side effects, pain or other problems after treatment? We want to hear from you. Please join the discussion below and tell us about your experiences with radiation therapy for cancer.
June 23, 2009 - Petrosky News-Review - Hospital cuts cardiac CT radiation - The radiation dose for a diagnostic scan of the heart and blood vessels was cut on average by more than half for almost 5,000 patients through a Michigan quality improvement project with no effect on image quality. In collaboration with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, a group of 15 Michigan hospitals worked together on the first multi-center trial to establish that cardiac CT radiation doses can be reduced by more than 50 percent, dramatically lowering the exposure risk for patients. The joint program designed to increase patient safety now has 35 participating hospitals, including Northern Michigan Regional Hospital in Petoskey. The project not only involved 15 hospitals working together in the first multi-center trial of its kind, it also included heart specialists and radiologists working side by side. “We report patient data and the dosing and other data requirements to be part of the regional database,” said Steven Cross, director of imaging services at Northern Michigan Regional Hospital in Petoskey. “We are already using very low protocols because our scanner is already a lower radiation producing scanner but we are looking forward to potentially using the doses from these findings.” Known as heart CT angiography, or coronary computed tomography angiography, the procedure has a 90-percent success rate in diagnosing heart disease. It is especially useful in identifying whether low-risk patients with symptoms do, in fact, have heart disease.
June 23, 2009 - Reuters - EU to extend checks on food from Chernobyl area - The European Union plans to extend strict radioactivity checks by 10 years on food imports from areas affected by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster due to continuing nuclear contamination, a document showed on Monday. The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, first restricted imports just days after the accident in April 1986, with laws that have been successively updated since then. The current legislation runs out on March 31, 2010. In a draft law to be submitted to EU countries, the Commission said the radioactive caesium contamination of certain farm products originating in countries most affected by the accident still exceeded maximum permitted levels. "A number of products originating from species living and growing in natural and semi-natural areas may present high levels of caesium-137 contamination and the reduction with time of these levels in these products ... relates to the physical half-life of that radionuclide, which is 30 years," it said. Products affected by the EU controls include many live animals such as horses, pigs, cows, poultry, sheep and goats, as well as meats and edible offal, birds' eggs, dairy products, sausages, natural honey, non-cultivated mushrooms, and certain wild berries and fruits like cranberries and bilberries.
June 23, 2009 - The Times - Mobile phones for children: a boon or a peril? - In a world where everyone is busy texting and chatting, more and more parents believe that their little ones should join the fun. In spite of dire warnings about the long-term harm that mobile phone use may wreak on young children’s mental and physical health, we have just passed the tipping point: more than half of British children aged between 5 and 9 own a mobile phone. Now, in this rapidly expanding market, a major network is about to adopt a range of kiddie-phones designed for children as young as 4, with claims that its handsets are safer and smarter. But can there be any sense in texting toddlers? Health concerns about the impact of mobile phone use on adults’ brains may have largely subsided but government guidelines still warn that children’s vulnerable grey matter should be protected. Professor Lawrie Challis, an emeritus professor of physics who has led the Government’s mobile-phone safety research, says that parents should not give children phones before secondary school. After that, they should encourage them to text rather than to make calls, as texting exposes their brains to lower levels of electromagnetic radiation. “We have no idea if they are different in reaction to this sort of radio frequency,” says Challis, “but there are reasons why they may be — children react differently to ionising radiation, radioactivity and gamma rays. If you are exposed to too much sunlight as a child, you are far more likely to get skin cancer than if you are exposed as an adult.”
June 23, 2009 - Beaver County Times - State to distribute new pills designed for use in nuclear accident - The Pennsylvania Department of Health is gearing up for a mid-August distribution of new potassium iodide pills to residents living or working near one of the state’s five nuclear power plants, including Beaver Valley Units 1 and 2 in Shippingport. For Beaver County, according to health department Stacey Kriedemann, that means the pills will be distributed through the health department’s office on Walnut Street in Vanport Township, behind the McDonald’s restaurant. The exact dates will be announced later. The pills are designed to prevent thyroid cancer in the case of a radioactive emergency by flooding the thyroid with “good” iodine, which would stop the thyroid from absorbing “bad” iodine. The pills first were distributed in August 2002. The state received 1.9 million tablets to distribute to more than 650,000 people within the 10-mile zones of the five nuclear plants in Pennsylvania. The pills that were given out in 2002 carried an expiration date of 2007. However, in July 2007, the state health department released a letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration saying that as long as the pills were stored properly, in a dry place without excessive heat or cold, the shelf life could be another two years. Local residents who picked up the pills in 2002 expressed their concerns about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks nearly a year earlier.
June 23, 2009 - Bay Area IndyMedia - UC Berkeley to Demolish Radioactive Building, Send Down University Ave - The demolition of the Bevatron, a.k.a. Building 51 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), is scheduled to begin in July. Demolition will include the removal of radioactive, hazardous, and non-hazardous waste totaling an estimated 4700 truckloads. Removal of waste will begin with 5 trucks a day, leading up to a planned 20 trucks a day by the end of July. Waste removal will take an estimated 3.5 years. According to the LBNL website (lbl.gov), 1000-1200 truckloads of the 4700 "may contain hazardous or radioactive material." Activists and concerned citizens are leery of the possible public health repercussions of demolishing and transporting such a large amount of hazardous and radioactive material right down the middle of Berkeley via University Ave on its way to the freeway and disposal sites. Not to mention the fact that the City of Berkeley, since 1986, has prohibited all activity related to nuclear weapons and energy through the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act. According to resident Pamela Sihvola, cited in a June 29th 2006 SF Chronicle article, the Bevatron was "the very first nuclear lab established in the country" and "played a significant role in the development of nuclear weapons." This would not be the first time the City of Berkeley has reneged on the NFB Act. In February, the City allowed the library to grant a contract to 3M, a notorious nuclear-weapons-supporting company, for the maintenance of its checkout machines.
June 23, 2009 - iAfrica - Nuclear fusion power soon - An experimental reactor that could harness nuclear fusion, the power that fuels the Sun, will begin operation in southern France in 2018, the project's governing body announced recently. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) should be fully operational in 2026, the ITER Council said in a communique after a meeting in Japan. The seven-nation council endorsed a "phased" completion of the multi-billion-dollar reactor, with a target date for "first plasma" by the end of 2018. ITER is designed to produce 500 megawatts of power for extended periods, 10 times the energy needed to keep the energy-generating plasma — a form of radioactive gas — at extremely high temperatures. It will also test a number of key technologies for fusion including the heating, control and remote maintenance that will be needed for a full-scale fusion power station. Preliminary trials would use only hydrogen. Key experiments using tritium and deuterium that can validate fusion as a producer of large amounts of power would not take place until 2026.
June 23, 2009 - Medical News Today - At Veterans Affairs Hospital, A Rogue Cancer Unit - The New York Times reports that a "rogue cancer unit" at a veteran's hospital in Philadelphia "operated with virtually no outside scrutiny and botched 92 of 116 [prostate] cancer treatments over a span of more than six years - and then kept quiet about it, according to interviews with investigators, government officials and public records." Dr. Gary D. Kao-- was responsible for almost all of the errors, which occurred during a "common surgical procedure" in which a doctor "implants dozens of radioactive seeds to attack the prostate cancer. "The team continued implants for a year even though the equipment that measured whether patients received the proper radiation dose was broken. The radiation safety committee at the Veterans Affairs hospital knew of this problem but took no action, records show." The cancer unit lacked peer review, and "the VA's radiation safety program; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates the use of all nuclear materials; and the Joint Commission, a group that accredited the hospital, all failed to intervene; either their inspections had been limited or they had not acted decisively upon finding problems." "Federal investigators are continuing to look into the flawed implants as well as those at other VA hospitals. The Philadelphia prostate unit was closed after problems began to surface in mid-2008, and it has yet to reopen. The VA has also suspended the implants, known as brachytherapy, at hospitals in Jackson, Miss., and Cincinnati, though neither had problems on a scale of Philadelphia's" (Bogdanich, 6/20).
