Press Pieces

The next scheduled update of this page is Monday, February 6, 2012.  Have a good weekend!  (Happy Birthday, James!)

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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.)

February 3, 2012 - RIA Novosti - Kyrgyz Schools Used Radioactive Coal for Heating - Contaminated radioactive coal was used for heating in 14 schools and one kindergarten in the northern Kyrgyz province of Chui, Svetlana Baitikova, a spokeswoman for the country’s Health Ministry, said on Friday. “In some schools radiation levels were 26 times above normal,” Baitikova said. Last November Kyrgyzstan imported some 9,000 metric tons of coal from neighboring Kazakhstan. Specialists later discovered that the coal, produced at the Kulansky mine in southern Kazakhstan, contained excessively high levels of radiation. The Prosecutor General’s office launched a criminal case and charged the head of the northern Kyrgyz company, which shipped the coal, with ecocide. He is currently in a detention facility in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek and faces between 12 and 20 years in prison if found guilty. Criminal cases were also opened against health and sanitary officials who authorized the dangerous shipment in the Chui administrative center of Tokmak.

February 3, 2012 - People's Daily - Scientists: Radiation is unavoidable - “Radiation can be divided into electromagnetic radiation and ionizing radiation according to the amount of their energy. The latter contains much more energy,” said Wang Zhongwen, a research fellow at the China Institute of Atomic Energy. Electromagnetic radiation and ionizing radiation are everywhere in the natural world. Thunder and lightning, static electricity, the Earth's magnetic field, and signal transmission in a person’s nervous system are all electromagnetic phenomena.

February 3, 2012 - Female First - Iron Maiden singer boards nuclear sub - Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson spent last weekend in a nuclear submarine, after being invited by the vessel's captain. Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson spent last weekend in a nuclear submarine. The 'Fear of the Dark' singer boarded HMS Victorious - stationed at HM Naval Base Clyde near Helensburgh in Scotland - for three nights after receiving a special invitation from the captain, to come and sample life on board. One of the submariners told the Helensburgh Advertiser the unexpected visit was "surreal". The source said: "When I heard that somebody called Bruce Dickinson was coming on board, I thought it was maybe a civilian contractor or someone who went by that nickname. "It was a bit surreal - it's not every day you bump into an international rock star on a nuclear submarine!"

February 3, 2012 - South Florida Business Journal - Palm Beach County oncologists plan $30M proton therapy center - One of the largest groups of oncology physicians in South Florida wants to build a $25 million to $30 million proton therapy center in Palm Beach County. That price might sound low compared to the announcement made in 2008 by local groups that hoped to build $100 million-plus proton therapy centers in South Florida. That plan, by Dr. James Schwade’s South Florida Proton Center is essentially shelved. Now, South Florida Radiation Oncology and its 12 physicians have taken on the challenge of building the region’s first proton therapy center.

February 3, 2012 - Press Action - Nuclear Waste Disposal: America's Ultimate Shovel-Ready Job Scheme - I’ve always wondered how low the dominant culture will stoop to perpetuate its absurd and destructive economic system. I think I found the answer. During a Feb. 1 congressional hearing, the co-chairmen of a commission to investigate nuclear waste disposal, officially known as the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, were answering lawmakers’ questions about a report the panel had recently released about options for a national nuclear waste repository. With the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada left for dead, the blue ribbon panel was tasked with finding other ways to deal with the spent fuel from the nation’s nuclear power plants. Let’s stop right there. The fact that a group of humans would engage in industrial activity that produces waste that’s so dangerous that it would need to be stored securely for thousands of years is astonishing in itself. But the fact that this group of humans would continue engaging in this industrial practice despite knowing the dangers attached to all phases of the nuclear fuel cycle is unfathomable.

February 3, 2012 - GigaOm - Crunching the numbers for nuclear fusion - Long promised, both on Do the Math and in real life, fusion is regarded as the ultimate power source — the holy grail — the “arrival” of the human species. Talk of fusion conjures visions of green fields and rainbows and bunny rabbits . . . and a unicorn too, I hear. But I strike too harsh a tone in my jest. Fusion is indeed a stunningly potent source of energy that falls firmly on the reality side of the science fiction divide — unlike unicorns. Indeed, fusion has been achieved (sub break-even) in the lab, and in the deadliest of bombs. On the flip side, fusion has been actively pursued as the heir-apparent of nuclear fission for over 60 years. We are still decades away from realizing the dream, causing many to wonder exactly what kind of “dream” this is.

February 3, 2012 - Peoria Times - Editorial fumbles point of nuclear power report - Your recent editorial "Water should not be political football" fumbled the point of the "Too Close To Home: Nuclear Power and the Threat to Drinking Water" report authored by the Arizona PIRG Education Fund and Environment Arizona Research & Policy Center. For years, our organizations have documented problems related to nuclear power plants and urged a cleaner energy future. Specifically, the Arizona PIRG Education Fund has highlighted concerns with nuclear power ranging from mechanical failures to being a lousy economic investment. Our recent report, using newly acquired U.S. EPA data, signals another reason to be concerned with nuclear power - the risk to drinking water in the event of an accident or leak. As nuclear facilities get older, leaks are more common. According to our report, 75 percent of U.S. nuclear plants have leaked tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen that can cause cancer and genetic defects. In the case of the Palo Verde nuclear power plant, the track record of unsolved tritium leaks has been generated during routine operation.

February 3, 2012 - Brattleboro Reformer - VY decision could have far-reaching ramifications - The decision rendered by Federal District Court Judge J. Garvan Murtha in the Entergy v. Shumlin, et al, case could have consequences for state governments around the nation, said Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell. Those consequences could be one of the reasons Vermont may appeal Murtha's decision to a federal appeals court, said Sorrell. "Among the considerations is not just the impact of this decision on Vermont Yankee," he said. "There are important questions as to how this decision might be used as precedent going forward." Federal Court Judge J. Garvan Murtha rendered his opinion on Jan. 19, ruling the state Senate crossed over into federal territory when it voted to prohibit the Vermont Public Service Board from issuing a certificate for public good for continued operation. Murtha ruled the Senate inappropriately considered the radiological safety of the power plant - which is under the sole jurisdiction of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - in deliberations over the future of Yankee. In his decision, Murtha prohibited the state Legislature from taking part in the issuance of a CPG. However, Murtha affirmed the PSB's authority to issue a CPG, as long as it only considers "economics, reliability, and other objectives over which the other entities may have jurisdiction ..." Murtha also found that the PSB cannot condition the issuance of a CPG on the existence of a below-wholesale-market power purchase.

February 3, 2012 - BBC News - Hubble snaps stunning barred spiral galaxy image - The Hubble space telescope has captured an image of a "barred spiral" galaxy that could help us better understand our own Milky Way. Most of the known spiral galaxies fall into this "barred" category - which are defined by the pronounced bar structure across their centres. The presence of this structure may be an indication of a galaxy's age. Two-thirds of nearby, younger galaxies have the bar, while only a fifth of older, more distant spirals have it. The new picture also continues the Hubble space telescope's long heritage of striking astronomical images. In the upper left of the image is a cluster showing recent star formation that is just visible to Hubble's cameras. But it is a bright source in X-ray light; astronomers believe that this IXO-5 X-ray source is actually a "binary" system comprising a star and a black hole in mutual orbit.

February 3, 2012 - Royal Gazette - Dock X-Ray machine to be operational by this summer - Construction of the X-Ray Scanner on Hamilton’s docks is now 30 percent complete, according to Bermuda Customs, with the project now slated for completion this summer. A Customs spokesman acknowledged that the X-Ray project, initially given an April, 2011 completion date, had encountered some unexpected obstacles. “In the initial construction phase, an unused underground bunker was discovered on the site and as such, a minor delay occurred with respect to the laying of the concrete slab. “However that delay has not hindered the progress of the project in any material way.” The facility will allows Customs agents to scan every container coming through the port, keeping drugs and firearms from being smuggled into the Island.

February 3, 2012 - Pharmaceutical Business Review - FDA approves Bayer radium-223 chloride expanded - Bayer HealthCare has received the US Food and Drug Administration approval to proceed with its expanded access program for the investigational drug radium-223 chloride. Expanded access refers to the use of an investigational drug, under certain circumstances, to treat patients with a serious disease or condition who cannot participate in a controlled clinical trial. Radium-223 chloride is the investigational drug developed for patients diagnosed with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC)/hormone-refractory prostate cancer (HRPC) with symptomatic bone metastases. Radium-223 chloride will be made available to patients through qualified clinical sites participating in this program, the company said.

February 3, 2012 - China Daily - Japan to join global nuke compensation pact - Japan will join at least four other nations in a pact to help compensate victims of nuclear accidents in member countries, a newspaper reported on Friday, as it continues to grapple with the aftermath of the world's worst atomic disaster in 25 years. The Asahi daily said that Tokyo could in the fiscal year starting in April sign up to the US-led plan, under which countries would pay money into a shared fund they could draw on if they suffered a nuclear accident. The government has decided to join after an earthquake and tsunami wrecked the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in the country's northeast, triggering power shortages and radiation leaks that caused mass evacuations and widespread contamination. It had previously resisted, arguing that nuclear accidents were highly unlikely in the country, the paper said. If damage claims exceeded 37 billion yen ($486 million) after a nuclear accident in another member country, Japan would be on the hook for around 7-8 billion yen, the Asahi reported, without citing sources.

February 3, 2012 - Recycling International - Input from scrap experts on radiation code - Government experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been working towards finalising the draft ‘Code of Conduct on the Transboundary Movement of Scrap Metal and Semi-finished Products of the Metal Recycling and Production Industries that may inadvertently contain radioactive material’, reports the BIR world recycling body. At a meeting in Vienna, Austria, the recycling industry was represented by the BIR’s Environmental & Technical Director Ross Bartley as well as by other scrap experts from the USA, Germany and Spain. In essence, says the BIR, it was proposed that every transboundary movement of ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal or semi-product would need to be monitored for radiation and that a Radiation Monitoring Report should be provided in paper form or electronically. Mr Bartley explains: ‘Not every metal is at risk of inadvertently containing radioactive material; for example, primary aluminium semi-finished products such as ingot, slab, coil or billet should be considered for exclusion from the scope of this Code of Conduct.’

February 3, 2012 - Westchester Patch - DEP Investigating Radioactive Kit Found in East Goshen - According to a press release, authorities from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection recently found amounts of radium-226 in trash believed to have originated from the Hershey's Mill development in East Goshen Township. The radioactive material was discovered on Jan. 19, when a load of construction debris set off radiation alarms at Waste Management Inc.'s Norristown transfer station. “The radioactive material may have been contained in the kit for more than 80 years,” Bureau Director David Allard said in a press release. “The metal box likely came from a basement, an attic or a collector’s stash. Anyone who tampered with it or stored it for a long time may have been exposed to high levels of radiation.” The kit contained antique surgical equipment as well as four capsules inside a small lead safe marked “Radium Chemical Co., Inc.” Authorites believe the four capsules to be the source of the radium-226.

February 3, 2012 - Nuclear Street - Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Weekly Review - A U.N. agency has found the initial health impacts of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi accident to be minimal, while another international body recently gave its approval to the so-called stress tests for the country’s other reactors. At Fukushima itself, the news was less encouraging, as leaks continue to plague the complex system of pipes moving contaminated water between treatment facilities and the damaged units.

February 3, 2012 - Waterford Patch - Poll: The Future Of Nuclear Power In Connecticut - It appears the nuclear industry has a failure to communicate. Thursday night, the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE) gave a three-hour presentation to the Nuclear Energy Advisory Council about the future of nuclear power in Connecticut. CASE argued that another nuclear reactor should be built in Connecticut, and the best spot would be Millstone Power Station, if the federal government builds a national nuclear waste repository. A nuclear spent fuel repository has not been built partly because the majority of the public is still against nuclear power and therefore it is politically difficult, a point backed up by CASE’s research. CASE interviewed 600 people in Connecticut, and many were against nuclear energy despite having incorrect or no information on the topic. “The nuclear industry has done a bad job of communicating with the public,” NEAC Chairman J.W. “Bill” Sheehan said, a statement CASE speakers echoed.

February 3, 2012 - Mainichi Daily News - Indictment of contractors exposes illicit work at nuke plants - Three people and two firms were indicted Feb. 2 on charges of dispatching a worker to the Oi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui Prefecture under a falsified contract in violation of the Employment Security Law. Those indicted by the Kokura Local Public Prosecutors Office are Hideo Ichise, 58, of Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, Yoshimi Tomita, 59, of Maizuru, Kyoto Prefecture, and Kanae Ikegami, 36, of Kitakyushu's Wakamatsu Ward. Prosecutors also indicted Taihei Dengyo Kaisha Ltd., a Tokyo-based power plant construction and maintenance firm, and Takada Kiko, a plumbing firm in Takahama, Fukui Prefecture. The Kokura Summary Court on Feb. 2 fined Ichise and Tomita and the two firms 500,000 yen each and Ikegami 250,000 yen. Ichise is the Fukui business manager of Taihei Dengyo, and he previously served as the firm's Oi operation chief. Tomita is president of Takada Kiko while Ikegami is an executive of Dream, previously known as Soshin Kogyo, a plumbing and housing equipment firm. She is also the wife of a gang leader with ties to the Kitakyushu-based crime syndicate Kudo-kai.

February 3, 2012 - New Mexico Business Weekly - Big military science project shaped modern New Mexico - Modern New Mexico was born at 5:29:45 a.m. on July 16, 1945, when the world’s first atomic bomb was exploded in the desert 35 miles southeast of Socorro. The Trinity blast at the White Sands Proving Ground marked the beginning of the atomic age, and in the U.S., New Mexico was the epicenter of that age. From that point forward, the state’s economy was built around nuclear weapons and high-tech research.

February 3, 2012 - Northwest Herald - Byron plant released little tritium - The trace amount of radioactive tritium released in steam to cool a reactor during a shutdown at an Illinois nuclear plant was not enough to present a danger to the public, according to the first estimates by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Preliminary calculations indicate that the radiation dose from Monday’s release at the Byron Generating Station was less than 0.001 percent of the commission’s annual dose limit of 100 millirems. That amount is thought to be safe to workers and the public, agency spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng said. “That is a very, very, very small amount,” Mitlyng said, much less than the dose from a dental X-ray (0.5 millirem) or a smoke detector (0.008 millirem). Exposure to radiation increases a person’s lifetime risk of cancer, so minimizing exposure is a good idea.

February 3, 2012 - Associated Press - Nuke inspectors focus on 'unusual' wear on tubes - The integrity of some equipment installed in 2009 at Southern California's San Onofre Unit 2 nuclear plant is drawing concern after unusual wear was found on hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water. Thursday's disclosure came two days after a tube leak at the plant's other unit prompted operators to shut down the reactor as a precaution. A tiny amount of radiation could have escaped, but officials say workers and the public were not endangered. The problems at Unit 2 were discovered during inspections of a steam generator, after the plant 45 miles north of San Diego was taken off-line for maintenance and refueling. The two huge steam generators at Unit 2, each containing 9,700 tubes, were replaced in fall 2009, and a year later in its twin plant, Unit 3, as part of a $670 million overhaul. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, more than a third of the wall had been worn away in two tubes at Unit 2, which will require them to be plugged and taken out of service. At least 20 percent of the tube wall was worn away in 69 other tubes, and in more than 800, the thinning was at least 10 percent.

February 2, 2012 - Philadelphia Inquirer - Capsules of radium found at a Norristown waste station - When a load of construction debris set off radiation alarms at a waste station in Norristown, an investigation revealed a rare find: an antique medical kit containing four capsules of radium. State officials said Tuesday they were searching for the kit's owner, lest the person be suffering any ill effects from the radioactive material. The radium capsules together weigh one gram and were safely contained in a lead-lined box, according to the Department of Environmental Protection. But if someone handled the capsules, which are in the form of radium-226, the radiation could burn the skin, said David Allard, director of the agency's Bureau of Radiation Protection. Even if someone were to open the box for an hour without touching the capsules, the resulting radiation exposure would be equivalent to having 100 CT scans, Allard said. The load of debris that contained the medical kit was traced to a work site at the Hershey's Mill retirement community in West Chester, officials said. But it is unclear how the kit got there. The kit set off alarms at a Norristown transfer station owned by Waste Management Inc.

February 2, 2012 - U-T San Diego - Leak at nuclear reactor may have vented; plant may have leaked radiation - A steam leak within a newly replaced generator at the San Onofre nuclear plant is raising the prospect that small traces of radioactive gas may have reached the atmosphere, though without any significant danger to workers or the public. Air extractors apparently carried small traces of radioactive gas from the generator area to an unsealed auxiliary building outside a reactor dome, setting off radiation alarms, Victor Dricks, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said on Wednesday. “If there was any radiation that escaped from the auxiliary building it would not pose any danger to the workers on site or to the public’s health and safety,” he said. “It would have been a small fraction of the natural background radiation.” Southern California Edison spokesman Gil Alexander said he could not confirm those details but did not dispute the account.

February 2, 2012 - Associated Press - Kyrgyzstan seeks culprits over radioactive coal - Kyrgyzstan's government says it will reprimand officials responsible for allowing contaminated radioactive coal to be imported into the country from neighboring Kazakhstan. Emergency Services Minister Kubatbek Boronov said Thursday that 990 tons of tainted coal will later this week be shipped out of the northern Chui province back to Kazakhstan. Deputy Prime Minister Aaly Karashev said officials who failed to prevent the coal from being imported will be punished within 10 days. News of the radioactive coal has sparked outrage among opposition politicians in the impoverished Central Asian nation. Some have accused Prime Minister Omurbek Babanov of benefiting financially from its purchase. Government scientists have said that although the background radiation emitted by the coal is much higher than average, it is not lethal.

February 2, 2012 - Memphis Flyer - Radioactive Rubbish - Two of the four landfills in Tennessee that accept radioactive waste are located in Memphis, and that has some residents worried for their health. Shelby County mayor Mark Luttrell arranged a forum at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library last week after receiving complaints from citizens concerned about the state law that allows for dumping radioactive waste in the North and South Shelby County landfills. The panel discussion included representatives from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) and the Sierra Club's local Chickasaw group. TDEC utilizes the Bulk Survey for Release (BSFR) program to analyze materials with extremely low levels of radioactive contamination before allowing them to be disposed of in the landfills.

February 2, 2012 - Edie Energy - Compensation for false teeth lost in nuclear reactor 'rebuffed' - An engineer who sneezed sending his dentures plunging to the bottom of a nuclear reactor was turned down for compensation. The claim for the false teeth, which may well still be at the bottom of the reactor, was revealed by Dounreay heritage officer, James Gunn, in this month's issue of the Dounreay News. Dounreay, one of Britian's first nuclear reactors when it opened in 1955, has been in the process of being decommissioned since 2005. Mr Gunn, who is preserving both the physical and oral history of the historic site, revealed the tale of the dentures when describing some of the more human stories he had come across.

February 2, 2012 - Limerick Post - Thousands at risk from deadly gas - Thousands of Limerick families are putting their lives at risk by ignoring warnings about a potentially deadly gas. Almost one in 10 Limerick homes which were tested for the killer gas, Radon, were found to have potentially harmful levels of the gas, which can cause lung cancer. But almost 90,000 houses in the city and county have gone untested. A spokesperson for the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland has told the Limerick Post that one in ten of all homes tested in Limerick were considered to have high radon levels, putting their occupants at risk. But just 1,300 houses have been tested across the city and county in comparison to more than 4,000 in neighbouring Clare. The tests have identified parts of Newcastle West, Askeaton and Shannon where homes were found to be at risk or at high risk from the levels of the gas detected. The spokesman pointed out, however, that huge areas of the city and county have never been tested. “The more we test, the more high levels we find but we can’t say whether an area is considered to be high in radon until people ask to have their houses tested. “We really want to see more people have this simple test done because it is the only way the risk can be identified”.

February 2, 2012 - PR.com - New Gold Test XRF Analyzer Features Newest Detection Technology - A leading supplier of x-ray fluorescence analyzers for precious metals analysis, QSX Instruments Inc, is pleased to announce the release of a new XRF Analyzer for this application. The new QSX-295Tplus enhances the benefits that other analyzers in the Quickshot XRF line provide and is the first to feature a Silicon Drift Detection system (SDD). The new, “plus,” system is the evolution of the QSX-295T model; which has been the most popular Quickshot XRF analyzer for precious metal assay work. The addition of a higher resolution detector (SDD technology) in the QSX-295Tplus will provide users with increased precision at faster measurements speeds (10 seconds, compared to 30 seconds).

February 2, 2012 - Las Vegas Review-Journal - Nuclear waste hearing turns testy over Yucca Mountain - Leaders of an expert study panel urged Congress on Wednesday to abandon the long-troubled strategy that has failed to solve the problem of how the nation should dispose of nuclear waste. Co-chairman Lee Hamilton said members of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future don't expect lawmakers to act this year on broad changes it has recommended after a two-year study. But he urged some steps be taken on reforms, including a new "consent-based" approach to finding a state willing to host burial of high-level nuclear waste that has accumulated at power plants and government installations. Hamilton said the cooperative strategy "is the only path on the table to get us out of the box" after the long impasse over the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.

February 2, 2012 - PCB007 - Vigilant Enhances Capabilities with New X-Ray Test Equipment - Vigilant Components has invested further in its component test and verification facility with new state-of-the art component X-ray test equipment. As a new independent electronic component distributor, Vigilant has been established by experienced component specialists and is committed to providing high integrity component sourcing, verification and counterfeit detection services to its customers. Thanks to its specialized X-ray capabilities, the new Component Inspection System allows Vigilant to provide industry-leading counterfeit detection capabilities for all sourced components. The system is a welcomed addition to the company’s in-house dedicated component testing laboratory.

February 2, 2012 - PRWeb - ContagionSurvival.com Offers Protective Kits for Pandemics, Chemical and Radiation Disasters as San Onofre Nuclear Power Generating Station Releases Radiation  - An Associated Press report by Michael R. Blood entitled "Small radiation amount 'could have' escaped plant" states that a radiation leak was detected Tuesday afternoon in Unit 3 at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, about 45 miles north of San Diego. The seaside plant was taken off line while investigators tried to determine what happened. It was the second accident in 3 months when in November, the company took more than an hour to notify the public of an ammonia leak in a storage tank that prompted the evacuation of some workers. ContagionSurvival.com spokesman Octavio Padilla responded to his company's recently published website by stating, "Since the release of the article, it has been established that radiation actually did escape. There are 7 million nervous people within a 50-mile radius of San Onofre, many of whom are angry that Southern California Edison and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have been slow with inadequate reports of just how much radiation that was." He went on to say, "Our company's primary focus has always been Earthquake Preparedness, and there are 96 nuclear reactors in regions at higher risk of quakes than previously thought. The most populous area being Indian Point, where 20 million New Yorkers live within a 50-mile radius of a reactor."

February 2, 2012 - Lexology - Presidential commission recommends nuclear waste management and funding reforms - The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future released its final report detailing a new strategy for managing the nation’s nuclear waste. The Commission’s key recommendations include removing nuclear waste management from the purview of the Department of Energy (DOE), creating a new federally chartered corporation to implement the waste management program and immediately overhauling how utilities fund the nation’s waste management activities. The Commission submitted its report to Secretary of Energy Chu on January 26 and urged the Secretary to appoint a senior official at the agency to coordinate prompt implementation of the Commission’s recommendations. President Obama formed the Commission following his decision to halt work on a geologic storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Despite more than two decades of work on developing that site, the United States still lacks a central repository for civilian nuclear waste, and nuclear waste remains at power plants around the country. Since the early 1980s when Congress created the Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF), utilities have paid the federal government 0.1 cents per kilowatt-hour of nuclear electricity sold in order to fund nuclear waste management activities. Much of that money collected from utilities, however, has been used by Congress to fund unrelated programs or to reduce the annual budget deficit.

February 2, 2012 - Insurance Journal - Nuclear Accidents Pose Little Risk to U.S. Health, Say Regulators - The risk to public health from a severe nuclear power plant accident in the United States is “very small” because reactor operators should have time to prevent core damage and reduce the release of radioactive materials, U.S. nuclear regulators said in a study on Wednesday. The study comes almost a year after the disaster in Japan in March when an earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, causing reactor fuel meltdowns and radiation releases. “Successful implementation of existing mitigation measures can prevent reactor core damage or delay or reduce offsite releases of radioactive material,” the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in the study. “As a result, the calculated risks of public health consequences from severe accidents modeled in the severe accident study) are very small,” the NRC said. The study found there was “essentially zero risk” to the public of early fatalities due to radiation exposure following a severe accident. The long-term risk of dying from cancer due to radiation exposure after an accident was less than one in a billion and less than the U.S. average risk of dying from other causes of cancer, which is about two in one thousand.

February 2, 2012 - Energy Choices - Smart meters will not be ’obligatory‘ says minister - Government confirms that it cannot force people to have a smart energy meter, raising concerns about national roll-out. Concerns about radiation and privacy have forced the government to concede that it cannot force households into having an energy smart meter installed. Smart meters have big potential benefits,[...] but there are also potential concerns which must be addressedSpeaking in parliament, energy minister Charles Hendry admitted the government would “not make them obligatory,” and this was later confirmed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The DECC says it is responding to concerns about the smart meters themselves, which emit electromagnetic radiation at levels similar to mobile phones, microwaves and Wi-Fi hubs. In the USA and Canada, the fear of smart meters producing radiation has seen energy companies hit with multi-million dollar class action lawsuits from people who have had the devices installed in their homes and now claim to be ill from radiation sickness.

February 2, 2012 - Edie Waste - Nuclear fuel recycling boost could achieve 80% recovery level - Professor Christian Ekberg will co-ordinate the nuclear fuel recycling project Researchers in Sweden are investigating ways to maximise the recycling of nuclear fuel for fourth-generation power systems. The 9.4m euro project, headed up by the Chalmers University of Technology, aims to produce safe fuel that can be 80% recycled, compared to current levels of 1%. Fourth generation power systems can lead to a reduction of the amount of high-level, long-lived nuclear waste to a tenth of what it is today, while energy output can increase hundredfold. Many researchers believe the new technology will have a commercial breakthrough within 20 years. Germany is at present the only European country that has decided to phase out nuclear power.

February 2, 2012 - Nuclear Street - Executives Touch on Vermont Yankee, Indian Point as Entergy Reports Earnings - Entergy filed a motion Tuesday asking state power regulators to approve continued operation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant following a recent court decision favorable to its relicensing. In a conference call on the company’s fourth quarter earnings, Entergy CEO J. Wayne Leonard said the state’s next step is unknown, and it has until Feb. 21 to appeal the decision. In it, a judge ruled that Vermont laws compelling the closure of the plant after its original federal license expires this year infringed on the federal government’s authority to regulate nuclear safety. For its part, Leonard said Entergy is confident that the lower court’s ruling will stick. The company is looking at ways to recover attorney’s fees from the state, and Leonard highlighted language in the judge’s decision saying there was no evidence that Entergy acted in bad faith in its dealings in Vermont.

February 2, 2012 - Mid-Hudson News - NRC rejects Indian Point’s fire protection exemption requests - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has denied the majority of requests for exemptions from fire protection requirements at the Indian Point nuclear power plants in Buchanan. Entergy, meanwhile, issued a statement saying it intends to “comply with [the ruling] in every way [and] our fire protection will be even more comprehensive, and cover even more areas of the plant.” Based on information from Entergy, the NRC has decided that most of the requests to substitute operator manual actions for fire protection features do not meet NRC’s criteria. “After considering the compensatory measures, the NRC does not have an immediate safety concern,” Michele Evans, director of NRC’s Operating Reactor Licensing said. “Although the two units have some deficiencies in their defense-in-depth, they have extensive fire protection programs, including an on-site fire brigade to respond to and extinguish fires. In addition, each unit has established fire watches to monitor areas containing the deficiencies.”

February 2, 2012 - Nyack News & Views - Study: Indian Point Threatens Water Supply - The Indian Point Nuclear Facility in Westchester County threatens the drinking water to more than 11 million people in the region, according to a report released by an environmental advocacy group. Leaked radioactive contaminants in the event of even a minor mishap could put the health of 11.3 million people at risk, says the study from Environment New York. The report also shows that Indian Point threatens water supplies for more than twice as many people compared to any other nuclear facility in the nation. “The danger of nuclear power is too close to home. Here in New York state, the drinking water for nearly 10 million people is too close to an active nuclear power plant,” said Eric Whalen, Field Organizer with Environment New York. “An accident like the one in Fukushima, Japan or a radioactive leak could spew cancer-causing radioactive waste into the drinking water of millions of New Yorkers.”

February 2, 2012 - Mainichi Daily News - Hibakusha: Now is the time to discuss radioactive 'black rain' - Seiji Takato urges a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry official to expand the scope of areas where residents are entitled to free health care for diseases caused by the "black rain" fallout from the Hiroshima atomic bombing, on Jan. 20, 2012. (Mainichi)"It's hardly bearable, absurdly inadequate ..." said a disappointed Seiji Takato, secretary-general of Saeki-ku Kuroi Ame-no-kai (Saeki Ward Black Rain Association), on Jan. 23. He was looking at a report numbering about 160 pages in an annex of his home in the suburbs of Hiroshima, which he also uses as his office. The report, which lists figures that "experts" had analyzed, was delivered at a meeting of a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry panel three days earlier. The panel was reviewing the areas where residents are entitled to medical assistance in connection with their exposure to the "black rain" fallout from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. It was snowing lightly in Tokyo on Jan. 20 when the experts' panel released its report suggesting that the scope of areas where victims were entitled to free health check-ups should not be expanded -- a conclusion falling short of the demands made by Takato and others who had spent about four hours traveling all the way from Hiroshima.

February 2, 2012 - Waste Management World - Rare earth plant given temporary licence - The Malaysian government has granted a controversial rare earth plant in Kuantan a temporary operating licence, despite strident protests by residents and green groups over fears of the radioactive waste it will produce. After hearing recommendations from the Atomic Energy Licensing Board on Monday, the government said yesterday it will award the Australian company Lynas Corporation a temporary licence to start operations, but imposed five conditions related to safety, including several on waste disposal. Among others, Lynas must detail its plans for a permanent disposal facility for waste residue. 'If the conditions are not complied with, the temporary licence may be suspended or revoked and the next licence application will not be considered,' said Mr Ghazali Ismail, a spokesman for the board.

February 1, 2012 - The Stanford Daily - SLAC announces first atomic X-ray laser - Scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory announced last Wednesday their involvement in an experiment that created the first successful atomic X-ray laser. Such a laser was predicted to be possible as long ago as 45 years, according to Science Now. The vast amount of energy required for a functioning atomic X-ray laser, however, led past physicists to attempt even nuclear explosions in order to generate the requisite power. SLAC broke through by using the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) laser to power the atomic X-ray laser. SLAC scientist John Bozek said that the LCLS, which has been operational since August 2009, is the only X-ray free electron laser in the world that would have been powerful enough to power the atomic X-ray laser being tested in the experiment. The $410 million LCLS emits light 10 billion times brighter than other X-rays.

February 1, 2012 - Stockton Record - Radioactive device stolen in Manteca - A radioactive device was stolen from a truck in Manteca on Monday evening or Tuesday morning, but the public is not at risk, according to the Manteca Police Department. The item, a nuclear densometer, was taken from a truck in the 800 block of Nevada Street, police said. The device is an engineering tool that tests the density of materials and objects. It only poses a threat to an individual who tampers with it, police said. Police ask anyone with information to contact South County Crime Stoppers at (209) 823-4636 or the Manteca Police Department (209) 456-8101.

February 1, 2012 - Scientific American - Reveal What's Beneath Fishes' Scales - X-rays of fish skeletons that scientists use to study evolutionary development are now displayed as art. A new exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History will feature 40 x-rays of sea creatures laid out in evolutionary sequence. X-Ray Vision: Fish Inside-Out showcases the work of the museum’s scientists. X-rays allow researchers to study fish structures without dissections. The exhibition opens to the public on February 4 and runs until August 5.

February 1, 2012 - Chillicothe Gazette - Public comment sought on Piketon site waste - U.S. Energy officials said they're still weighing their options on how to dispose of waste from cleanup operations at the Piketon Department of Energy site. At a quarterly public meeting Tuesday at Waverly High School, officials said they haven't made a decision on disposal options or tear-down options for older buildings on the site, but they said they're continuing to seek input from residents in Ross, Jackson, Pike and Scioto counties. "I think the biggest misconception is that we've already made a decision," said Joel Bradburne, Portsmouth site lead for the DOE. "In all sincerity, we're here to clean the place up and make sure people have input and understand how the decisions are made."

February 1, 2012 - Arizona Daily Star - New study raises questions on 'proton' cancer treatment - A warning to men considering a pricey new treatment for prostate cancer called proton therapy: Research suggests it might have more side effects than traditional radiation does. A study of Medicare records found that men treated with proton beams later had one-third more bowel problems, such as bleeding and blockages, than similar men given conventional radiation. This is an observational study so it is not definitive, but it is one of the largest to compare these treatments. Proton therapy is rapidly growing in use - Medicare covers it - even though no rigorous studies have tested whether it is as safe or effective as usual care. It costs around $48,000 - at least twice as much as other prostate radiation treatments. Hospitals are rushing to build proton centers, and nine are operating now - sites include Boston, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Jacksonville, Fla., and Loma Linda, Calif., east of Los Angeles. Promoters often claim it is less likely to cause complications. "There's no clear evidence that proton therapy is better" for prostate cancer, and the new results suggest it may cause more complications, said Dr. Ronald Chen, a radiation specialist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

February 1, 2012 - My Broadband - How unsafe is cellular radiation? - The impact of cellphone radiation on a person’s health made headlines in SA again, and we take a look at what the WHO said. The debate regarding the potential link between cellphone use and cancer (and other health concerns) is starting to make headlines in South Africa again. The debate is far from being settled, and a recent World Health Organisation study suggests that mobile phone use is possibly carcinogenic (cancer-causing) to humans. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an arm of the WHO, classified the radiation associated with mobile phone use as Group 2B: “possibly carcinogenic to humans”.