June 23, 2009 - Salt Lake Tribune - State will fight radioactive waste ruling - Utah is joining the fight to stop EnergySolutions Inc. from burying large volumes of foreign radioactive waste in its Tooele County landfill. The paperwork has not been filed yet, but the state's plans to appeal were revealed in papers filed last week in Washington. Last month U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart ruled that the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-level Radioactive Waste had no authority over EnergySolutions' Utah disposal site. And there has been some question whether the state of Utah, which is a Northwest Compact member, would join an appeal of that ruling. Stewart's ruling, in effect, crimps Utah's power through the compact to control the low-level radioactive waste that goes to EnergySolutions, including the leftovers from cleaning up Italy's dismantled nuclear reactors that the company wants to import. Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. aligned the state with the compact. But Huntsman has been nominated to become U.S. ambassador to China and is expected to be replaced soon by Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, whose views on the lawsuit are unknown. Papers filed last week at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission say Utah, along with the Northwest and Rocky Mountain compacts, intends to appeal Stewart's ruling. "The defendants ... will appeal the district's decision to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals," the papers say. Bill Sinclair, deputy director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, said Monday he had no comment on the possible appeal. But indications are that the state's appeal could be filed as soon as Tuesday [June 23]. The Northwest and three-state Rocky Mountain compacts must file their appeals within 30 days of Stewart's final judgment, which was issued Wednesday.
June 23, 2009 - BBC News - Missing for 50 years - US nuclear bomb - More than 50 years after a 7,600lb (3,500kg) nuclear bomb was dropped in US waters following a mid-air military collision, the question of whether the missing weapon still poses a threat remains. In his own mind, retired 87-year-old Colonel Howard Richardson is a hero responsible for one of the most extraordinary displays of aeronautic skill in the history of the US Air Force. His view carries a lot of weight and he has a large number of supporters - including the Air Force itself which honoured his feat with a Distinguished Flying Cross. But to others, he is little short of a villain: the man who 50 years ago dropped a nuclear bomb in US waters, a bomb nobody has been able to find and make safe. Shortly after midnight on 5 February 1958, Howard Richardson was on a top-secret training flight for the US Strategic Air Command. It was the height of the Cold War and the young Major Richardson's mission was to practise long-distance flights in his B-47 bomber in case he was ordered to fly from Homestead Air Force Base in Florida to any one of the targets the US had identified in Russia. The training was to be as realistic as possible, so on board was a single massive H-bomb - the nuclear weapon he might one day be instructed to drop to start World War III.
June 23, 2009 - Associated Press - Piketon uranium plant at risk without federal loan guarantee - A company’s plans to build a uranium enrichment plant in southern Ohio are in jeopardy without a $2 billion federal loan guarantee, The Columbus Dispatch reported Sunday. USEC Inc., based in Bethesda, Md., is developing the American Centrifuge project on the site of a former gaseous diffusion plant in Piketon. The company applied for the loan guarantee 10 months ago under a U.S. Department of Energy program launched by former President George W. Bush. Without the loan guarantee, USEC won’t be able to obtain private financing, officials said. The delay is adding to the project’s overall cost, which is about $3.5 billion, USE spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle told The Dispatch. The company has spent about $1.4 billion so far, including the construction of a new facility. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has said he intends to speed up the process of approving loan guarantees, but only one has been issued. In late March, Chu’s department signed off on a $535 million loan guarantee for a solar-panel manufacturing plant to be built by California-based Solyndra. USEC’s project, announced five years ago, is supposed to open in 2011 and employ about 400. Enriched uranium from the plant would be used in generating electricity at nuclear power plants.
June 23, 2009 - Heartland Institute - Minnesota Edges Closer to Ending Moratorium on Nuclear Power - The Minnesota Senate gave bipartisan approval to a bill that would lift a 15-year-old ban on the construction of new nuclear power plants in the state. The bill was narrowly defeated, 70-62, in the House, but the result marked strong progress in a longstanding effort to return nuclear power to Minnesota’s energy portfolio. State Sen. Mike Jungbauer (R-East Bethel), one of the original proponents of the provision, praised the Senate for acting. “I was pleased to see so many of my fellow senators on the other side of the aisle support this amendment,” Jungbauer said. “Now we can move forward and have a real discussion about the future of nuclear power in this state.” Jungbauer first introduced legislation two years ago to lift the ban. He said the strong support for the measure in the Democrat-controlled Senate showed his colleagues recognize the excellent safety record of nuclear power. In addition, he noted, nuclear power is absolutely necessary for the state to meet its carbon dioxide emission reduction goals in a relatively affordable manner. “If we are insistent on reducing our carbon footprint, nuclear power has to be part of the equation. After all, it has zero carbon emissions,” Jungbauer said.
June 23, 2009 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - Alexander, Bunning aim to protect nuclear workers' claims - Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., joined Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., to introduce legislation designed to protect the claims of nuclear workers and their families. The bill would ensure that the families of nuclear workers who die before their claim is paid would still receive compensation. From a press release: "Jim Bunning has been the real leader in providing compensation to dedicated nuclear workers who were so instrumental in our Cold War victory," said Alexander. "Tennessee has more workers who were made sick through their exposure to nuclear weapon hazards than any other state in the union--nearly 20,000 cases. We should not allow an inefficient bureaucracy to run out the clock through a claims process that takes so long that our Cold War heroes are dying before their claims are processed, leaving their families with reduced compensation--or none at all." The bill, according to the release, "is needed to address cases in which sick former nuclear workers and their eligible survivors die during a claims process that can take years to complete, resulting in reduced or no compensation for family members."
June 23, 2009 - KIFI - Hazardous Materials Team Stabilizes Drum - An Idaho National Laboratory hazardous materials team has successfully depressurized a bulging drum that was identified Monday at the Advanced Test Reactor Complex's water treatment facility. The team was able to remove the lid and release the excess pressure. The 55-gallon drum contains a biocide that is used to destroy algae in the water piped into the Advanced Test Reactor's cooling systems. Other biocide drums in the vicinity were inspected and were not a concern. The drum and its contents are not radioactive. The biocide arrived recently and has not been used in the Advanced Test Reactor cooling system. No radioactive or hazardous materials were released. No injuries were reported and no evacuations ordered. Neither employees nor the public was in danger. The cause of the over pressurization is not known. An investigation has been initiated to determine what caused the excess pressure to build.
June 23, 2009 - Deseret Morning News - Bennett calling for 100 new N-plants - Senate Republicans led by Utah Sen. Bob Bennett called Monday for building 100 new nuclear plants in the United States over the next 20 years. They say that would help reduce global warming just as much as the "cap and trade" proposals by Democrats to cut greenhouse-gas-causing, carbon-based energy such as coal or oil but would still provide cheap power needed to keep the U.S. economy vibrant. "One of the driving forces behind America's economic growth for the last 100 years has been our access to what we call cheap energy," Bennett said as he chaired a Senate Republican Conference hearing on nuclear energy that featured nuclear scientists, economists and witnesses from business groups. "If we're going to survive in the kind of economy we want, we have to have continued access to cheap energy," he said. Bennett then asked the GOP-invited experts where such cheap energy could come from while also fighting global warming, and they each pointed to nuclear energy. Such response was not a surprise, as Republicans had large posters behind Bennett during the hearing saying, "The climate-change debate: 100 new nuclear plants or new national energy tax," and "100 new nuclear plants in 20 years: Why we should do it."
June 23, 2009 - Heartland Institute - Yucca Mountain Construction Involves Multiple Safeguards - We are a long way from storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but when we do, the facilities will look much like the underground bunker in a James Bond film, where a nefarious villain hides out while plotting to blow up the world. The facilities will be that hidden, remote, and reinforced. Even the above-ground facilities will be impressive. The buildings on the surface outside the main tunnel entrance at Yucca Mountain will house the facilities needed to prepare radioactive materials for disposal. Some of these buildings will be the size of sports arenas—400 feet long and several stories high. Buildings in which nuclear materials are processed will be designed to withstand major earthquakes, tornadoes, and acts of sabotage. The United States has an exemplary history of safe transportation of nuclear materials. Since the 1960s the nation has conducted safely more than 3,000 shipments of spent nuclear fuel, traveling more than 1.7 million miles, without any harmful release of radioactive material. For all shipments of such waste to the repository, the U.S. Department of Energy would use extremely durable, massive transportation casks built according to designs certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). To be certified, casks must be designed to withstand severe accidents without releasing their radioactive contents.