February 1, 2012 - China Buzz - Minor Malfunction at Chinese Nuclear Power Plant - Today the Chinese-language website of The People's Daily, quoting Hong Kong Media, reported a minor accident at the Ling Ao Nuclear Power Plant in southern Guangdong. The report states that no radiation leak was detected. The Ling Ao plant is only about 50km north of Hong Kong and only 1 km away from Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant. According to information released by Daya Bay Nuclear Power Operations Management Co. Ltd., the company that operates and manages the plant, technicians discovered three days ago, that the plant's no. 3 reactor was mistakenly using old data. The operators say that technicians have already rectified the problem and confirmed that the safe operation of the plant was not affected by the malfunction and that no radioactivity was detected. The report also says that the Hong Kong government has not recorded any unusual readings.

February 1, 2012 - Greenwich Patch - Oncologist From Greenwich Uses Cutting Edge Approach to Cancer Treatment - Dr. Daniel Fass has treated more than 1,000 patients, with a cutting edge radiation therapy like no other in the region. “I chose oncology because it was such a challenge, “We’ve made so much progress and I’m happy being part of that.” Dr. Daniel Fass finds great professional satisfaction at his Theall Road medical practice- the Institute for Image Guided Radio Therapy- treating patients with lung, breast, head, neck, throat, prostrate and other cancers with state of the art radiation treatment. “It was a great opportunity,” the Greenwich resident said about his decision to locate in Rye after a chief residency at New York University and a fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, “an excellent opportunity for people who needed service.” Before opening his practice in Rye, Fass was head of Bendheim Center at Greenwich Hospital from 1992 to 2009. Four years after his arrival, radiation oncologist Fass has touched the lives of more than 1,000 patients and pushed the frontier of cancer treatment at his Rye office with WestMed on Theall Road.

February 1, 2012 - Zee News - Mobile phones to display radiation level in India - Mobile phones sold in India will start displaying the level of radiation from September 1, 2012 as the government has made it mandatory for handsets to disclose such tags. Earlier, concerned over possible health issues, a committee comprising officials from Delhi`s health department, experts from WHO, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Jawaharlal Nehru University had come up with a stringent guideline. It had set the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) level for mobile handsets in Delhi and NCR at less than 1.6 watt per kg for six minute and taken over a volume containing a mass of one gram of human tissue. This SAR level has been taken as the standard across the country and the government has advised mobile companies to give directions in the manual booklet as well. The tag is intended to forewarn consumers about the health hazards posed by handsets.

February 1, 2012 - Business Wire - Toshiba’s Aquilion PRIME CT System Receives FDA Clearance - Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc. announces the FDA clearance of the Aquilion™ PRIME CT system, the latest addition to the Aquilion CT product line and part of the “ONE Family” of CT scanners. With double-slice technology and coneXact™ reconstruction algorithm, originally designed for Aquilion ONE, the system can generate 160 unique slices per rotation, enhancing MPR and 3D-rendered images. The Aquilion PRIME was designed for healthcare facilities that need to perform a wide variety of advanced clinical examinations and produce high-quality clinical images with reduced radiation exposure. “That, along with standard patient safety features AIDR and NEMA XR 25 Dose Check Software, helps clinicians acquire quality images while attempting to minimize radiation dose as much as possible.” .The Aquilion PRIME features an 80-row, 0.5 mm detector, a 7.5 MHU large-capacity tube, and 0.35-second scanning. This high-speed rotation allows rapid data acquisition and shortens scan times while the fast reconstruction unit further improves throughput, reducing time required for diagnosis. The system also features a 78 cm aperture gantry, the largest currently available in a high-end CT system. The combination of a 660-pound patient-weight-capacity couch with a large gantry bore makes the Aquilion PRIME an ideal system for use in emergency scanning or bariatric patient studies.

February 1, 2012 - Science Codex - A pocket of star formation - NGC 3324 is located in the southern constellation of Carina (The Keel, part of Jason's ship the Argo) roughly 7500 light-years from Earth. It is on the northern outskirts of the chaotic environment of the Carina Nebula, which has been sculpted by many other pockets of star formation (eso0905 - http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso0905/). A rich deposit of gas and dust in the NGC 3324 region fuelled a burst of starbirth there several millions of years ago and led to the creation of several hefty and very hot stars that are prominent in the new picture. Stellar winds and intense radiation from these young stars have blown open a hollow in the surrounding gas and dust. This is most in evidence as the wall of material seen to the centre right of this image. The ultraviolet radiation from the hot young stars knocks electrons out of hydrogen atoms, which are then recaptured, leading to a characteristic crimson-coloured glow as the electrons cascade through the energy levels, showing the extent of the local diffuse gas. Other colours come from other elements, with the characteristic glow from doubly ionised oxygen making the central parts appear greenish-yellow.

February 1, 2012 - The Guardian - Can the UK achieve its carbon targets without nuclear power? - A new report, which has attracted cross-party support, is claiming that the government's decision in favour of nuclear power was "corrupted" by "false" information. Corruption of Governance? (pdf) was jointly written by Unlock Democracy and the Association for the Conservation of Energy and it argues that "this corruption of governance can only be rectified if Parliament re-opens this debate, and MPs vote on this issue having seen the correct information". One of the report's central arguments is that, according to the government's own figures, "there is absolutely no need for any more nuclear power stations to deliver energy security ('keep the lights on') and achieve 80% reductions in carbon dioxide by 2050". In part, it says that this is down to the fact that the government stated that the UK's electricity supply will need to "double or even triple" in order to achieve a low-carbon economy. But the report states that this was based on flawed information and assumptions about electricity "needs" by 2025 and beyond. It led to some contorted thinking, it adds.

February 1, 2012 - Nuclear Street - Nuclear Industry Receives New Earthquake Data for Central and Eastern U.S. - The majority of American nuclear plants will draw from a new and extensively revised dataset detailing the earthquake risk across much of the U.S. And although the research began in 2008, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the Central and Eastern United States Seismic Source Characterization Project will inform decisions about plants’ seismic risks under safety changes ordered following the earthquake-triggered Fukushima Daiichi accidents in Japan. The seismic data project took nearly four years to complete and updated studies used for earthquake preparedness since the late 1980s. The peer-reviewed research draws from historical earthquake and geological data dating as far back as 1568. It cost about $7 million to complete, with funding from the Electric Power Research Institute, the Department of Energy and the NRC. Seismic studies have long been part of the licensing process for nuclear facilities, although the new and more extensive data may confront some plant owners with earthquake risks higher than previously thought. According to an NRC release announcing the study Tuesday, “Calculations with the new model are expected to result in a higher likelihood of a given ground motion compared to calculations done using previous models.”

February 1, 2012 - Burlington Free Press - Vermont Yankee ruling a slap in face of Vermonters - The recent news that a federal judge has ruled against Vermont in the dispute over the closing of Vermont Yankee is truly a slap in the face of the people of Vermont. It doesn't make much difference which side of this issue that one finds themselves, the fact of the matter is that the elected officials of Vermont representing the majority of the people of Vermont felt that Vermont Yankee and the parent company's operation wasn't safe enough to permit the plant to operate another 20 years. The basis for the ruling by this judge was that only the federal government, which is supposed to be representative of the people's wishes, has the sole power to approve or deny such an extension of the said license to operate.

February 1, 2012 - Associated Press - U.S. agency inspects? Byron nuclear plant - A failed electrical insulator blamed for a power loss to a nuclear reactor in Byron was replaced Tuesday, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission began a special inspection into how equipment responded to the outage, officials said. Exelon began preparations to re-start the Unit 2 reactor at the Byron Nuclear Generating Station, though it was unclear how soon it could return to service, spokesman Paul Dempsey said. The insulator, a piece of protective equipment that helps regulate the flow of electricity in the plant’s switchyard, failed Monday morning and fell off the metal structure to which it was attached. That interrupted power and caused the reactor to automatically shut down as a precaution. It was not immediately clear what caused the insulator to fail, but the part will be sent to a lab for analysis, Dempsey said.

February 1, 2012 - ExplorerNews.com - Senator Melvin’s energy plan to support education - What if Arizona K-12 and universities had a dedicated revenue stream of $100 million or more every year? What if this revenue stream was counter-cyclical to the routine boom-bust cycles of our economy? What if this revenue stream was not connected to property taxes? Co-locating Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS), recycling facility and future expansion for new technology makes sense. As the Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) [On America’s Nuclear Future] noted, storage in some form, for some period of time, is an inevitable part of the nuclear fuel cycle. As part of its nuclear recycling and storage facilities, an interim storage facility would allow stranded used nuclear fuel to be transferred from reactor sites. Bring used fuel to a central location for interim storage, reprocessing, and permanent storage is an efficient and effective policy. Arizona offers multiple sites that contain (1) remoteness, (2) deep geologic storage sites and (3) existing transportation infrastructure. These potential sites are in the Hualapai Valley north of Kingman, the Colorado Plateau province in the Holbrook Basin, the Picacho Basin southwest of Picacho Peak and in the San Simon Valley southeast of Safford in Graham County. The key to site selection is the opposite of the Yucca Mountain process, which was top down. Consent-based, bottom-up site selection by potential host communities is the key.

February 1, 2012 - Reuters - Nordic power-Near-term spike on cold, nuclear dip - The shortest-term Nordic power prices surged on Wednesday as a frigid spell coincided with a plunge in Swedish nuclear output, while the rest of the contract curve fell back on predictions that the cold would soon give way. "The day-ahead prices are soaring today," said a Norway-based portfolio manager. "Tomorrow is now priced at 100 euros, which is up 25 (euros) since yesterday." The benchmark contract on the pan-Nordic Nasdaq OMX Commodities exchange, the second-quarter 2012, fell 1.34 percent to 36.90 euros at 1051 GMT while the March 2012 dipped 1.44 percent to 41 euros. "Most of the curve is a touch down on the weather forecast, which says it's going to be milder again over the weekend," the portfolio manager said. "The blocking high over Russia is apparently weakening." He attributed the near-term spike to the one-two punch of abnormally cold temperatures and technical problems at Swedish nuclear plants. "Swedish reactors tomorrow are supposed to produce only around 5,000 MW out of a capacity of 9,000 MW," he said.

February 1, 2012 - Associated Press - Agency probing U.S. nuke reactor pumps - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is launching a special inspection into how some equipment responded to a power failure at a nuclear reactor in the midwestern state of Illinois. NRC spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng says some water pumps at the Byron Generating Station switched off when the Unit 2 reactor lost power Monday, then came back on without being manually reset. She says the pumps are designed to switch off after a set amount of time if there is an undervoltage, but normally must be reset. She says there was no danger because the plant about 153 kilometers northwest of Chicago has multiple backup pumps, but the NRC wants all pumps to perform properly. Exelon Energy officials say they’ve replaced a faulty electricity insulator at the plant that was responsible for the outage.

February 1, 2012 - KMJ Now - San Onofre Reactor Still Shut Down - A reactor at the San Onofre nuclear power plant was shut down Tuesday because of a possible leak, but there is no imminent danger, utility operators said. Sensors at the plant detected a possible leak in one of Unit 3's steam generator tubes, Southern California Edison spokesman Gil Alexander said. Even if a leak is confirmed, it would pose no danger to the public or plant workers, he said. No release has been made into the atmosphere, he added. "It is not a major leak. It has not risen to the level where it would cause the unit to automatically shut down," Alexander told U-T San Diego (http://bit.ly/xo0rM1). "But as a precaution we're shutting the unit down to go in and inspect." Unit 2 of the nuclear plant is currently offline for maintenance and upgrade. The utility said it has ample power to meet customer needs while Unit 3 is offline. Once the problem is resolved it will still take several days before the reactor comes back online because of an elaborate start-up procedure for nuclear plants, the U-T reported.

February 1, 2012 - The Daily Ossining - Environment N.Y. Says Indian Point Threatens Water - A new report released by Environment New York contends that Indian Point Nuclear Power Plants are a threat to the drinking water of 11.3 million people in the New York metro area. Still, officials for the power plants said a radioactive substance that has been leaked into the ground poses no threat to drinking water and has “no public health consequence.” A 50-mile affected radius was calculated using the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Ingestion Pathway Emergency Planning Zone, where, “its primary concern is the ingestion of food and liquid that is contaminated by radioactivity.” “The danger of nuclear power is too close to home,” said Eric Whalen, field organizer with Environment New York, an environmental advocacy organization. “Here in New York State, the drinking water for nearly 10 million people is too close to an active nuclear power plant. An accident like the one in Fukushima, Japan or a radioactive leak could spew cancer-causing radioactive waste into the drinking water of millions of New Yorkers.”

January 31, 2012 - Minneapolis Star-Tribune - The Tampered Radon Test - I don't know how it happened, and I'm not accusing anyone of intentionally doing something that's completely despicable, but it looks like someone intentionally tampered with a radon test. I recently inspected a home that was being flipped for some young first-time home buyers. The home had a newly finished basement, and the young couple planned to use one of the basement bedrooms as their master bedroom, so they hired me to do a radon test at the same time. For the record, radon causes lung cancer. The radon test was high, so the buyers asked the home flipper to install a radon mitigation system. Here's where it starts to get interesting. Red Flag #1 - The flipper refused, and said they wanted to have the radon re-tested. Why? I don't know. There was absolutely no legitimate reason to have the radon re-tested. We followed EPA protocol for the radon test, using a continuous electronic monitor that we send in for calibration annually. Red Flag #2 - The flipper wanted to have 'their own guy' perform a radon test, using the charcoal canister method. Why would someone prefer to use an older method of testing? I don't know. The electronic monitor gives an hour-by-hour breakdown of the radon levels in the home; the charcoal canister method just gives the final number. It's far easier to tamper with a charcoal canister than an electronic test.

January 31, 2012 - ECT.coop - NRECA Backs New Nuclear Waste Plan - A federal panel’s proposal to take politics out of the nation’s approach to nuclear waste disposal has met with support from NRECA and five other energy trade associations.The groups said they agree with the panel’s proposal to create a new federal corporation to run a high-level waste program, as opposed to leaving it in the hands of Congress and the Energy Department. The Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) on America’s Nuclear Future also is on the right track by urging prompt construction of at least one interim storage facility and assuring that money in the federal Nuclear Waste Fund is used for its intended purpose, they said in a statement. “Nuclear energy is a key component of America’s energy mix. The BRC recognizes this with its recommendation for stable, long-term support for advanced reactor and fuel cycle technology development that can help address the energy challenges facing future generations,” they said.

January 31, 2012 - Battle Creek Enquirer - U.S. needs to heed report on nuclear waste issue - Dozens of facilities throughout the United States generate nuclear waste every day, material that can remain radioactive for thousands of years. Officials have spent decades working on a safe, centralized system to deal with that waste, with little to show for it. As a result, about 71,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel - with about 2,200 additional tons generated each year - is stored "temporarily" at some 75 sites around the country, posing potential security and health concerns. Last week, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future issued a report on managing the nation's growing inventory of nuclear waste. The report warrants careful study and consideration. Unfortunately, its release was met with little fanfare, indicating that action on its recommendations is unlikely. Panel members studied the waste issue for two years and made it clear that something needs to be done, saying in their report: "(T)his generation has a fundamental, ethical obligation to avoid burdening future generations with the entire task of finding a safe, permanent solution for managing hazardous nuclear materials they had no part in creating,"

January 31, 2012 - Daily News & Analysis - ST’s faulty radium board plan on - What was supposed to be a convenient tool for commuters with which to identify routes on state transport buses seems to have backfired badly on the authorities. On paper, the decision to convert the white-painted steel plates — which serve as route indicators — to radium-painted ones appeared to be the right thing to do. A couple of weeks ago, when Deepak Kapoor, the Maharashtra State Transport Corporation (MSRTC) managing director, was on a visit to Vidarbha, he saw that these route indicators were not properly visible, and so he began consulting with experts on how best to solve the problem. He was advised to use fluorescent paint instead of white paint as a background. On January 24, he issued orders to the effect that all the indicators inside MSRTC buses be re-painted. About 5,000-odd buses have already been re-painted, but many bus drivers and conductors have had to face complaints from passengers regarding the indicators’ poor visibility.

January 31, 2012 - Northern Ireland Executive - Radon Letters In Newry Are A Scam - Some residents in the Newry area have today reported receiving letters suggesting that it will be necessary to vacate their homes in mid-February in order to facilitate testing for radon gas. The letters claim to be from the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS) and appear to be signed by Health Minister Edwin Poots. The Minister and the Department wish to make it clear that no such letter has been issued and any residents who receive such correspondence should report it to the police on 0845 600 8000. A spokeswoman from the DHSSPS said: “Neither the Minister nor the Department have issued any such correspondence. Residents receiving these letters should report them to the PSNI for further investigation.” The DHSSPS has also informed the NI Environment Agency (NIEA) and the Environmental Health Department of Newry and Mourne District Council.

January 31, 2012 - Mainichi Daily News - 'Shadow meals' employed to keep families safe from radiation - The practice of kagezen -- literally "shadow meal" -- entails setting out meals at home for a family member who is absent, in hopes that they will be safe while traveling. Meals were commonly prepared by family members waiting at home for the safe return of husbands and sons on distant battlefields, or fathers who were away as migrant workers. There may be some families today who practice kagezen for family members who are hospitalized or for children away on long school trips. There's been a recent revival of kagezen, which families had been carrying out less and less in modern times. "Shadow" meals at homes and schools are being set aside, not for someone who is absent from the dinner table, but for radiation testing. Apparently, setting aside actual meals for nutritional analysis is a method that had been used prior to the nuclear crisis. The latest kagezen trend began in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, when the city started radiation testing of school lunch last fall, and has spread across the country. Starting Jan. 16, the method has been implemented by schools and nursery schools in the Fukushima Prefecture city of Minamisoma, where a week's worth of school meals are tested with equipment that can distinguish between different types of nuclear species, on top of measuring radiation doses. Neither iodine-131 nor cesium-134 or -137 was detected in the first test, which must have had many people relieved.

January 31, 2012 - AZoRobotics - Report Proves Cyberknife Robotic Radiosurgery for Central Lung Treatment is Highly Effective - Accuray, a radiation oncology company has declared that a study has been published, which shows the advantages of the CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System used for treatment of central lung tumors. In the past, central lung tumors were treated with Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT) and needed a lot of accuracy to ensure that the risks of damaging vital structures, which include the esophagus, the airway and heart that can cause grave complications such as death. This research work was published in theine January 2012 issue of the Green Journal and showed that the CyberKnife System, which uses the Lung Optimized Treatment and Synchrony Respiratory Tracking System helps track and rectify respiratory motion in a non-contact manner so as to perform central lung lesions with less toxicity without affecting healthy tissue, such as the trachea, esophagus, and heart while also providing high levels of tumor control.

January 31, 2012 - ANI - ‘Sloshing’ galaxy cluster discovered - Scientists have spotted vast clouds of hot gas ‘sloshing’ in Abell 2052, a galaxy cluster situated nearly 480 million light years from Earth. The scientists are studying the hot (30 million degree) gas using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from the Very Large Telescope to see the galaxies. “The X-ray images were amazing. We were able to see gas sloshing like liquid in a glass,” said NRL’s Dr. Tracy Clarke. “Of course this would be one enormous glass since we see the gas sloshing over a region of nearly a million light years across!” The Chandra data revealed the huge spiral structure in the hot gas around the outside of the image.

January 31, 2012 - PRWeb - Dentist in Odessa to Utilize Innovative 3-D Imaging Technology for Dental X-Rays - Dr. Robin Rutherford is a cosmetic and implant dentist in Odessa, and has announced that he will be providing 3-dimensional x-rays at his practice for assisting in the diagnosis, planning, and treatment involved in dental care. The i-Cat® machine is an advanced Computerized Topography tool for implants and restorations, oral surgery, TMJ and sinuses, and orthodontics. As an Odessa implant dentist, Dr. Rutherford plans to utilize the technology to more precisely place implants, locate the source of, and diagnose pain, and aid in removing wisdom teeth. The i-Cat® software compiles all images of a patient’s oral composition in a single 3-D scan that takes less than ten seconds. Dr. Rutherford adds that through the machine’s enhanced mapping features, he can customize an entire course of treatment for implant placement and final cosmetic restoration. He says he is excited about the innovative technology as a way to ensure patients receive the best possible treatment for their dental needs. “This C. T. technology is where the future of dentistry is headed. In a decade, today’s panoramic X-rays will be considered arcahaic, like rotary telephones are compared to today’s smartphones.”

January 31, 2012 - Wisconsin Rapids Tribune  - Breast health screening session planned - Breast Thermography, also known as digital infrared thermal imaging, or DITI, is a radiation-free, contact-free, noninvasive state-of-the-art clinical screening test recommended for women of all ages. DITI is the most advanced technology available for early detection of breast disease, including cancer. Heat energy from abnormal blood vessels is detected by infrared cameras and converted to color diagnostic images obtained by a certified clinical thermographer and interpreted by a board-certified medical doctor.

January 31, 2012 - PressTV - 'US destroys world with DU ammunition' - A slow genocide is resulting from the use of uranium munitions by the US and NATO in numerous countries around the world. A new report shows US forces have used massive amounts of DU in Afghanistan -- causing a huge number of congenital deformities and cancers. Several UN human rights commissions have prohibited the use of depleted uranium on humans, including during military conflicts. However, the US government has used weaponized depleted uranium on humans, including: 340 tons during the first [Persian] Gulf war in 1991; every missile used during the 1998 Yugoslavian invasion; at least 1,000 tons in Afghanistan in 2001; and 2,400 tons in Iraq in 2003. Depleted uranium is radioactive and extremely destructive to humans - with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. In other words, it takes 4.5 billion years for one kilogram of depleted uranium to reduce to a half a kilogram- - meaning that the US has contaminated certain countries almost forever.

January 31, 2012 - PanArmenian.net - Space radiation caused Russia’s Mars probe crash – official - Space radiation triggered a glitch in the on-board computer system causing the recent crash of Russia’s Mars probe, Federal Space Agency head Vladimir Popovkin said on Tuesday, Jan 31. “Two components of the onboard computer system were spontaneously rebooted and it switched into a standby mode,” he said. “The most likely reason [for the glitch] is the impact of heavy charged space particles,” he said. Another possible cause could have been defective microchips imported from abroad, he said. “The use of imported microchips is not only our problem,” he said, adding that NASA and the U.S. Defense Department were also concerned by illegal imports of those products, RIA Novosti reported. A government commission has ruled out any “external or foreign influence” on the spacecraft, including alleged electromagnetic emission from a U.S. radar in the Pacific Ocean. Phobos-Grunt, Russia's most ambitious planetary mission in decades, was launched on November 9 but it was lost due to a propulsion failure and fell back to Earth on January 15.

January 31, 2012 - Mid-Hudson News - State , Entergy reach agreement on one contention regarding Indian Point’s license renewal - The state, which has been concerned about Entergy’s management program to ensure the continued integrity of Indian Point’s containment structures, has reached a settlement agreement with the company regarding that issue in the continuing NRC license renewal application process. Entergy provided information to address the state’s concerns and pledged to conduct continued checks on the containment buildings if the license is renewed. NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said it is one of several issues to be addressed. “Certainly any time you are talking about the containment buildings for a nuclear power plant, they serve a very important function, especially as we saw what happened in Fukushima,” Sheehan said. “Their role is integral to the plant’s safety, so for this to be resolved at this point means that the judges can now focus on some of the other issues that will be raised.”

January 31, 2012 - Northwest Herald - Nuclear plant unit shuts down - A loss of offsite power Monday morning led to an emergency shutdown of a unit at Exelon’s Byron Nuclear Generating Station. The situation posed no danger to the public, Exelon spokesman Paul Dempsey said. “There was a loss of offsite power and unit 2 was shut down,” Dempsey said. “We are investigating the cause.” According to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) news release, an unusual event was declared at 10:18 a.m. The plant automatically shut down in response to the loss of offsite power. The diesel generators are currently supplying power to plant equipment. “Our emergency system worked as planned,” Dempsey said. “All systems responded as designed and the diesels came online.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the air within a 10-mile emergency planning zone around the plant could be unsafe to breathe in the event of a major plant catastrophe and recommends evacuation of this zone in the event of an incident. The NRC says food and water supplies may be unsafe after a nuclear accident within a 50-mile radius of the station, which includes parts of McHenry County.

January 31, 2012 - Reuters - France must extend nuclear reactors' lifespan: audit - France has no option but to extend the lifespan of its nuclear power plants as any investments to renew its nuclear capacity or to increase its reliance on other forms of energy would be too costly and come too late, the French Court of Audit said. The French independent government body, which is charged with conducting financial and legislative audits, said in a report that a lack of investment decisions to build new reactors meant there were few choices left. "...In the absence of investment decisions an implicit decision has already been made which commits France either to prolong the reactors' lifespan beyond 40 years or to quickly change the energy mix, which implies more investments," said the report on the costs of the French nuclear power sector. The report, published on Tuesday, said that if the reactors' lifespan was limited to 40 years this would mean having to build 11 new-generation reactors by 2022. "Putting in place such an investment program in the short term is highly unlikely, even impossible ...," it said.

January 31, 2012 - Nuclear Street - As It Pitches AP1000 for New Temelin Reactors, Westinghouse Signs MOU With Metrostav - In its efforts to build new reactors in the Czech Republic, Westinghouse has announced a memorandum of understanding with Metrostav a.s. to help construct two AP1000 units at the Temelin nuclear plant. Metrostav—a Czech construction firm that counts power plants and Prague subway projects among its portfolio—would assume key construction and project management responsibilities for Temelin units 3 and 4 under the exclusive deal. The firm also will work with Westinghouse on its Temelin bid to Czech utility CEZ. “As we prepare to submit a formal proposal to CEZ this year for completion of the Temelin Nuclear Power Plant, it can clearly be seen that we are taking a series of important steps to make sure we have key elements of our delivery team and our supply chain in place to ensure that the project will be a success,” Westinghouse regional president Yves Brachet said in a release.

January 31, 2012 - Nuclear Street - Iowa Lawmakers Reconsider New Nuclear Plant Bill - After it stalled in the Senate last year, Iowa legislators are giving a second look to a bill that would help MidAmerican Energy build a new nuclear plant in the state. In recent years, MidAmerican Energy has studied the feasibility of building a new plant, potentially including small modular reactors. MidAmerican is one of 11 utilities on the customer advisory board of NuScale Power, which is in the process of submitting a 45 megawatt reactor design to federal regulators. Last year the Iowa House approved a bill that would allow MidAmerican to collect money from ratepayers for a nuclear plant in advance of its completion. Following cost overruns and abandoned reactor projects in the late 1970s and 1980s, many states prohibited utilities from raising capital from ratepayers for nuclear plants before they come online. In its latest iteration, the Iowa bill would give the state’s utilities board more oversight of a proposed nuclear plant’s costs and feasibility.

January 31, 2012 - Zee News - Daniel Radcliffe grew up terrified of a nuclear blast - Daniel Radcliffe has revealed that there were quite a few things that frightened him as a child, but the thought of a nuclear blast terrified him the most. The young star is about to scare film fans as the star of horror film ‘The Woman in Black’. “I was afraid of ghosts when I was a kid and afraid of the dark and monsters under the bed. When I was a kid and somebody first told me about a nuclear bomb I would live in fear of nuclear war for the next five years of my life,” Contactmusic quoted him as saying. Nowadays, his biggest fear is creepy crawlies. “I don’t love cockroaches,” the ‘Harry Potter’ star admitted.

January 31, 2012 - Associated Press - Japan Cabinet OKs bill to cap nuke reactor life - Japan's Cabinet approved bills Tuesday aimed at bolstering nuclear safety regulations following last year's Fukushima disaster, including one that would put a 40-year cap on the operational life of nuclear reactors. The approval came as International Atomic Energy Agency experts generally endorsed "stress test" results at two idled reactors in western Japan, bolstering the Tokyo government's efforts to restart the facility, though the IAEA team said some safety measures needed clarification. Japan currently has no legal limit on the operational lifespan of its 54 reactors, many of which will reach the 40-year mark in coming years. One reactor at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant had been in use 40 years when the tsunami struck last March.

January 31, 2012 - Dow Jones Newswires - Still "Uncertainties" Over Nuclear Costs In France - Report - Many uncertainties remain over the costs faced by the nuclear industry in France, notably those related to the decommissioning of reactors and the treatment of nuclear waste, the French state audit office president Didier Migaud said in an interview with French daily Le Monde released Tuesday. The French state auditor Cour des Comptes released a report on nuclear costs in France, in a bid to assess all the costs of the industry following a major controversy over the share of nuclear in France's power sources--around 80%--after the Fukushima disaster in March last year. France is the world's second largest nuclear operator with 58 reactors, after the U.S.

January 31, 2012 - Rockford Register Star - Regulators: ‘No danger’ from Byron nuclear plant shutdown - A loss of power coming into the Byron nuclear plant caused one of two reactors to automatically shut down about 10:15 a.m. today. Backup diesel generators were activated after the power outage and were being used for safety equipment that vents heat from the reactor, according to a spokeswoman from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Lisle. “Right now, we believe the plant is in a stable condition,” said the NRC’s Viktoria Mitlyng. “There is no danger to the workers or the public.” Exelon, which operates the Byron plant, declared an “unusual event” — the lowest of four emergency classifications established by the NRC — after the outage. Mitlyng said two NRC resident inspectors are monitoring the plant. According to the NRC, smoke was seen from an on-site transformer, but no fire was found by responders. It said steam is being released from the plant to aid in the cooling process and does not represent a threat to the public. Byron station spokesman Paul Dempsey said crews are still trying to determine how power coming to the generator was interrupted. The steam release, which he said made a whooshing sound, was expected to continue into the evening.

January 30, 2012 - Cutting Edge - New Atomic X-ray Laser Advances Science - Scientists working at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have created the shortest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, fulfilling a 45-year-old prediction and opening the door to a new range of scientific discovery. The researchers aimed SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at a capsule of neon gas, setting off an avalanche of X-ray emissions to create the world's first "atomic X-ray laser." "X-rays give us a penetrating view into the world of atoms and molecules," said physicist Nina Rohringer, who led the research. A group leader at the Max Planck Society's Advanced Study Group in Hamburg, Germany, Rohringer collaborated with researchers from SLAC, DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Colorado State University. "We envision researchers using this new type of laser for all sorts of interesting things, such as teasing out the details of chemical reactions or watching biological molecules at work," she added. "The shorter the pulses, the faster the changes we can capture. And the purer the light, the sharper the details we can see."

January 30, 2012 - RT.com - Litvinenko: MI5, MI6 death files ordered released - MI5 and MI6 have been ordered to declassify documents in the case of ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who died in London in 2006 from radioactive poisoning. The papers are expected to shed light on Russia’s alleged involvement in the matter. The data request came from Dr Andrew Reid, the St Pancras Coroner, who is conducting an investigation into the death of Litvinenko, reports The Daily Mail. According to the newspaper, Dr. Reid agreed to review allegations that Litvinenko was killed because of his open criticism of Russia’s Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin. The case “demands an investigation into the alleged criminal role of the Russian state,” says Dr. Raid in his statement that has been leaked to the newspaper. “The inquiry will extend beyond the mechanical circumstances of death,” reads the statement. “If Mr Litvinenko is shown to have died as a result of ingestion of Polonium 210, the public interest plainly demands an open and fearless investigation into the full circumstances; including how and why this fatal ingestion occurred.” Dr. Raid specifically stressed that “any lesser level of inquiry would not command public confidence either nationally or internationally.”

January 30, 2012 - News & Observer - TomoTherapy offers safer radiation - Radiation therapy, once considered a crude weapon of last resort in the war on cancer, has gotten so sophisticated, oncologists joke its latest version involves "bending a beam." That's, of course, an exaggeration of what a TomoTherapy machine really does. TomoTherapy treatment promises radiation therapy that damages less healthy tissue surrounding some of the most challenging tumors - those that are odd-shaped or curve inward, particularly in the head, the neck and the pelvic area. "It has more degrees of freedom, so you have more customization," said Dr. Larry Marks, who heads the radiation oncology department at the UNC School of Medicine. "It enables you to do unusual stuff."

January 30, 2012 - Plymouth Daily News - Environmental group report claims water supply threatened by nuclear power - The drinking water for 4.8 million people in Massachusetts could be at risk of radioactive contamination from a leak or accident at nuclear power plants in the region, claims a new report released by the MASSPIRG Education Fund and Environment Massachusetts Research and Policy Center. “Here in Massachusetts, the drinking water for well more than half of our state is too close to an active nuclear power plant to ignore,” said Janet Domenitz, Executive Director of MASSPIRG. Representatives of MASSPIRG and other environmental organizations presented their report at a ceremony near Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Manomet. The report argues public health and environment is harmed by Pilgrim's daily radioactive releases into the air because off-site releases are not properly monitored and disclosed to the public, and what the government standards are based on decades-old science. Leaks from nuclear power plants are becoming more common as the facilities get older, MASSPIRG states.

January 30, 2012 - Daily Green - How to Win Friends, Influence People, and Bury Nuclear Waste - There was something for everyone in a blue ribbon commission's final report about managing waste from nuclear power plants. The report, released January 26 and in such high demand that downloads crashed the commission's servers, drew praise from the Nuclear Energy Institute. And from utility organizations. And from Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and Senate majority leader who hates the Yucca Mountain waste repository. And from Fred Upton, the Michigan Republican and House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman who likes the Yucca Mountain waste repository. Not bad for a bipartisan commission charged with the thankless task of recommending alternatives for disposing of some 70,000 metric tons of hot stuff nobody wants in their backyard. Strike that comment. Maybe there's a community that wouldn't mind having spent nuclear fuel in its backyard. It all depends on how it's asked. The Swedes have figured out that honey works better than vinegar. We could learn from their example. More on that in a bit. Two of the blue ribbon panel's recommendations were: 1) geologic disposal is the only practical way to dispose of spent fuel rods that can no longer support productive fission reactions, and 2) a "consent-based approach" should be instituted for finding the right location for the burial ground.