June 22, 2009 - Korea Times - Man Nabbed for Selling Fake 'X-Ray' Glasses - A 39-year-old man was arrested for selling fake ``X-ray'' glasses through several Web sites, police said Monday. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said it arrested the man, identified as Chung, on suspicions of selling fake made-in-China see-through glasses to 13 people and reaping nearly 6 million won ($4,700) in illegal gains. He was taken into custody, it said. He sold the glasses for 550,000 won apiece. It also said he had 14 previous offenses on his criminal record. Among the 15 Web sites promoting the X-ray glasses, six were under his control, police said. Recently, spam mail and online ads touting X-ray glasses that see through clothes have drawn public attention. But police and scientists were skeptical of their efficacy. The X-ray glasses are also being sold in China, according to Chinese media.
June 22, 2009 - Philadelphia Inquirer - Phila. VA errors went uncorrected for years - Almost as soon as the Philadelphia VA Medical Center began offering radiation seed therapy to prostate cancer patients in 2002, questions arose about the quality of the treatment, federal investigators said. Yet it wasn't until a year ago that anything happened. The Philadelphia VA suspended the "brachytherapy" treatment program and began examining whether more than 100 veterans had received inadequate radiation doses. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees such radiation therapy, launched an investigation and published some results this month in the Federal Register. In recent news reports, the extent of the problems with the brachytherapy program became public. Of 92 mismanaged cases, 57 men got significantly less radiation than prescribed, and 35 received excessive doses, including 25 who received too much radiation to the rectum. NRC investigators found numerous systemwide problems at the Philadelphia VA, among them: Brachytherapy clinicians had never been trained in how to define a medical error, or how to report such an event. Independent review of case records, a standard quality assurance measure, was nonexistent. Radiation safety monitors did quarterly audits, but did not detect problems. This all came out not because the NRC finished its inquiry; regulators return to the Philadelphia VA this week, and their report is expected this fall. Rather, the revelations emerged because an NRC advisory committee asked the agency for an update at its regular public meeting. Committee members had been hearing disturbing things about the Philadelphia VA's program. "The rumor came out through the radiation therapy community," Temple University nuclear physician Leon Malmud, the advisory panel chair, said in an interview yesterday. "Normally, we would not be informed until the NRC completes its investigation." By the end of the committee's May 7 meeting, a transcript shows, some of the 13 experts still couldn't fathom how recognized flaws went unreported, undocumented, and uncorrected - for six years.
June 22, 2009 - Gainesville Times - Radon educator says cancer-causing gas is common in Georgia homes - Though radon may sound like something from another planet, it’s actually a dangerous substance found throughout Hall County. Radon is a naturally occurring gas that is a product of the decay of uranium. "We’ve gotten enough data to know where some problematic areas are in Hall County," said Ginger Bennett, a radon educator with the University of Georgia’s Radon Education Program. Bennett said radon can come from soil and rocks and though it is found all over the U.S., it is common to North Georgia. "If your house sits on dirt, it’s most likely a question of how much, not a question of if you have radon," Bennett said. Exposure to high levels of radon is known to cause lung cancer. "It is the leading cause of lung cancer in nonsmokers," Bennett said. In 2007, officials estimate more than 800 people in Georgia died of cancer caused by radon exposure, though there is no definitive way to know what caused the cancer. "Of the Southern region, Georgia has the highest number of deaths believed attributable to radon," Bennett said.
June 22, 2009 - Hamilton Spectator - Isotope 101: Why instability is a good thing - There's plenty of worried talk and nervous hand-wringing about a worldwide shortage of medical isotopes. But what exactly are these chemical marvels, how are they made and how do they work? Think back to high school chemistry class and the items that make up the periodic table -- things like hydrogen and carbon and nitrogen, for example. All of the basic chemical elements are made up of atoms that contain protons, neutrons and electrons. The protons and neutrons are stuck together in the nucleus of the atom, while the electrons fly around the outside of the nucleus. It's the number of protons in the nucleus that determines the element. So, an atom with one proton is hydrogen, for example. Carbon atoms have six protons. Oxygen has eight. Let's take carbon as an example. Normally, carbon has six neutrons to go with its six protons. Add them together and you get carbon-12. The six-proton, six-neutron version of carbon is its most stable form, and chemistry, like most of us, prefers stability to instability. But sometimes an element will have more than just its one stable form. Sometimes it will have other less stable forms, and sometimes these less stable forms don't last very long -- precisely because they are unstable.
June 22, 2009 - Cape Fear Business News - GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Encourages Congress to Support Development of Recycling Technology to Turn Used Nuclear Fuel into an Asset - As the White House and U.S. Congress create a new national strategy for managing used nuclear fuel, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) is encouraging lawmakers to support the research and development necessary for recycling nuclear fuel. Testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Science & Technology Committee on Wednesday, Lisa Price, a GEH senior vice president, briefed lawmakers on GEH’s proposed Advanced Recycling Center (ARC). The concept offers a timely solution to the industry’s most significant public policy and environmental challenges by turning used nuclear fuel into an asset. “The nation faces a choice today: We can continue down the same path we have been on for the last 30 years, or we can lead a transformation to a new, safer and more secure approach to nuclear energy,” said Price, GEH Senior Vice President for the Nuclear Fuel Cycle and CEO of Global Nuclear Fuel LLC. “We need an approach that brings the benefits of nuclear energy to the world while reducing concerns about nuclear waste.” As the only nuclear reactor vendor that is majority-owned by a U.S. company, GEH is offering the ARC, which would put U.S. technology to work to improve economic prosperity through job creation, enhance national security, help curb greenhouse gas emissions and provide a unique opportunity to regain the historical U.S. leadership position in nuclear science and technology.
June 22, 2009 - TVNZ - X-ray machine could help sheep farmers - New Zealand's sheep industry is about to start using a new x-ray machine which the developers say will help farmers deliver a better product to the dinner table. Lamb is a big export earner and New Zealand's biggest meat processor, Silver Fern Farms, is keen to find out which sheep breeds provide the best value for money. The company will use an x-ray machine to scan about 40 lambs per minute and provide a 3D image of each. It will record vital statistics like weight, the size of the different cuts, the number of ribs and eventually the meat, fat and bone ratios. Silver Fern Farms spokesman Keith Cooper says it is a technological breakthrough for the industry. "It's a first... in our view, its a first in the world" says Cooper. On Monday at the Paereora works near Timaru, Canterbury farmers got a demonstration. "If we can get more feedback on the lamb we're supplying the better it is. I think it's a good concept" says farmer John Gregan. For example the French rack is a very popular cut of lamb but no one really knows which type of sheep produces the best product. This technology can show which breed has the most ribs or which produces the leanest or fattiest meat. Silver Fern Farms says the x-ray machine will ensure farmers produce what consumers want. "Farmers need to take it, grasp it and make some on farm decisions to help themselves deliver sustainable returns" says Cooper.
June 22, 2009 - WFMZ-TV - PPL Appealing Assessment of Security Drill at Nuclear Power Plant - PPL says it is appealing the feds' take on a recent security exercise at its only nuclear power plant. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was behind the drill, in which it tries to gain unauthorized access into the facility. It took place in March at the PPL station on the Susquehanna River in Luzerne County, north of Berwick. Niether party has released the actual grade. If it was negative, that could result in more inspections and additional oversight. PPL says its Susquehanna plant is one of the most secure facilities in the country, if not the world.
June 22, 2009 - Associated Press - New detector not much better catching nuke matter - A government report coming out today says the next generation of radiation detectors for use at U.S. ports are only marginally better but cost more than twice as much. The machines are intended to prevent terrorists or criminals from smuggling a nuclear bomb or its explosive components into the U.S. hidden in a cargo container. The monitors now in use can detect the presence of radiation, but they cannot distinguish between threatening and nonthreatening material, like ceramics and kitty litter. While capable of making that distinction and better at detecting lightly shielded material, the Government Accountability Office report says the new machines perform no better when radiological and nuclear materials are hidden in lead. The report raises the question whether the new machines, at about $822,000 each, are worth the cost. The current ones cost about $308,000. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said the administration is not asking for money to purchase these machines in 2010.