January 30, 2012 - Cardiovascular Business - Texas allows Positron subsidiary to produce Sr-82, other isotopes - The Texas Department of State Health Services-Radiation Control Program has granted Positron's wholly owned subsidiary, Manhattan Isotope Technology (MIT), approval of its radioactive materials license amendment. This amendment will permit MIT to receive and process solutions which contain Strontium-82 (Sr-82) and multiple other radioisotopes. Over the next six months MIT will obtain Sr-82 target solutions from foreign irradiators for final purification into active pharmaceutical ingredient grade Sr-82 at the MIT facility in Lubbock, Texas. During proton irradiation to produce Sr-82, many other radioisotopes are co-produced. These additional isotopes are removed from Sr-82 during radiochemical processing. The previous MIT radioactive materials license was limited to two radioisotopes: Sr-82 and Sr-85. The new amended license broadens the scope of isotopes permitted on site and allows MIT greater flexibility in this validation phase, according to the Montreal-based Positron.

January 30, 2012 - Cleveland Daily Banner - An enemy in your home - The World Health Organization released its mortality statistics for 2011 and a startling figure surfaced about in-home causes of death. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, radon gas causes more deaths than drunk driving, fires, drownings and airplane crashes — more than 20,000 deaths each year in the United States alone. It is the no. 1 cause of lung cancer among non-smokers and the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. You can’t see, smell or taste radon. Worse, it may very well be present at a dangerous level in your home. Here’s the good news: This problem is easily preventable with a few simple and inexpensive adjustments, according to experts. If this is true, do you not owe it to yourself to learn about radon and how to prevent becoming a statistic? Proverbs 22:3 says, “Sensible people will see trouble coming and avoid it, but an unthinking person will walk right into it and regret it later.” — Good News Translation. That need not be us. Lung cancer from radon is not something we want to live to regret. In general, lung cancer kills more people than breast, prostate, colon, liver, kidney and melanoma cancers combined. If there is a way to avoid lung cancer, a sensible person should be interested.

January 30, 2012 - Economic Times - Solar storms behind vanishing electrons in Earth's outer radiation belt - Scientists have unraveled the mystery behind the disappearing act of high-energy electrons in Earth's outer radiation belt, which may pave the way to predict space weather phenomena. UCLA researchers showed that the missing electrons are swept away from the planet by a tide of solar wind particles during periods of heightened solar activity. "This is an important milestone in understanding Earth's space environment," said lead study author Drew Turner, an assistant researcher in the UCLA Department of Earth and Space Sciences and a member of UCLA's Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP). "We are one step closer towards understanding and predicting space weather phenomena." During powerful solar events such as coronal mass ejections, parts of the magnetized outer layers of sun's atmosphere crash onto Earth's magnetic field, triggering geomagnetic storms capable of damaging the electronics of orbiting spacecraft.

January 30, 2012 - PRNewswire - Radiopharmaceutical for Targeted Treatment of Prostate Cancer to Enter Clinical Trials - A new targeted radiopharmaceutical, designed to deliver a therapeutic dose of radiation directly to metastatic prostate cancer, will be manufactured in Hamilton, Ontario to be used in clinical trials that will evaluate its efficacy and benefits for patients. The radiopharmaceutical, I-131-MIP-1466, will be manufactured by the Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization (CPDC, Hamilton, ON), for the developer of the compound, US-based Molecular Insight Pharmaceuticals (Molecular Insight, Cambridge, MA). The trial, anticipated to start in early 2013, will mark the first time that a small-molecule-based radiopharmaceutical specifically targeting prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA), a type of protein expressed in high levels on prostate tumours, will be tested for its ability to treat prostate tumours that have spread throughout the body.

January 30, 2012 - Sentinel & Enterprise - We're ignoring dangers of wireless technology - There's a much better question to ask St. Anna kids than where Adolf Hitler owned land ("With iPads, St. Anna School students have the world at their fingertips," Wednesday): How dangerous to health is wireless technology, such as iPads and cell phones?  A recent study published in the journal Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine, reported some alarming findings, including that children absorb twice the amount of cell-phone radiation in their heads, and as much as 10 times in their bone marrow, than adults do. iPads use the same/similar energy. Of course, you'll find articles saying there's no known danger (or, it's controversial), but almost all of those originate from government (like the National Cancer Institute) or business sources. They lie. See an example of bogus science at: http://www.emf-health.com/reports-drcarlo-danishstudy.htm. Some dangers of microwave radiation have been known since at least the 1970s. More are being discovered.

January 30, 2012 - Palm Beach Post - High-tech proton cancer therapy center planned for Palm Beach County Jacksonville's Embrace a Healthy Florida - Tired of sending patients to Jacksonville for the latest cancer treatment, a group of Palm Beach County doctors hopes to spend $30 million to build South Florida's first proton therapy center. South Florida Radiation Oncology aims to join a nationwide building boom of proton centers, which feature high-tech radiation machines encased in concrete crypts. Proponents say proton beams are so precise that they can radiate a tumor without damaging the healthy tissue around it. "It has the ability to be deposited in the tumor with no exit dose," said Ravi Patel, managing director of Wellington-based South Florida Radiation Oncology, which has offices from Boca Raton to Port St. Lucie. Patel said he's considering sites in Wellington, Boynton Beach, West Palm Beach and Boca Raton.

January 30, 2012 - Mainichi Daily News - Gov't starts study of radiation effects on wildlife near Fukushima plant - The Ministry of the Environment has started a study to examine the effects of radiation from the disaster-struck Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant on nearby plant and wildlife, particularly their reproductive functions. The ministry -- working with the Japan Wildlife Research Center and the National Institute of Radiological Sciences -- is selecting local species of plants and animals based on 12 recommended for study by the International Commission on Radiological Protection in the event of nuclear disaster, including a type of mouse, shellfish, and pine tree. For comparison purposes, specimens will be collected from areas with differing radiation levels both inside and near the no-entry zone around the plant. The specimens will be checked for radioactive cesium levels, and also for anomalies in their appearance or DNA. The study will pay particular attention to the reproductive faculties of amphibians and mammals and checks for abnormalities in their offspring, as well as in the seeds of local flora.

January 30, 2012 - Blog for Iowa - Natural Disasters In The U.S. And Nuclear Power: Why Iowans Are Getting Involved - The Iowa Legislature is considering enacting a law to subsidize the nuclear power industry this session. Let’s Get Together, Act and SHUT DOWN this Legislation. “Natural Disasters in the U.S. and Nuclear Power” is the topic of a talk by John Rachow M.D. Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 7:30pm, Main Meeting Room at the Hiawatha Library, 150 West Willman Street, Hiawatha, Dr. Rachow, immediate past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), is speaking in response to the recent disaster in Japan. All are welcome. The public is invited. There is no charge. Iowa PSR is leading a grassroots campaign against an advanced cost recovery bill, a measure which would enable utilities to collect the capital expense for a new nuclear reactor in advance from their customers. The bill, which is being seriously considered by the Iowa House of Representatives [italics BFIA's], was supported by MidAmerican Energy. If the bill passes, MidAmerican would be allowed to recover all development costs from ratepayers and retain the advanced payments, if for any reason, a risky new nuclear reactor is not built.

January 30, 2012 - Asian Age - 'Worst scenario' on Fukushima crisis kept under wraps - The possible worst case scenario resulting from the nuclear crisis at Fukushima was shared with only a few lawmakers as making the report public would have caused alarm and ‘no one would have remained in Tokyo,’ a Japanese minister said. Japan's nuclear disaster minister Goshi Hosono has said ‘the worst scenario’ on development of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima complex, which was compiled two weeks after the crisis began, was shared only by a few lawmakers, including then Prime Minister Naoto Kan, due to fears it might cause confusion among the public. "The scenario was not a possibility in fact. If it had been made public at that time, it was likely that no one would have remained in Tokyo," Hosono was quoted as saying by Kyodo News. "It would have caused trouble regarding the government's handling of the nuclear crisis," he said.

January 28-29, 2012 - Webmuenster took the weekend off.

January 27, 2012 - Platts - NRC staff says renewables can't replace proposed Calvert Cliffs-3 nuclear plant  - US Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff asserted Thursday that renewable electricity generating sources are not a viable alternative to UniStar Nuclear Generating Services' proposed Calvert Cliffs-3 nuclear power plant in Maryland. Andy Kugler, an NRC staff senior project director, told an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that an analysis staff did of wind- and solar-generating projects that likely would be built in the state by around mid-decade total about 300 MW. UniStar has proposed building a 1,600-MW MW unit adjacent to Calvert Cliffs-1 and -2 in Lusby. The company said the plant could be completed by December 2017, if it receives a combined construction and operating license from the NRC. Kugler said that even if 1,600 MW of renewable power projects were built in the state, 400 MW would be the maximum average production by these sources, given the variable nature of wind and solar generation. Consequently, he said an additional 1,200-MW, natural gas-fired generator would have to be built to assure electric grid stability. The ASLB hearing was held to consider a challenge to an NRC Final Environmental Impact Statement, issued March 20, 2011, that concluded there are no renewable power alternatives to the proposed Calvert Cliffs-3 plant, should it be built. NRC requires applicants to demonstrate that a new nuclear power plant is the best choice for new generation.

January 27, 2012 - The Financial - New ISO standard makes food irradiation safer - A new ISO standard provides state-of-the art requirements for food irradiation, commonly used to improve quality and safety in food processing,according to ISO. The standard will benefit manufacturers, irradiation operators, regulators, customers and, ultimately, consumers. ISO 14470:2011, Food irradiation – Requirements for the development, validation and routine control of the process of irradiation using ionizing radiation for the treatment of food, not only provides requirements, but also guidance for meeting them. Food irradiation is the process where food is exposed to ionizing radiation in order to improve its safety and quality. It is intended to be used only on food that has been produced under good manufacturing practice (GMP) principles. The irradiation of food can be used for different purposes including control of pathogenic microorganisms and parasites, reduction of the number of spoilage microorganisms, inhibition of the sprouting of bulbs, tubers and root crops, extension of product shelf life or phytosanitary treatment.

January 27, 2012 - ThomasNet News - METTLER TOLEDO Releases "How Safe is X-Ray Inspection of Food?" Webinar - METTLER TOLEDO Safeline x-ray has developed a 15-minute webinar which tackles some of the most popular misconceptions about x-ray inspection of food. The webinar, "How Safe is X-Ray Inspection of Food?," is available on-demand 24/7 at www.mt.com/pi-ondemand and answers many important questions for food manufacturers, including: o Why use x-rays to inspect food? o What are the effects of x-rays to flavors, textures and the nutritional values of food? o What is the difference between x-ray inspection and food irradiation? o What is the difference between x-ray radiation and radioactivity? o How safe are the x-ray systems used in the food industry? The webinar demonstrates that bringing inspection into the food production process poses no threat to the health of production staff or to the quality of food. Furthermore, in exploring the efficacy of x-ray inspection in detecting physical contaminants such as glass, metal, stone, bone, and high density plastic and rubber, it shows that food inspected by x-ray is demonstrably safer than food which hasn't.

January 27, 2012 - ZeeNews - Soon, breast cancer could be detected from hair - An Australian company is developing a hair test to screen for breast cancer, and it says that the test could become a viable alternative to mammography. SBC Research is conducting an 80-patient trial to test its hypothesis that women with breast cancer have higher levels of phospholipids in their bloodstream that can be detected in their hair. The company aims to commercialise the test and says it could be made available to women of all ages as an initial screening, unlike mammography, which is largely restricted to women over 50. Those involved in the consortium began developing a test based on their discovery that hair from women with breast cancer had a different cell structure to hair from other women. They used synchrotron X-ray technology to detect 70 per cent of women who had breast cancer in a series of trials, by observing a ring in their hair not present in disease-free hair.

January 27, 2012 - Associated Press - Vt. nuke plant nixes request for more tritium tests in former drinking water well - The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant once again is refusing the state's request that it conduct more tests for radioactive tritium in a former drinking water well on the plant grounds. Officials in the administration of Gov. Peter Shumlin maintain the tests could show whether tritium that leaked from the plant had had reached a deep underground bedrock aquifer. It already has shown up in numerous test wells nearer the surface. Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, also showed up in a test in October 2010 in the former drinking water well near a plant construction office building. That's the well on which the state wants more tests.

January 27, 2012 - Daily Beast - Panel Highlights Alarming Lack of National Plan for U.S. Nuclear Waste - A U.S. government panel concludes that the handling of radioactive waste from all 104 American nuclear plants is “damaging and costly” and needs a complete overhaul. For longer than Barack Obama has been alive, the United States has been a country without a formal plan to deal with long-term nuclear waste. Some nations, like Spain, bury it underground. Others, like France, reprocess some used fuel to suck the maximum amount of juice from it. But America, well, simply stalls. There are costs to that stalling. A government panel appointed by Energy Secretary Steven Chu released a report Monday taking the United States’s lackadaisical attitude to task. “Put simply, this nation’s failure to come to grips with the nuclear waste issue has already proved damaging and costly,” wrote the panel, which was led by Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman, and Brent Scowcroft, a national security adviser to two Republican presidents. The problem is diverse and robust. Rather than store all nuclear waste in a single, highly protected location, America’s current policy simply bides time by housing the radioactive byproducts of nuclear fission at each of the country’s 104 operating plants. While many are secure, the system has holes. A Newsweek report in late 2010 highlighted safety lapses at some nuclear plants—8 percent of plants holding high-level waste failed security tests.

January 27, 2012 - Chicago Homeland Security Examiner - Senate bill seeks study on TSA body scanners radiation  - U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) will introduce legislation in Congress to require a new independent health study of the full body X-ray scanners deployed at U.S. airports across the country since 2009. TSA Cheif John Pistole agreed to an independent study of the full body X-ray scanners after repeated requests by Senator Collins on November 2, during his testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, in which Collins is a ranking member. On November 9, Pistole reneged on the deal, telling the Senate transportation committee that independent studies had demonstrated the machines emit a "minute" amount of radiation. Pistole said a draft of a report by the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security validated earlier conclusions that the machines are not harmful and therefore there is no need for a new study.

January 27, 2012 - iWatch News - Loophole in Senate bill may create nuclear risks - In the post 9/11 world, the threat of a nuclear bomb being fabricated and used by terrorists is real. Now a group of nuclear experts has told Congress that a loophole in a bill meant to limit the use of bomb-grade uranium in medical isotopes could undo years of work to curb the risk of such material being diverted to such a bomb. Signed by over a dozen experts in the medical and nuclear non-proliferation fields, the letter raises concerns about the American Medical Isotopes Production Act of 2011, passed by the Senate in November. The bill, currently awaiting a House vote, is aimed at reducing the use of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) in developing the medical isotope Molybdenum-99 — a key ingredient in the medical diagnosis of millions of American patients a year. Highly-enriched uranium is also a key ingredient in nuclear weapons, and experts say its continuing production for civilian use poses many security risks. The letter, submitted by the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project (NPPP), argues that the bill might unintentionally promote the heightened production of HEU by Russia, in particular.

January 27, 2012 - Galesburg Register-Mail - A mom’s battle over her son’s death - Grey eyes. Haunted, too. It’s the little girl’s eyes in the picture that grab your’s first. Grabs and holds you in the same way she clutches a framed picture. Emmalynne Barnes turned 4 years old three days after her father died. He’s the man in the framed picture. He’s the man Emmalynne’s 2-year-old brother, David, doesn’t remember. Aaron Barnes died Aug. 24, 2011. He had worked hard to even get into the military, losing 90 pounds to serve his country. The Fairview native survived two tours of duty in Iraq — 26 months total — with the United States Army and came home in late 2008 to be with family and friends. But Aaron got sick in October 2010 and it took a long time for doctors — first Veteran’s Administration physicians and then private surgeons who cut out his kidney — to figure out what was wrong. “They said he died of sacromatoid renal sarcoma,” Aaron’s mother, Kim Schisler said Thursday. “I had never heard of it. So I had to look it up.” And while Kim researched the rare form of kidney cancer that spread to his bones, lungs and brain, she stumbled across another issue — depleted uranium. Depleted uranium is part of the waste obtained from producing fuel for nuclear reactors and atomic bombs. The U.S. armaments industry uses depleted uranium to coat weaponry like artillery shells, tanks and aircraft since the late 1970s.

January 27, 2012 - Reuters - Detailed results from ALSYMPCA phase III study with Alpharadin to be presented at 2012 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium - Algeta is a company focused on developing novel targeted therapies for patients with cancer based on its alpha-pharmaceutical platform. Algeta's lead product Alpharadin (radium-223 chloride) is in development as a potential new treatment for cancer patients with bone metastases. It is in pre-registration for castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) patients with bone metastases, and filings are expected mid-2012 in the USA and Europe; Alpharadin has Fast Track designation for this indication in the USA. Alpharadin is also under clinical investigation in breast cancer patients with bone metastases and in combination with docetaxel chemotherapy in CPRC patients with bone metastases. Alpharadin is being developed and will be commercialized, pending approval, under a global agreement with Bayer Pharma AG. Algeta is also exploring the potential of Targeted Thorium Conjugates (TTCs), which are based on conjugating the alpha-emitter thorium-227 to targeting molecules, as a basis of a future pipeline of tumor-targeting alpha-pharmaceutical candidates.

January 27, 2012 - News Medical - Positive results from cisplatin plus radiation therapy trial on head and neck cancer - A select subgroup of advanced head and neck cancer patients treated with radiation therapy plus the chemotherapy drug cisplatin had more positive outcomes than patients treated with radiation therapy alone and continued to show positive results 10 years post-treatment, according to a study presented at the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium, sponsored by AHNS, ASCO, ASTRO and SNM. Researchers analyzed two subgroups totaling 410 patients who had advanced head and neck cancer and received radiation therapy or radiation therapy plus cisplatin. Those who had microscopically involved resection margins and/or extracapsular spread of disease showed improved local-regional control with radiation and chemotherapy. At 10 years post-treatment, the local-regional failure rates were 33.1 percent and 27.1 percent, respectively. Disease free survival for radiation therapy only patients was 12.3 percent compared to 18.4 percent for those treated with radiation plus cisplatin and overall survival was 19.6 percent and 27.1 percent, respectively. In contrast, patients who were enrolled in the study solely because they had tumors involving multiple lymph nodes did not benefit from receiving radiation therapy and chemotherapy concurrently.

January 27, 2012 - Galaxy Stocks - GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Prepares for Finland ESBWR Bid - General Electric Company NYSE:GE recently disclosed that GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) continues to expand its presence in the Finland. Company has recently signed a new project development memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Space Systems Finland Ltd (SSF), Finnish software and systems engineering firm, which specializes in the validation and verification of safety critical software for various industrial sectors, including the aerospace and utility industries. GE is basically a Diversified Machinery industry company. The sales of company resulted $147.3 billion for last consecutive twelve months, and the company’s net income recorded $13.04 billion. The company’s growth of its sales in recent quarter vs. year ago quarter recorded -7.9% which is below from Standard and Poor’s benchmark of 13.6%.

January 27, 2012 - Kalamazoo Gazette - Fusion: X-Ray Laser Zaps Solid to 2 Million Degrees - The quest to create nuclear fusion may have come a step closer when scientists heated solid matter to two million degrees with the world's most powerful X-ray laser, a study reported Wednesday. A team of researchers working at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California used the rapid-fire laser -- a billion times brighter that any other man-made X-ray source -- to flash-heat a miniscule piece of aluminum foil. In so doing, they created a form of plasma known as "hot dense matter," reaching temperatures hotter than two million degrees Celsius (3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit). The whole process lasted less than a trillionth of a second.

January 27, 2012 - Naharnet - Fusion: X-Ray Laser Zaps Solid to 2 Million Degrees - The quest to create nuclear fusion may have come a step closer when scientists heated solid matter to two million degrees with the world's most powerful X-ray laser, a study reported Wednesday. A team of researchers working at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California used the rapid-fire laser -- a billion times brighter that any other man-made X-ray source -- to flash-heat a miniscule piece of aluminum foil. In so doing, they created a form of plasma known as "hot dense matter," reaching temperatures hotter than two million degrees Celsius (3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit). The whole process lasted less than a trillionth of a second.

January 27, 2012 - New York Times - Is Spent Nuclear Fuel Really Waste? - When the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future was established two years ago, after the Obama administration killed a proposed repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, one of the items on its agenda was to determine whether spent nuclear fuel was in fact waste. Among advocates of nuclear power, considerable disagreement exists about whether the spent fuel can be considered waste, given that it contains unused uranium as well as plutonium, which is created in nuclear reactors and can be used as fuel. France and Japan have factories that chop up the fuel and chemically remove the uranium and plutonium for reuse. And on paper, there are designs for reactors that could take some of the most long-lived, troublesome materials in the spent fuel and transmute them into elements that would be easier to handle because they break down in centuries rather than millenniums. But such reprocessing is also a path to making materials for nuclear weapons, so the United States discourages it abroad. Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter banned the technology here; President Ronald Reagan lifted the ban, but so far it has not mattered, because it is commercially unattractive to American utilities.

January 27, 2012 - PRWeb - American Lawmakers Warned of Emerging Nuclear Power Market Risks and China’s Possible Domination - Cleantech analyst firm Kachan & Co. was among a number of voices in Washington this week advocating American lawmakers support new safer, cleaner nuclear power options in the face of growing Chinese enthusiasm for the technologies. A consortium of nuclear power advocates is concluding a week of briefings today with members of House and Senate energy committees from both sides of the aisle, and members of the bipartisan U.S. Defense Energy Security Caucus. The group’s message: There are safer, cleaner nuclear power options coming available, and while many of them are being developed in America, they stand the best likelihood of adoption and commercialization in China. The consortium is led by the Thorium Energy Alliance, an American advocacy group promoting the benefits of thorium-based nuclear power over today’s uranium, and James Kennedy, president of ThREEConsulting, a consultant on rare earths and thorium, promoting the development and integration of a U.S. rare earth cooperative and separate thorium storage and industrial products company.

January 27, 2012 - Business Green - Experts cast doubt on Japan nuclear plant tests - Advisers to Japan's nuclear safety agency have said power plant stress tests do not prove that a nuclear plant is safe, as the country faces the prospect of a summer without a single nuclear reactor in operation. Last year, the Japanese government ordered the nuclear authorities to conduct tests on all Japan's reactors after the 11 March meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi raised questions about the safety of nuclear power, particularly in a country prone to earthquakes and tsunami. Currently only three of Japan's 54 reactors - just over six per cent of its total nuclear capacity - are in operation after the Fukushima accident forced the closure of active reactors for safety checks. The latest closure came on Friday when a reactor at a plant near the Japan Sea was shut down for inspection.

January 27, 2012 - Public Service News - National Downwinders Day Vigil for Idaho Victims - The National Day of Remembrance for America's Downwinders is being marked in Idaho this morning with a candlelight vigil in Boise. "Downwinders" are people who were exposed to radioactive fallout from government nuclear-weapons testing in Nevada - fallout that fell hard on Idaho, especially the Emmett area. Liz Woodruff, executive director of the Snake River Alliance, is coordinating the event. "It's really important for people to remember and hold the federal government accountable for taking care of the effects of that, for the people who were hurt by it - and saying, 'never again.' " The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was passed in 1990 but was limited to residents in parts of Arizona, Nevada and Utah. Even though Idaho's congressional delegation has attempted over the years to extend coverage to Idaho, Woodruff says, the idea has been shot down. "In spite of the fact that people that got cancers and other diseases from the weapons tests were in Idaho. Some of the highest concentrations were in Idaho."

January 27, 2012 - The Press & Journal - Probe after workers’ boots contaminated - The Dounreay nuclear facility near ThursoAn investigation was under way last night after workers were contaminated by radioactive material at the Dounreay nuclear complex.. The toxic material was found on the boots worn by 14 employees as they ended their shift on Wednesday. Site contractors DSRL yesterday said none of the individuals were harmed and there has been no release of radioactivity to the environment. The incident occurred in a building inside the controlled fuel cycle area which is due to be demolished within the next few weeks. Radiation alarms went off as the workers checked themselves through hand and foot monitors. The contamination was detected on the soles of their safety boots

January 26, 2012 - Webmuenster on off-site assignment.

January 25, 2012 - Asbury Park Press - Water of millions in peril from nuclear plants - Environmental activists said in a report Tuesday that nearly 3.3 million New Jerseyans drink water from supplies at risk of contamination if there’s a leak or accident at a nuclear plant. Speakers at a Statehouse news conference called for nuclear plants to be shuttered or phased out, with no new plants developed, in favor of renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar. In the short term, they want independent safety reviews, immediate upgrades and regular groundwater tests. “The dangers are too close to home. There’s too many New Jerseyans’ drinking water that would be at risk. You shouldn’t have to worry about getting cancer from drinking a glass of water,” said Jennifer Kim, an advocate with New Jersey Public Interest Research Group. Kim said the report is the first to measure the number of people whose drinking water supplies are within range of a nuclear plant. She said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provided water intake data previously not released by the government, citing national security interests.

January 25, 2012 - Cape Cod Times - Group seeks closure of all nuclear plants - Opponents of nuclear power are calling for closure of the country's nuclear plants, including Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, because of the potential for contamination of water supplies from a Fukushima-type disaster. In a report released Tuesday, MASSPIRG Education Fund and Environment Massachusetts Research and Policy Center raised the alarm over dangers to drinking water supplies around Pilgrim and other nuclear facilities across the country if there is a disaster such as occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan in March 2011. A large amount of radioactive water escaped into the ocean after the earthquake and tsunami-fueled Fukushima meltdown, according to the report. Although the 32-page report did not focus on the potential impact on the Cape, the Falmouth Water Department oversees the Long Pond Reservoir, which provides drinking water for 77,500 people and is within 50 miles of Pilgrim, according to MASSPIRG Executive Director Janet Domenitz.

January 25, 2012 - The Patch - NYC is testing out a long-distance X-ray-like device to scan for guns - Do you feel lucky? No, probably not if you’re a guy with a gun in NYC and this incredible new technology works as intended. According to the Huffington Post, cops are testing out a device that functions similar to night vision goggles, but instead of detecting infrared radiation, this imaging technology uses terahertz—a wavelength that can effectively see through clothing by detecting natural human-emitted radiation. If an object—like a gun—blocks the body’s terahertz imaging, police would be able to detect the weapon through clothing from up to 16-feet away, according to the article.

January 25, 2012 - MIT Technology Review - Electron Holography Produces First Image of a Single Protein - The behaviour and function of proteins is largely determined by their shape. So one of the great ongoing quests in biology is to understand and model the structure of proteins. That's a tricky task. Biologists currently do it using techniques such as X-ray crystallography, which requires millions of protein chains to form into a crystal. The trouble is that most proteins don't form crystals. And even when they do, not all the molecules will be in the same conformation and so the diffraction pattern can end up being a kind of average of several different shapes. That's why biologists know the shape of less than 2 per cent of the proteins in humans. What's needed, of course, is a way of imaging individual proteins. One idea is to us x-rays or electron beams to do the trick and indeed some groups have had some success with this technique. But the disadvantage is that beams with an energy of a few KeV tend to destroy biomolecules so it's not clear how accurate these images can be. Nether is it possible to view the molecules over time. Today, Jean Nicholas Longchamp and pals at the University of Zurich in Switzerland have found a way round this. These guys make the entirely sensible suggestion of imaging proteins using low energy electron beams that don't destroy biomolecules. At this energy, electron beams have a wavelength of a nanometre or so, making them perfect not just for imaging with atomic resolution, but for holography.

January 25, 2012 - Buffalo News - Ordnance Works site cleanup requires system to control radon - A “fully functional” system to control or abate the release of radon gas into the air should be in place before any radioactive residues from World War II weapons production can be removed from the interim waste containment structure at the former Lake Ontario Ordnance Works, according to the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. The corps, which is responsible for cleanup or management of environmental pollution left over from TNT production and work on the atomic bomb, has issued a technical memorandum for use in deciding on the future of the site at the border between the towns of Lewiston and Porter.

January 25, 2012 - Medical XPress - Study points to therapy for radiation sickness - A combination of two drugs may alleviate radiation sickness in people who have been exposed to high levels of radiation, even when the therapy is given a day after the exposure occurred, according to a study led by Harvard Medical School researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital Boston.

January 25, 2012 - Buffalo News - Travelers deserve courtesy - The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon have forever complicated how we travel, but a suggestion by the acting chairman of the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority could make the process just a bit more bearable. Henry M. Sloma would like to see Transportation SecurityAdministration personnel display more courtesy to passengers, adding that personnel charged with screening might benefit from“sensitivity training.” While most air travelers have learned to accept the burden of new security measures, we agree with Sloma that the experience should be as pleasant as possible. The NFTA runs both the Buffalo and Niagara Falls airports and wants to attract as many passengers as possible. More passengers means more airlines and more flights, which is good for Western New York. Many Canadians use the NFTA’s airports because of the low fares and many destinations. The NFTA wants to do what it can to keep them as customers. And while the TSA’s mission of ensuring safe air-line travel is of the utmost importance, the TSA agents don’t need to be overly harsh or intimidating to do their jobs.

January 25, 2012 - BDNews24.com - Delta diverts polar flights due to solar storm - Delta Air Lines was diverting some flights on polar routes between Detroit and Asia to avoid disruptions to aircraft communications by a strong solar radiation storm, the airline said on Tuesday. The storm, considered the strongest since 2005, has caused minor disruptions for US airlines, and Delta said it altered routes for "a handful" of flights, and that the changes were adding about 15 minutes to travel times. "We are undergoing a series of solar bursts in the sky that are impacting the northern side of the world," Delta spokesman Anthony Black said. "It can impact your ability to communicate," he said. "So, basically, the polar routes are being flown further south than normal." United Airlines spokesman Mike Trevino said the carrier diverted one flight on Monday because of the storm, but none on Tuesday. American Airlines reported no operational impact due to solar flares but that it is monitoring the atmosphere, spokesman Ed Martelle said.

January 25, 2012 - Rock River Times - Nuclear plants pose risks to drinking water for Illinois - The drinking water for 652,000 people in Illinois could be at risk of radioactive contamination from a leak or accident at a local nuclear power plant, says a new study released Jan. 24 by the Illinois Public Interest Research Group Education Fund (Illinois PIRG). Brian Imus, Illinois PIRG state director, explained: “The danger of nuclear power is too close to home. Nuclear power plants in Illinois pose a risk to drinking water for more than 600,000 Illinoisans. An accident like the one in Fukushima, Japan, or a leak could spew cancer-causing radioactive waste into our drinking water. The nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, last year drew a spotlight on the many risks associated with nuclear power. After the disaster, airborne radiation left areas around the plant uninhabitable, and even contaminated drinking water sources near Tokyo, 130 miles from the plant. According to the new report, “Too Close to Home: Nuclear Power and the Threat to Drinking Water,” the drinking water for 652,00 people in Illinois is within 50 miles of an active nuclear power plant — the distance the Nuclear Regulatory Commission uses to measure risk to food and water supplies.

January 25, 2012 - KIVI-TV 6 - Report: Fallout from Fukushima coincides with spike in Boise infant mortality rate - The aftermath of the tsunami that ransacked the Japanese coast led to one of the worst nuclear meltdowns in the history of the world. Now, two researchers believe it may also have played some role in killing tens of thousands of Americans. “[It’s] 155,000 deaths,” Joseph Mangano said, ”so we’re not talking about an increase from three to five deaths. We’re talking about quite a few.” Mangano works at the Radiation and Public Health Project. The report he co-authored for a medical journal suggesting a link between Fukushima fallout and an increase in deaths in the United States has stirred up some controversy. “The authors appeared to start at a conclusion,” Scientific American’s Michael Moyer wrote, “ – babies are dying because of Fukushima radiation – and work backwards, torturing their data to fit their claims.”

January 25, 2012 - Platts - Modeling errors in GEH design jeopardize certification schedule - The staff of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission discovered errors in GE Hitachi's modeling of its ESBWR nuclear reactor design recently, prompting a re-evaluation of the agency's schedule to certify the design, a staff member said Tuesday. The agency's staff had planned to submit a rule package certifying the ESBWR -- Economic Simplified Boiling-Water Reactor -- design to the commission for approval this coming Friday, said George Tartal, who manages the team that is reviewing the reactor design, but "that's not going to happen." The agency had also planned to publish a rule in May certifying the 1,520-MW ESBWR design, if the commission voted to approve it. But Tartal said NRC staff will reassess whether issuing the final rule will be delayed during a meeting with GEH on January 31.

January 25, 2012 - Nuclear Engineering International - DOE announces funding plan for small modular reactors - The U.S Department of Energy (DOE) has announced a new programme that could see it share up to half of the cost of developing and deploying two small modular reactor designs. US-based SMR designs that can be deployed by 2022 will be considered for the funding, which is estimated at $452 million over five years (subject to congressional approval). Designs deployable before 2022 may receive ‘additional consideration,’ according to the draft Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) released 20 January. DOE is taking industry comments on the draft FOA before making it final. DOE said that that it would share up to half of the costs for engineering, design certification and licensing for up to two SMR designs. SMRs are reactor units with a nominal output of 300 MWe or less and are able to be fabricated remotely and transported to the site for assembly or components or operation, it said.

January 25, 2012 - Vermont Journalism Trust - Murtha decision may backfire on nuclear proponents - Editor’s note: This op-ed is by George Harvey, the chief technology officer of Artificial Cognition, Inc. In his free time, he volunteers for the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution. According to the federal government, the states have no right to consider public safety relative to continued operation of nuclear power plants. Judge Murtha has ruled Vermont violated this in its actions on Vermont Yankee. So the plant will very likely continue to operate until the Vermont Public Service Board can consider the certificate of public good, which it must do without regard to safety. This ruling may be a source of cheer for some who support nuclear power, but its effects might turn out to be very contrary to their wishes. Indeed, this ruling reduce the likelihood new reactors are permitted. The states retain a right to consider safety for initial permits, but the right is lost when the permit is issued. No one, especially politicians, likes to lose power. The questions raised by nuclear whistle blowers, former engineers, anti-nuclear physicians and the organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists will become more important in the permitting process.