June 22, 2009 - UV Spectroscopy - New thermoelectrically cooled MPPC for photon counting applications - Hamamatsu Photonics have expanded their range of semi-conductor detectors featuring photon detection capability with the introduction of the brand new S11028 series multi-pixel photon counter (MPPC). The new device utilizes a Geiger-mode avalanche photodiode structure for ultra-low-level light detection, and a two-stage thermoelectric cooler, which operates down to -20oC and reduces dark count to 1/20 of that at room temperature. The MPPC is easily connected to an external circuit for simple operation and is operated from a low voltage power supply (typically 70 Volts). The S11028 series, with its active area of 1 mm x 1 mm, is available in three pixel counts (100, 400, or 1600 pixels). Each pixel contains a quenching resistor so that simultaneous photon events can be counted separately and with a high degree of accuracy. The devices feature typical gain values from 250,000 to several million, depending on the specific pixel number. They also feature high photon detection efficiency to UV and blue light, with peak sensitivity at 440 nm, making them ideal for scintillator readout. The S11028 series is ideal for a variety of applications, including positron emission tomography, high-energy physics, DNA sequencing, fluorescence measurement, nuclear medicine, point of care systems, drug discovery, medical diagnostic equipment and environmental analysis. Hamamatsu also offers a temperature controller which maintains the temperature inside the thermoelectrically cooled package at a constant level.
June 22, 2009 - Bennington Banner - Myths about nuke plant - A letter to the editor appeared in the Banner several weeks ago pertaining to nuclear power in general and the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in particular. Several outrageously erroneous comments were made, obviously for the purpose of frightening people into believing the Vermont Yankee license should not be renewed. I presume this person is not a liar but is certainly totally ignorant about the design, construction and operation of a nuclear power plant. As a graduate engineer involved in the nuclear power field for over 40 years I have gained pertinent related knowledge and experience. One statement made in the letter was that "the overcrowded pool of spent fuel rods is stored on top of the seven story building under a tin roof." This is a totally incorrect statement. Actually, the spent fuel rod assemblies are contained in a concrete reinforced (i.e. layers of meshed steel rods) pool submerged under 20 feet of water. The pool structure, reactor and associated equipment are totally enclosed in a concrete reinforced steel vessel several feet thick. This containment vessel is designed to remain intact after impacts from aircraft, tornadoes and hurricanes. I would say quite more substantial than a "tin roof." Also, the spent fuel rod assemblies are not "overcrowded." The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires that space be maintained in the pool to allow for unloading of several hundred fuel assemblies from the reactor at any time if necessary.
June 22, 2009 - The Station Network - Xenon gas leak in Belgium - Luxembourg's Ministry of Health has reported that it has been informed by the ECURIE European alert system that a gas leak occurred last week at Fleurus in Belgium. The incident happened at an isotope production facility in the Belgian town which is known by many travellers as being the town next to the Brussels-Charleroi airport used by Ryanair and other low-cost carriers. During the incident, radioactive xenon gas escaped into the environment. Xenon gas has a relatively low toxic level for human health: it is not absorbed by the body and does not deposit on fruit and vegetables. Because the center of production in Fleurus is located about 100 km from the border of Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the release of this leak did not impact on the territory. of the Grand Duchy. The monitoring network of Luxembourg did not detect an abnormal level of radiation. The Federal Agency for Nuclear Control (FANC) Belgium has launched an investigation into this incident.
June 22, 2009 - Scoop - Big Nuke's desperate radioactive hoax in impoverished Ohio - Job-starved southern Ohioans are being promised a shiny new nuclear plant. But the announcement has come with a cruel reminder, and the scent of a desperate hoax. Using the gargantuan corpse of the shuttered Portsmouth-Piketon uranium enrichment plant as his backdrop, U.S. Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) punctuated his enthusiastic endorsement the new nuke by proclaiming that, with his support, the US government has paid thousands of Ohio workers hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for the health damage they suffered from being irradiated while working there. Just north of the Ohio River, Portsmouth-Piketon was a mainstay of the nuclear power/weapons complex dating back to 1954 (it shut in 2001). Generations of workers and their progeny suffered a devastating plague of radiation-related diseases from the facility's radioactive fallout, inside and around the plant boundaries. It took decades of brutal, grinding grassroots campaigning to win even a modicum of compensation. Now the heaviest of nuclear hitters want to use this same site for a 1600-megawatt French-designed plant that would anchor a "Clean Energy Park." In a region devastated by the enrichment plant's shutdown, and by the decimation of the American industrial economy, it would be a flagship for the "nuclear power renaissance." It is a cruel hoax. Voinovich was joined by Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and a bevvy of heavy industry hitters that included Jim Rogers, head of Duke Energy, and representatives of Unistar, the United States Enrichment Corporation, Electricite de France and hundreds of plant workers who surrounded a tuxedoed band and the kind of high-profile reception that bespeaks an excess of corporate cash. But the most critical spot was occupied by Anne Lauvergeon, CEO of AREVA, the French government's nuclear front group. She ended her brief speech with a heavily inflected "Go Buckeyes!"
June 22, 2009 - Associated Press - Trainloads of toxic sludge to begin arriving in Texas - The first trainloads of PCB-tainted sludge dredged from the Hudson River will arrive this month and, in the eyes of critics, turn a stretch of West Texas into New York’s "pay toilet." They say burying dirt so toxic that General Electric Co. will spend at least six years and an estimated $750 million to dredge it up will create a new mess for future generations to clean up. But for the 15 jobs and bit of money it’ll bring local businesses, the folks who live near the site are willing to take the risk, however remote, of tainting the area’s groundwater with somebody else’s trash. "The city is not against it, and the city is not in an uproar," said Matt White, mayor of nearby Eunice, N.M. "It is a big impact on our city and definitely positive . . . so we’re very comfortable with it." The deal has the blessing of government officials in both states, and New York environmental groups who have lobbied for decades for the removal of the sludge say it will substantially lower the risk of PCBs — a likely carcinogen in high doses in humans — getting into the food chain. White said that the process is completely safe and that there’s no risk to Eunice’s 3,000 residents in bringing the contaminated dirt into their back yard. And the Dallas-based company that operates the disposal site, Waste Control Specialists, stands to make tens of millions of dollars, according to a company spokesman who declined to give an exact dollar amount.
June 22, 2009 - Greenville News - Consumers' fees pile up along with nuclear waste; Billions collected for disposalbut federal repository nowhere in sight after years of planning - Since 1983, consumers in South Carolina and other states with nuclear power plants have paid a special fee on their electricity bills to cover the costs of a long-planned national repository for radioactive waste. The fee has generated more than $30 billion for the federal government's Nuclear Waste Fund over the years, according to the Department of Energy. South Carolina's contribution was more than $1.2 billion at the end of last year. And yet the federal government still has no firm plan for disposing of the high-level waste. Earlier this year, the Obama administration announced that the site designated for permanent storage, Yucca Mountain, Nev., was no longer an option. That leaves spent fuel piling up indefinitely at nuclear plants near population centers and water bodies around the country, including Duke Energy Corp.'s Oconee Nuclear Station on the shores of Lake Keowee. South Carolinians and other consumers, meanwhile, continue to pay the fee. The Nevada repository was also being developed to store high-level waste left over from nuclear bomb making at the Savannah River Site near Aiken and other federal facilities.
June 22, 2009 - Republican Herald - Set funds aside for old reactors - Meltdown is not the word you want to hear in relation to a nuclear power plant. Even the global financial meltdown has potentially dire consequences for public safety over the long term. Even as the industry and Washington quite rightly have moved toward a new generation of nuclear plant construction, an analysis by the Associated Press raises troubling questions about the current generation. Nuclear plant operators are required to set aside enough money, over the course of a plant’s life, to pay for its decommissioning and demolition. That process, for most plants, costs hundreds of millions of dollars. The AP analysis found that the meltdown in the financial markets over the last two years has drained much of the money held by plant operators to safely decommission and demolish their plants. According to the analysis, operators of about half of the nuclear plants nationwide are not saving enough money for inevitable demolition projects. At the same time that the estimated cost of demolition has risen by $4.6 billion, the value of investments held by plant operators for that purpose has fallen by $4.4 billion, the AP reported. And, it found, the savings rate for demolition has declined for 80 percent of the nation’s reactors.
June 22, 2009 - TopNews United States - VA prostate cancer botching caused radiation burns in patients - According to New York Times' "anxiety-provoking" Sunday report, Dr. Gary Kao of the Philadelphia Veterans Administration hospital botched 79 percent of the prostate cancer treatment cases that involved a common surgical procedure. Records show that Kao, who has left the hospital, was off target in 92 of the 112 procedures involving the implant of radioactive metal "seeds" in the patients' prostate glands. The 'seeds' wound up in the rectums, bladders and other organs of the patients, leading to numerous side effects including excruciating radiation burns. Kao's lawyer disputed The Times' account of the six-year span but the newspaper said he practiced in an environment in which there was no in-house peer review of the doctors and was allowed to alter surgical paperwork without any objection from the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. As per the newspaper, for six years Kao practiced in a situation where there was no in-house peer assessment of the doctors, and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission never objected to the alterations he carried out in the surgical paperwork. However, in fall last year, a federal commission undertook an inspection at the hospital due to the number of patients given erroneous radiation doses. Kao was forced to leave the hospital when the medical center shelved its prostate cancer treatment program because of the still-ongoing probe.