January 25, 2012 - Huffington Post - States Should Maintain Role in Nuclear Oversight  - Governor Peter Shumlin's efforts to challenge the safety of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant does not mark the first time that a Vermont governor went toe to toe with the plant. In 1985, when I was governor, I learned that the plant had falsified inspection reports for years and that thousands of unchecked parts may have been installed. The plant had an unplanned shut down for eight months to replace the entire recirculation piping unit. Both plant officials and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had kept me in the dark. The state's nuclear engineer concluded that probably violations had occurred in the "storage and handling program for safety related materials." Plant officials issued denials. Who was right? How could I assure Vermonters that the plant was safe? That is the same question that is being asked today. Governors have the responsibility to protect the safety of their citizens. If the plant accidentally releases radiation, the governor takes immediate action, ordering an evacuation, issuing iodine pills. But the governor had no power to prevent an accident in the first place.

January 25, 2012 - GoLocalProv - New Report Shows Nuclear Power Threatens Thousands of Rhode Islanders - The drinking water for tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people in Rhode Island could be at risk of radioactive contamination from a leak or accident at a local nuclear power plant, according to a new study released today by Environment Rhode Island Research & Policy Center and Rhode Island PIRG Education Fund. "The danger of nuclear power is too close to home. Here in Rhode Island, the drinking water supply of far too many people is too close to an active nuclear power plant," said Channing Jones, Field Associate with Environment Rhode Island. "An accident like the one in Fukushima, Japan, or even simply a leak, could spew cancer-causing radioactive waste into our drinking water." The nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan last year drew a spotlight to the danger surrounding nuclear power. After the disaster, airborne radiation left areas around the plant uninhabitable, and even contaminated drinking water sources near Tokyo, 130 miles from the plant. According to the new report, Too Close to Home: Nuclear Power and the Threat to Drinking Water, the drinking water supplies for nearly 65,000 people in Rhode Island are within 50 miles of an active nuclear power plant – the distance the Nuclear Regulatory Commission uses to measure risk to food and water supplies.

January 25, 2012 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - Guard allegedly found asleep at Oak Ridge nuke facility - The government's security contractor confirmed Monday it is investigating allegations that a security officer slept on the job and also used an unauthorized cellphone inside a high-security facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "WSI-Oak Ridge (formerly known as Wackenhut Services) has initiated an investigation into all the allegations," spokeswoman Courtney Henry said in an email response. Photographs of the individual in question were distributed anonymously to multiple groups, including WSI, the News Sentinel and the U.S. Department of Energy. The photographs were reportedly taken inside Building 3019, the highest-security facility at ORNL. The building houses a large stockpile of fissionable uranium-233, which could potentially be used in an atomic bomb. Henry would not confirm the identity of the individual or whether the photographs were taken inside 3019.

January 25, 2012 - Minot Daily News - Officials to test Minot proppant after oilfield waste found radioactive - The North Dakota Department of Health said Monday that it will be testing bags filled with proppant sand stacked in downtown Minot for radioactivity this week. The decision stems from recent news that the Williston landfill rejected 23 loads of oilfield waste since June due to radioactive contamination. An independent testing firm called in to investigate the situation in Williston found ceramic proppant, as well as filter socks used in the process of preparing "frack sand" to be pumped into the ground, to be radioactive. The materials found have been determined to be naturally occurring radioactive materials, but the quantities of the materials turning up in testing is far above the levels found in nature. Those "hot" materials have been traced to proppant originating in China, according to Terry O'Clair, the director of the North Dakota Department of Health's Air Quality Division.

January 25, 2012 - Blog for Arizona - A layman's rebuttal of Al Melvin's "Nuclear waste recycling is wonderful" argument - I'm not an expert on nuclear waste reprocessing, nor to I play one on BfA. But I've spoken with some experts and done a reasonable amount of research on the web. I know enough to read Atomic Al Melvin's recent op ed, Arizona could benefit from nuclear recycling, with a healthy dose of skepticism and concern. Before I go into the op ed, a bit of background. Melvin has said in the past he wants 6 new nuclear power plants in Arizona. That's right, he wants to put 6 nuclear plants, which demand plentiful supplies of water for cooling and safety (remember what happened when the cooling system cracked at Fukushima?), in water-starved Arizona. Melvin never met a Nuke he didn't like. Now, to the op ed. Melvin cites the wonders of the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. The nuclear waste is stored in a salt basin, and it brings in nothing but money and jobs, he says. That, for Melvin, is the model for the nuclear waste dump and reprocessing facility he wants here. It didn't take long to dig up information on the WIPP site. The studies of the Carlsbad site began in 1973, and the actual site of the storage had to be moved a number of times because the conditions weren't absolutely perfect. But they are using it now -- not, by the way, to reprocess nuclear waste, but just to store "transuranic waste." Here's what that means. Transuranic waste consists primarily of protective clothing, tools, glassware, equipment, soils, and sludges that have been contaminated with trace amounts of manmade radioactive elements, such as plutonium.

January 25, 2012 - Salt Lake Tribune - A mountain of nuclear waste - Before the month is out, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future will unveil the result of its two year-long investigation into what to do with the accumulated radioactive waste at the country’s nuclear power plants. By year’s end, that waste will constitute a mountain 70 years high, with the first cupful generated in 1942 at the Fermi lab not far from Chicago when scientists first created a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. There remains no viable solution for either the management or certainly the “disposal” of nuclear waste. Yet, the one recommendation that will not be contained in the Department of Energy report is to stop making any more of it. While a child would never be allowed to continue piling up toys in his or her room indefinitely, failing to tidy up the mess, the nuclear industry continues to be permitted to manufacture some of the world’s most toxic detritus without a cleanup plan. A sneak peak last July at the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future draft report confirms that no new miracles are to be unveiled. Its preferred “solution” appears to be “centralized interim” storage, an allegedly temporary but potentially permanent parking lot dump site for highly radioactive waste that, based on past practices, will likely be targeted for an Indian reservation or a poor community of color.

January 25, 2012 - Emmett Messenger-Index - Will the downwinders finally be heard? - On this job, I should not have an opinion about what I write. I work hard to remain neutral. But, when it comes to downwinders, I sometimes find it hard to remain objective. Over the years, this story has brought me to tears more times than I remember. Tears of sorrow and of frustration. The topic has blindsided me at unexpected moments. But, there have been a few random moments of hope. When I started writing about nuclear fallout in 1997, I had no idea it would mushroom into a national debate that would span three decades - and it may not be done yet. Most of us know that above ground nuclear tests were done in Nevada in the 1950s and 1960s. Fallout from these tests contained a variety of toxic dust, with Iodine-131 gaining the most notoriety. The National Cancer Institute says I-131 can cause thyroid cancer. In 1990, the U.S. Congress approved paying people from a handful of counties in Nevada, Utah and Arizona for some cancers their residents developed. In 1997, the NCI released a report that said areas that received the most fallout were not in the counties Congress was already compensating. Gem County was the third hardest hit by fallout in the country. And, in spite of a lot of news and political coverage, this inequity of payment has never been changed. Since 1997, I have listened to people who are scared for the lives of their grown children.

January 25, 2012 - Tri-City Herald - Board raises issue about corrosion at vit plant - Hanford vitrification plant testing has not shown that components that will be difficult to replace can last the required 40 years the plant is designed to operate, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. Whether vessels and piping for high-level radioactive waste in the plant will corrode is an issue raised by DOE scientist Donald Alexander in an unresolved Differing Professional Opinion in May. The defense board also has been evaluating wear issues for the past nine months. The defense board sent a letter to DOE on Friday asking for a briefing within 45 days to provide confidence that the vitrification plant will operate safely and reliably for 40 years. It noted that DOE, with contractor Bechtel National, is developing a course of action to address wear design issues. "However, the current pace of the contractor's efforts to close the issues does not support timely resolution," said a defense board staff report that accompanied the letter.

January 25, 2012 - Longview Daily News - Yucca Mountain on the horizon for GOP candidates - The presidential debates have featured discussions most recently addressing the Republican candidates' tax returns, how quickly they'd repeal President Obama's Affordable Health Care Acr and personal claims made by ex-spouses. One topic missing from the recent debates in South Carolina, but not from the campaigns' radar, is the nation's nuclear waste storage plan, which also hits home with Washingtonians. Much of the nation's nuclear waste was once "earmarked" (always a favorite word in Washington, D.C.) for the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada, where provisions were made for permanent housing and burial of millions of gallons of contaminated material. Stockpiles at the Savannah River site near Aiken, S.C., and Washington's Hanford site are among those in indefinite limbo until Yucca Mountain is opened or a new nuclear waste storage facility can be approved. Congress designated Yucca Mountain in 2002 as the nation's sole current repository site for deep geologic disposal of spent nuclear fuel. In early 2010, however, Obama and the Department of Energy announced they would discontinue funding for the project in the face of local opposition in Nevada, home state of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and a swing state that went for Obama in 2008.

January 25, 2012 - New York Times - Wanted: Parking Space for Nuclear Waste - Protesters gathered in Reno, Nev., last year to demand that the Yucca Mountain repository be opened.When the Obama administration killed a plan to create a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the government established a “blue-ribbon commission” to study what to do next. Its final report is due on Sunday, and this week three organizations began a public lobbying campaign for several of the recommendations that they assume the commission will make. Yucca was supposed to store nuclear waste, but the emphasis now is on “managing” it, especially the waste at scattered locations where reactors no longer operate. At places like Maine Yankee, Connecticut Yankee and Rancho Seco in California, reactors have been torn down, but the fuel remains in small concrete-and-steel silos that require maintenance and monitoring by a guard force. Sometimes the presence of nuclear waste prevents re-use of the sites by industry. The Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association of the reactor operators, joined with the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, another utility group, to endorse the idea of centralizing such wastes.

January 24, 2012 - Webmuenster on off-site assignment.

January 23, 2012 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - Weirdly Wonderful - Radium-powered golf balls. Fishing lures that glow in the dark. Atomic potions that add pep to your step and cure all that ails you. Who knew radiation could be so much fun? Welcome to what may be the world's finest collection of nuclear paraphernalia, atomic doodads and just about anything having to do with the history of radiation and radioactivity. "I've reached the point where I'm real happy," said Dr. Paul Frame, senior health physics instructor at Oak Ridge Associated Universities and founder and curator of what he calls simply The Collection. "It covers all the bases I wanted to cover, quantitatively and qualitatively," Frame said. "That is what's unique about the collection."

January 23, 2012 - Daily Freeman - News.Woodstock wants review of proposed fracking ban - The Town Board has asked the Ulster County Planning Department to review a proposed local ban on activities surrounding the natural gas extraction method known as hydraulic fracturing before it sets a public hearing on the proposal. A draft zoning amendment was adopted by the board at a meeting Tuesday. Officials said recommendations are also being sought from the town Planning Board. “I think we should just go ahead and send it on,” town Supervisor Jeremy Wilber said. “It still gives us plenty of time to look at it.” Wilber said the county Planning Department will be able to identify where the proposal could conflict with state law. “I just think if there were any big glaring deficiencies in there, (county Planning Director Dennis Doyle) would help us,” he said.

January 23, 2012 - RSC - Asteroid ages united by new isotope standard - A type of water-containing asteroid is up to 9 million years younger - than previously thought and formed later than other asteroids in the solar system, say scientists in Japan. They accurately calculated their age using a new technique to date carbonates in meteorites derived from hydrous asteroids. The results agree with a model of asteroid formation that involves heating by a radioactive nuclide. The formation of asteroids and other small bodies in the solar system by accretion is a fundamental process that preceded planet formation but remains 'one of the most poorly understood processes in the planet formation theory', says Wataru Fujiya, lead researcher at the University of Tokyo. Studies on different classes of meteorite have suggested that when asteroids are formed helps to determine the temperatures that they experience, as it governs the abundance of the hot radionuclide aluminium-26. But the data that maps out the story of the formation of hydrous asteroids, which contain water and organic matter, have sparked controversy.

January 23, 2012 - SMR - State of Utah Approves Use of Water Rights for Blue Castle Nuclear Plant Project - Blue Castle Holdings Inc. (BCH) today received approval from the State of Utah to use existing water rights for the Blue Castle Nuclear Plant Project (BCP) in Green River. BCH leased the water over 4 years ago from the Kane County and San Juan County Water Conservancy Districts for the expected 60 years of plant operations. After a strict review of the Districts' applications for changing the points of diversion, places of use, nature of use, and storage of water, Utah's State Water Engineer approved the 53,600 acre feet of water per year from the Green River for the proposed nuclear electricity generation project. The approved water for the BCP was allocated previously for electric generation by Utah's State Water Engineer for use in coal fired power plants that were not constructed. The proposed two-unit Blue Castle Nuclear Project would increase the electricity generated in Utah by approximately 50%, adding between 2,200 to 3,000 Megawatts of installed electrical capacity, using less than 1% of the State's current water diversion.

January 23, 2012 - CNet - CNETNewsCraveX-ray artist's amazing images reveal hidden beauty - Apparently Superman isn't the only one with X-ray vision. During his nearly two-decade career, British photographer Nick Veasey has been using his own superpowers to peer inside everything from insects to MP3 players to jumbo jets--and create stunning images of their innards. And like any accomplished superhero (or artist), Veasey makes it look easy. To view one of his X-ray photos is to think the trick was simply in choosing the proper-size machine for the job and rather lazily pushing the button. In this scenario, the insect and the MP3 player were no-brainers. As for the passenger plane, the difficulty was just in locating an X-ray machine big enough to use on the thing (or--a more imaginative viewer might think--to shrink the plane, complete with a crew member or two, down enough to fit into a doctor's office).

January 23, 2012 - Scientific American - No New Uranium Mines Near Grand Canyon - The arm wrestling match over job creation and environmental conservation continues. One example is the recent announcement regarding new uranium mining near the world’s most famous gorge. According to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the U.S. federal government will implement a 20-year ban on new mining claims in areas surrounding the Grand Canyon. In his announcement, Salazar explained that the Grand Canyon’s “priceless landscape” deserved protection from uranium mining, to the applause of environmental groups and eco-tourists. The embargo extends a 2009 interim ban by the Interior Department that’s almost expired. “A withdrawal is the right approach for this priceless American landscape,” said Salazar. “People from all over the country and around the world come to visit the Grand Canyon. Numerous American Indian tribes regard this magnificent icon as a sacred place and millions of people in the Colorado River Basin depend on the river for drinking water, irrigation, industrial and environmental use.”

January 23, 2012 - PRInside - Global ElectromagneticCompatibility(EMC) ShieldingMarket (2011-2016) - EMC design consideration is becoming an indispensable part of product design. The rise of 3G, WiFi, and other features in mobile phones and similar enhancements in product design have served as key drivers for EMI shielding solutions. For example, in the automotive sector, the increasing adoption of navigation systems and wireless based infotainment systems are opening new revenue opportunities for EMI shielding solutions. Typical materials used for electromagnetic shielding include sheet metal, metal screen, and metal foam. Any holes in the shield or mesh must be significantly smaller than the wavelength of the radiation that is being kept out, or the enclosure will not effectively approximate an unbroken conducting surface. Another commonly used shielding method, especially with electronic goods housed in plastic enclosures, is to coat the inside of the enclosure with a metallic ink or similar material. The ink consists of a carrier material loaded with a suitable metal, typically copper or nickel, in the form of very small particulates. It is sprayed on to the enclosure and, once dry, produces a continuous conductive layer of metal, which can be electrically connected to the chassis ground of the equipment, thus providing effective shielding.

January 23, 2012 - Herald & Review - Clinton, DeWitt County get radiation tool - The potential unsafe release of radiation will be easier to identify in DeWitt County after radiation detectors are installed in police and sheriff’s vehicles. The Farmer City and Clinton police departments and the DeWitt County Sheriff’s Office will install the devices in their cars as part of a statewide effort. The Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System purchased 6,200 of the cellphone-size detectors for police and fire units. About 2,000 of the devices were sent to Japan to help responders to the March earthquake and tsunami. DeWitt County Chief Deputy Mike Walker said the benefit of having the devices extends beyond the Clinton Power Station, a single-unit nuclear plant six miles east of Clinton. “There could be a semitruck with radioactive material on the road or other situations where it wouldn’t hurt to check things out,” Walker said. The ability to detect a radiation source in a vehicle traveling through a community is an advantage, Clinton Police Chief Mike Reidy said. “It’s good to know what’s out there so we might know sooner rather than later if we’re talking about a radioactive event,” Reidy said, adding the radiation monitors also could improve officer safety in the event of a mishap at the nearby nuclear plant.

January 23, 2012 - The Guardian - UN experts begin review of Japan's nuclear stress tests - A team of UN nuclear experts on Monday began a review of tests conducted by Japan to prove the safety of its nuclear reactors in the wake of the Fukushima radiation crisis. The Vienna-based International Atomic Agency's (IAEA) team of 10 experts will be in Japan until 31 January. "We are conducting a review that they [the Japanese government] requested of their methodology and approach for conducting comprehensive safety assessments or stress tests," James Lyons, the leader of the IAEA team, told reporters. Public anxiety about nuclear safety since Fukushima, where an earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems and triggered reactor meltdowns and radiation leaks, causing widespread contamination, has prevented the restart of reactors shut for maintenance.

January 23, 2012 - PRNewswire - Varian Medical Systems Showcases Advanced Radiotherapy Systems for Treating Cancer at 2012 Arab Health Congress and Exhibition - Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR - News), the world leader in radiotherapy, is spotlighting its family of advanced treatment machines and integrated software solutions at the 2012 Arab Health Congress and Exhibition over the next four days. The Varian exhibit (Sheikh Saeed Hall, Booth No. S3-E40) focuses on latest developments and future innovations in Varian's complete line of medical linear accelerators – including the fast and precise TrueBeam system – along with Eclipse™ treatment planning software, ARIA® oncology information software, proton therapy systems, brachytherapy solutions, and its full range of X-ray tubes and digital image detectors. "We are excited to be able to showcase our advanced treatment, software and imaging systems at this prestigious event," says Rolf Staehelin, Varian's director international marketing for EMEA and APAC. "Varian is the clear market leader in radiotherapy and radiosurgery in the Gulf Corporate Council (GCC) countries and is at the forefront of technology advances that help clinicians benefit patients by delivering faster and more efficient treatments. We are looking forward to sharing our excitement about these developments with the radiation oncology community in this key region."

January 23, 2012 - Aiken Standard - Nuclear Science Week begins Monday - The South Carolina-Georgia region will take part in the observance of National Nuclear Science Week through activities intended to recognize nuclear industry professionals and raise awareness about the uses of nuclear power. National Nuclear Science Week, sponsored locally by the Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization and the Nuclear Workforce Initiative, is celebrated Jan. 23 through Jan. 27 with the theme "Get to Know Nuclear." The week long celebration began nationally three years ago, but the observance locally is in its first year, Nuclear Workforce Initiative program manager for the SRSCRO Mindy Mets said. "The expertise in this region is incredible, and so we're trying to help celebrate that as part of National Nuclear Science Week," Mets said. "It kind of opens people's eyes, hopefully, to the fact that nuclear technology is used in many, many ways in our daily lives and they may not realize it."

January 23, 2012 - Daily News Transcript - After six years, operators of the Pilgrim nuclear plant in Plymouth still waiting for license renewal - Here’s one anniversary that nobody expected to see: Six years have passed since the Pilgrim nuclear plant’s operators applied for a two-decade extension of its license. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sets a 22-month target for uncontested reactor renewals, and 30 months for contested ones. Licenses were never completely denied, and critics often accused the NRC of rubber-stamping them. But Pilgrim blew through those deadlines years ago. Even the Vermont Yankee plant, a source of seemingly never-ending controversy in its home state, emerged from its relicensing saga. The NRC approved a renewal for Vermont Yankee – a sister plant of Pilgrim’s, also owned by Entergy Corp. – last March. The request was submitted alongside Pilgrim’s in January 2006.

January 23, 2012 - Augusta Chronicle - Cost savings proposed for MOX project at Savannah River Site - The government’s $4.8 billion quest to rid itself of tons of high-grade plutonium from old nuclear bombs is veering in new directions this year. The broad plan is to build a mammoth mixed oxide, or “MOX” plant at Savannah River Site, where the material will be rendered forever unusable in weapons by blending it into commercial nuclear reactor fuel. That construction project, entering its sixth year, is moving ahead as planned, said Peter Hanlon, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s assistant deputy administrator for fissile materials disposition. “It is on schedule to be completed in October of 2016,” he said in an interview with The Augusta Chronicle. “Right now we’re at 60 percent completion on the overall project.” Currently, about 2,200 workers are employed at the site — up significantly from the 1,800-person workforce last year. Although the fuel factory itself is progressing much as it was envisioned a decade ago, the newest changes under consideration focus on how and where the plutonium “pits” from obsolete warheads will be dismantled and converted to a powder suitable for use in the MOX plant.

January 23, 2012 - Arizona Republic - Arizona should begin nuclear recycling - Recent articles about my proposed education fund and related spent-nuclear-fuel recycling program have produced some uninformed and negative reactionary responses. I urge everyone in the media and political arena and the voting public to educate themselves about this important subject. First, commercial recycling of used nuclear fuel has a long and successful history, mostly outside of the United States. The French company Areva has successfully managed a recycling complex for more than 40 years. Second, approximately 60,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel are stored at nuclear-reactor sites never designed for storing such material. Deep geologic salt beds are the recommended sites for retrievable storage of spent nuclear fuel. To maximize storage capacity at the site, it makes sense to co-locate a recycling facility at the storage site. In terms of mass, 96 percent of the used fuel is reusable. As with so many other materials, it makes environmental sense to recycle the used fuel.

January 23, 2012 - Salt Lake City Weekly - One Step Closer to a Nuclear Reactor in Utah - On Jan. 20, Utah State Engineer Kent Jones approved Blue Castle Holdings’ application to lease and divert 53,600 acre-feet of water from the Green River to the company’s proposed nuclear-power plant. The decision took over two years and sparked controversy throughout Utah, inspiring more than 200 individuals and groups to make comment protesting the plant. Leading the charge against Blue Castle are a wide range of environmental groups, including HEAL Utah and the Utah Rivers Council. A press release issued by HEAL Utah indicates that Blue Castle’s opponents are looking at issuing a formal appeal that could end up in court. The state engineer is instructed by law to approve any application that he has reason to believe meets the state’s criteria: that the water is available, its use won’t disrupt existing rights and the project is viable “physically and economically,” among others. This means that the decision is decidedly not a political statement, but a signal that the proposed project so far meets the state’s requirements.

January 21-22, 2012 - Webmuenster took the weekend off.

January 20, 2012 - PhysOrg.com - Using ion beams to detect art forgery - University of Notre Dame nuclear physicists Philippe Collon and Michael Wiescher are using accelerated ion beams to pinpoint the age and origin of material used in pottery, painting, metalwork and other art. The results of their tests can serve as powerful forensic tools to reveal counterfeit art work, without the destruction of any sample as required in some chemical analysis. Their research is featured on the front cover of the current issue of Physics Today in an article titled, “Accelerated ion beams for art forensics.” Wiescher and Collon say, “Art experts play an important role in identifying the style, history and context of a painting, but a solid scientific basis for the proper identification and classification of a piece of art must rely on information from other sources. “A host of approaches with origins in biology, chemistry and physics have allowed scientists and art historians not only to look below a painting’s or artifact’s surface, but also to analyze in detail the pigments used, investigate painting techniques and modifications done by the artist or art restorers, find trace materials that reveal ages and provenances, and more,” Wiescher and Collon continue.

January 20, 2012 - WBOY 12 - X-Rays, the Latest Tool in ‘Green’ Manufacturing - Environmental concerns are increasingly shared by responsible manufacturers around the world. In the U.S., National Wire & Cable is an example of a company who takes the commitment to “Green” manufacturing seriously. The company has implemented sophisticated X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) technology to ensure its products comply with all applicable International lead-free, Green and REACH manufacturing standards. X-Ray fluorescence is a phenomenon in which a material is exposed to x-rays of energy and atoms in the sample absorb the energy. If the energy is high enough, a core electron is ejected from an atom in the sample. To fill the void left by the ejected electron, a different electron will take its place. This change in position gives off energy that is specific to its element. This energy can be detected and analyzed by the XRF device.

January 20, 2012 - eReleases - X-Rays, the Latest Tool in ‘Green’ Manufacturing - Environmental concerns are increasingly shared by responsible manufacturers around the world. In the U.S., National Wire & Cable is an example of a company who takes the commitment to “Green” manufacturing seriously. The company has implemented sophisticated X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) technology to ensure its products comply with all applicable International lead-free, Green and REACH manufacturing standards. X-Ray fluorescence is a phenomenon in which a material is exposed to x-rays of energy and atoms in the sample absorb the energy. If the energy is high enough, a core electron is ejected from an atom in the sample. To fill the void left by the ejected electron, a different electron will take its place. This change in position gives off energy that is specific to its element. This energy can be detected and analyzed by the XRF device.

January 20, 2012 - The Local - Swedish nuclear safety needs improving: report - Sweden should take steps to increase security against attacks at its nuclear plants, including introducing armed guards, according to a new government-sponsored report, published on Thursday. "A terror attack against a nuclear power plant can have the same consequences for the surroundings as a nuclear power plant accident," the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (Strålsäkerhetsmyndigheten) said in a statement. The authority, along with the national police administration (Rikspolisstyrelsen), the Swedish National Grid (Svenska Kraftnät) and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap, MSB), authored the 139-page report, calling for among other things expanding the protection area around the plants and for permanent and armed security forces on-site. "There is no reason why these security guards should not have the ability to protect themselves if they are exposed to violence. I don't think this is very controversial," Swedish Radiation Safety Authority inspector Stig Isaksson told AFP.

January 20, 2012 - ThinkDigitNews - Mobile phones to come with radiation tags in Delhi  - There have been multiple reports confirming mobile phone radiation has adverse effects on the human body. The World Health Organisation had last year cautioned that radiation from mobile devices could cause cancer. Back in India, there have been increasing concerns over health hazards from radiation due to mobile phones and towers. The Delhi government has finally decided to do something about it. The state government has now mandated for the mobile phone manufacturers to display the level radiations emitted by their devices. So now users can figure out how much radiation their phones are emitting and can affect their health. It's notable that the manufacturers presently do not display such radiations tags with their devices, making it impossible for users to know the health risks involved with a particular handset. The decision was made during a meeting of from the state health department, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and WHO in Delhi. State health minister AK Walia, who presided over the meeting, also decided to put some restrictions on the mobile phone towers across Delhi, and urged Centre to draw up guidelines for mushrooming towers. “We already have the central government’s detailed guidelines given by the inter-ministerial committee on electro-magnetic field (EMF) radiation. Since it is a very big issue, we will discuss it with the Union health ministry and then draft Delhi specific guidelines within the next few weeks,” Walia said.

January 20, 2012 - UroToday - Dosimetric implications of residual seminal vesicle motion in fiducial-guided intensity-modulated radiotherapy for prostate cancer - PURPOSE: To determine whether residual interfraction seminal vesicle (SV) displacement necessitates specific planning target volume (PTV) margins during fiducial-guided intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) of the prostate. METHODS: A planning computed tomography (CT) scan and 2 subsequent CT scans were prospectively obtained for 20 prostate cancer patients with intraprostatic fiducial markers. After CT registration, SV displacement relative to the prostate was quantified as a function of margin size for both the proximal (1 cm) SV (PSV) and the full SV (FSV). Two IMRT plans were simulated for each patient (prostate + PSV and prostate + FSV) both with a uniform 5-mm PTV margin. Minimum clinical target volume (CTV) dose (Dmin) and the volume of SV receiving 95% of the prescription dose (V95%) were assessed during treatment and compared with the initial plan. RESULTS: In all cases, SV displacement with respect to the prostate was greater for the FSV compared with the PSV. To ensure at least 95% geometrical coverage of the CTV for 90% of patients, margins of 5 and 8 mm were required for the PSV and FSV, respectively. Dosimetrically, residual SV displacement had minimal impact on PSV coverage compared with FSV coverage. For the PSV Dmin was =95% of the prescribed dose in 90% of patients with an overall mean V95% of 99.6 ± 0.8%; for the FSV Dmin was =95% of the prescribed dose in only 45% of patients with a mean V95% of 97.9 ± 2.4%.

January 20, 2012 - Occupational Health & Safety - Truck Inspection Turns Up Contaminated Tissue Holders - Commercial vehicle inspectors from the California Highway Patrol recently discovered a shipment of bathroom tissue holders that were contaminated with Cobalt-60 and prevented them from reaching retail stores in northern California, according to the agency, which says it has the nation's largest commercial vehicle inspection program, conducting more than 600,000 inspections annually. The items were detected during a routine commercial vehicle inspection and ultimately determined to be constructed from contaminated metal containing Cobalt-60. CHP said it notified the California Department of Health Services, an action that brought about a nationwide product recall. "Our commercial personnel have the training, equipment, and capability of locating items that may threaten the safety of public safety," said CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow. "This equipment and training is essential in accomplishing our mission of providing safety, service, and security."

January 20, 2012 - Nanowerk - T-Rays technology could help develop Star Trek-style hand-held medical scanners - Scientists who have developed a new way to create a type of radiation known as Terahertz (THz) or T-rays - the technology behind full-body security scanners - say their new, stronger and more efficient continuous wave T-rays could be used to make better medical scanning gadgets and may one day lead to innovations similar to the "tricorder" scanner used in Star Trek. In a study published recently in Nature Photonics ("Greatly enhanced continuous-wave terahertz emission by nano-electrodes in a photoconductive photomixer"), researchers from the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), a research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore and Imperial College London in the UK have made T-rays into a much stronger directional beam than was previously thought possible and have efficiently produced T-rays at room-temperature conditions. This breakthrough allows future T-ray systems to be smaller, more portable, easier to operate, and much cheaper.

January 20, 2012 - Daily News & Analysis - Advanced treatment for cancer available - For those who are waging a war against cancer, there is good news. BGS Global Cancer Institute is now equipped with the world’s most advanced radiation machine, TrueBeam STx. The institute is the first hospital in Asia Pacific to have this technology. At the inauguration on Tuesday, Dr K Ravindranath, Global Hospitals Group’s CMD, said: “We have been performing medical and surgical procedures to treat a variety of cancers. The addition of TrueBeam STx will help us bring cancer patients the best radiation technology. We will soon commission Gamma Camera and Brachytherapy machines, while PET CT has already been commissioned.” After bringing TrueBeam STx in Bangalore,the hospital is planning to get the equipment at its Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai centres.

January 20, 2012 - Missouri News-Horizon - Restart of Troubled Nuke Plant Appears Later than Sooner - Top officials with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—with their eyes on the troubled Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant— have now made three stops to town in the last eight months. The latest, Thursday night, when officials with the Omaha Public Power District, the folks who run Fort Calhoun, were ridiculed by several members of the public. These were furious and frustrated folks on hand for an NRC hearing exploring when the plant—which has been shutdown for 10 months—will be allowed to restart. Late last year there was speculation the start-up might come as early as April, but in an interview with Nebraska Watchdog the NRC pushed back at that suggestion. Nebraska Watchdog: I didn’t get a sense, at this meeting, that April was a likely start-up date. Troy Pruett, NRC: Yea, I didn’t have that sense as well. According to Pruett, the Deputy Director for the Division of Reactor Projects, Fort Calhoun has “a number of significant performance issues.”

January 20, 2012 - Vermont Public Radio - After Ruling, Legislative Leaders Look To Public Service Board For VY Decision - A federal judge has ruled that the state of Vermont cannot force Vermont Yankee to shut down in March, but the ruling left the door open for the Public Service Board to decide whether to issue a certificate of public good. (Host) A federal judge has ruled in favor of Entergy Vermont Yankee in its lawsuit over the continued operation of the Vermont's only nuclear power plant. The ruling effectively means the state cannot force the plant in Vernon to shut down in March, as Governor Peter Shumlin wants to do. VPR's John Dillon has more: (Dillon) U.S. District Judge J. Garvan Murtha says federal law trumps the Vermont Legislature's ability to determine the future of a nuclear power plant. Vermont is the only state in the country that gives lawmakers a say in whether a plant can continue to operate. After a history of radiation leaks and misstatements by plant officials, the Vermont Senate two years ago denied Yankee permission to operate past March of this year. But Murtha's 102 page ruling blocks the state from enforcing that law.

January 20, 2012 - Al Jazeera - Pushing nuclear exports after Fukushima - Japan plans to boost civilian nuclear exports, even as it tries to appease its population angered at radiation leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, crippled by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. "The reason why Japan is taking these dangerous steps [exports] is to gain business opportunities and diplomatic clout with developing countries," explained Yuki Tanabe, an expert at the Japan Centre for a Sustainable Environment and Society (JACSES). In December 2011, bills to allow export of nuclear plants to Vietnam and Jordan, as part of bilateral co-operation, were approved by the foreign affairs committee of Japan's House of Representatives. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has justified the deals saying these countries "badly want Japan's high-level technology". But Noda also said that Japan must help "enhance the safety of nuclear power plants in those countries". Agreements are pending with several other countries, including India, Bangladesh and Turkey, covering the construction of power plants, their operation and management by Japanese companies.

January 20, 2012 - Platts - Spain starts process to reverse Garona nuclear plant closure order - Spain's government has started the legal process to reverse the decision of the country's previous government to close the Santa Maria de Garona nuclear power plant, the country's nuclear commission said late Thursday. The Industry Ministry sent a written request asking if a 2009 ruling which orders the closure of the country's oldest nuclear reactor could be modified, the Comision de Seguridad Nuclear said in a note. The operator of the 466 MW Santa Maria de Garona plant, Nuclenor, which is owned half and half by utilities Endesa and Iberdrola was notified in July by the previous government that the plant would have to be closed in 2013. The new Mariano Rajoy-led government has stated earlier this year that it will seek to overturn that ruling. The Industry Ministry has asked the CSN to detail any other conditions or recommendations which it might apply, but that it would seek to extend the operating license until 2019.