June 22, 2009 - WTN News - What do we have to lose? Let's lift Wisconsin's nuclear moratorium - The opponents of nuclear energy in the United States were almost giddy earlier this year when President Obama slashed the budget for a proposed waste storage site in Nevada. Surely, they thought, the inevitable demise of the Yucca Mountain project would end silly talk of splitting more atoms to produce power. They were wrong. While Obama is no fan of the Nevada waste site, and he's certainly not foolish enough to battle Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his home state, he understands the need to maintain - and even expand - America's fleet of commercial nuclear reactors. “Nuclear power represents more than 70 percent of our non-carbon generated electricity,” Obama said during his 2008 campaign. “It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power as an option…” Some of the money shifted from Yucca Mountain has gone toward “next generation” nuclear energy research through the U.S. Department of Energy, which last month awarded 71 grants to U.S. universities - including 10 to the UW-Madison. The goal is to design a better nuclear plant, solve waste storage problems (perhaps through reactors that burn their own waste) and to keep dangerous materials out of the hands of terrorists and rogue nations. “As a zero-carbon energy source, nuclear power must be part of our energy mix as we work towards energy independence and meeting the challenge of global warming,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu in announcing $44 million in grants. A day later, Chu unveiled a $2.9 million program to fund scholarships and fellowships for nuclear science and engineering students at U.S. universities and colleges. Chu said a new generation of nuclear scientists and engineers are needed for a growing industry.
June 22, 2009 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - Tainted goods: Local company keeps closer eye after incident - After a Knoxville metal recycler melted nuclear material that had inadvertently infiltrated its mill, the company learned its lesson: The combination of radiation detectors and a watchful eye can prevent massive, costly messes. The Knoxville company, Gerdau Ameristeel, has since weeded out radioactive isotopes sent to it with scrap metal at least 50 times, according to reports from a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission database. Gerdau Ameristeel has developed an elaborate firewall to keep out castoff nuclear material, according to Jim Turner, corporate environmental director of the Toronto-based company, which has an executive office in Tampa, Fla. The Knoxville facility now has as many as six levels of radiation detection at a cost of about $1 million, and Gerdau Ameristeel checks the system each month to make sure it's working, Turner said. The accidental melting occurred in 1993, when the radioactive isotope cesium-137 - probably from a castoff industrial gauge - sneaked unnoticed into the facility's steel mill, according to research compiled by James Yusko, a national expert on radioactive waste who works for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and has compiled an unofficial list of such incidents around the nation and the world.
June 22, 2009 - Springfield News-Leader - Veteran exposed to nuclear radiation for tests; Military was intent on developing group of hardened troops - On the Fourth of July weekend of 1957, Darrell Robertson was on a train from Fort Lewis, Wash., to southern Nevada. He was one of hundreds of young men with orders in hand to take part in a training exercise that they were told was crucial to the fight against communism. The native of Lamar was headed deep into the burnt landscape of the Mojave Desert, to a place called Camp Desert Rock. There, between 1945 and 1958, the U.S. military conducted 106 atmospheric nuclear tests. At the time, Robertson said, military brass believed a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets was likely. They were intent on developing a group of troops hardened by repeated exposure to radiation. They thought exposure to radiation was like sunning on the beach: First you burn, then you tan. "Today, you think, 'How would you ever harden troops to that?' " Robertson said. "It's not something that you can become accustomed to or environmentally be exposed to and continue to go on. That's just not a fact. But see, they didn't know that then." On one of his first days in the tent city, Robertson was roused at 4 a.m. the time of least wind and highest humidity in the desert -- and driven to a lookout spot known as Newsman's Knob to observe his first-ever "shot." Putting on a heavy jacket, helmet, goggles and leather gloves, Robertson and more than 100 others were instructed to crouch, cover their eyes and turn away from the cloud. What followed was a relatively minor detonation only a few kilotons but many of the newbies in his group weren't prepared for the "blowback" that came moments later.
June 22, 2009 - San Francisco Chronicle - Navajo homes razed - uranium contamination - The federal government plans to spend as much as $3 million a year to demolish and rebuild uranium-contaminated structures across the Navajo Nation, where Cold War-era mining of the radioactive substance left a legacy of disease and death. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its Navajo counterpart are focusing on homes, sheds and other buildings within a half-mile to a mile from a significant mine or waste pile. They plan to assess 500 structures over five years and rebuild those that are too badly contaminated. "These families, with the resources they have, they would not be able to put up a new home for themselves," said Lillie Lane, a spokeswoman for the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency. "We don't know how radiation in the home affected these families, but in the end people will be living in safe homes." Between the 1940s and the 1980s, millions of tons of uranium ore were mined from the 27,000 square-mile reservation that spans Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Many Navajos, unaware of the dangers of contamination, built their homes with chunks of uranium ore and mill tailings. The U.S. EPA estimates it will cost $250,000 to demolish each structure, haul away the debris and rebuild. The residents of contaminated homes will not be charged for the rebuilding.
June 20-21, 2009 - Webmuenster took the weekend off.
June 19, 2009 - CTV - New radioactive patch appears to zap skin cancer - A radioactive skin patch just might become a safe and effective way to treat a form of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma, researchers at the Society of Nuclear Medicine meeting report. The small study found that the skin patch does not leave scarring, as current therapies can, and appears to non-toxic, reports the lead author the study, Priyanka Gupta, a nuclear medicine technologist at All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. "It's exciting to think that this patch can deliver treatment on an outpatient basis with little risk of the scarring or other complications that surgery or radiotherapy present," he said in a statement ahead of the SNM annual meeting. "This study opens a new dimension not only for treating skin malignancies, but also for nuclear medicine therapy in general." The patches contain radioactive phosphorus-32 and deliver beta radiation to the cancer site. In the study, eight adult patients who had basal cell carcinoma on the face, but no cancer in underlying facial structures elected to try the patch instead of surgery or radiation. The patches were custom-made according to the shape and size of each patient's skin cancer lesions. They were applied on the cancer sites for three hours and then reapplied to each site two more times on subsequent days. Three months after treatment, biopsies of the cancer sites revealed no residual cancer.
June 19, 2009 - Northumberland Today - CNSC finding the results it's looking for: resident - Although a Port Hope police vehicle was parked outside the Union Hall Wednesday evening, there were no issues that required their services. It was quiet inside as representatives from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) explained their latest synthesis report -- Understanding Health Studies and Risk Assessments Conducted in the Port Hope Community from the 1950s to the Present -- to residents who dropped by their open house. The report, which gave Port Hope a clean bill of health, was based on more than 30 environmental and 13 epidemiological studies conducted in Port Hope over the years since Eldorado was in operation, says Patsy Thompson, director general of the directorate of environmental and radiation protection and assessment, CNSC. These were compared to 40 worldwide epidemiological studies. Thompson said the Uranium Medical Research Centre study for the Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee was not part of the CNSC synthesis report. That 2007 study undertaken by the Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee under the aegis of the UMRC, claimed levels of uranium in urine were extremely low, Thompson said. She added that the author of that study admitted to a lot of uncertainty about the test results and questioned it, so the CNSC did not look at it further, Thompson said. "The findings were similar to what's been measured where there are no uranium industries," Thompson said of UMRC study.
June 19, 2009 - eReleases - ‘Radiation Rescue: 4 Steps to Safeguard Your Family from the Other Inconvenient Truth - The Health Hazards of Wireless Technology’ - Prominent researchers around the world are raising the alarm about the adverse health effects of wireless technology. Today there are 4 billion cell phones in the world, and these and the other devices we use every day - PDAs, Wi-Fi, cordless phones, baby monitors and more - are immersing us in a type of harmful radiation our cells have never encountered before in human history. As Dr. Kerry Crofton, a health educator and concerned parent, reveals in her latest book, “Radiation Rescue” (published by iUniverse), the jury is no longer out … there are thousands of studies showing adverse biological effects. In “Radiation Rescue,” Dr. Crofton brings together, for the first time, the evidence and advice from an international panel of leading scientists, physicians and EMR technicians who tell consumers everything they need to know about how to protect themselves and their families. Children and young people are especially vulnerable. The good news: there are safer ways to use these high-tech devices. The book also offers detailed information and healing interventions for EMR-related health conditions, including the growing incidence of electro-sensitivity. There are surprising connections between EMR and insomnia, infertility, cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, and even Autism Spectrum Disorders.