January 20, 2012 - Egypt Independent - Protests at nuclear power station construction site escalate - Protesters at the nuclear power station site in Dabaa, located in the Matrouh Governorate on the North Coast, said on Thursday they would continue their sit-in and asserted that the government would not be able to force them out. Egypt’s first nuclear power station is planned to be built in Dabaa, but the residents stormed the site last week, destroying many buildings and staging a sit-in. They have already built 50 houses on the site, changed its name to New Dabaa and decided to move the cattle market there. They also said they would give 1,000 square meters for free to young people who cannot afford a place to live. Dabaa residents say the government did not compensate them for the land it allocated to the project. The protesters rejected Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri’s assurances that the government will go ahead with plans to build the plant on this site.

January 20, 2012 - PRWeb - 2 Million Nuclear Regulatory Documents Acquired by Certrec - Certrec, a leading provider of regulatory licensing and compliance solutions, is pleased to announce that it has acquired a collection of microfiche containing more than two million documents released by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) prior to November 1999. Known as the Public Legacy Library, the NRC collection contains over 2 million documents including correspondence, regulatory guidance and requirements, safety evaluations, technical documents, and many others. Historically, access to early NRC documentation by regulatory compliance professionals has been limited to searching microfiche documents using a fee-based service through the NRC’s Public Document Room in Washington, DC. Certrec’s acquisition makes these documents available to Certrec clients for regulatory research. “We wanted to acquire this capability to better serve our clients due to the limited availability of the pre-1999 documents – which are generally only available in hard copy or microfiche form,” says Ted Enos, Certrec President. “We can now provide these documents quickly and inexpensively to our clients upon request, without being dependent on the NRC’s Public Document Room.”

January 20, 2012 - Homeland Security Today - DoE Seeks to Amend Atomic Energy Act to Reclassify Certain Data - Last August 4, Department of Energy (DoE) Secretary Steven Chu wrote House Speaker John Boehner regarding “proposed legislation” that would amend the Atomic Energy Act to allow DoE “to restore to the Restricted Data (RD) category certain information that has been removed from that category pursuant to the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (AEA). According to Chu, “there is sensitive nuclear weapons design information embodied in some FRD [Formerly Restricted Data] and TFNI [Transclassified Foreign Nuclear Information] that should be subject to the more stringent security protections afforded RD now than current programmatic capabilities of DoD and the Intelligence Community permit. This proposed legislation would permit DoE, in conjunction with DoD or the Director of National Intelligence, to restore such information to the RD category.” Restricted Data pertains to classified nuclear weapons design information and is distinguished from Formerly Restricted Data which generally concerns the utilization of nuclear weapons.

January 20, 2012 - Lower Hudson Journal - Want to feel secure? Visit Indian Point - Everyone, for or against the nuclear power plants, should take the tour of the Indian Point facility. The overwhelming technology and safety procedures employed should be seen by all that live in this area. I do not have any fears about this nuclear facility after making my visit. Richard Eimert, Airmont.

January 20, 2012 - Journal-Register - Limerick nuke plant’s need for $100M may lead to rate hike - The federal government wants Exelon to explain how it intends to raise more than $100 million needed to guarantee one of the generators at its Limerick nuclear plant can be decommissioned when it is finally shut down. The answer to that question may be a hike in electric rates for customers. Last week, Peter Bamford, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission project manager for plant licensing, wrote to the chief nuclear officer of Exelon Nuclear and noted that as of Dec. 31, 2010, Exelon had $528.2 million in a fund geared toward paying for the cost of “decommissioning” the Unit 1 reactor and related equipment once the plant finally closes; however, the NRC staff “has determined that the minimum amount of decommissioning funding assurance required” by NRC rules is $628.3 million.

January 20, 2012 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - Stabilizing 60-yr-old nuke landfill - The Dept. of Energy's Oak Ridge cleanup manager announced today it had removed uranium-contaminated debris and soils from a 60-year-old landfill near the former K-25 uranium-enrichment plant and installed a protective cover. "The materials were removed to minimize the potential for future contamination of surface water and groundwater," UCOR (URS/CH2M Oak Ridge) said in a statement released to the news media. The landfill, a 6.5-acre property known as K-1070-B, was used for disposal of rad equipment and materials from the early 1950s to the mid 1970s, UCOR said.

January 20, 2012 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - Electrical problem shuts down ORNL reactor; restart postponed until March 26 - The High Flux Isotope Reactor was shut down manually Jan. 10, the day after starting up for a new cycle, because of an "electrical fault" in the cables serving one of the three heat-exchanger cells in operation at the research reactor, an ORNL official said today. Ron Crone, the lab's research reactors chief, said the 85-megawatt reactor was shut down in accordance with normal operating procedures. The plan now is to replace the electrical system during this unexpected outage and continue the down time for other maintenance and repairs as part of an extended outage that was aleady scheduled for February-March, he said. The new plan calls fro the reactor to restart on March 26, Crone said.

January 20, 2012 - Toledo Blade - Safety of Davis-Besse comes down to a question of faith - The unexplained cracks in the containment building of the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant may be more about transparency, oversight, and political opportunity than imminent threats of danger. Yet each of the former affects the latter. They cannot be shrugged off, especially by an industry that is trying to regain public confidence a year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. There are legitimate questions about how forthright FirstEnergy Corp. was as it gathered information that took the investigation down a more serious path. After insisting last October that cracks in the building's outer portion were cosmetic and confined to a "decorative" part of it, FirstEnergy came across flaws in the structure itself. That elevated concerns about the building's structural integrity and its ability to perform its vital safety-shield function. U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D., Cleveland) is miffed that FirstEnergy did not update the public about the plant's status as new information emerged. He says the utility was content to let northern Ohio remain in blissful ignorance. Others say the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission failed in that regard too.

January 20, 2012 - Indian Country Today - Cancer-Riddled Wind River Reservation Fights EPA Over Uranium Contamination - Kenny Slattery has lived on the Wind River Reservation for 51 years, and just across the street from the old Susquehanna-Western uranium mill tailings pile for that entire period of time. “They say there’s a cancer cluster in this area,” says Slattery. “I don’t know, but my mother died of lung cancer, and my father died of prostate cancer. My cousin’s husband died of esophageal cancer just a half-mile from here, and other people have died from cancer around this area too. Dogs have died of cancer. It’s strange.” The site is just a few miles southwest of Riverton, the ninth-most-populated city in Wyoming. It has a long history of contamination, as well as a cloud of rumors. “People say there’s a one-eyed fish over here,” says Slattery as he points to the pond in question. “Just one eye,” he says again, then laughs.

January 20, 2012 - Idaho Statesman - Idaho's Snake River Alliance to mark anniversary of nuclear bomb tests with vigil next week - The 61st anniversary of the first Nevada above-ground tests is Jan. 27 and the anti-nuclear group will mark the day with an 8 a.m. candlelight vigil at the Boise Depot. Afterward, the group will meet at the nearby Shangri-La Tea Room from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., at the corner of Orchard Street and Federal Way. Idahoans were hard-hit by the tests and Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, has been working for years to extend compensation available to victims in Utah, Nevada and Arizona under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. Four of the five most exposed counties in the nation were in Idaho, measured by iodine-131 fallout, which is connected to thyroid cancer. "It is essential that people never forget the price paid for nuclear weapons production," said Liz Woodruff, executive director of the alliance. "People in Idaho have cancer and have died from cancer as a result of these tests. "The U.S. government cannot make up for their loss and suffering, but we can honor them on Jan. 27 and call for compensation for downwinders and their families."

January 20, 2012 - Tri-City Herald - Fluor Hanford purchaser to pay $14,700 - A purchaser for former Hanford contractor Fluor Hanford has agreed to pay the federal government $14,700 after being accused of accepting kickbacks. The settlement agreed to by Alicia Woodrich is the second such settlement by a Fluor Hanford purchaser in a month. Both employees were accused of accepting kickbacks from Shane Fast, who was arraigned along with his nephew Skyler Hamm on Wednesday in Eastern Washington District U.S. Court in Yakima. Both have pleaded innocent. Woodrich signed an agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Washington but did not admit to accusations. During 2006, Woodrich accepted tickets to an unspecified sporting event valued at almost $300 from Fast, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. She also accepted a Macy's gift card worth $100, it said.

January 20, 2012 - Sacramento News & Review - Nuclear-power shake-up - California may be one step closer to becoming a nuclear-free state. Last month, a California Public Utilities Commission judge ruled that PG&E may not use ratepayer funds to finance the mandatory federal relicensing process of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant. The operating licenses for the two reactors at Diablo Canyon will expire in 2024 and 2025. Because relicensing is a time-consuming and costly process, the utility had hoped to shift it entirely onto customer’s bills. The cost to renew the power plant for another 20 years would be $80 million. Two years ago, the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility filed suit against PG&E, which pointed out that the utility was flouting a 2006 law that directs the California Energy Commission to assess a nuclear-power plant’s vulnerability to disaster due to a major seismic event or plant aging. But these seismic studies will not be complete until 2015, so PG&E must now effectively abandon the option of passing the buck on to ratepayers. “PG&E has known all along what our state expected them to do, and has flaunted those orders, wasting time and money in the process,” said Rochelle Becker of A4NR.

January 19, 2012 - DOTmed News - Bronx study looks at poverty, medical radiation exposure - Patients from communities blighted by poverty might receive slightly higher cumulative radiation doses from diagnostic imaging, but only because they're probably just sicker, according to a new study. Previous studies looking at this issue have been mixed: a Canadian report from 2005 found that richer patients had greater access to all forms of radiological imaging. That makes sense, as richer people tend to have better access to health care in general. But a Taiwanese study from 2008 found that poorer patients got more CT scans, according to the new report.

January 19, 2012 - Washington Post - In France, vintners erase a notorious past - The vintners around this ochre-stone village in the Tricastin region of southern France had it all: rolling hills, a historic chateau, sun-splashed lavender fields between their vines and a tart little wine dating from Roman times. If only it weren’t for the smokestacks rising arrogantly from the nearby Tricastin nuclear plant — and if only one of the companies operating the plant had not been convicted in 2008 of dumping a batch of uranium floride that ended up in aquifers running like veins under the banks of the Rhone River. After the widely reported nuclear accident, the wine here, Coteaux du Tricastin, was inextricably associated with the plant, and with a vaguely defined danger of contamination. Prices plummeted and merchants stayed away. Wine stewards erased the cursed name from their lists in restaurants around the country. Leftover bottles of Coteaux du Tricastin were going for a little over a euro, or $1.28, in Paris supermarkets. Tricastin, the vintners had to admit, had come to mean radioactive. The wine no longer evoked lavender and truffle but smokestacks and nasty chemicals. Although as pleasant as ever and scientifically proven to be unaffected, it was forever going to be shunned as dangerous to the health as long as it had that name on the label.

January 19, 2012 - Southern Maryland News - NRC investigates Calvert Cliffs - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is continuing to investigate a greater-than-green security finding that occurred over the summer at Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Lusby. According to a report released last week by the NRC, the commission issued the plant a final significance determination in August for the greater-than-green finding. A green finding is the lowest, least harmful class of findings subject to NRC enforcement. Because it was a security-related finding, details cannot be released to the public, but the report notes that plant owner Constellation Energy Nuclear Group took immediate corrective actions to address any security-related vulnerability associated with the finding. On Sept. 29, the NRC’s Office of Investigations completed an investigation to determine whether acts associated with the finding were “willful,” the report states. Based on evidence gathered through testimonies, it concluded that willful acts by plant security personnel were indeed associated with the finding.

January 19, 2012 - Stars & Stripes - Radon found at some U.S. military housing units on Okinawa - Residents in about 100 military homes on Okinawa are being offered new housing units after tests revealed elevated levels of a naturally occurring radioactive gas, the Air Force said this week. A fall survey of some Air Force-managed housing found radon in the homes exceeded safety guidelines set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to the 18th Wing, though the service declined to say just how much of the gas was present. Radon — which is emitted from decaying radioactive elements commonly found in soil — is the top cause of lung cancer among nonsmokers and kills more people each year than drunken driving, drowning and house fires combined, according to the EPA. The Air Force said it is unaware of any health problems related to the presence of radon in military housing, but it has notified residents of the elevated levels. They have the option of moving within 30 days while the service works to upgrade ventilation systems to reduce the gas to safe levels. “Just moving the air has a substantial effect” on the radon, 18th Wing spokesman Ed Gulick said.

January 19, 2012 - Serious Law - Study finds oxygen therapy limits radiation brain injury - A new study has revealed hypoxia treatment can help limit the risk of brain injury when receiving radiation therapy for tumours. William Sonntag of the University of Oklahoma led a team of researchers in a trial designed to find a way of protecting healthy brain tissue against cognitive impairment. Mice were exposed to whole brain radiation, which resulted in them developing progressive deterioration of spatial learning. However, those that were first treated with chronic hypoxia – where oxygen levels are limited – for three weeks, showed "significant improvement in this area".

January 19, 2012 - Williston Herald - Multiple samples fail radiation test at landfill - City of Williston employees held a meeting Tuesday night to outline what is and is not allowed in the landfill, but the topic of radioactive materials dominated the question and answer session. Through Test America, an independent company, the landfill had various samples tested for radiation. The North Dakota Department of Health restricts landfills from accepting materials that read above 5 picocuries per gram, and many samples exceeded that amount significantly. A picocurie is a measurement of radiation. The samples were gathered from loads of oil industry waste that were rejected by the landfill. The samples were tested for radium 226, radium 228 and lead 210, all of which are naturally occurring radioactive materials, or NORM.

January 19, 2012 - Green Prophet - Radioactive Material Was Stolen From an Egyptian Nuclear Power Plant - A search is underway to find whoever stole a safe containing radioactive material from Egypt’s first nuclear power station. While hundreds of protestors surrounded the El Dabaa nuclear power plant in Egypt last week, someone managed to sneak in and steal some of its radioactive material. One safe containing radioactive material was seized while another was broken open and some of its contents removed, according to Khaleej Times. The government has alerted security officials to the theft and a search party is underway.

January 19, 2012 - AZoRobotics - Mexican Hospital Uses Accuray’s CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System to Treat Cancer Patients - Radiation oncology company, Accuray declared that the CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System is being used by the CHRISTUS MUGUERZA Hospital Alta Especialidad to treat cancer patients. The hospital, based in Monterrey, Mexico, is the first center in the country to offer the advantages of the CyberKnife System to cancer patients. The CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System is a non-invasive technique used to treat both cancer and non-cancerous lesions in the body, including lung, head and neck, intracranial, pancreatic and prostate tumors. The system delivers effective doses of radiation with optimal precision. It is capable of tracking and correcting erratic tumor movements, which in turn reduce radiation contact to healthy tissues and also eliminates the side effects that are generally linked with other radiation techniques. CHRISTUS MUGUERZA had started treating patients in October last year. So far, with the help of the CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System, the hospital has treated eight patients with non-cancerous lesions or malignant tumors in the head, neck brain and kidneys. The hospital had administered stereotactic radiosurgery and stereotactic body radiation therapy using the CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System, thus providing a new treatment choice for cancer patients across the region.

January 19, 2012 - Mainichi Daily News - Ibaraki firm develops portable dosimeter to help market 'Fukushima rice burgers' - An IT company in Ibaraki Prefecture has developed a portable dosimeter capable of measuring up to around 100 becquerels of radiation in 1 kilogram of rice or other farm products within three minutes without damaging the farm produce, setting the stage for a local non-profit group to sell "Fukushima rice burgers." Computer Associated Laboratory Inc. in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture, plans to put the newly-developed dosimeter on the market in April. After ensuring the safety of rice from Fukushima with the new radiation measuring device, Tsukuba AgriChallenge, a nonprofit organization in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, is to sell rice burgers using rice from Fukushima Prefecture. Computer Associated Laboratory will also set up a company jointly with Tsukuba AgriChallenge to check all kinds of farm products for radiation for farmers in Fukushima Prefecture. Computer Associated Laboratory Inc. President Tatsuo Nemoto said, "It can measure farm products for radiation easily at supermarkets or agricultural cooperative unions. The price (of the dosimeter) is expected to be less than 1 million yen." He said he would try to develop even more sophisticated devices in the future.

January 19, 2012 - Mainichi Daily News - Most households living in high-radiation apartment building want to move - At least nine of the 12 households living in an apartment building here where high radiation levels were found want to move out, it was learned from local authorities and other sources. The high radiation levels are thought to have been caused by irradiated gravel taken from Namie, near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, that was used to make concrete used in the building. The apartment building was finished in July of last year. Of the 12 households, five are disaster evacuees from Namie and five are disaster evacuees from Minamisoma, and the other two households are local residents. The evacuees' apartments were rented by the prefectural government. A 63-year-old woman who evacuated from Namie lives here with her husband, daughter, and two grandchildren. One of the grandchildren is taking high-school entrance exams in February, but afterwards she wants to move. "I'm tired from the repeated moving, and don't have an appetite," she said.

January 19, 2012 - Canada NewsWire - Aurora School Removes Wifi to Protect Children's Health - Another school has removed its Wifi, following warnings that the system emits potentially harmful microwave radiation. "Schools are in the business of helping children, not hurting them so we shouldn't be taking chances," said Brenda Glashan, principal of the Aurora Montessori School, a private elementary school of 350 students north of Toronto. Last May the World Health Organization warned that radiation from WiFi, cell phones and other wireless devices may cause cancer. Researchers have since reported that WiFi from laptop computers causes damage to human sperm. Several Ontario private schools have since removed their wifi systems, but many public schools continue to install them despite the health warnings. Aurora Montessori school is known for its advanced computer lab, and now hardwires all of its internet connections.

January 19, 2012 - Straight.com - Man-made radiation rankles opponents of smart meters - Everyone recognizes the dangers of secondhand smoke, but what about secondhand radiation [“Demand for smoke-free housing on the rise in Metro Vancouver”, December 22-29]? Why can provincial and civic authorities assault us with excess radiation via smart meters and a blanket Wi-Fi mesh? I realize it’s unrealistic to expect to escape man-made radiation, but at least I can chose to reduce my exposure to a cellphone. Radiation on steroids offers me no such option. How is it that municipalities in California are removing these meters due to significant health repercussions, yet our government and B.C. Hydro have flagrantly ignored dozens of B.C. municipalities calling for a moratorium [“Safety of smart meters stirs continued debate”, December 29–January 5]? According to University of Santa Cruz scientist Daniel Hirsch, at a 10-foot distance, the whole-body exposure to radio frequencies may be up to 80 times higher from a smart meter than the whole-body radio-frequency exposure from a cellphone. Notes Hirsch: “It’s a large experiment on a very large population, and a big chunk of that experiment is involuntary.”

January 19, 2012 - Grand Rapids Press - Federal government should fund MSU nuclear facility - U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu speaks during an appearance at the Detroit Economic Club on Wednesday in Detroit. Federal funding for a $600 million nuclear research facility under development at Michigan State University could be in doubt in the face of the nation's economic problems and the federal budget squeeze, Chu said Wednesday. Michigan’s congressional delegation should be focused and united in making sure the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams slated for Michigan State University receives the funding it deserves. In a state devastated by the recession, the project is expected to create thousands of badly needed jobs. But equally important is its expected advances in the field of nuclear science, which would bolster this country’s global competitiveness. MSU beat out Illinois’ Argonne National Laboratory in 2008 to build the cutting-edge research facility, estimated to cost $615 million. But on his recent visit to Detroit, Energy Secretary Steven Chu reminded us the job is not finished. His remarks at a meeting of the Detroit Economic Club indicated funding is not certain as his department evaluates what projects it can afford.

January 19, 2012 - Progressive Radio Network - Green Power & Wellness - 01/17/12 - Have 14,000 Americans already died from Fukushima's radioactive fallout? Health researchers Dr. Janette Sherman and Joe Mangano's recent peer-reviewed scientific survey says yes....and that many more of us will be dying as well. Covered in major media throughout the world, these findings have been vehemently denied by the nuke power industry---but supported by scientists. Join us for an hot hour on the true death toll of atomic energy, from Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island to the daily emissions of your own nearby nukes.

January 19, 2012 - POGO - Eight Reasons to Scrap CMRR-NF, the Energy Department's Billion-Dollar Nuclear Facility - The U.S. is pouring billions of dollars into a proposed Department of Energy (DOE) facility in New Mexico that would increase nuclear weapons production. Given that President Obama pointed to the nuclear arsenal as a source of budget cuts last week, there isn’t a better time to eliminate funding for this irresponsible money pit: the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF). CMRR-NF was first conceived a decade ago with the intention of replacing an existing Los Alamos National Laboratory Facility. But its mission has expanded to enable the increased production of plutonium pits, which form the core of nuclear warheads—even though experts doubt the need for increased pit production. In short, CMRR-NF’s mission, cost, and design have spiraled of control. POGO has published a report outlining why the facility needs to be cut. Here are the top eight reasons.

January 19, 2012 - Nuclear Street - Egyptian Leaders Remain Committed to New Nuclear Plant, Looting Reported at Site - Egypt remains poised to build its first nuclear power plant, originally approved under the leadership of ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak. But local opposition remains fierce, with looting recently reported at the proposed site. Egypt’s new Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri said Tuesday that his government will follow through with plans to build a reactor in Dabaa 200 miles west of Cairo. The country originally planned to solicit bids in late 2010 for the construction, estimated to cost $4 billion by the World Nuclear Association, but the project was delayed during the fall of the Mubarak regime. Some local residents remain angered by the plant and what they say were unfair land seizures for the site. Egypt’s Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper reported protests and clashes with police in Dabaa over the weekend, as well as looting at the proposed construction site. No nuclear material is stored there, nor has reactor construction begun. Still, looters made off with computers, monitoring devices for earthquakes, transformers, cables and furniture. Engineers from the country’s Atomic Energy Authority subsequently began to dismantle and remove the remaining equipment, Al-Masry Al-Youm reported.

January 19, 2012 - Nuclear Engineering International - November accident at INL was ‘preventable,’ report concludes - The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Health, Safety and Security has published its analysis of a November 2011 accident at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), which saw an uncontrolled release of radioactivity that contaminated 16 workers and the facility. An accident investigation report lists three factors that contributed to the accident. On 8 November 2011, workers at the INL Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) Zero Power Physics Reactor (ZPPR) facility were packaging plutonium (Pu) reactor fuel plates. Two of the fuel storage containers had atypical labels indicating potential abnormalities with the fuel plates located inside. Upon opening one of the storage containers, the workers discovered a Pu fuel plate wrapped in plastic and tape. When the workers attempted to remove the wrapping material, an uncontrolled release of radioactive contaminants occurred, resulting in the contamination of 16 workers and the facility. An accident investigation board, appointed at the request of the OHSS, submitted its final report on the accident on 4 January 2012.

January 19, 2012 - Nelson Daily - Greens say Health Canada failed to reveal radioactivity in rainwater - The Green Party of Canada said despite public concern over fallout from the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Health Canada failed to report higher than normal radioactive iodine levels in rainwater. The Greens have been calling for Canada to increase transparency around possible radioactive contamination in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. “We were worried that this important information would not reach the public and unfortunately, it looks as if we were right,” said Green Leader Elizabeth May, MP for Saanich Gulf Islands in a written press release. It has now been revealed that data were not released from a Calgary Health Canada monitoring station detecting levels of radioactive iodine in rainwater well above the Canadian guideline for drinking water. This isotope was known to be released by the nuclear accident and also showed up in tests in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Ottawa. Lower levels of contamination resulted in a don't-drink-rainwater advisory in Virginia.

January 19, 2012 - Huntington News - French Scientists: Childhood Leukemia Spikes Near Nuclear Reactors - French researchers have confirmed that childhood leukemia rates are shockingly elevated among children living near nuclear power reactors. The International Journal of Cancer has published in January a scientific study establishing a clear correlation between the frequency of acute childhood leukemia and proximity to nuclear power stations. The paper is titled, “Childhood leukemia around French nuclear power plants – the Geocap study, 2002-2007.” This devastating report promises to do for France what a set of 2008 reports did for Germany — which recently legislated a total phase-out of all its power reactors by 2022 (sooner if the Greens get their way). The French epidemiology — conducted by a team from the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), the Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN) and the National Register of hematological diseases of children in Villejuif, outside Paris — demonstrates during the period from 2002-2007 in France the doubling of childhood leukemia incidence: the increase is up to 2.2 among children under age five.

January 19, 2012 - Palladiium Times - Barclay refutes safety claims concerning Indian Point - The potential closure of Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan is not justified, according to an area lawmaker who is refuting safety concerns regarding the facility. Assemblyman Will Barclay, R-Pulaski, who also serves on the New York Assembly Committee on Energy, noted Tuesday that the safety concerns cited by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other officials are unfounded, and the closure of the facility would lead to a loss of well-paying jobs while causing hikes in energy costs for New Yorkers. Indian Point Energy Center includes two nuclear power units: Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit 2, put online in 1975, and Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit 3, which became operational in 1988. The license for the Unit 2 facility is set to expire in September 2013, with the license expiration at the Unit 3 plant scheduled to expire in December 2015.

January 19, 2012 - Williston Herald - Where is the radioactive waste going? - According to Williston Landfill officials, 23 dump loads have been rejected due to high reads on a Geiger counter, an instrument used to detect radiation. And during a meeting Tuesday night, results showed several of those samples have high enough radiation to be a health concern. Several calls have been made to companies, and several questions have been asked to city officials with regard to where rejected waste ends up. At this point in time, the rejected waste has not been accounted for. These 23, and possibly more, loads of radioactive waste need to be accounted for. Are they being dumped in the river? An empty field? The Minot landfill? The oil companies responsible for the waste need to come clean about this public health concern. They need to stop ignoring our phone calls for answers. The situation is unnaccaptle and a betrayal of the public's trust. If you have any information about where and how waste is disposed after it is rejected by the landfill for radiation related reasons, please contact reporter Dustin Ingram at the Williston Herald, 701-572-2165.

January 19, 2012 - Rome News-Tribune - Residents urged to be part of radon, uranium study - The Georgia Department of Public Health is developing a Monroe County survey related to uranium and radon contamination. The responses from residents will be used to evaluate whether there are elevated rates of illness in the community that might be caused by the naturally occurring radioactive element or from the radon produced when uranium decays. Jane Perry, program director for the department's chemical hazards program, said the surveys of residents' health and environmental concerns probably will be distributed the first week in February, with results available near the end of March. The survey will be posted online and also will be available at public gathering places and community events, she said. It will be mailed to community leaders and local agencies that might have a role in health or environmental services.

January 19, 2012 - Augusta Chronicle - Drug screens bar 80 workers from Vogtle site - Eighty contract workers were denied access to — or evicted from — Plant Vogtle after failing drug tests during 2011, according to reports filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The majority of those workers were associated with the construction zone where site work is under way for the planned addition of Vogtle’s new Units 3 and 4, said Amoi Geter, a Southern Nuclear spokeswoman. “It shows the process is working as it should,” she said, noting that 3,933 vendors and contractors were evaluated for access during 2011.  Of the 80 who failed the screenings, 55 were pre-access screenings for workers who were not yet authorized to enter the area.

January 19, 2012 - Tampa Bay Times - Progress Energy's rate increase to pay for nuclear plant comes under scrutiny - Karl Nurse was not happy to read a Tampa Bay Times story that said Progress Energy customers would be paying $49 a month in 2020 for a nuclear power plant that would not begin operating until the next year.  Late last year, Nurse, a St. Petersburg City Council member, proposed a resolution asking the Legislature to repeal Progress' ability to charge customers in advance for the plant. That prompted a call from Progress Energy, asking for a meeting. On Jan. 9, Nurse said, he talked with Chris Flack, Progress' executive director for external communications. Flack, according to Nurse, "just said the $49 is wrong. It's $13."

January 19, 2012 - Chattanoogan - TVA Has Temporary Work Stoppage At Watts Bar After Safety Concern - TVA has temporarily stopped work at its Watts Bar 2 nuclear plant after discovering a safety concern. Some 1,000 workers are not expected back on the job until next Monday. TVA officials said, "During work activities Tuesday, Watts Bar 2 personnel discovered that cables had erroneously been removed in December from an open circuit breaker and that a valve was removed from a system without following proper guidelines. No one was hurt, and at no time was the safety of any operations or the general public impacted. "All plant conditions have remained within their normal operating ranges throughout the timeframe involved. "Because all of TVA’s operations demand the highest levels of safety and human performance, Unit 2 personnel are participating in safety 'stand downs' - stopping of work until the errors discovered are clearly communicated to all personnel and the expectation to adhere to the highest standards of safety and quality on every job are reinforced."

January 19, 2012 - Detroit Free Press - On Lake Michigan's shore, no room for lax nuclear safety - If you made regular mistakes in your job, your boss would probably put you on probation and give you a few months to shape up. If a nuclear power plant screws up, it apparently gets to keep its 20-year operating license. That's the paradox -- and anxiety -- lurking at the Palisades nuclear power plant on the shore of Lake Michigan between St. Joseph and South Haven. While the Nuclear Regulatory Commission appears to have the plant and its staff on a short leash and has heightened inspections, the aging plant also has authority to keep operating to 2031, when it will be 60 years old. It is already among the 10 oldest nuclear plants still operating in the U.S. At least the Palisades staff and those at Entergy Nuclear Operations, which owns the plant, seem to be relatively honest about the lapses in judgment and an overall plant culture that has grown lax about safety procedures. But given the age of the plant, it's hard for a lay person to comprehend how the culture of safety was allowed to deteriorate.

January 19, 2012 - Lincoln Journal Star - Fort Calhoun shows off flood recovery efforts - A refrigerator magnet shows an aerial photograph of Fort Calhoun Station engulfed in the muddy floodwaters of the Missouri River. Across the magnet is written: "We Saved FCS!" About 650 Omaha Public Power District employees and about 150 contractors who fought the historic Missouri River flood received the magnets as souvenirs. "It's a reminder of what you can accomplish, what you can cope with," said John Herman, division manager of nuclear engineering for OPPD. They kept the $1 billion nuclear plant safe by protecting critical infrastructure and buildings with earthen berms, hundreds of sandbags and massive "aqua dams."

January 19, 2012 - Reuters - Federal panel faults Idaho lab for radiation exposure mishap - The radiation exposure of 16 workers at a nuclear research lab in Idaho stemmed from a failure to properly assess the risks posed by the handling of decades-old plutonium fuel cells, federal investigators concluded on Wednesday. In its report on the November 8 mishap at the Idaho National Laboratory, the U.S. Energy Department's Office of Health, Safety and Security also found the lab erred in not activating its emergency plan sooner after the accident, a delay that may have compromised medical treatment of the workers. The panel recommended the lab conduct a fresh assessment of "the likelihood, severity and risk of accidents," as well as the effectiveness of hazard controls at the deactivated reactor where the exposure occurred. The Idaho National Laboratory, occupying 890 square miles in eastern Idaho, is the Energy Department's leading nuclear research center, employing some 6,000 government workers and contractors. The decommissioned reactor involved in the accident is located within a complex of facilities used for remotely handling, processing and examining spent nuclear fuel, radioactive waste and other irradiated materials.

January 19, 2012 - PRNewswire - International Isotopes Inc. Depleted Uranium Project Nuclear Regulatory Commission Licensing Remains on Course - International Isotopes Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: INIS), announces the NRC has commenced the public notification and comment period on the draft EIS for the Company's planned depleted uranium de-conversion facility. As a part of the public comment period process, the NRC plans a public meeting in Hobbs, New Mexico on February 2, 2012. In addition to the public meeting, comments on the project and the draft EIS will be taken until February 27, 2012. The application and information about the NRC license review process are available on the NRC website at http://www.nrc.gov/materials/fuel-cycle-fac/inisfacility.html. The Draft EIS is available in the NRC's ADAMS online database by entering Accession Number ML12001A000 in the Content Search box.

January 19, 2012 - Pahrump Valley Times - DOE set to cut county $3.8M check - Nye County will receive $3.8 million in Payment Equal to Taxes from the U.S. Department of Energy, a lucrative source of county revenue that had all but disappeared when President Obama announced he would zero out funding for Yucca Mountain in January 2010. A letter from Peter Lyons, DOE assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said the payment is according to an agreement with Nye County in which DOE agrees to pay the county 3 percent of total funds appropriated for nuclear waste disposal up to $300 million, an agreement which doesn’t expire until June 30, 2013. The DOE also made reference to Section 116 of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which sets up the formula for payments. Congress included funding for nuclear waste in a series of continuing resolutions that ended April 15, 2011. No funds were appropriated for nuclear waste activities after that.

January 19, 2012 - MarketWire - Cleveland BioLabs Publishes Manuscript on New Radiation Countermeasure CBLB613 - Cleveland BioLabs (NASDAQ: CBLI) today announced the online publication of a manuscript describing the radioprotective and radiomitigating properties of a new countermeasure, CBLB613, in Radiation Research (Vijay K. Singh, Elizabeth J. Ducey, Oluseyi O. Fatanmi, Pankaj K. Singh, Darren S. Brown, Andrei Purmal, Vera V. Shakhova, Andrei V. Gudkov, Elena Feinstein and Alexander Shakhov (2011) CBLB613: A TLR 2/6 Agonist, Natural Lipopeptide of Mycoplasma arginini, as a Novel Radiation Countermeasure. Radiation Research In-Press). The studies cited in the manuscript were conducted by scientists at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute and the F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Cleveland BioLabs and Roswell Park Cancer Institute. The publication describes CBLB613, a new pharmacological agent developed by Cleveland BioLabs, which is a synthetic analogue of naturally occurring Mycoplasma derived lipopeptide ligand for Toll-like receptor 2. Participating scientists investigated CBLB613 for radioprotection, radiomitigation, toxicity, immunogenicity and pharmacokinetics in mice. CBLB613 was also evaluated for its effects on cytokine induction in unirradiated and irradiated mice, as potential mediators of the drug's action, and on radiation-induced cytopenia.