June 19, 2009 - Reuters - Obama-backed nuclear fuel bank plan stalls at IAEA - A uranium fuel supply plan hailed by U.S. President Barack Obama as a way to stem the spread of nuclear arms stalled in talks at the U.N. atomic watchdog on Thursday after resistance from developing nations. The International Atomic Energy Agency and industrialized nations argue that a multilateral uranium-enrichment center would best meet growing global nuclear energy demand while dissuading nations from building proliferation-prone enrichment plants themselves. But emerging nations, who fear "multinationalizing" control over the fuel cycle would curb their right to home-grown atomic energy for electricity, rejected a request by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei to develop a detailed plan for approval in September. While developing states agreed to let talks go on, they warned others on the IAEA's 35-nation governing board against "attempts meant to discourage the pursuit of any peaceful nuclear technology on grounds of its alleged 'sensitivity'." Diplomats in the boardroom said India led the objections. "A large number of delegations do not want to proceed," the Indian chief delegate said. Developing nations comprise about half the IAEA board, which makes key decisions by diplomatic consensus.
June 19, 2009 - Dayton Daily News - Backers of project say ‘green plant’ part of nuclear renaissance; Opponents say it’s a bad idea, with no way to clean up waste - Thirty years after the nation’s worst nuclear accident, the partial reactor core meltdown at Three Mile Island, nuclear power is being reinvented as clean, green and safe — a talisman against global warming. Government and industry officials say a reactor proposed for Piketon would be part of a nuclear renaissance that would be environmentally friendly — nuclear doesn’t produce greenhouse gases — and spur job creation in impoverished Appalachian Ohio. “This is the day everybody’s been waiting for for a long time,” said John K. Welch, chief executive of USEC Inc., which enriches uranium for reactor fuel and leases the Energy Department’s Piketon atomic plant site. “This is a big deal.” Duke Energy, one of the partners in the reactor project, has no cost estimate or timetable, said spokeswoman Rita Sipe. The cost estimate for two reactors Duke plans to build in South Carolina is $11 billion. Duke currently has seven reactors, all in the Carolinas. Piketon could get more than one reactor, Sipe said. She said the Piketon site, once home of a Cold War atomic weapons plant, “looked like a good fit” as the Energy Department works to convert such facilities for new uses. Piketon would use the Evolutionary Power Reactor, which can provide electricity to 1.5 million customers and “features enhanced safety and simplified operations and maintenance,” according to its French designer, Areva. Areva is building four of the reactors, one in Finland and France and two in China. One is planned for Maryland. “EPR is a fortress,” Areva CEO Anne Lauvergeon said in Piketon on Thursday, June 18. “Nothing can get out, nothing can get in.”
June 19, 2009 - Ottawa Citizen - Radiation leaking at double the ‘action level’; Safety official concerned about tritium released into air from Chalk River - Low-level radiation seeping into the Ottawa Valley from the disabled nuclear reactor at Chalk River is double the “action level” at which officials must respond to control the situation, a new Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission document shows. The quantity of radioactive tritium released into the surrounding air and then falling on to land and into the Ottawa River is well within current maximum health limits. But those limits have now been questioned by one federal nuclear safety commissioner, echoing a long-running debate over what constitutes a safe exposure level to the cancer-causing tritium, especially in drinking water. “Today’s standards may not always be in existence,” commission member Alan Graham told officials with Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., which operates the reactor, at a meeting in Ottawa last week. “I’m just concerned that we are — you are loading the atmosphere, whether it’s air or in water, with excess tritium. Now I know it’s dispersed in huge amounts of atmosphere, but still, how much of that may be getting in — falling as excess or extra into the water supply, the Ottawa River and so on?” he said.
June 19, 2009 - Salem News - Taking a position on the Salem power plant - Everyone wants everyone to take a position on the Salem Harbor Station. Soon, there will be a big announcement by Dominion, and many are concerned that the plant will switch to biomass. The problem with biomass is that while defined renewable, which sounds good, it means various sources may be burned to create power, including tires, demolition wood laced with various chemicals, animal waste, and trash. Burning some biomass-qualifying substances means that air quality can take a toxic hit. When many biomass sources are incinerated, methane, dioxins, furans and other toxics — some at strengths greater than the current emissions from coal-firing — could end up in Salem Sound's air. While biomass may be renewable, it could be dirtier. A move to biomass could split environmental goals, sending Salem Sound in the wrong direction for one-half of the issue — cleaner, less dangerous emissions. The growing concern is that Dominion will operate under the radar and burn various substances that create highly toxic plumes. Groups like Healthlink encourage locals to take pictures of dark exhausts and upload them to its Web site. And what the group says about air quality monitoring — being limited and mostly ineffective — has merit.
June 19, 2009 - Barents Observer - Nuclear waste cargo sailing the Barents Sea - 40 year old rusty spent nuclear fuel containers from Russia’s abounded submarine base Gremikha were shipped to Murmansk this week. The voyage from Gremikha to Murmansk normally takes one day. This is the same route as the Russian retired submarine K-159 took when it sank northeast of the inlet to the Kola Bay in August 2003. The vessel which is sailing with the highly radioactive spent fuel this week is the 35 year old Serebryanka. The rusty spent nuclear fuel containers have been stored outdoor at Gremikha for 40 years, posing a grave radiation threat. They contain uranium fuel from some of the Soviet Union’s first nuclear powered submarines, which at that time were based at Gremikha. The submarines reloaded their deadly radioactive spent fuel to the onshore open-air storage site. During the latest years, both Russia and the international society have put much effort into cleaning up the radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel stored at the very remote naval base Gremikha on the eastern shores of the Kola Peninsula. Norway is one of the most active countries cooperating with Russia to secure naval spent nuclear fuel.
June 19, 2009 - The Guardian - O'Leary man frustrated by province's handling of radioactive device - An O’Leary man fighting to have the provincial government charged for selling him radioactive materials in a surplus auction last June said he’s nowhere near finished his battle. Glen MacPherson first came into contact with the radioactive device after buying $10 worth of items in a box at the government auction. Among the items in the box, which included the paper shredder MacPherson wanted, was a respirable dust monitor used for testing purposes by the Health Department. This device has been the centre of MacPherson’s year-long battle, which has spanned numerous letters between him and various government departments, hazardous waste organizations and deputy chief health officer Dr. Lamont Sweet. The result has been failure on MacPherson’s behalf. Despite a letter from Transport Canada stating the government appeared to have broken regulations concerning the proper documentation and transportation of the device, officials have done nothing more than offer to buy the device back from MacPherson. But transportation regulations haven’t been the only issue. MacPherson said he and his mother, Deborah MacPherson, both developed medical issues because of the device. From the first day he came into contact with it, MacPherson said he had a reaction to the device, resulting in severe burning and itching up his arms. Likewise his mother suffered burns on her body, which MacPherson likened to an intense sunburn. However, in a letter from Sweet, MacPherson was told the device, which carries a radiation level classed as Carbon 14, is not capable of causing adverse health effects. MacPherson said he doesn’t buy it. “They’re trying to tell me there’s nothing wrong with it and that the government did nothing wrong,” MacPherson said. “They put this in a sale, got $10 out of it, never followed the rules and cause a bunch of health problems. I want the P.E.I. government charged. They made a mistake but they don’t want to deal with it.”
June 19, 2009 - Associated Press - NRC to send shortfall letters to 26 atomic plants - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will notify the owners of 26 nuclear plants Friday that they are not saving enough money to dismantle the reactors once they're no longer operating. In a memo obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday, the agency told congressional offices it would make a formal announcement of its findings on Friday. It said it would work with the plants on a case-by-case basis to develop remedial savings plans. "Normally, there are only four to five plants that fall into this category," NRC senior congressional affairs officer Eugene Dacus wrote in the memo. "The NRC believes that the economy may account for the unusually high number this year." The plants deemed coming up short range from the Vermont Yankee station near Brattleboro to the three Browns Ferry reactors near Decatur, Ala. The AP reported Tuesday that over the past two years, estimates of dismantling costs for the entire U.S. nuclear industry have soared by more than $4.6 billion due to rising energy and labor costs, while the funds that are supposed to pay for shutting plants down have lost $4.4 billion in the battered stock market.