January 18, 2012 - Tri-City Herald - DOE official looking at expanding research of small nuclear reactors - Research will be moving forward this year toward development and design certification of small modular nuclear reactors, said Peter Lyons, the Department of Energy assistant secretary of nuclear energy. Lyons, the primary policy adviser to Energy Secretary Steven Chu on nuclear energy research and international nuclear activities, visited Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland on Tuesday and then spoke at a meeting of the Eastern Washington Chapter of the American Nuclear Society. While no one source alone can meet increasing demand for electricity, both in the United States and also in developing countries, nuclear energy must be part of the mix as a clean and reliable source, he said. He is interested in the development of small modular reactors as an alternative to the trend of developing increasingly larger nuclear plants, he said. If there is enough demand for the small plants, large numbers could be built in a factory and then one or more would be transported to sites for use, he said. More modules could be added as needed for electricity production.

January 18, 2012 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - State finds 'no validity' to allegations against IMPACT Services - The state said today it has found "no validity" at this point to a series of allegations levied against IMPACT Services on a national hotline for reporting nuclear and chemical incidents. Among allegations in the anonymous complaint to the National Response Center was that IMPACT Services -- an Oak Ridge waste processor -- had illegally disposed of radioactive materials at the Chestnut Ridge Landfill in Anderson County. The complaint said IMPACT Services was intentionally shielding radioactive materials to prevent detection at the landfill's entry station. Tisha Calabrese-Benton, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, said Tuesday that the state performs regular inspections of IMPACT Services and other companies licensed to process nuclear materials. Those inspections include sampling, surveys, employee interviews and audits of records, she said. "We have found no evidence in any of those inspections of these allegations," Calabrese-Benton said. Kristof Czartoryski, IMPACT's regulatory affairs manager who formerly worked for TDEC, called the allegations "unfounded and ridiculous."

January 18, 2012 - Big Think - Time Itself Is About to Be Unhinged - The international body that controls decisions over how to count time may decouple atomic clocks from the Earth's rotation of the Sun by abolishing leap seconds. Currently, leap seconds are added to atomic clocks every so often, just before midnight, due to irregularities in the Earth's movement, making it one second before midnight twice. The International Telecommunication Union will convene this week in Geneva, Switzerland, to decide whether to make time an entirely abstract phenomenon. Whether time remains tethered to physical events or not, some difficulties may be ahead. America's Global Positioning System satellites do not add leap seconds, nor do satellites being launched by Europe, China and Russia, causing worries that if the current system is maintained, navigation errors may occur. If leap seconds are abolished, astronomers may suffer as their computers rely on the turning of the stars to make calculations. In some 2,000 plus years, atomic clocks would say it is day when it is the middle of the night.

January 18, 2012 - Asbury Park Press - Find new use for nuclear plant - In December 2010, Gov. Chris Christie announced the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lacey will be closed by Dec. 31, 2019. As a result of this announcement, local, state and federal officials need to seriously consider what Lacey and southern Ocean County will look like after Oyster Creek closes its doors. In 2010, Lacey collected $11.1 million in energy taxes from Oyster Creek, 41 percent of its municipal budget. These taxes will trickle to a halt in 2019, creating a huge deficit. In addition to the tax deficit, the loss of jobs at the facility and the ripple effect on small businesses, it is clear that we must come together to plan and transition this facility into something viable. After meeting with local stakeholders on the issue, I believe that the best way to avoid the problems of Oyster Creek’s closure is to transition the facility into a new power plant. Shortly after taking office last year, I worked diligently with the Christie administration to ensure that Lacey was included in the governor’s energy master plan. The language in the plan provides a level of certainty for private power companies and shows they will have a cooperative partner in Trenton should they consider constructing a new plant in Lacey. This is just a first step in what will be a long process, and I look forward to working with the community to ensure that the taxpayers of Lacey are protected.

January 18, 2012 - iPolitics - Nuclear power’s defenders are doing the safety dance - Any fool can pour a cup of poison in the ocean, but a thousand wise men can’t get it back. The maxim applies to the nuclear industry around the world and right here in Canada. Despite all the high-toned assurances about safety, they want you to forget the most important point of all: it only has to leak once. And that’s what happened just before Christmas at New Brunswick’s Point Lepreau nuclear generating station. On December 13, six litres of heavy water were spilled on the floor of the reactor building. Not a big spill, not a calamity, but the facility had to be evacuated. The day after, NB Power had a surprise for the public. Three weeks before the heavy water spill, there had been another, and unpublicized, accident – known as an “incident” in the euphemistic and self-forgiving lexicon of the industry. In late November 2011, 23 barrels of water saturated with the toxic chemical hydrazine were mistakenly released into the Bay of Fundy.

January 18, 2012 - AZoOptics - Innovative µCT Inspection System to be Displayed at MD+M West 2012 - The ìCT Inspection system of Nordson DAGE will be exhibited at the Expo. Nordson DAGE X-ray inspection systems are improved through the 2-D X-ray investigations provided by the Computerized Tomography (CT) functionality. In order to design the advanced CT models, Nordson DAGE X-ray inspection systems employ the highly developed, sub-micron feature identification of 2-D X-ray images offered by Nordson DAGE X-ray systems. The resulting innovative CT models have wide applications for internal dimensional measurements, 3-D sample analysis, and virtual micro-sectioning.

January 18, 2012 - Associated Press - 2 groups to explain Va. uranium mining concerns - Two groups are scheduled to speak out on their concerns about ending Virginia's 30-year ban on uranium mining. The Virginia Coalition and the Alliance for Progress in Southern Virginia have scheduled a news conference in Richmond on Wednesday to outline their concerns. The groups describe their membership as job creators and current and past members of the General Assembly. They say they're concerned about the health of their workers and the economic future of the region if uranium mining is allowed. Virginia Uranium Inc. has proposed mining a 119-million pound deposit in Pittsylvania County. The General Assembly is expected to consider lifting the ban but the bill-filing deadline for the 2012 session is days away. Most opposition to uranium mining has been based on environmental concerns.

January 18, 2012 - Dexter Patch - Washtenaw County Public Health Department Offers Half-Priced Radon Testing Kits - The Washtenaw County Public Health Department is observing January as National Radon Action Month. To promote this event, Washtenaw County is offering half-priced radon home test kits from Jan. 17-31. “Our goal is to have every resident in Washtenaw County test their home for radon, and to fix the problem if elevated levels are found,” said Angela Parsons, environmental health education coordinator with the department's Environmental Health Division.

January 18, 2012 - Crienglish.com - China to Monitor Radiation in Drinking Water around Nuclear Plants - China's local health authorities have been told to launch a system of checking drinking water around the country's nuclear power plants for radiation. The monitoring will cover areas within 30 km of plants that are both in operation and under construction, according to a national working plan for drinking water monitoring in 2012, which was published on the website of the Ministry of Health on Tuesday. The document also specified that the plants will include the operating Tianwan nuclear power plant in Jiangsu province, Qinshan plant in Zhejiang, Daya Bay and Ling'ao nuclear power stations in Guangdong, as well as those under construction in Zhejiang, Liaoning, Fujian, Shandong, Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan provinces. The plan asked the authorities to consider both natural radiation conditions and artificial radioactive matters that may have leaked from the nuclear power plants in the nuclide analysis if the monitoring finds elevated levels of radiation.

January 18, 2012 - Evening Telegraph - Court told nuclear decision is flawed - A barrister acting for a campaigner who is battling to stop low-level radioactive waste being dumped near her village says the decision is flawed. Communities aecretary Eric Pickles granted planning permission for disposal of the waste at a landfill site at King’s Cliffe, near Corby, and its operator Augean started taking deliveries in December. Village resident Louise Bowen-West, of Wastewatchers, recently failed to block the proposals in the High Court but yesterday she asked appeal judges to rule the High Court had got the law wrong and the decision in May to give the go-ahead to Augean should be reconsidered. Richard Drabble, appearing for Ms Bowen-West, told the judges the permission was a “foot in the door” for much larger quantities of hazardous and low-level radioactive waste to be deposited in the area.

January 18, 2012 - National Post - Big Bang camera goes dark - On Saturday, 1.5-million kilometres from Earth, at a place known as the L2 Langrangian Point, where the Planck Satellite orbits the sun in lockstep with the Earth, a tank of liquid helium coolant went dry. Immediately, a camera that had been chilled by the helium to -270 degrees Celsius started to warm up from the sun’s light, and as it did, an array of highly sensitive microwave radiation detectors known as spider-web bolometers became too warm to detect the faint, lingering flash of the Big Bang, an ancient light that fills the sky. Thus ended the working life of the Planck Surveyor, a European satellite that took the most expensive single picture in history, and which soon will use a bit of remaining fuel to propel itself toward cremation in the sun.

January 18, 2012 - Lexology - Renewable energy overtakes nuclear power in U.S. market - As noted by The Washington Post's Wonkblog, renewable energy overtook nuclear power as an energy source in the United States for the first time in decades in 2011. The most recent figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that renewable energy provided 11.95 percent of domestic U.S. energy production through the first nine months of 2011, compared with just 10.62 percent from nuclear. But the story explains that "[t]he two things that most people associate with the term 'clean energy' — namely, wind and solar — are nowhere close to overtaking nuclear power," with the "vast bulk of 'renewable' power in the United States still com[ing] from large-scale hydropower (4.35 percent), biomass (3.15 percent) and biofuels (2.57 percent)." The story continues: Going forward, however, that could well shift. The nuclear industry is more focused on replacing soon-to-retire plants than expanding outright. There aren’t likely to be too many more large-scale hydropower plants in the United States — the prime hydro sites have all been taken. And as for biomass and biofuel, critics have raised serious questions about whether either of these sources are as sustainable as alleged. On the other hand, solar and wind were by far the fastest-growing energy sources last year — solar electricity grew 46.5 percent and wind by 27.1 percent (though it’s unclear whether either source can maintain that hectic pace now that Congress has allowed a few key subsidies to expire.)

January 18, 2012 - Utility Week - Switzerland's nuclear exit? - The future of Switzerland's nuclear energy industry hangs in the balance after the country's parliament voted in favour of a nuclear phase-out. The two houses of the country's legislature have agreed on proposals that include a ban on licences for new nuclear power plants and the immediate shut-down of existing plants that do not meet safety requirements. The government is now drawing up draft legal measures that should be ready for public consultation in the summer. However, it could be years before the legislation takes effect, and even then it would do so only after a ­referendum. Like Germany, Switzerland's about-turn on nuclear energy came in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident in March last year. Energy minister Doris Leuthard announced that the application process for new nuclear power plants would be suspended pending a report into events at the stricken Japanese plant. "The industry welcomed this decision," says Matthias Rey, spokesman for industry body Nuklearforum Schweiz. "We wanted to draw conclusions and learn lessons from what had happened in Japan and use this in the application process [for new plants]."

January 18, 2012 - OilPrice.com - Safety and Security Advantages of Small Nuclear Reactors - Ever since Chernobyl, much of the public has been afraid of nuclear power plants. While there are no nuclear plants in Western Europe, North America, or Oceania which are designed so badly or operated so irresponsibly as Chernobyl was -- thus offering nothing like the Chernobyl disaster experience -- the public is still concerned. Along comes the small modular nuclear fission reactor (SMRs) -- which are even more safe and secure than modern western designs. The public should feel better about nuclear by learning more about SMRs. And government regulatory agencies should be feeling much better about licensing the new SMR designs, given their improved safety and security aspects. Here is more from John Wheeler: Small modular reactors offer several big advantages that make them safer: They are smaller, so the amount of radioactivity contained in each reactor is less. So much less in fact, that even if the worse case reactor accident occurs, the amount of radioactive material released would not pose a risk to the public. In nuclear lingo we say SMRs have a smaller “source term.” This source term is so small we can design the plant and emergency systems to virtually eliminate the need for emergency actions beyond the physical site boundaries. Then, by controlling access to the site boundary, we can eliminate the need for off-site protective actions (like sheltering or evacuations).

January 18, 2012 - Stars & Stripes - Japan told US military of radiation fallout days before public - Japan’s science ministry provided data to U.S. forces about levels of radioactive fallout from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant far earlier than it informed the public, according to The Associated Press. U.S. forces received the data on March 14, three days after the 2011 tsunami led to a meltdown at the plant, according to Itaru Watanabe, an official with the Foreign Ministry’s science bureau. The public was not provided data until March 23. Watanabe, a member of the investigative panel probing the nuclear disaster for the Diet, said at a meeting Monday that the science ministry had released the information to the U.S. “to seek support from them” in dealing with the emergency, according to the AP. It’s unclear what U.S. Forces Japan did, or could have done, with the data. No spokesperson for USFJ was immediately available for comment.

January 18, 2012 - Alliance for Nuclear Accountability - DOE Seeking More Reactors to Use Controversial Plutonium Fuel (MOX) - Under growingbudgetary stress, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it is amendinga troubled program to dispose of surplus weapons plutonium[i]. DOE aims to eliminate a costly new facility fordisassembling plutonium cores (pits) from nuclear bombs and is considering processingthe pits in existing facilities at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in SouthCarolina and the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. Facing a host of hurdles, DOE aims to turn the separated plutonium into controversial new mixed uranium-plutonium oxide fuel (MOX) for use in unnamed nuclear power reactors. Today’s notice reveals that DOE is widening its search for utilities willing to accept MOX and states that they “will analyze use of MOX fuel in a generic reactor in the United States to provide analysis for any additional future potential utility customers.” It is unknown which new utilities DOE is courting but today’s announcement reaffirms the difficulty of persuading utilities to use MOX fuel, which presents a number of technical, cost and proliferation challenges, according to the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA). ANA is a network of 35 local, regional and national organizations representing the concerns of communities in the shadows of the U.S. nuclear weapons sites and radioactive waste dumps and has been tracking the troubled MOX program since its inception.

January 18, 2012 - World Nuclear News - Records tumble for uranium producers - Last year was a bumper year for Paladin Energy and Uranium One's uranium mines, while production at Denison and Rio Tinto's operations were victims of circumstance. Paladin Energy and Uranium One have both released year-end figures celebrating the achievements of their operations in Africa, Kazakhstan, Australia and the USA. For Uranium One, the year's attributable production totalled a record 10.7 million pounds U3O8 (4116 tU), up 45% on 2010 figures, with record full-year sales of 9.9 million pounds U3O8 (3808 tU) up 43% on the previous year. The majority of Uranium One's production comes from its Kazakh ventures, although 2011 also saw the company's first report of output from the Honeymoon in-situ leach (ISL) operation in Australia, contributing 210,000 pounds U3O8 (81 tU) to the total.

January 18, 2012 - The Tennessean - Unprotected nuclear fuel could mean disaster - Thanks to The Tennessean for printing the Jan. 12 op-ed by Dr. Jeffrey Patterson on the dangers of nuclear waste storage. Dr. Patterson, past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, is right about the excessive risks of transporting spent fuel from nuclear reactors to another location for storage. Do we want trucks or trains moving through our towns carrying high-level radiation? But equally hazardous is leaving spent fuel unprotected, as it is currently. Not only floods, earthquakes and hurricanes, but also tornadoes, could cause a Fukushima-like disaster. In fact, last April one almost did. When the F5 tornado that hit Tuscaloosa moved through, it passed close enough to Browns Ferry to knock out electrical power for days. Think what would have happened to northern Alabama and Middle and East Tennessee if the reactor had experienced a direct hit. The spent fuel at Browns Ferry might have been spread throughout the region. As Dr. Patterson says, hardened on-site storage is the best means of disposing existing high-level waste. The best answer for the future, however, would be to stop producing the deadly stuff and get our energy from sun, wind and water.

January 18, 2012 - Idaho Statesman - Plans for uranium de-conversion plant move forward for International Isotopes of Idaho Falls - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has started the public comment period on the draft environmental impact statement for International Isotopes’s planned depleted uranium de-conversion facility in New Mexico. Idaho Falls-based International Isotopes Inc. is in the licensing and design phase of an environmentally friendly, green technology, uranium de-conversion and fluorine extraction processing facility near Hobbs, N.M., where a public hearing will be held Feb. 2. Comments on the project will be taken until Feb. 27. “The NRC currently anticipates completion of this licensing process and issuing the license for the facility in mid to late summer of 2012,” Steve T. Laflin, president and CEO, said. “In the next few months, the exact timing of the NRC license issuance will become much clearer and allow the company to complete financing and start construction on this important project.” The application can be viewed at http://www.nrc.gov/materials/fuel-cycle-fac/inisfacility.html. The Draft EIS is available in the NRC’s ADAMS online database by entering Accession Number ML12001A000 in the content search box.

January 18, 2012 - KUOW - Gregoire Reacts To Leaked Hanford Waste Report - Washington Governor Chris Gregoire says construction on a waste treatment plant at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation must continue. This despite serious safety concerns raised by two high-level whistleblowers. There's also a newly leaked report that warns plutonium levels in Hanford tank waste could be much higher than previously thought. Gregoire says those issues should be taken seriously, but the clean-up has already taken too long. "If there's a good and valid reason for us to stop, to slow down, we will listen to any legitimate concern," Gregoire says. "But in the meantime I cannot continue to allow US Department of Energy to delay and delay and delay. The Columbia River is at stake, all of that area and its vitality." The concern is sludge in aging underground tanks could seep into the Columbia if it's not retrieved and turned into safer glass logs. The waste treatment plant is currently under construction. But the head of nuclear safety for the project is the latest whistleblower to tell our Richland correspondent, Anna King, that the plant is under-designed and vulnerable to major malfunctions.

January 17, 2012 - RocketNews24 - Tokyo Clinic to Test Internal Radiation Exposure - On January 16th, a clinic was opened in Tokyo’s Shinagawa Ward to check the levels of internal radiation exposure. The clinic, loosely translated as Radioactivity Premium Dock, offers a complete body scan for radiation levels, among other services, which the general public can access for a fee. The company hopes to reduce anxiety resulting from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster and to help the public manage their health. The clinic was established by Japan Third Party, a Tokyo-based IT firm listed on the JASDAQ. They’ve imported machinery and tools developed in Belarus after the Chernobyl disaster. On this day, they were offering a free trial. A woman from Tokyo’s Minato Ward (45) said, “I’m concerned about radiation exposure from contaminated food. With this test, I can put my mind at ease.” The cost of a full-body scan and a test for thyroid exposure is 12600 yen (about $160 US). Residents of Fukushima Prefecture and other evacuees are half-price. According to a company representative, “By collecting the test data, we also hope to contribute to the development of treatments for victims of radiation exposure.”

January 17, 2012 - NBC News - TSA Radiation Tests - The Transportation Security Administration is going to start testing screeners to see if they are being exposed to too much radiation. The TSA says screeners will start wearing devices that measure their exposure to radiation. The move is in response to concerns over how much radiation screeners are exposed to from airport scanners. So far, there is no word on when screeners will start wearing the devices.

January 17, 2012 - Moscow Times - Russia to Test If U.S. Radar Affected Failed Space Probe - Russian scientists will test whether radiation from a U.S. radar accidentally affected the failed Fobos-Grunt space probe that plummeted to Earth on Sunday, RIA-Novosti reported. Russian space official Yury Koptev, who heads a commission responsible for analyzing the probe's flight, said an experiment will be run in the coming days in which a device with equipment similar to that on board the Fobos-Grunt probe will be exposed to the same level of radiation emitted by U.S. radars that may have affected the Russian device. "The results of the experiment will allow us to confirm or refute the version of possible radar influence," Koptev said, RIA-Novosti reported. A source in the space industry told business daily Kommersant on Tuesday that one of the versions being examined by space officials in determining the reason for the probe's failure is "outside influence on the probe" by a U.S. radar in the Marshall Islands.

January 17, 2012 - Washington Times - NIMBY nation - No one should argue that President Obama underreaches. When the commander in chief says, “not in my backyard,” he doesn’t mean the South Lawn behind the White House but from sea to shining sea. The O Force has just given the thumbs down to a proposal to open new uranium mines on 1 million acres of land near the Grand Canyon. Two years ago, Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar placed a temporary halt on new uranium-mine claims in the scenic region in order to study the impact of mining operations on the Colorado River’s watershed. On Jan. 9, Mr. Salazar announced the freeze had morphed into a 20-year moratorium, winning plaudits from progress-hating leftists. The interior secretary was apparently unconvinced by a study from the Arizona Geological Survey that calculated an accidental dumping of a truckload of uranium ore into the river would raise the concentration of the mineral in the river water by a mere one-half of 1 percent.

January 17, 2012 - Rutgers Daily Targum - Enhanced images of galaxy offer insight into universe - University researchers uncovered evidence of matter over the past year that could give researchers a better understanding of other galaxies. Clearer images, enhanced since the researcher’s initial discovery of a large galaxy cluster in 2008, provide information about dark matter with the help from images National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Chandra X-ray Observatory took, said Jack Hughes, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. “It is the most massive of any of these clusters found at this distance or beyond,” he said. “It has great importance for helping us to learn about how structures in the universe formed.” After researchers discovered the cluster “El Gordo” in 2008, they studied it through European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to understand it better, said Felipe Menanteau, study leader and postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The researchers discovered two dozen objects in the southern hemisphere of the sky using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, Hughes said. The National Science Foundation funded the survey. “El Gordo” is an emerging galaxy cluster that formed through the collision of two independent clusters that went through each other, he said.

January 17, 2012 - Environmental Expert - Distillery sludge used to treat radioactive sites - It's not the usual association that comes to mind - drinking your favourite brew and nuclear wastes - but a new study shows how distillery sludge can help solve one of our most pressing environmental problems. According to a new study, contaminated sites can be treated with sludge from the treatment of distillery wastewater in bioreactors. The study demonstrates an efficient method for decontamination of groundwater based on bacteria in sludge that naturally convert uranium into an insoluble form that can be more easily removed. Uranium is radioactive and toxic to animals and humans, accumulating in and causing damage to the kidneys. In the US, the safe limit or maximum contaminant level (MCL) for uranium in drinking water, established by the Environmental Protection Agency, is 0.30µg/L. Different regulations for uranium in drinking and bottled water exist across the EU. The European Food Safety Authority concluded in a 2009 study that most people in Europe would never be exposed to anything approaching the World Health Organization's Tolerable Daily Intake of 0.6µg per kilogram of body weight.

January 17, 2012 - Northumberland News - Life in Port Hope just fine, even with radioactive waste - The majority of Port Hope residents are happy with life in the community as the low-level radioactive cleanup prepares to kick into construction mode, according to a recent telephone survey. The 10th annual Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) Public Attitude Survey, conducted by IntelliPulse Marketing, shows overall satisfaction with life in Port Hope remains very high, at 95 per cent, said PHAI project director Christine Fahey. In addition, public confidence in the PHAI Management Office's ability to safely manage the waste for the long term, came in at 84 per cent -- its highest level ever, up from 81 per cent last year and 65 per cent since the first survey done in 2002, said Ms. Fahey. "It's encouraging to know the residents of Port Hope continue to increase their confidence in our ability to safely move the waste while minimizing community impact," she said. "We've asked the community to tell us what is important to them and how we are doing, and we will continue to engage and listen as we move into Phase 2."

January 17, 2012 - World Nuclear News - Federal cash for legacy waste clean-up - A project to clean up low-level radioactive wastes dating back to the dawn of the nuclear age can move forward with the announcement of a 10-year funding commitment from the Canadian government. Natural resources minister Joe Oliver announced the investment of C$1.28 billion ($1.26 billion) of federal funds to address historic waste resulting from more than five decades of radium and uranium refining operations at Port Hope, Ontario. The investment underscored the government's "long-standing commitment to clean up historic low-level radioactive waste in the Port Hope area," according to the minister. Some 1.7 million cubic metres of low-level radioactive waste is located at several sites within the neighbouring municipalities of Port Hope and Clarington. The waste resulted from radium and uranium processing carried out between 1933 and 1988 by the former Crown corporation Eldorado Nuclear Limited and its private sector predecessors.

January 17, 2012 - MedGadget - Planmed Verity Mobile Extremity CT Scanner for Orthopedic Imaging Receives CE Mark - Planmed (Helsinki, Finland) has received European CE Mark for the Planmed Verity, a mobile extremity CT scanner for orthopedic imaging. The Planmed Verity Extremity Scanner utilizes cone-beam CT (CBCT) technology that provides fast and accurate low-dose 3D imaging of peripheral skeletal fractures and disorders at the point-of-care. Volumetric imaging with multi-planar reconstruction and volume rendering can be performed with an isotropic resolution of up to 0.2mm (optional 0.1mm high resolution mode). Scanning takes less than 20 seconds during which images are acquired using a short X-ray pulse instead of continuous radiation, resulting in a radiation dose of up to ten times lower compared to extremity imaging protocols with conventional CT. The compact, mobile device can be sited in any existing X-ray room, side-by-side with other imaging systems.

January 17, 2012 - ZDNet - Silicon nanowires give Moore's Law some breathing space - Australian scientists have fabricated a silicon wire just four atoms wide. Although it is a mere 10,000th the size of a human hair, it conducts electricity as well as copper, the researchers say. The breakthrough could mean a bit of breathing space for chip designers, who would have expected to run into weird quantum effects (loss of conductivity due to electron tunnelling, for instance) at this scale. But they have shown that Ohm’s law - which describes the relationship between current, resistance and potential difference between two points in a circuit – holds, even in a wire just four atoms across. The researchers explain that keeping resistivity low at this scale is a challenge, but by spiking the silicon crystal with phosphorus atoms every nanometre or so, the team was able to demonstrate diameter-independent resistivity.

January 17, 2012 - Albany Times Union - Are we really closer to doomsday? - No, today’s talker isn’t about the mystery of why the Mayan calendar runs out in 2012 (“Dang, my chisel broke.” “Ah, forget it. No one will notice. Wanna catch the ritual sacrifice and go out for bite?”) It’s about the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists decision to move their “Doomsday Clock” one minute closer to midnight. That gives the world a figurative five minutes. The group, which started the clock in 1947 and last updated it in 2010 by moving it back a minute, said it appeared the progress it had hoped world leaders were making did not come about. The group cited the ongoing failure to address global warming or take stronger steps to reduce nuclear weapons and control the proliferation.

January 17, 2012 - Nuclear Street - USEC’s American Centrifuge R&D May Be Funded Through March as DOE Negotiations Continue - On Friday USEC announced a “path to provide interim funding” through March for research at the company’s American Centrifuge Plant as it continues to pursue government support for the uranium enrichment venture. USEC did not elaborate further, saying only that it had identified the “path to funding” with the Department of Energy. The fate of a $300 million research, development and demonstration project at the plant remains uncertain, and it would require an appropriation from Congress or funds from transfers of depleted uranium from USEC to DOE. USEC will continue to work with DOE and legislators to procure further funding. The R&D program would involve the construction of at least one complete cascade of machines so USEC’s enrichment technology could be tested at commercial scale.

January 17, 2012 - Clarksville Leaf Chronicle - January is 'Radon Action Month' - January is Radon Action Month. Charles Jobe from the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation will present a "Go Green" program at 1 p.m. Jan. 23 at the Stewart County Public Library. The presentation will include an overview of what radon is and where it comes from; why and how to test homes and buildings for radon; and steps to take if test results indicate a home or building is unsafe.

January 17, 2012 - Mainichi Daily News - Government tries to find structures where radioactive gravel was used - The national government will try to find all structures where 5,200 metric tons of highly radioactive gravel from near the crisis-hit Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant was used and measure the radiation levels there, it has been learned. The gravel is thought to have made its way to around 200 construction-related businesses. The company that mined the gravel kept it in the town of Namie, which was marked for evacuation. Before the designation on April 22, the company shipped the gravel to 19 companies, from which it spread to well over a hundred others. The national and Fukushima prefectural governments have begun investigating whether irradiated materials from other mining businesses may have also been shipped. According to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), there are three mining companies near areas recommended to evacuate because of high radiation levels, and it will look into whether there were shipments made after the nuclear disaster began and measure radiation at the mining sites. If high radiation is found, it will request a stop to shipments.

January 17, 2012 - The Engineer - EDF withdraws opposition to Exelon and CENG merger - French utility company EDF has reached an agreement with Chicago-based electricity firm Exelon to protect the operational autonomy of Constellation Energy Nuclear Group (CENG). As part of the agreement, EDF has agreed to withdraw its opposition to the proposed merger between Exelon and Constellation Energy. .Constellation Energy Nuclear Group is a 50.01/49.99 joint venture between Constellation Energy and EDF. CENG operates five nuclear plants on three sites in Maryland and New York.

January 17, 2012 - Newberryport Daily News - NRC criticism unwarranted - Congressman Markey has made a career of second-guessing the careful engineering assessments of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to fulfill his political ambitions, and Congressman Tierney is now jumping on the anti-nuclear bandwagon. The NRC is one of the most highly regarded government agencies and its staff is both skilled and thorough. Since nuclear plants are overbuilt to have large margins of safety, the NRC is correct in noting that a small amount of normal concrete deterioration is not a problem. In this case once again, the system has worked where an issue was identified, carefully considered and good engineering and safety judgment prevailed. One would have hoped our elected officials would have better things to do then try to play engineers in opposition to the folks with the real expertise.

January 17, 2012 - Jornal.us - Brazilian nuclear power plants set new records in 2011 - The electricity produced by Brazil’s two nuclear power plants, Angra 1 and Angra 2, set new records in 2011. The total amount of electricity generated was 15.644 million megawatts (MWh). The two plants also set individual records in 2011: Angra 1 generated 4.654 million MWh and Angra 2, 10.989 million MWh. Angra 1 is 30 years old and Angra 2 has been operational for a decade. Both plants are operating at 100% of capacity at the moment, generating 3.17% of all electricity in Brazil (91% of Brazil’s electricity is produced by hydroelectric power plants). The nuclear power plants are an important part of the state of Rio de Janeiro electricity grid, generating 30% of the electricity the state uses (the nuclear power plants are located in the state at Angra dos Reis). Sometime at the end of 2015 or the beginning of 2016. a third nuclear power plant, Angra 3, is scheduled to go online. At that time, nuclear power will generate 60% of the electricity used in Rio de Janeiro.

January 17, 2012 - Newsday - Perilous nuclear material needs care - Terrorists with nukes is a nightmare scenario that makes compelling reading of a new report assessing how well nuclear materials are secured around the world. It would be a herculean task for a terrorist group or rogue nation to get weapons-grade nuclear material and build a bomb. But it's a classic low-probability, high-risk threat because of the deadly, society-changing devastation it would unleash. Weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium are stored at hundreds of sites in 32 countries, according to the nuclear materials security index developed by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private advocacy group. Using obscure but publicly available documents, the index ranks nations based on factors such as the quantity of nuclear material stored, physical protections, tracking, transportation security, political stability and corruption. Some sites are well secured, but many are not, raising the specter that terrorists could steal or buy the materials on the black market.

January 17, 2012 - KTVC 9 - What Will Become Of TVA's Nuclear Waste? - As the Tennessee Valley Authority spends billions of dollars expanding it's nuclear power program concerns are growing over what to do with all that nuclear waste. 25-years ago the U.S. Congress designated a site in Nevada to bury the waste but politics and concerns from people who live there have stalled the disposal program. So the waste is just sitting at plant sites like Sequoyah in Soddy Daisy. Almost everybody connected with nuclear power agrees the radioactive waste is the "achilles heel" of the industry. But the more this country stalls the process the more waste keeps building up in our backyard. Sitting outside the Sequoyah nuclear plant there is row after row of 100-ton steel and concrete casks. Each one is packed with 10-15 tons of radioactive nuclear waste -- the pellets and rods that were used to generate electricity. TVA's nuclear program spokesman, Ray Golden, said disposal of nuclear waste is tied up in court.

January 17, 2012 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - Changes to Y-12 sick worker program focus of event - The U.S. Labor Department will host a daylong session in Oak Ridge on Wednesday to discuss changes that will make it easier for former Y-12 workers — or their surviving relatives — to collect money from the federal compensation program for sick nuclear workers. The session will be held from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. at the Doubletree Hotel on Illinois Avenue. The Labor Department has been notifying former workers at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant that additional workers have been added to a so-called "Special Exposure Cohort," which makes it easier to collect $150,000 on claims for cancers potentially caused by radiation exposures in the Cold War workplace. If workers are declared part of an SEC and have one of the 22 specified cancers under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness and Compensation Program, there is a presumption that the cancer was caused by workplace exposures. They do not have to go through a "dose reconstruction" process to prove that their radiation exposures were sufficient to have caused their cancer.

January 17, 2012 - Cleveland Plain Dealer - Before giving Davis-Besse another 20-year operating license, crack the case of the cracks - Well-documented problems at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant now include mysterious hairline cracks in the outer concrete "shield building" around the reactor and its containment vessel. These problems demand more than the usual ho-hum treatment from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So the real mystery is why the NRC has let plant operator FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co., a subsidiary of Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp., power up the reactor before the utility completes its investigation into what caused the cracks. An NRC spokeswoman said the commission allowed Davis-Besse to restart on Dec. 6 after a FirstEnergy analysis, accepted by the NRC, judged the reactor safe to operate. The company has until Feb. 28 to give the NRC a root-cause report on the cracks, which were first found during a repair shutdown in October.

January 17, 2012 - Salt Lake Tribune - On blended waste - Thank you for running Mike Cowley’s thoughtful essay, “Blended waste is too hot for Utah” (Opinion, Jan. 1). It is refreshing to hear others sharing the same frustration about Utah’s “regulation” of EnergySolutions. By allowing EnergySolutions to accept “blended waste,” Gov. Gary Herbert and his regulators are gutting our state’s ban on the most radioactive classes of nuclear waste. When it comes to governments allowing land use by corporations that deposit chemicals, hoping nobody is looking, always follow the money. Thank you, Mike Cowley, for doing the work that our regulators won’t.

January 16, 2012 - Chestertown Spy - Maryland first in US to Commission Nuclear Reaction since 1974 - Maryland moved a step closer this week to commissioning the nation’s first new nuclear reactor since 1974, but there is still a long road ahead before any construction begins. The Board of Public Works voted unanimously to grant UniStar Nuclear Energy LLC the wetlands permit that it needs to build a proposed third nuclear reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Lusby. UniStar released a statement after the BPW vote saying, “This is an important milestone in our development of the Calvert Cliffs 3 project. As we have consistently indicated, a number of different factors need to align before a project of the scope of Calvert Cliffs 3 is brought to fruition, including, most notably, the realization of a regulatory framework within the State of Maryland and receipt of a Department of Energy loan guarantee.” UniStar, a subsidiary of the French energy company EDF, also needs to find an American-owned partner company to meet Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations because Baltimore-based utility company Constellation Energy pulled out of the joint venture in 2010.