June 19, 2009 - PRNewswire - 100 New Reactors Would Result in Up to $4 Trillion in Excess Costs for U.S. Taxpayers and Ratepayers - The likely cost of electricity for a new generation of nuclear reactors would be 12-20 cents per kilowatt hour (KWh), considerably more expensive than the average cost of increased use of energy efficiency and renewable energies at 6 cents per kilowatt hour, according to a major new study by economist Dr. Mark Cooper, a senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School. The report finds that it would cost $1.9 trillion to $4.1 trillion more over the life of 100 new nuclear reactors than it would to generate the same electricity from a combination of more energy efficiency and renewables. Titled "The Economics of Nuclear Reactors," Cooper's analysis of over three dozen cost estimates for proposed new nuclear reactors shows that the projected price tags for the plants have quadrupled since the start of the industry's so-called "nuclear renaissance" at the beginning of this decade -- a striking parallel to the eventually seven-fold increase in reactor costs estimates that doomed the "Great Bandwagon Market" of the 1960s and 1970s, when half of planned reactors had to be abandoned or cancelled due to massive cost overruns. The study notes that the required massive subsidies from taxpayers and ratepayers would not change the real cost of nuclear reactors, they would just shift the risks to the public. Even with huge subsidies, nuclear reactors would remain more costly than the alternatives, such as efficiency, biomass, wind and cogeneration.
June 19, 2009 - Litchfield County Times - Caution for Nuclear Age - Stephanie Cooke, the author whose ideas have sculpted the edges of countless debates on nuclear arms, will be at the Jewish Community Center in Sherman to discuss her first book, "In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age," on June 26 at 7:30 p.m. The book is described as covering "the provocative history of our failure to manage the power of the atom from the Manhattan project to the present energy crisis." The author suggests "the mistakes of the past are on the verge of being repeated, and the book's title calls everyone to understand and respect the power held in mortal hands." "In Mortal Hands" delves into a world of nuclear energy after the Cold War. Originally intended to prevent warfare, the progression and possession of nuclear weapons has turned the initial goal into an arms race. Instead of averting the disastrous consequences of war, the science of the atom bomb has transformed the best of intentions into a saga of growing and potential lethal pockets of threats. "In Mortal Hands" touches on the problem of proliferation, the issue of access to nuclear energy technology as a way to "get in the game," the lack of a system of safeguards and the negative effects of the wide-spread availability of nuclear power, among many other issues. The major themes, Mrs. Cooke explained in a phone interview, include how non-military nuclear technology can lead to nuclear arms programs and how potentially harmful these arms can be.
June 19, 2009 - Buffalo News - Citizen group urges agency to order full cleanup of radioactive waste - The West Valley Citizen Task Force called for a full cleanup of radioactive waste at the West Valley Demonstration Project and the former Western New York nuclear fuel reprocessing center. But at the same time, the group urged authorities to pursue additional environmental impact studies and continue public involvement if a phased decision-making approach is chosen instead. The task force, made up of representatives from the surrounding community, has been meeting since 1997 to advise the federal and state governments on a preferred cleanup method of the 3,300-acre site. The task force sent the 12-page letter and attachments to the Department of Energy, which announced a three-month extension of the decision deadline, through Sept. 8. About 200 acres of the site hold high-level radioactive wastes and other dangerous wastes left over from reprocessing operations in the 1960s. The task force document supports a 64-year, $9.7 billion removal of all waste from the site. At the same time, it advocates speedy completion of tasks in the initial portion of the state and federal governments’ preferred phased decision-making alternative — work that would cost $1.2 billion over eight years.
June 19, 2009 - Associated Press - Violations at Callaway plant disclosed by former Ameren nuclear worker - A former AmerenUE engineer accuses the utility and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of not fully investigating a two-hour unplanned shutdown at the Callaway reactor in 2003. The NRC later found that control room operators delayed a corrective move since the error occurred just before a scheduled maintenance shutdown. The agency called the delay "not prudent" but noted it did not threaten human safety. Former employee Lawrence Criscione (krih-SHOHN) says he was denied promotions and lost his reactor operator's license after reporting the problem, which he discovered four years later during a routine review. Documents obtained by The Associated Press show he was paid more than $500,000 in a confidential settlement in exchange for his resignation in 2008 and an agreement to not pursue any future legal claims against the St. Louis-based utility.
June 19, 2009 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - House Science Committee looks at nuke reprocessing - The House Science & Technology Committee, which is chaired by Congressman Bart Gordon of Tennessee, today held a hearing on nuclear reprocessing -- looking at the state of capabilities and possible adoption of a national strategy. In a statement distributed after the hearing, Gordon said: "I believe everything has to be on the table when it comes to meeting our growing need for energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I believe nuclear power is part of the solution to the daunting challenge of climate change, and I also recognize that our 104 operating reactors provide very reliable baseload power. To me, the best reason to consider reprocessing is that an expansion of nuclear power may make the once-through fuel cycle inadequate for maintaining our nuclear power supply as uranium resources eventually become scarce." The witnesses incldued Mark Peters of Argonne National Laboratory; Alan Hanson of Areva; Lisa Price of GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy; and Charles Ferguson of the Council on Foreign Relations.
June 19, 2009 - Associated Press - Janitor gets 6 years in Tenn. nuclear parts theft - A former janitor was sentenced to six years in prison Thursday for trying to sell scrap hardware he stole from a shuttered plant that enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. Roy Lynn Oakley, 67, of Harriman pleaded guilty in January to one count of disclosing restricted data in violation of the Atomic Energy Act. He entered the plea deal the day his trial was set to begin. U.S. District Judge Thomas Varlan sentenced Oakley to the six-year prison term outlined in the deal and three years of supervised release after Oakley gets out. He could have received up to 20 years if convicted of the original two charges in his indictment. U.S. Attorney Russ Dedrick said Oakley "betrayed this country in order to line his pockets with money." Oakley admitted taking the equipment from the U.S. Energy Department's former K-25 uranium enrichment plant in Oak Ridge, where he was employed from 2006 to 2007 by cleanup contractor Bechtel Jacobs and held a moderate security clearance.
June 19, 2009 - Congressman Doc Hastings - Lawmakers press to keep Yucca Mountain moving forward - Congressman Doc Hastings (WA-04) today led a letter sent to Energy Secretary Steven Chu by a bipartisan group of 25 lawmakers requesting that the Department of Energy continue the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository program. The letter highlights the ramifications of delays and urges proper funding for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing review. “The federal government has a legal obligation to clean up nuclear waste sites like Hanford,” said Hastings. “After years of studies and billions spent, Yucca was determined to be the most suitable repository for spent fuel and high-level waste at cleanup sites. The message in our bipartisan letter is clear; we strongly support additional funding for the Yucca Mountain project so that the NRC license review can continue. Inadequate funding and more delays will have serious consequences when it comes to our nation’s defense nuclear waste.”
June 19, 200 - Fox 13 News - Moab Uranium Tailings May Threaten Colorado River - Although millions of tons of Uranium tailings have been removed, some citizens of Moab are concerned that the remaining tailings may contaminate the nearby Colorado river. The river runs through town and a potential contaminatino could jeapordize drinking water. Energy Solutions were contracted to remove the mounds of tailings in 2007. "Were were moving it is to an environmentally stable location, 30 miles north of the town of Moab to a stable environment where that material can sit for thousands of years," says Energy Solutions' Project Manager, Larry Brede.
June 19, 2009 - Lincoln County Record - Commissioners Approve $700,000 in Consulting Contracts - County Commissioners approved a new round of consultant contracts for 2009-2010 during their regular board meeting June 15. The total amount for the five consultant contracts was $700,000. Dr. Mike Baughman of Intertech Services received $235,000. Robison/Seidler, $285,000, Resource Concepts $50,000, and Las Vegas based Attorney Brett Whipple $50.000. Jason Pitts of Geo Core Data received $80,000. Commission Chairman Paul Mathews said the money was part of $1.2 million received directly from the Department of Energy (DOE). Baughman presented a services contract document between the County and his firm, Intertech Services, and outlined the assignment as "to provide professional consultation and advice for a professional fee in connection with oversight, mitigation, planning and impact alleviation planning relating to the Department of Energy's radioactive waste management programs in Nevada." No one was on hand at the Commission meeting to present contract agreement documents for Robison/Seidler, Resource Concepts or Brett Whipple. Connie Simkins, Lincoln County Nuclear Oversight Program Coordinator, said Resource Concepts is on a "task-based contract" and do not spend any money until assigned tasks come up for them. Since the DOE has put all its focus of late on getting the licensing agreement settled, Simkins said, there have been no studies needed to help the grazing operators or private property owners who would be affected by Yucca Mountain or the proposed railroad that falls under the expertise of Resource Concepts.