January 16, 2012 - Mainichi Daily News - Radioactive gravel likely shipped to over 200 companies - Radioactive gravel thought responsible for high radiation readings in a new apartment complex in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, was likely shipped to over 200 companies, making its way into apartments, bridges, and possibly temporary homes for evacuees, according to government investigators. The gravel was kept in a part of the town of Namie, in an area near the disaster-hit Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. From the time the nuclear disaster began to the establishment of the area as an evacuation zone on April 22, the company owning the gravel had shipped 5,200 metric tons of it to 19 companies, according to national and local government sources. Two of the receiving companies were ready-mix concrete companies and the rest were construction companies. However, the gravel was then reportedly sent on to over 200 other companies, where it was used in building materials.

January 16, 2012 - DrBicuspid.com - Thyroid cancer increasing in the U.S. - Thyroid cancer, which affects about 11 people per 100,000 each year, appears to be on the rise, according to an article in the Indianapolis Star. But medical experts are unsure why. National Cancer Institute statistics suggest that in recent years the number of cases of thyroid cancer has increased by 6.5%, making it the fastest-increasing cancer in the U.S. "Ten years ago if I saw four new thyroid cancer patients a year, it would have been a lot," said G. Irene Minor, a radiation oncologist with Indiana University Health Central Indiana Cancer Center, told the Star. "Now sometimes I see that many in a month, and I have seen three in a week." Experts remain divided on the cause of the increase, although some attribute it to better screening methods, which means smaller tumors are being detected more often than previously possible. Other potential causes include obesity, radiation exposure -- particularly from dental x-rays -- and diets low in fruits and vegetables, the Star noted.

January 16, 2012 - DrBicuspid.com - Study reaffirms safety of handheld x-ray system - Dental care providers and their patients need not worry about radiation exposure when using the Nomad handheld intraoral xray device (Aribex), according to a new study in Health Physics (February 2012, Vol. 102:2, pp. 137-142). More than 6,000 handheld intraoral x-ray units are in use today in the U.S. in dental radiography, veterinary medicine, forensic, military, and research applications, according to the study authors, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and DIQUAD, a company that offers dental x-ray quality and dose evaluation services. Several vendors sell handheld intraoral x-ray devices, including Aribex, DigiMed, Sigma, Video Dental Concepts, and EXARO. But there have been concerns about the use and safety of these devices because the user is required to be in the room, holding the device, while the x-rays are taken.

January 16, 2012 - Richmond Times-Dispatch - Your Health: FDA oversees devices used for mammograms - Q: How much radiation exposure is there during a typical mammogram? A: Mammograms are low-dose X-rays of the breast to screen for or diagnose cancer. The benefit of early detection of breast cancer outweighs the risk that the small dose of radiation will do harm, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health oversees a program that makes sure mammogram machines are operating properly. Safety guidelines set by the American College of Radiology and the FDA call for mammogram radiation exposure not to exceed a certain level. Digital mammography has become the standard, with about 80 percent of mammography systems in the U.S. digital, said Edward Hendrick, a member of the American College of Radiology's breast-imaging communications committee. "We do know that digital does best for dense breasts in detecting cancer," said Hendrick, a clinical professor of radiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

January 16, 2012 - Edinburgh Evening News - Nuclear plant is told to strengthen jellyfish defences - The operator of Torness nuclear power station has been ordered to make safety improvements and urged to boost its defences against jellyfish. A new report from nuclear watchdog the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has highlighted issues with checks on safety valves, concerns about radioactive waste discharge pipes, and a lack of self-closing safety doors. The inspectors did highlight that safety overall, however, was adequate and operator EDF insisted the points raised in the reports were already being addressed. One of the more high-profile incidents was the blockage of the coolant inlets at Torness by large numbers of jellyfish last June, which led to both reactors being shut down.

January 16, 2012 - PRWeb - Rigaku Introduces New 5th Generation MiniFlex Benchtop X-ray Diffraction (XRD) Instrument - Rigaku Corporation today announced the newest additions to its MiniFlex series of benchtop X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyzers. The new 5th generation MiniFlex is a general purpose X-ray diffractometer that can perform qualitative and quantitative analysis of polycrystalline materials. MiniFlex is now available in two variations. Operating at 600 watts (X-ray tube), the MiniFlex 600 is twice as powerful as other benchtop models, enabling faster analysis and improved overall throughput. Running at 300 watts (X-ray tube), the new MiniFlex 300 does not require an external heat exchanger and thus requires even less space. Each model is engineered to maximize flexibility in a benchtop package.

January 16, 2012 - Nanowerk - Enhanced X-ray shielding with carbon nanotubes - Theoretical and experimental studies over the past few years have demonstrated that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) could exhibit novel and outstanding electromagnetic effects. Researchers have used this to fabricate various types of CNT nanocomposite materials for electromagnetic interference shielding, outperforming conventional shielding (see for instance: "Breakthrough nanocomposite material has virtues of plastics and metals"). In new work, scientists have now demonstrated the enhanced X-ray shielding of CNTs (see paper in Materials Express: "Enhanced X-Ray Shielding Effects of Carbon Nanotubes"). "The mechanism for our observations is still far from clear elucidation and it cannot be understood by conventional X-ray attenuation theory," Shuji Tsuruoka, a researcher at Shinshu University's Research Center for Exotic NanoCarbons, and one of the paper's authors, tells Nanowerk.

January 16, 2012 - Anniston Star - Business As Usual: Radon elimination not high on some homeowners' to-do list - Like a lot of people who’ve lived through the recession, Bryan Booth has done a little re-invention of his professional self. Before the crash, Booth was the owner of Advantage Construction, a White Plains-based homebuilding contractor. These days, he calls his company Advantage Construction and Energy Solutions. He’s marketing himself as the guy who can make your house more energy-efficient, saving you money. “As you can imagine, there’s not a lot of new home construction right now,” he said. “The work we get is mostly remodeling and work to make houses more energy-efficient.” Booth is always on the lookout for work that contractors can still do, even in a slow economy. He recently started an enterprise that would seem to be marketable in Anniston, but so far, it’s been a tough sell. He’s doing radon remediation. Radon is a radioactive gas that forms when uranium deteriorates. If the geology is right, radon can seep up through cracks in the rock and enter the atmosphere. Put a house on top of that cracked rock and the gas can collect in it, bringing the radon concentrations to a dangerous level. Breathe that gas long enough, and it increases your chances of lung cancer.

January 16, 2012 - Southeast Missourian - Nuclear Puffs? Radioactive Tissue Boxes Point To Conspiracy - I'm not sure if we should blame al-Qaeda or the giant drug conglomerates that make up Big Pharma, but I know one thing is for certain: a conspiracy is afoot. I realized this after reading a news story regarding retailer Bed, Bath and Beyond over the weekend. The firm was recalling tissue holders they had sold which had been found to be radioactive. That's right. Radioactive! That cutesy ceramic container holding the box of Puff's in your bathroom, just might be nuclear! Apparently these radioactive tissue boxes weren't sold at all Bed, Bath and Beyond stores, but one location in St. Louis did get a dozen. Six of the contaminated containers have been recovered, but the others are still at large. There is the nagging -- and at the time of this writing, still unanswered -- question as to how some simple tissue holders exactly became radioactive. Could this be a new type of attack by al-Qaeda?

January 16, 2012 - Asbury Park Press - New cancer therapy center to open in NJ - As the adage goes: Less is more. This mantra can explain the advantages of choosing proton therapy to treat certain cancers, based on the reasoning that less radiation on healthy tissue is more beneficial for patients. Beginning this spring, the ProCure Proton Therapy Center, 103 Cedar Grove Lane, will become one of 10 proton therapy facilities in the country, and the only in New Jersey and the New York metropolitan area. CentraState Healthcare System, a hospital in Freehold, is another ProCure partner. “It is a major accomplishment for New Jersey to have this kind of center,” said Chris Domalewski, director of marketing and business development.

January 16, 2012 - MineWeb - Peninsula Energy - NRC Approves Earlier Deep Disposal Well Testing - The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have advised Peninsula's wholly owned subsidiary Strata Energy, Inc. that the development of a deep disposal well to test subsurface conditions would be considered exploration and Strata can begin drilling without any further approval. This decision allows the Company to proceed with DDW testing significantly ahead of original schedule and could see flow rates at the upper limits of expectation that would lead to significant capital expenditure reductions at the Lance Projects. Construction and operation of up to five Underground Injection Control (UIC) Class 1 wells at the Lance Central Processing Plant site was approved by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (WDEQ) in April 2011. At the time of WDEQ permit issuance, the NRC regulations classified the drilling of any deep disposal well as part of the operation of an ISR project and subsequently a NRC Source Material License (SML) or an Exception was required to develop and test a deep disposal well (DDW).

January 16, 2012 - Oxford Mail - 20-year storage of radioactive waste - Thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste from disused nuclear reactors is set to be stored for the next 20 years in rural Oxfordshire. Local villagers admit they have concerns about the plans that will see a new 92,000 sq ft storage unit on Harwell business park hold the metal from decommissioned nuclear reactors sealed inside concrete blocks until a permanent underground disposal site is built. Radioactive materials are already stored at the old RAF base, and there have long been plans for waste from Harwell’s disused reactors to be stored on the site. But now Research Sites Restoration Limited (RSRL) – a branch of the UK Atomic Energy Authority – also wants waste from Culham and Winfrith in Dorset to be transported to the site. Approximately 2,500 cubic metres of waste would be kept on the site, within the parish of East Hendred, until a new multi-billion pound underground disposal facility opens in 2040.

January 16, 2012 - TruthDive - India ranks poor in nuclear material security, Australia may stop uranium sale - Australia’s ruling Labour Party government has come under fresh pressure to review its recent decision to lift a ban on uranium sale to India after a new report ranked the country poorly on nuclear material security. The report by the US think-tank – the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) follows Labour’s proposal, ratified at its party conference late last year, to overturn its long-held stance against selling uranium to India, which has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Greens party’s nuclear spokesman Scott Ludlam has been quoted by The Age as saying that the report highlighted how far India had to go in meeting the standards Australia should demand. “I think this is going to force the government to put some teeth into this so-called safeguards agreement, which doesn’t address the kinds of issues that the NTI is putting down in their paper,” Senator Ludlam said. “I think it’s a massive wake-up call that, first of all, the change of policy at the end of last year was a mistake,” Senator Ludlam said.

January 16, 2012 - Japan Times - New condo's foundation radioactive - High levels of radiation have been detected on the first floor of a newly built condominium complex in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, the municipal government said. Crushed stones used in the building's concrete foundation came from the exclusion zone around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, local government officials said. A quarry firm said Monday it shipped some 5,280 tons of crushed stones from Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, to 19 contractors after the nuclear crisis started last March 11, including some 1,065 tons distributed to a concrete maker that provided the material for the Nihonmatsu building's foundations. The firm is investigating its shipments to determine if crushed stones contaminated with radiation also were used in other buildings.

January 16, 2012 - Nuclear Street - NRC Staff Amenable to Post-Fukushima Safety Enhancements Proposed by Nuclear Industry - At a meeting Friday, officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expressed tentative support for an industry-proposed strategy to improve emergency preparedness at nuclear plants following the Fukushima Daiichi crisis in Japan. Last month the Nuclear Energy Institute submitted an approach to meeting proposed plant safety enhancements called FLEX that uses pre-staged backup equipment and supplies supplemented by further resources off-site. The NEI notes the enhancements could be put in place more quickly than plant modifications requiring a lengthy regulatory approval process. At a meeting at NRC headquarters Friday, Bloomberg quoted agency deputy director Martin Virgilio as saying the NEI’s approach represented an acceptable methodology and could help mitigate damage from unexpected disasters. In a blog post Wednesday, an agency spokesman wrote, “The NRC staff believes this approach is a reasonable starting point, although more work is needed on defining these strategies. We also must ensure the NRC can inspect how plants put the strategies in place and that we can hold plants accountable for keeping those strategies ready and available.”

January 16, 2012 - Utilities.me.ch - China PM: Nuclear is "safe reliable, mature tech" - China’s Prime Minister, Wen Jiaobo, has revealed the nation’s intention to go strong on renewables and nuclear power, as it attempts to cut usage of coal burning. Talking at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, Jiaobo said that a commitment to renewables is: “important for promoting world economic recovery and prosperity,” adding that China is making “tireless efforts” in this regard. “We have shut down 80GW of small coal power plants – equivalent to the power supply of a mid-size European country – and found new jobs for the 600,000 workers who were laid off as a result, saving 12 million tonnes of coal that would otherwise have been burned.”

January 16, 2012 - Nuclear Engineering International - Accelerator driven system starts opeartion - The Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK•CEN) has started operating the world’s first accelerator driven system (ADS). The demonstration project, known as Guinevere, couples a lead-cooled nuclear reactor with a particle accelerator. It could play a key role in deciding the future of high-level waste disposal.

January 16, 2012 - Las Vegas Sun - We must demand clear answer from Romney on Yucca Mountain - It is no secret that our elections — especially presidential elections — have become contests in which what candidates don’t say is at least as important as what they do tell the voters. Long ago the electorate, through a fault most of its own making, gave up the expectation that politicians seeking high office would tell the truth. The reasoning was simple: If we are told the truth, we won’t vote for the truth teller. If we are told something less than what is factual, we tend to vote for that person and then complain later when what we thought we were told doesn’t mesh with what the fellow we elected does. That continues the vicious circle of lies, votes and more lies, and that results in the public having an ever-decreasing opinion of the political class, which is forced to tell us less of what we need to know in order to win the votes of people who have become completely disenchanted with the whole thing.

January 16, 2012 - Lower Hudson Journal - Indian Point shutdown reignites nuke battle - A shutdown of the Indian Point 2 reactor last week triggered the latest round of skirmishes and public debate over the future of nuclear power — and the plant itself. The 38-year-old reactor was taken offline Tuesday after a massive water pump overflowed inside the containment dome, the 18th unplanned shutdown at Indian Point in five years. Federal regulators said neither the public nor workers were ever in danger. But when either of Indian Point’s two working reactors is taken offline, the stakes ratchet up in the plant’s five-year battle to operate beyond 2015. Opponents hold press conferences, elected officials attend hearings, regulators investigate, company executives brace for unfavorable headlines and the public is left to wonder about the significance of it all. “Simply the fact that there’s ‘nuclear’ in the plant’s name means that it’s going to receive an outsized amount of attention, and from us as well,” Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said. “These plants are not static. They do things like change out the reactor core pumps periodically. They will overhaul various safety systems.”

January 16, 2012 - Dayton Daily News - Uranium plant in Piketon receives new hope - In an effort to keep alive hopes for a uranium enrichment plant in southern Ohio, the Obama administration has offered the company seeking to build the facility a way to spend $44 million of its own money on continued research and development. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Friday his department would assume $44 million in liability for uranium “tails” — a byproduct of uranium enrichment that can be used as a further source of uranium — currently held by Bethesda, Md.-based USEC, which hopes to launch a uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, about 90 miles southeast of Dayton.

January 16, 2012 - Detroit Free Press - Recent problems at the Palisades nuclear plant in west Michigan - 2008: Palisades fails to assess employees' radiation exposure after they handle tools and their radiation monitors show evidence of exposure, leading to a plant downgrade for much of 2009. Later in 2008, five workers are trapped for 90 minutes inside a high-temperature area because of a hatch malfunction. The extent of worker exposure to radiation in the first incident is not clear. 2010: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission downgrades the plant one category for nine months after finding that workers failed in 2009 to detect that a neutron absorber had degraded in the pool where spent fuel rods are stored. Oct. 23, 2010: A supervisor walks off the job in the control room without permission, apparently after an argument, which leads to a violation notice. May 10, 2011: One of three water pumps that cools hot reactor equipment fails because a worker improperly greased it.

January 16, 2012 - San Luis Obispo Tribune - Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant safety meeting is public - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a daylong public meeting Wednesday in San Luis Obispo to discuss planned updates to Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant’s reactor safety systems. Plant owner PG&E has requested an amendment to its operating licenses to upgrade several outdated reactor safety components. The meeting will last from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Embassy Suites Hotel, 333 Madonna Road, San Luis Obispo. It will be a technical discussion among about a dozen plant managers and three representatives of the NRC’s reactor regulation office. The public is welcome to observe the meeting. However, a portion dealing with security matters will be closed to the public.

January 14-15, 2012 - Webmuenster took the weekend off.

January 13, 2012 - Radioactive tissue boxes removed from stores - Metal tissue holders contaminated with low levels of radioactive material may have been distributed to Bed, Bath & Beyond stores in more than 20 states including New York, federal regulators said Thursday. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman David McIntyre said the home products company had pulled the tissue holder from its stores. He said there is little to no risk to human health — but it's better to avoid unnecessary exposure to radiation. "If someone has one of these, they could receive a small radiation dose from it," he said. For example, he said someone keeping one of the boxes on a vanity in the bathroom and spending about 30 minutes a day near it for a year would receive the equivalent of a couple of chest x-rays. "There's no real health threat from these, but we advise people to return them," he said.

January 13, 2012 - Electricpig - Atomic hard drive tech could give your next phone 1TB of storage - A breakthrough in the way we store data has lead to controlled experiments where a bit – the building block of computer data – can be stored on just 12 atoms. The science behind it will revolutionise the way your mobile devices store data. The experiments are being carried out by IBM Research. The idea is to try and condense information so that both bits of data and atoms can sit closer to each other without conflicting due to their inherent magnetism. Whereas current hard drives use around a million atoms to store a bit (which is basically your binary 1 or 0), it takes just 12 in the lab, which means it takes just 96 to form a byte (8 bits strung together to form information).

January 13, 2012 - U-T San Diego - UCSD downsizes plans for proton center - UCSD Health said this week it is halting plans to build a $205 million proton therapy center in La Jolla that would have competed with a similar Scripps Health project that is under construction in Mira Mesa. UCSD officials said they’ve decided, instead, to pursue a smaller $30 million project with different technology after seeing one delivered to a hospital in St. Louis in October. With just nine proton centers operating in the United States, the decision comes amid questions about whether two proton centers can exist in one county. Scripp Health Chief Executive Chris Van Gorder contends that duplicate facilities could actually help drive up health care costs. Dr. Arno Mundt, chair of UCSD’s Department of Radiation Medicine, said that downsizing the university’s project was a good idea from both a financial and technological standpoint.

January 13, 2012 - Brattleboro Reformer - No radiation limits exceeded at VY in 2010 - According to the Vermont Department of Health, there were no instances where radiation emissions from Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon exceeded state limits in 2010. The DOH's radiation surveillance report for Yankee was published on its website on Wednesday. "There were no instances of non-compliance with the Radiological Health Rule from either operations at Vermont Yankee or the tritium-contaminated plume of groundwater first reported in January 2010," stated the report. The purpose of the surveillance, which has been conducted since plant startup in 1970, is to assure that the public's health is protected from excess amounts of radiation. Environmental measurements are taken at various locations throughout the year, which are compared to background radiation, past measurements and state regulatory limits. In 2010, more than more than 1,600 samples of air, water, milk, soil, vegetation, sediment and fish were taken at the Yankee property line, on-site, from the Connecticut River and from the towns surrounding the station. In addition to monitoring radiation and radioactive effluents from the plant, DOH also conducts a continuing analysis of cancer statistics for people who live in the communities surrounding Yankee.

January 13, 2012 - Mainichi Daily News - Courts find black rain from A-bomb was more far-reaching than gov't acknowledged - Doves fly by the gutted Atomic Bomb Dome, center background, preserved as a landmark for the tribute to the A-bomb attack, following a speech delivered by Prime Minister Naoto Kan to marking the 66th anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing, at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima on Saturday, Aug, 6, 2011. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)Eight lawsuits brought against the government by plaintiffs seeking certification of radiation sickness from the "black rain" that fell on Hiroshima after the city's atomic bombing in 1945, have seen rulings that rain fell in a broader area than was indicated by a study on which national assistance eligibility was based, and that far more people may have been exposed to radiation, it has been learned. In response to requests from the Hiroshima Municipal Government and the Hiroshima Prefectural Government to expand the eligible area, the national government established an experts' commission in December 2010, which, over a year later, has reached no conclusions. The gap between the national government's rationale for radiation-illness certification and the judiciary's rulings are expected to influence debate on what constitutes eligibility. When the commission meets Jan. 20, it will have been five months since its last meeting.

January 13, 2012 - The Citizen - We must fight smart meters for our health - Answers about the radiation exposure from the looming smart meters are not forthcoming from BC Hydro, despite rejection of the concept from the World Health Organization. As Dr. Robert Becker, surgeon and author twice nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize states "The greatest polluting element in the Earth's environment is the proliferation of electromagnetic fields. Scientists estimate that the levels are now 200 million times higher than they were 100 years ago. If the price of milk had increased at the same rate as the level of electromagnetic radiation, we would be paying $14 million for a quart of milk today!" Municipalities across North America and Europe are providing the choice to opt out of smart meters which we must demand here as well. Non-consent forms can be placed on our meters at home and we mustn't succumb to anyone wanting to "service" the meter.

January 13, 2012 - New Electronics - Breakthrough transmitter sets frequency record - A tiny terahertz transmitter has generated the highest frequency ever attained by a microelectronic device, according to researchers from the TU Darmstadt University of Technology in Hessen, Germany. The device operates at room temperature, which could lead to it paving the way for new applications such as nondestructive testing or medical diagnostics. Terahertz (THz) electromagnetic radiation has yet to establish a reputation for itself in scientific and engineering fields, partly due to the fact that transmitters and receivers operating at THz frequencies were bulky and expensive. A team of physicists and engineers led by Dr Michael Feiginov at the TU Darmstadt's Institute for Microwave Technology and Photonics has developed a resonance tunnel diode (RTD) for generating terahertz electromag¬netic radiation that takes up less than 1mm2 and may be produced using conventional semiconductor device fabrication technologies. The team notes that the innovative transmitter has set a new frequency record, 1.111THz, for microelectronic devices - the highest frequency ever generated by an active semiconductor device.

January 13, 2012 - PhysOrg.com - Binary star system found by following gamma-ray signal - To find a binary star system, which is where two stars are in close proximity to one another, astronomers have traditionally relied on pure luck. They’d first start studying what would look like a single star, then look for a radiation signal that would provide them with more information. Such a system clearly isn’t the best approach to finding such binaries, so a group of researchers have turned the tables around so to speak, as they describe in their paper published in Science, and have found a binary by first finding its gamma-ray signal and then tracing it back to its origin.

January 13, 2012 - Bloomberg News - Nuclear plant output falls to 10.3% - Shikoku Electric Power Co. was to shut the 566-megawatt No. 2 reactor at its Ikata plant in Ehime Prefecture on Friday night for regularly scheduled maintenance, Akira Hirai, a spokesman for the utility, said by phone. The unit was scheduled to completely stop generating electricity at 11:50 p.m., he said. After the unit is shut, Shikoku Electric will have no reactors in operation. No date has been set to resume power output at the plant. Atomic plants nationwide are undergoing extensive safety checks in light of last year's Fukushima disaster.

January 13, 2012 - Barents Observer - Russian nuke material more secure - The NTI Nuclear Materials Security Index published this week is a first-of-its-kind analysis public baseline assessment of the status of nuclear materials security conditions around the world. The index lists all 32 countries around the globe that possess more than one kilogram of weapon-grade radioactive material. In other words; material useful for making the bomb. Russia is ranked on the 24th place and by that remains one of the least-safe countries in respect of nuclear-security. The report however says today's Russia and the Russia of 20 years ago is completely different. Russian authorities have attained significant achievements in reducing the nuclear threat and continued their work despite considerable economic difficulties in the 1990s, the report reads. In Barents Russia, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish authorities have sponsored projects on physical protection of sites containing highly-enrich uranium, including the nuclear icebreaker-base Atomflot in Murmansk and the submarine naval yards in Severodvinsk.

January 13, 2012 - Red Orbit - New Study Finds Global Nuclear Security Lacking - A new study published by the U.S.-based Nuclear Threat Initiative has ranked 32 countries believed to possess nuclear material based on the level of security with which their potential bomb-making ingredients were locked down. The results, say experts, suggest that the global community has a long way to go in tracking and securing potentially rogue nukes. The report is loaded with surprises. In first place for tightest nuclear security was Australia, while struggling countries like Mexico, South Africa and Kazakhstan finished alongside or even ahead of first-world nations like Japan (23rd place). The U.S., which has one of the world’s largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons fared decently, tying Belgium for 13th place. At the very bottom of the list came the rigidly autocratic nation of North Korea, the newest addition to the nuclear community. Yet even more disturbing for many was Pakistan, which held the second-to-last position just ahead of North Korea.

January 13, 2012 - Times Live - Louvre to send artworks to Fukushima - France's Louvre museum plans to send more than 20 artworks to Japan, including Fukushima prefecture, near the stricken nuclear plant, in order to show solidarity with the disaster-hit country. The exhibition will run from April 20 to September 17 in Japan's Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, said Jean-Luc Martinez, director of the department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities at the Louvre. The exhibition, to be titled 'Meeting, Love, Friendship, Solidarity in the Louvre collections', will feature 23 paintings, sculptures, drawings and other works from different eras and civilisations. "Neither the works nor staff from the Louvre who will accompany them on a voluntary basis will be endangered," said Martinez, adding that the level of radioactivity was no higher than in a Paris museum.

January 13, 2012 - WHEC News 10 - Radioactive agent found in metal tissue box holders - Health officials removed 12 metal tissue box holders from the shelves of multiple Bed, Bath and Beyond stores after they were found with low levels of cobalt-60 radioactive material. Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health Dr. Nirav Shah says the products were removed from four different Bed, Bath and Beyond stores in New York - in Westbury, Port Chester, Elmsford and Huntington Station. The item, a Dual Ridge Metal tissue box holder model number DR9M, was available in 200 Bed, Bath and Beyond stores nationwide. It was also available at Bed, Bath and Beyond's website and has since been removed. State and local health officials secured the contaminated tissue boxes after Bed, Bath and Beyond was contacted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Jan. 10 regarding the shipment. The health department says holding the tissue box to one's chest for an hour would cause a level of radiation equivalent to a chest X-ray. Cobalt-60 is a man-made product, often used in the sterilization of medical equipment and as a source for leveling devices and thickness gauges used during the production of metal products. It is also used in radiation therapy.

January 13, 2012 - USDOL Press Release (012/12/12) - US Department of Labor notifies workers of 17 facilities associated with Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act about potential eligibility under EEOICPA - The U.S. Department of Labor is notifying former workers of 17 facilities associated with the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act about compensation and medical benefits potentially available to them under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, which is administered by the department's Division of Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation. Survivors of qualified workers also may be entitled to benefits. Former employees may be eligible if they worked at any of the facilities during a period of covered U.S. Department of Energy-funded environmental remediation efforts. Additionally, three facilities already covered under the EEOICPA now have expanded periods of eligibility.

January 13, 2012 - USDOE Press Release (01/12/12) - President Obama Names Scientists Mildred Dresselhaus and Burton Richter as the Enrico Fermi Award Winners - President Obama has named Mildred S. Dresselhaus and Burton Richter as the winners of the Enrico Fermi Award, one of the government’s oldest and most prestigious awards for scientific achievement. The Presidential award carries an honorarium of $50,000, shared equally, and a gold medal. The award is administered on behalf of the White House by the U.S. Department of Energy. “The scientists being recognized today with the prestigious Enrico Fermi Award have provided scientific leadership throughout their careers that has strengthened America’s energy and economic security,” said Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. “I congratulate them for their achievements as pioneers in innovative research and thank them for their service.”

January 13, 2012 - Bloomberg News - NRC Staff to Lay Out Next Steps on Plant Safety, Official Says - U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will outline next steps for power-plant safety during a meeting tomorrow with industry representatives to consider post- Fukushima recommendations.  The NRC staff tomorrow “will lay out our new approach” to industry officials during a meeting at the agency’s Rockville, Maryland, headquarters, spokesman Scott Burnell wrote in a blog post yesterday. The regulator’s approach, combined with proposals offered by the industry last month for additional backup systems, may improve safety at U.S. plants following the Japan crisis, Burnell said. The NRC is weighing safety rules for 104 U.S. commercial reactors after an earthquake and tsunami triggered meltdowns and radiation leaks at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501)’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant in Japan in March. The commission on Dec. 15 approved a list of priorities for regulatory action, including steps for plants to handle power failures.

January 13, 2012 - Associated Press - NY Should Map Gas Wells, Set Radiation Limits - The Environmental Protection Agency says New York regulators should set limits for radioactive materials in gas-drilling wastewater sent to public treatment plants before allowing any hydraulic fracturing of natural gas wells in the state. The federal agency made that suggestion and others related to radiation from gas-drilling activities in 44 pages of comments submitted Wednesday night on the state Department of Environmental Conservation's proposed rules for high-volume hydraulic fracturing. DEC Commissioner Joe Martens said Wednesday that the state agency received an unprecedented number of comments on its environmental review, which began in 2008. DEC spokeswoman Emily DeSantis said Thursday that 32,100 comments have been tallied so far and the number is expected to exceed 40,000 when all are counted.

January 13, 2012 - Asheville Citizen-Times - Protests a new nuclear power station close to Asheville - Asheville is only 60 miles from the proposed William States Lee nuclear power plant in Gaffney, S.C. We are closer to Gaffney than Tokyo is to Fukushima. Asheville is experiencing an increase in tourism, we support growing our food locally, and our city is dedicated to supporting renewable energy and retrofitting buildings for efficiency. If built, the Gaffney-Lee nuclear plant could change all that. From the preconstruction requirements, to the construction and operation of the plant, and then storage of nuclear waste, it will drastically impact our local resources, wildlife and surrounding communities. Sending comments to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC.gov), participating in the public comment meeting on Jan. 19 in Gaffney or writing letters to oppose the nuclear plant to our local representatives will make a difference.

January 13, 2012 - The Oak Ridger - Largest source of ORNL groundwater contamination’ removed - The Department of Energy's environmental management contractor URS/CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) recently removed a tank that is considered to be the largest source of groundwater contamination in Bethel Valley at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Tank W-1A, a 4,000-gallon tank on ORNL's central campus was commissioned in 1951. The large stainless steel tank collected and stored liquid wastes from radiochemical separations and high-radiation analytical facilities at ORNL, according to a UCOR press release. The tank was removed from service and emptied in 1986 when significant levels of soil and groundwater contamination were traced to the area surrounding the vessel.

January 13, 2012 - UPI - Lack of funds threatens nuclear lab - A nuclear research lab expected to break ground this year at Michigan State University is in jeopardy of losing its federal funding, officials said. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the Obama administration has not yet decided on funding for the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, a research lab that would create jobs and provide an economic boost to the state, The Detroit News reported. "We have to be very careful because we can't be starting six things, and we can only afford four things or five things," Chu said Wednesday in remarks at the Detroit Economic Club.

January 13, 2012 - Energy Central - Is it Time for California to Phase Out Nuclear Power? - Italy recently became the fourth nation to pledge to phase out nuclear power since Japan's Fukushima disaster. Italy accomplished this feat by a popular referendum, soon after Germany did the same in its legislature (Bundestag). Switzerland has also agreed to a phase out and Japan itself has agreed to phase out much of its nuclear capacity in favor of renewables and natural gas. Should California do the same? Could it do the same? California has effectively banned new nuclear plants in the state since the 1970s due to a law that requires there be an effective federal nuclear waste disposal facility before any new plants are built in California. And despite efforts to create a federal waste facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, and other places the U.S. is still far from completing any such facility. There has not, however, been any widespread push to phase out California's existing nuclear plants. We have three, two in California (Diablo Canyon in San Luis Obispo County and San Onofre in San Diego County) and one in Arizona (Palo Verde) that serves California. These three plants provide about 5,000 megawatts of steady electricity to California and have never suffered any major accidents.

January 13, 2012 - Daily Kos - Arizona's Atomic Al loves him some nuke waste - State Senator Al Melvin, a Republican who represents the area north of Tucson, thinks Arizonans will approve what the people of Nevada rejected at Yucca Mountain, even though they were promised bucketloads of cash: a dumping ground for the nation's nuclear waste. And who will help educate citizens about the need for and safety of his cockamamy scheme? Who better than teachers! Melvin's atom-fried noggin' thinks educators will embrace his plan because the millions made from storing nuclear garbage will be used to prop up the state's struggling education system. You know, the very same schools that Melvin and his fellow tea party nitwits in the Arizona legislature cut $450 million just last year. Atomic Al Melvin has worked on his pitch to sell a nuclear waste dump to Arizonans. He's always claimed it's all about funding education. Nukes for schools. But now he's got a name for it: The Arizona Energy-Education Fund. No "Atomic" in the name. No "Nuclear." Just "Energy." Don't want to scare anyone now, do we? Bring a nuclear waste dump to Arizona, Melvin says, and it will mean $100 million a year for public schools. Isn't that great? Starve public schools, then throw them a nuclear bone and hope they bite on it.

January 13, 2012 - Las Vegas Sun - SC gov says Romney promised to bid out Yucca - At an event in Columbia, South carolina, that state's governor, Nikki Halley, raised the issue of Yucca Mountain, according to a source on the ground. Here's what she said: "I said, governor, we had this issue with Yucca Mountain. They made a promise to us. They said they would take our nuclear waste. And after years of us paying a billion dollars … with some other states, they pulled the rug out from us, just for political purposes. He said, ‘I will bid it out to any other state, and if we can’t do that, I will fight to get you your money back.'"

January 12, 2012 - Webmuenster on off-site assignment.

January 11, 2012 - PRNewswire - NASA's Chandra Finds Largest Galaxy Cluster in Early Universe - An exceptional galaxy cluster, the largest seen in the distant universe, has been found using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation-funded Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile. Officially known as ACT-CL J0102-4915, the galaxy cluster has been nicknamed "El Gordo" ("the big one" or "the fat one" in Spanish) by the researchers who discovered it. The name, in a nod to the Chilean connection, describes just one of the remarkable qualities of the cluster, which is located more than 7 billion light years from Earth. This large distance means it is being observed at a young age. "This cluster is the most massive, the hottest, and gives off the most X-rays of any known cluster at this distance or beyond," said Felipe Menanteau of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., who led the study.