June 18, 2009 - HealthDay News - Radiation May Raise Stroke Risk After Hodgkin's - Hodgkin's lymphoma survivors who are treated with radiation therapy have a greatly increased risk of stroke and transient ischemic attack, also called a "mini-stroke," new research has found. Flora E. van Leeuwen and colleagues at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam studied 2,201 people with Hodgkin's lymphoma who had been treated before age 51 and had survived at least five years after their diagnosis. After a median follow-up of 18 years, the researchers found that they were 2.2 times more likely to suffer a stroke and 3.1 times more likely to experience a transient ischemic attack (TIA) than people in the general population. Radiation to the head and neck was associated with this increased risk, but not chemotherapy. "For young survivors of Hodgkin's lymphoma, who are at especially increased risk of stroke and TIA, physicians should consider appropriate risk-reducing strategies, such as treatment of hypertension and lifestyle changes to reduce the risk of stroke and TIA," van Leeuwen and colleagues wrote. The study appears online June 17 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The findings contribute to the "already overwhelming evidence that radiation therapy in Hodgkin's disease is shortsighted," Dr. Dan L. Longo, of the U.S. National Institute on Aging, wrote in an accompanying editorial.
June 18, 2009 - ChattahBox - 3-D, X-ray Holograms Possible, With New Laser Technology - A team of researchers may have discovered the key to developing 3-D, holographic x-ray images that offer doctors a real-time look into a patient’s body. Instead of the standard still-photo x-rays, doctors may one day be able to view a patent’s beating heart, increasing the diagnostic tools at a doctor’s disposable. Head researcher Professor Anthony Starace from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, conducted the research using high-powered electrons in a process called high-harmonic generation, or HHG. The technology to produce x-ray images using HHG has existed for years, but scientists were unable to produce clear images. The current HHG technology involves shining an optical laser on low electrons, such as hydrogen, helium or neon, but the process emits a very weak light source. Professor Starace and his team solved the weak light problem, by bouncing the optical laser off heavier atoms, such as gases like xenon, argon and krypton. The results were successful in producing a high-powered x-ray image. Starace varied the wavelength of the lasers, using wavelengths within certain atom-specific ranges that created oscillations of the heavier atoms. This new technology could form the basis for more powerful and precise X-ray images. Nanoscientists can also use the technology to produce 3-D images of microscopic structures.
June 18, 2009 - Columbus Dispatch - In Pike County, it's about the jobs - Pike County residents know something about the dangers of nuclear energy, but they also understand the need for jobs in Appalachia. So feelings were a little mixed yesterday as word began to circulate about plans to build a multibillion-dollar nuclear power plant near this county seat. The plant, a collaboration between Duke Energy and the French nuclear energy company Areva, would be located on the sprawling grounds of a former uranium-enrichment plant. Gov. Ted Strickland and company officials plan to release full details today. It could take a decade or more to build and would employ about 4,000 workers during the construction phase alone, assuming the project receives financing and federal approval. If the reactor is a success, officials say, the site is large enough to hold a second nuclear plant. The locals say it would be worth the wait.
June 18, 2009 - Atlanta Journal Constitution - Some cellphone dangers debatable; some not - When I started covering technology 18 years ago, there was lots of talk about potential hazards of using a cellphone. One report would say there was a risk of brain cancer; another would follow saying there was no harm from the relatively low-powered radio signals from the phone. Then the back-and-forth would start all over again. It continues today. Recently Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, said his research shows it is possible that cellphone radiation raises risks for some relatively rare cancers. But if the arguments are similar today, cellphone use has changed dramatically. Cellphones were an expensive luxury a decade or so ago. Air time was expensive. Most folks only used them when a land line wasn't available. These days, everyone has a cellphone —- including kids who, according to Herberman, are especially vulnerable to the hazards of radiation. Many people use them constantly, to the point of dropping land line service entirely. So, for many people, exposure to any potential health hazard has grown from a few hours a month to a few hours a day.
June 18, 2009 - Sudbury Star - Why is province denying access to critical PET scanning technology? - Upon request, the Ministry of Health provided me with a copy of the published and thus far Positron Emission Tomography (PET) clinical trial results (December 2008). As a cancer patient, I was extremely pleased to read that PET trials were very successful. Some positive comments within the report included: "Clinical experts in Ontario believe there is sufficient evidence that PET improves the diagnosis and treatment of patients." "Overall, physicians changed their intended management in 36.5% of patients after PET." As for the results for recurrent thyroid cancer, germ cell cancer, colorectal cancer, the results are basically the same. "These patients have a marker in the blood that is high ... which suggests that their ... cancer has recurred; however, the results of the CT/MRI scans are negative. A PET scan may help identify cancer metastases with a low rate of false positives and enable definitive and occasionally curative treatment." There are many additional and positive comments and results listed within the report. PET is used throughout the world and has been proven, by far, a wondrous cancer diagnostic tool. Yet, PET trials have been ongoing for close to a decade in Ontario. It is critical in my view that the results of these trials be widely distributed to medical practitioners. But the same report also states, "It appears, however, that some practitioners are not referring their patients because they do not know about Ontario's PET program." How shameful. The issue of PET scans is controversial in Ontario. Many of us that are informed and have a vested interest (cancer patients, oncologists, medical practioners) acknowledge that the Ontario Liberals have, for some reason, placed this critical issue on the back burner. The Ombudsman brought forward several recommendations in December 2008 and not a single one has been carried forward. How can this government deny the obvious?
June 18, 2009 - Northumberland Today - Cameco resumes UF6 production - Port Hope's Cameco Corporation resumed production of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) at its conversion facility yesterday, June 17. "We recalled 25 employees who were temporarily laid off in December. They have been back on the job for several weeks so things are pretty much returned to normal," Doug Prendergast, senior communications specialist with the Cameco's fuel services division, said Wednesday afternoon. An estimated 40 people were laid off last December when the UF6 production stream was suspended. Five people were called back earlier this years and now, with the 25 most recent callbacks, 30 people are back to work. In the interim, Cameco cut 17 permanent jobs from its workforce. In total, around 420 people are employed by Cameco in Northumberland County: 375 in he conversion facility, 28 in research, four in the Vision 1020 office and six in the computer department. Production of UF6 at the facility was suspended December 2008 when the company could not obtain a supply of hydrofluoric acid (HF) on "acceptable terms". In May 2009, Cameco announced it had signed a contract with its historic supplier of HF, North Americanbased Honeywell, under terms "mutually beneficial to both". HF is a primary feed material for the production of UF6.
June 18, 2009 - Burlington Free Press - Cleanup responsibility of nuke plant owners - The owners of nuclear power plants must take full responsibility today for their cleanup costs, especially if they are to be mothballed for up 60 years -- long enough to put any financial projections made today about decommissioning funds in doubt Vermont -- the Douglas administration particular -- should be less concerned about past agreements with Vermont Yankee owner Entergy and more about the broad public interest. The administration must base its policy on what will best protect the interest of Vermonters, in terms of money, health and environment. The questions about who will ultimately be responsible for the cost of cleaning up after a nuclear power plant emerges again as The Associated Press reports that the decommissioning funds for almost half the reactors in this country -- including Vermont Yankee -- are falling short. The idea is the money is set aside and invested so that over time it grows enough to cover the cost of decommissioning. Yet recent declines in the financial markets have taken down the balances of many of these funds, leaving them far short of the amount needed. For the past two years, the Vermont Legislature passed bills requiring additional financial commitments from Entergy -- above what's required under current agreements -- to ensure there will be enough money in the decommissioning fund. Gov. Jim Douglas vetoed both bills, saying Vermont needs to keep its word or risk losing the trust of the business community. Yet asking for an up-front commitment from Entergy to make sure taxpayers won't be stuck with the bill given that the cleanup will only start six decades after the plant shuts down.