January 11, 2012 - PRLeap - Norcada Introduces Micro-porous Silicon Nitride Membrane Windows for Microscopy & Microanalysis - Norcada announced today the launch of their two newest microporous Silicon Nitride TEM windows to the microscopy and microanalysis communities. These Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) sample holders have a mesh structure with 2µm diameter holes and 3µm distance, and their uniform high quality silicon nitride film is available in 50nm and 200nm thicknesses. These devices perform excellently in high beam intensity TEMs, SEMs and STXM. While these products have been only available for a few weeks at Norcada.com, they have been proven to perform well in complex scientific applications.

January 11, 2012 - VAdvert.co.uk - NASA’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer Completes Mission Operations - After 16 years in space, NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) has made its last observation. The satellite provided unprecedented views into the extreme environments around white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes. RXTE sent data from its last science observation to the ground early on Jan. 4. After performing engineering tests, controllers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., successfully decommissioned the satellite on Jan. 5. RXTE far exceeded its original science goals and leaves astronomers with a scientific bounty for years to come. Data from the mission have resulted in more than 2,200 papers in refereed journals, 92 doctoral theses, and more than 1,000 rapid notifications alerting astronomers around the globe to new astronomical activity. “The spacecraft and its instruments had been showing their age, and in the end RXTE had accomplished everything we put it up there to do, and much more,” said Tod Strohmayer, RXTE project scientist at Goddard.

January 11, 2012 - Westmorland Gazette - Community events on underground disposal of radioactive waste in West Cumbria to be held - Residents are being given the opportunity to get clued up on the issues surrounding potential underground disposal of radioactive waste in West Cumbria. A series of community events, organised by West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely Partnership, are to be held across the county this month with one in Kendal on Monday, January 23, at Kendal Town Hall. The drop-in events will be attended by technical experts from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC), as well as regulators, the Office for Nuclear Regulation and the Environment Agency. There will also be an independent geologist attending the events. Councty Councillor Elaine Woodburn, leader of Copeland Borough Council, said: “If West Cumbria decides to take part in the Government’s search for a suitable site for a repository it will have impacts for many generations into the future. "So we would like everyone to get clued up about what is happening and let us know their views. These events are a great way for people to do that.”

January 11, 2012 - Aurora Advocat - RMH scanner is first at facility in Portage - Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna recently installed the first 256-slice CT scanner in Portage and Summit counties. The SOMATOM Definition Flash CT scanner by Siemens is at the hospital in Ravenna. It is a dual-source CT, featuring two X-ray tubes that simultaneously revolve around the patient's body. It can capture the body's skeleton, organs and blood vessels in the minutest detail. It requires a fraction of the radiation delivered by many other scanners. "Now that Robinson Memorial has this new technology, we'll be able to diagnose coronary artery disease and congenital heart conditions using cardiac CT, a non-invasive procedure compared to an invasive catheterization angiography," said Dr. A. Roger Tsai, cardiologist at Robinson Memorial.

January 11, 2012 - Voice of Russia - US astronomers discover galaxy cluster - US astronomers have discovered the largest ever galaxy cluster located more than 7 billion light-years from Earth. The cluster became visible through two superpower telescopes that belong to the US and Chile. It emits more radiation than any other cluster located the same number of light-years away from Earth. Galaxy clusters are the largest known objects in the Universe. Their formation depends on the amount of dark matter and dark energy.

January 11, 2012 - TCPalm - I'll gladly choose airport pat-down over radiation of body scan - In the modern era we are bombarded with radiation by cellphone towers, power lines, medical tests, smart meters, etc. We are cautioned by the establishment to avoid even the nonionizing radiation from the sun, but not that all radiation exposure is somewhat cumulative and long-lasting. So it becomes the decision of the individual to avoid all radiation he or she deems unnecessary. The Transportation Security Administration assures us its scanners are safe, even though no thorough or long-term testing has been done, And as of now, TSA has refused to submit them to further independent testing. Anyway, there can be no satisfactory testing of these scanners since it would have to account for the interaction of the radiation on the skin lotions and potions used by passengers to avoid exposure to radiation and the hazards of modern living. These petroleum-based substances, when exposed to radiation, may compound the dangers of the topical radiation emitted by those questionable scanning devices.

January 11, 2012 - Las Vegas Review-Journal - CSN radiation therapy alumnus helps battle cancer - At Nevada Cancer Institute, Joseph Dayvie, 23, is a warrior against cancer. Day after day, the 23-year-old radiation therapist and College of Southern Nevada alumnus works with doctors to plan attacks on cancer and administers radiation to precisely zap and kill cancer cell clusters. In what is arguably one of the toughest job markets, Dayvie was hired at Nevada Cancer Institute after graduating in May 2011. Although the institute's future at the time was uncertain, Dayvie counted himself as one of the most fortunate graduates in his class. He had spent the last four years of his life dedicated to learning the field at CSN, which boasts the only radiation therapy program in the state. He also completed a 12-week intensive internship at Nevada Cancer Institute, as part of an innovative partnership between the community college and the research and treatment center.

January 11, 2012 - Taunton Daily Gazette - Time to fix our nuclear waste disposal system - Last year was a scary year for nuclear reactor sites. The summer floods threatened to encroach on reactors in Nebraska and Iowa, an earthquake and a hurricane happened in quick secession to rattle and flood the East Coast, and the continuing events of the Fukushima-Daiichi reactor accident provided harrowing examples of the threats posed to spent fuel at reactor sites. The fate of spent fuel there kept the world on edge for days. It's worth noting that the amount of fuel in vulnerable storage pools in Japan was far less than what is crowded into pools at many U.S. reactors. As we all learned, a loss of coolant could produce a fuel melt and large radiation releases. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Used reactor fuel was to be permanently stored in deep underground repositories, away from floods and other natural hazards. But the solution to the nation's nuclear waste problem has been elusive for decades. Meanwhile, 65,000 metric tons of spent reactor fuel is still looking for a home.

January 11, 2011 - BBC News - Nuclear power needed to fight climate change says Al-Khalili - The scientist, author and broadcaster Prof Jim Al-Khalili says "we have to change our views on nuclear power" as he addressed concerns after the Fukushima plant leak in Japan. The professor of nuclear physics said nuclear was affordable, secure and reliable - adding solar and wind power were important but not enough to replace the current reliance on coal and gas.

January 11, 2012 - 19 Action News - Environmental Coalition Challenges Davis-Besse License Extension on Shield Building Cracks - As promised on January 5th at a standing room only U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) meeting at Camp Perry in Port Clinton near Davis-Besse about its cracked concrete shield building, an environmental coalition today launched a new contention against FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company's (FENOC) proposal to extend the atomic reactor's operations from 2017 to 2037. Beyond Nuclear, Citizens Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Don't Waste Michigan, and the Green Party of Ohio, official intervenors against FirstEnergy's application to NRC for a 20 year license extension at the long problem-plagued reactor, filed a formal contention in the NRC's Atomic Safety Licensing Board (ASLB) proceeding today, citing the cracked concrete shield building as the final straw regarding Davis-Besse's safety risks. The groups are calling on FirstEnergy to withdraw its application for the license extension, which would mean operations at the plant would cease at the expiration of its current license, April 22 (Earth Day), 2017, at the very latest.

January 11, 2012 - Platts - Vermont power companies sue Entergy for nuclear unit faults - Two Vermont electricity distributors said Tuesday they were suing Entergy in a state court for damages of $6.6 million they say stemmed from the failures of cooling towers at the Vermont Yankee nuclear generating unit in 2007 and 2008. The suit was filed in the Vermont Superior Court in Windham County, according to a statement from Central Vermont Public Service and Green Mountain Power, the two largest distribution utilities in the state. Entergy's Vermont Yankee failed to use "good utility practice" in running the unit, which has a gross capacity of 635 MW, CVPS and GMP said. Vermont Yankee is located near Brattleboro, Vermont. The cooling tower failures in August 2007 and July 2008 caused "significantly reduced power output, which in turn deprived us of power due to us and our customers at specified, below-market prices," the two distributors said. The companies said they sued following "lengthy efforts to reach a settlement with Entergy." Because of the failure of those negotiations and the upcoming expiration of the statute of limitations for the matter, CVPS and GMP took court action, they said.

January 11, 2012 - Fulton Sun - Riddle to file bill to permit expansion of nuclear plant - Rep. Jeanie Riddle, R-Mokane, said Monday she intends to file legislation soon that would allow Ameren Missouri to recover costs of obtaining an early site permit for a second nuclear reactor at Callaway Energy Center. “Last year the House approved a measure I offered that would make it possible to expand the nuclear plant in Callaway County. I intend to use that exact language that was approved last year as a starting point for this year,” Riddle said. The measure offered by Riddle last year was approved by a vote of 121 to 21 in the House. But the issue died in the Senate when agreement could not be reached.

January 11, 2012 - Carlsbad Current Argus - Need to find real nuclear solutions has become critical - Our need to find real solutions to the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle has become critical. In California, the Nuclear Waste Act of 2012 is currently being circulated for signatures. If approved, this bill would effectively ban using nuclear power generation in California, and would mean rolling blackouts and electricity hikes by about 50 percent there. The initiative, demanding a disposal path for high level waste, is being advanced due to the March meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power station. Do we reprocess or dispose of this leftover spent fuel? And where do we put it in the meantime? Most of this material is currently sitting at the plants where it was generated. These plants are often near water sources, fault lines and population centers, and should quickly be moved it to a better location. The Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future suggests centralized interim storage as the immediate solution for spent fuel. Above-ground interim storage is a proven, safe technology. An interim storage facility in an isolated, centralized area would reduce risk and halt settlement payments related to waste disposition. "The simplest answer is that this is a case where you want to put all your eggs in one basket," explained Jack Volpato, Eddy County commissioner. "Right now, we've got eggs all over the place, and they are in spots vulnerable to hurricanes and earthquakes."

January 11, 2012 - Corvalis Gazette Times - Low-enriched nuclear fuels topic of two-day meeting at Oregon State - A group of national experts on an initiative to use fuel that is less highly enriched in nuclear research and test reactors is scheduled to meet today and Wednesday at Oregon State University, to assess progress toward this goal. Members of this High Performance Research Reactor Working Group are part of a program that began more than 30 years ago, and have recently accelerated its efforts in the interest of enhanced nuclear security. There are only five civilian research and test reactors in the United States that now use highly enriched uranium for their operation, out of the original 47 in 1978. Research and test reactors in the United States never have used material that could be used in the production of large-scale nuclear weapons, but there has always been concern about the potential for these radioactive materials to be used in “dirty bombs.” “This is the last stretch in this program,” said Wade Marcum, an OSU assistant professor of nuclear engineering. “Ultimately we plan to convert all civilian research and test reactors to using low-enriched fuels, but the remaining reactors using high-enriched fuels require very specific fuel designs in order to conduct their ongoing research.”

January 11, 2012 - Deseret Morning News - Critics blast regulator's decision to allow blended N-waste at EnergySolutions' site - Anti-nuclear activists were joined Tuesday by Rep. Jim Matheson , D-Utah, in their criticism of a state regulatory agency's decision to allow EnergySolutions to accept blended nuclear waste in advance of completing new safety assessments at its Tooele County site. The December decision by Rusty Lundberg, director of the state Division of Radiation Control, means EnergySolutions can accept up to 40,000 cubic feet of blended waste for disposal — or less than 1 percent of the total volume of waste the company can accept — at its facility in Clive. Linda Johnson, co-president of Salt Lake City’s League of Women Voters, said she was at the rally representing herself and urged greater study of the issue. “Since there is no pressing need, we shouldn’t act rashly and gut our ban on hotter waste,” Johnson said.

January 11, 2012 - KPBS - San Onofre Nuclear Plant Upgrading Reactor Heads - Southern California Edison took one of the two large generating units offline Monday night at its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Edison said new high-pressure turbines will increase the San Onofre nuclear plant's efficiency and generating capacity. Edison (SCE) said the work is part of scheduled refueling, maintenance and upgrades for Unit 2. Edison's Gil Alexander said the company is making other improvements while the unit is removed from service. "We're going to make some additional technology upgrades that will make the plant more efficient, more cost-effective for customers and safer for our workers," said Alexander.

January 10, 2012 - GSN - Researchers find new method to treat previously lethal doses of radiation - Researchers working for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have found a new way to treat lethal doses of radiation with antibiotics and a natural protein. The scientists’ search, said DARPA, for new radiation countermeasures for troops that might offer more effective treatment for extreme exposure and timely, storable solutions is a high priority. The DARPA-funded research effort determined that a cocktail of an antibiotic and a protein fight radiation sickness more effectively when they are combined than when used separately. It said while doctors have used antibiotics to treat radiation sickness, DARPA's researchers found that adding bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein (BPI), a protein found naturally in immune systems, allowed them to increase the survival rates of mice exposed to toxic levels of radiation to nearly 80 percent. More importantly, said DARPA, the BPI/antibiotic treatment was effective up to a day after exposure to radiation, giving it a significant advantage over other treatments that must be administered within hours of exposure.

January 10, 2012 - Orlando Sentinel - Broward asks TSA for health information about airport scanners - Broward County pushed forward its crusade to find out whether body scanners at the airport are safe, sending a letter to federal aviation officials and local members of Congress asking if there's evidence. Since the European Union banned use of radiation-emitting backscatter scanners in airports in November, Broward commissioners have taken a worried posture. The scanners are in use at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. In the Friday letter, Broward Aviation Director Kent George asked the federal Transportation Security Administration's opinion on Europe's stance. George also asked whether the TSA had conducted "additional, recent studies" on the scanner and "its effects on the health/safety of the frequent traveler." Commissioners had threatened to ask for a ban on the use of the scanners here, which would have been the first such request in the nation. But commissioners agreed by a split vote last month to send a letter pushing for more information, as a first step.

January 10, 2012 - PRNewswire - NASA's Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer Completes Mission Operations - After 16 years in space, NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) has made its last observation. The satellite provided unprecedented views into the extreme environments around white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes. RXTE sent data from its last science observation to the ground early on Jan. 4. After performing engineering tests, controllers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., successfully decommissioned the satellite on Jan. 5. RXTE far exceeded its original science goals and leaves astronomers with a scientific bounty for years to come. Data from the mission have resulted in more than 2,200 papers in refereed journals, 92 doctoral theses, and more than 1,000 rapid notifications alerting astronomers around the globe to new astronomical activity.

January 10, 2012 - MSU News Service - MSU research leads to new opportunities for commercial licensing - Researchers at Montana State University have developed a system for the removal of radioactive material from porous surfaces, a remediation scenario that had previously required the destruction of the contaminated materials. This low-cost method is now patented and available for commercial licensing. The process, which MSU researchers in MSU's Department of Physics developed in collaboration with Idaho National Lab, makes it possible to effectively and efficiently clean natural and man-made porous material of radioactive contamination. The system eliminates the practice of full demolition and removal of contaminated objects and can address radiation on surfaces such as brick, tile, cement, granite, marble and other stone material. Porous surfaces represent a problem for traditional decontamination processes as radioactive material can hide deep in surface cavities and continue to emit radiation. The process combines an inexpensive laser and a polymer material to irradiate, free and capture contaminants from porous surfaces. The captured material may then be cured and removed from the decontaminated site.

January 10, 2012 - Record Courier - Education key in battle against radioactive gas - If radon glowed in the dark, or stank or appeared as a haze, someone would know something was wrong. But the radioactive gas that's the leading cause of lung cancer among nonsmokers doesn't do any of those things. It's odorless, colorless and tasteless, and Douglas County is home to the most tests over the EPA action level in Nevada. The University of Nevada Cooperative Extension is hosting two meetings about radon during January, where residents can find out about the gas and find out how to correct it if they have too much. As of Sept. 30, 2011, 2,409 homes in Douglas County have been tested for radon, or about 10 percent. That's the highest percentage of homes tested for radon in any county in the state. Douglas also has the distinction of having the highest number of homes with tests above the limit, though not the highest percentage of homes with elevated radon levels.

January 10, 2012 - MyHealthNewsDaily - Airport Screeners to be Monitored for Radiation, TSA Says - The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is looking to monitor the levels of radiation that its employees are exposed to from X-ray technology, including airport body scanners, a document from the agency says. In the document, the TSA said it plans to start performing radiation measurements using "personal dosimeters," which are devices worn on the body that measure a person's exposure to radiation, at certain airports. Such devices are used by people who work near sources of radiation such as hospital and nuclear power plant employees. "The measurements will assist the TSA in determining if the Transportation Security Officers (TSO) at selected federalized airports are exposed to ionizing radiation above minimum detectable levels, and whether any measured radiation doses approach or exceed the threshold where personnel dosimetry monitoring is required by [Department of Homeland Security]/TSA policy," according to the document, which was posted on a government website.

January 10, 2012 - SFBay - The Intersector, a life saver for bicyclists - It detects bicyclists with a deft pulse of microwave radiation, and adjusts traffic lights to accomodate their distinct pace. If you ride a bike, it could save your life. It’s The Intersector, coming soon to Pleasanton, Monterey and hopefully other California cities near you. A California law passed in 2008 mandates that cities begin to phase in traffic control equipment include the capability to detect and adjust traffic for motorcycles and bicycles. The Interceptor can distinguish between bicycles and other types of traffic, giving bicycles 14 seconds to clear an intersection, but cars only four. It can also tack an extra five seconds of green light when it detects a cyclists in the intersection.

January 10, 2012 - Rutland & Stamford Mercury - Campaigners protest as tip accepts radioactive waste; King's Cliffe villagers march in protest at radioactive waste being dumped at a nearby landfill site - Campaigners opposed to a new low-level radioactive waste site have demonstrated against the arrival of the first consignments in King’s Cliffe. More than 100 residents marched through the village on Saturday to voice their concern at the action being taken by waste firm Augean. It followed the company’s announcement on Thursday that it had started receiving low level radioactive waste at its site close to the village. Permission was given for the waste to be disposed of at the site following a public inquiry.  A legal challenge by protesters is due to be heard at the Court of Appeal on January 17. Campaign group Wastewatchers organised the protest march. Spokesman Chris Leuchars said the news had “infuriated” local people.

January 10, 2012 - Domain-B.com - DRDO develops anti-radiation medicine from tulsi news - The tulsi plant whose medicinal properties have been known to Indians since ages is now the subject of research being conducted by the DRDO's (Defence Research Development Organization) Institute of Nuclear Medicines and Allied Sciences and Department of Radiobiology, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal for anti-radiation properties. Scientists at the institute have successfully tested tulsi extracts on mice in studies dealing with cancer and radiation. The defecse organisation is spending Rs7 crore on the tulsi project. Earlier, research students at the department of biotechnology of Vignan College in Guntoor, in Andhra Pradesh, had found that tulsi extracts contained several ingredients useful in the treatment of diabetes and cancer in humans. With the discovery, the traditional belief about the health benefits of growing a tulsi plant in the backyard has been shown to have scientific basis. It now becomes clear that the leaves of the tulsi plant do indeed have curative properties and can be used to treat not only diabetes, cancer but also as an anti-radiation substance.

January 10, 2012 - E&E - Can chairman's new chief of staff help bridge panel's deep divides? - The new chief of staff for Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko has played a key role in controversies that have helped drive a wedge between the NRC chief and his fellow commissioners. Angela Coggins was named chief of staff late last month, replacing Josh Batkin, who resigned Dec. 27, 2011, to take a marketing and communications post at the International Code Council (E&ENews PM, Jan. 3). She will spearhead efforts to achieve the chairman's goals and communicate with stakeholders and his four fellow commissioners. Coggins is moving into a tough spot. Jaczko and his colleagues do not get along. In October, the four commissioners -- two Republicans and two Democrats -- complained to the White House about Jaczko bullying NRC staffers, particularly female employees, and withholding information from the commission. Jaczko denied the allegations.

January 10, 2012 - Mainichi Daily News - Fukushima nuclear plant worker in coma after collapsing at site - The man, an employee of a company cooperating with TEPCO, has been in a state of cardiac and respiratory arrest, the utility said on Jan. 9. The worker had been exposed to 52 microsieverts of radiation on Jan. 9 before collapsing and losing consciousness at the crippled plant that day. TEPCO is trying to confirm how long he has been working at nuclear plants and how much accumulated radiation doses he has been exposed to so far. According to TEPCO, the man had been pouring concrete since the morning of Jan. 9 in order to manufacture a tank to hold radioactive materials following the treatment of contaminated water emanating from the cooling of nuclear reactors at the plant.

January 10, 2012 - Public Service - Future of Stem Cell Therapy - Canadian scientists investigating the effects of radiation on the human body 50 years ago discovered that bone marrow 1contains stem cells that provide a lifelong supply of blood cells. This discovery paved the way for the first stem cell therapy – in the form of bone marrow transplants – using bone marrow stem cells from healthy donors to treat patients with genetic blood disorders and leukaemias.

January 10, 2012 - Digital Journal - Ahmadinejad and Chavez rail against U.S., joke about nukes - The leaders of Iran and Venezuela on Monday mocked and joked about 'imperialism' and nuclear bombs. Ahmadinejad was in Venezuela as part of a tour of Latin American countries to shore up support for Iran after U.S. sanctions over its nuclear program. Reuters reports that Hugo Chavez, during a welcome ceremony for Ahmadinejad at the presidential palace in Caracas, said: "One of the targets that Yankee imperialism has in its sights is Iran, which is why we are showing our solidarity. When we meet, the devils go crazy." Chavez's comment was mocking U.S. warnings to Latin American nations not to help Iran. Chavez said: "The imperialist madness has been unleashed in a way that has not been seen for a long time." He described the U.S. as a "threat to our world," and railed against "U.S. imperialism," saying: "The Venezuelan and Iranian people are on the way to fighting all the greed and arrogance of imperialism."

January 10, 2012 - Mid-Hudson News - Cooling pump at Indian Point breaks, IP2 shut down - One of four pumps that supply cooling water to the Indian Point unit 2 nuclear reactor broke down resulting in operators shutting the facility down for repairs, Entergy officials said Tuesday morning. The pumps, which are in the containment building, supply water to the plant's reactor. There was no release of radioactivity and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was notified of the shutdown, Entergy officials said. The plant will be returned to service once the maintenance work has been completed. Unit 3 continues to operate at full power.

January 10, 2012 - Bloomberg News - Entergy Gets $140,000 Fine After Nuclear Workers Browse Web - Entergy Corp. (ETR) should be fined $140,000 for failing to prevent employees in a reactor control room from inappropriately accessing the Internet, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposed. Nine control-room workers at the River Bend station, about 24 miles (39 kilometers) northwest of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, “deliberately violated” plant procedures by using the Internet while on duty from January to April 2010, the NRC said today in a statement. The employees browsed news, sports, fishing and retirement websites, though not pornography, NRC spokesman Victor Dricks said in a phone interview. Entergy “could choose to pay the fine” or has 30 days to contest the penalty, Dricks said. The NRC joined the Federal Aviation Administration among agencies cracking down on distractions in jobs related to public safety. In April 2010, the FAA directed airlines to more closely stress the risks of using mobile-device in cockpits after a Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL) flight overshot its destination because pilots were using their laptop computers.

January 10, 2012 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - Labor Dept.'s Jan. 18 session to explain expanded 'Special Exposure Cohort' for Y-12 workers, help file compensation claims - I've written a couple of times about the recently expanded "Special Exposure Cohort" for Y-12 workers, which makes it easier for sick nuclear workers or their survivors to collect claims from a federal compensation program. The U.S. Labor Department will host a day-long session (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) Jan. 18 at the Doubletree Hotel on Illinois Avenue in Oak Ridge. The purpose will be to discuss the new designation, which includes Y-12 employees from 1948-1957, and help people file claims or schedule appointments. If workers are declared part of an SEC and have one of the 22 specified cancers under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness and Compensation Program, there is a presumption that the cancer was caused by workplaces exposures and does not require a dose reconstruction to prove that the radiation exposure was sufficient to have caused the cancer.

January 10, 2012 - Greenville Sun - NFS Facility In 'Safe Shutdown' After Nitric Acid Leak - The Nuclear Fuel Services facility here is in "safe shutdown" following a noon leak of nitric acid in an outdoor bulk chemical storage area. The nitric acid was contained by a dike designed for that purpose, said NFS communications manager Lauri Turpin. Nitric acid can mix with water to cause fumes that can be hazardous. As a precautionary measure, employees working in nearby areas were redirected to another NFS facility. Two employees were seen by NFS medical staff, and released. No injuries have been reported, Turpin said in a news release. The acid contained in the dike is being transferred to recovery vessels. NFS has notified local, state and federal authorities.

January 10, 2012 - Associated Press - Feds seek comments on proposed NM uranium plant - Federal regulators have released a draft environmental impact study on a proposed uranium deconversion plant in southeastern New Mexico. Idaho-based International Isotopes Inc. plans to deconvert the tons of depleted uranium tails that will be produced each year by Louisiana Energy Services' National Enrichment Facility in nearby Eunice. In the process, International Isotopes will be able to simultaneously extract fluorine gases that could be sold and used in manufacturing solar panels, computer screens and medical equipment. Elected officials from the area have expressed support for the project. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's staff has found through its preliminary assessment that the deconversion plant would have no large environmental impacts.

January 10, 2012 - Salt Lake City Weekly - Stop Blended Nuclear Waste Rally Tuesday! - Regulators have decided that blended nuclear waste, including waste once considered too hot for Utah, is now good to be dumped in the state. Local environmental advocates of HEAL Utah are hoping to put the heat on the Governor’s Office to reverse that decision at a special rally Tuesday. HEAL Utah along with other veteran state activists are rallying against a decision by regulators with the Division of Radiation Control to allow certain new blends of radioactive waste to be brought into the state by Energy Solutions. The activists will be rallying outside the board meeting of the Radiation Control Board where regulators will be discussing and defending their decision to bring waste into the state, after the press conference and rally.

January 9, 2012 - The Engineer - Balloon-borne telescope will shed new light on black holes - A balloon-borne telescope will shed new light on black holes by looking at the polarisation of X-rays from outside the solar system. Researchers from Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, have received funding from NASA to launch the X-Calibur telescope. It will float at an altitude of 40km, studying black holes both in and outside of our galaxy. Astronomers have previously only studied X-ray polarisation from one source outside the solar system, the Crab Nebula. X-Calibur and another mission called GEMS will study new sources and provide a way of gathering data not previously available. ‘Whenever you look at the sky at a different wavelength you see something completely different,’ said research leader Prof Henric Krawczynski. ‘[X-Calibur’s] main claims to fame are two new observables: the polarisation degree and direction of X-rays, which provide information about cosmic sources that is not available in any other way.’

January 9, 2012 - Evening Telegraph -Waste campaigners take to the streets - Dozens of villagers staged a protest angry that low-level radioactive waste is being dumped at a landfill site days before a legal challenge to the move. Protesters, both old and young, carried placards and banners as they marched through the streets of King’s Cliffe on Saturday to protest. It came after Augean confirmed last week that it had started to process low-level radioactive waste at its East Northants Resource Management Facility, in Stamford Road, near to the village. Waste Watchers, a local protest group, expressed its anger at the news as it comes a matter of days before a legal challenge against the move will be considered at the Court of Appeal in London on January 17. King’s Cliffe resident Chris Leuchars, a leading member of Waste Watchers, said: “We have to show that people in the village still feel strongly about this.

January 9, 2012 - Bloomberg News - Shady Reporter Probes Poisoning in Classic 1930s Satire: DVDs - Journalists who bemoan the public’s low opinion of their profession should watch “Nothing Sacred,” a 1937 comedy showing that scorn for the press is hardly new. Restored in its original Technicolor on a Kino DVD, the film is one of Hollywood’s funniest putdowns of the Fourth Estate. Fredric March plays Wally Cook, a shady New York City reporter who visits a small Vermont town to interview Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard), a local woman supposedly dying of radium poisoning. He wants to bring Hazel back to the big city, where he plans to serialize her story for his daily rag, The Morning Star. Unbeknown to Wally, Hazel has just been told by her soused doctor (Charles Winninger) that she’s been misdiagnosed and isn’t dying, after all. When the physician finds out Wally is snooping around town, he delivers this scathing appraisal of reporters. “The hand of God reaching down into the mire couldn’t elevate one of them to the depths of degradation,” he bellows.

January 9, 2012 - Measurement Devices for Industry and Science - TSA and X-ray Measurement Devices - Over the nine years since the agency’s inception, The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) has implemented stringent safety protocols to ensure that technology used at airports to screen people and property is safe for all passengers, as well as the TSA workforce. In addition to regular maintenance, each individual machine that uses X-ray technology is regularly tested to ensure the radiation emitted falls within the national safety standards. The testing is conducted by manufacturers and/or third party maintenance providers, per the terms of their TSA contracts. Contract requirements mandate that the manufacturer notify TSA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should any equipment appear to emit radiation at levels above the national standard. In the spirit of transparency, TSA is posting reports for all radiation tests, including the annual TSA-mandated test of every X-ray based technology, on www.tsa.gov as they are completed. You can find them here: www.tsa.gov/research/reading/xray_screening_technology_safety_reports.shtm. These reports confirm that each piece of technology reviewed meets all national safety standards. However, during TSA’s review of these reports, inaccuracies were identified in contractor reporting that affected the documentation of some of the test results.

January 9, 2012 - Jackson Journal-Courier - Radon awareness growing - It’s colorless, it’s odorless, prolonged exposure to it can cause lung cancer and hazardous levels of it are found in a majority of homes in west central Illinois. But radon is getting more and more attention, having been a part of disclosure reports for property sales and — starting this year — in apartment lease agreements. The new amendment to the Illinois Radon Awareness Act requires landlords to disclose reports of hazardous levels of the radioactive gas, though it does not require landlords to conduct tests themselves. In fact, the state does not have any hard and fast mandates concerning radon. So far, regulation has been primarily about allowing people to recognize if there is a problem. In Morgan County, the average reading in radon tests conducted by professionals is 6.6 picocuries per liter. Scott County has almost twice that amount on average. The level where the Environmental Protection Agency recommends taking action is 4 picocuries per liter.

January 9, 2012 - UPI - PET therapy effective for prostate cancer - U.S. researchers suggest proton therapy -- a type of external beam radiation -- is effective for localized prostate cancer with minimal side effects. In one study, researchers at the University of Florida in Jacksonville studied 211 men with low-, intermediate- and high-risk prostate cancer. The men were treated with proton therapy, a specialized type of external beam radiation that uses protons instead of X-rays. Nancy Mendenhall of the university's Proton Therapy Institute said the treatment was effective and the gastrointestinal and genitourinary -- reproductive organs and the urinary system -- side effects were generally minimal. In a second study, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda, Calif., and the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group in Philadelphia performed a case-matched analysis comparing high-dose external beam radiation therapy using a combination of photons (X-rays) and protons with brachytherapy (radioactive seed implants).

January 9, 2012 - Express Healthcare - Siemens Introduced its New CT Applications for Dose Reduction - At the Congress of the International Society of Pediatric Radiology (IPR) in London, Siemens Healthcare introduced its new CT applications for dose reduction especially suited for pediatrics. The dual source computed tomography system, with two X-ray tubes and detectors, respectively, remains the world’s fastest scanner and minimises radiation dose for the patient. In various studies, physicians have used this system to scan infants in below one second, and with an X-ray dose of less than one mSv (millisievert). The resulting images show a high quality without motion artifacts.

January 9, 2012 - Arutz Shiva - The 'Just in Case' Cell Radiation Cure - As one of the most “in-touch” countries in the world, Israel is also one of the “hottest” - in terms of radiation generated by cellphones and cell network antennas. Does cellphone use really cause cancer? The jury is still out on that question, although there are advocates on both sides who point to studies proving, or disproving, that extended exposure to the radiation generated by the cell network – and by cellphones themselves, which are generally carried on the body and used next to the head – cause cancer. Sticking an electronic device that transmits and receives radio waves certainly sounds cancer-inducing, but believe it or not, the largest study undertaken so far of the link between cellphone use and cancer – the World Health Organization's Interphone study – found not only that there was no clear connection between the two, but that in some cases, cellphone use was associated with a lower rate of brain cancer! Still – why take chances? It stands to reason that bombarding the head with anything – especially radiation – will eventually be proven damaging, and that's why many people around the world, especially in Israel, try to prevent, if not the use of cellphones, then at least the erection of cell towers in residential neighborhoods. Kfar Sava, an Israeli town in the Sharon area, takes its environmental concerns very seriously (a municipal by-law requires that there be a park or green space on every square block) – and had now become the first city in Israel, and indeed in the world, to implement a system for constant monitoring of cellphone radiation.

January 9, 2012 - Bloomberg News - Nanobiotix in Talks With Potential Partners on Cancer Treatments - Nanobiotix SA, a French developer of cancer treatments that interact with radiation therapy, is in talks with about 10 potential partners, Chief Executive Officer Laurent Levy said. Some companies are interested in Nanobiotix’s “whole platform,” while others are focused on one or more products, Levy said in an interview. Nanobiotix, based in Paris, has received some offers already and aims to agree on a partnership in the next six months, he said. Levy declined to comment on which companies are involved in the talks. Nanobiotix is a spinoff of the State University of New York and funded by venture capital firms including Matignon Technologies, OTC Asset Management, Cap Decisif, Amorcage Rhone- Alpes, CIC Vizille and Masseran Gestion-CGE, according to its website. Its experimental NanoXray products allow for higher doses of radiation in the tumor without increasing damage to healthy tissue, according to the website.

January 9, 2012 - Nuclear Street - Palisades Nuclear Plant Shuts Down for Maintenance Unrelated to Recent NRC Findings - Operators shut down the reactor at the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan Thursday to replace a seal on a control rod. An Entergy spokesman noted the preventative maintenance is unrelated to increased regulatory scrutiny following three recent findings by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Combustion Engineering pressurized water reactor has 45 control rods, and the Holland Sentinel quoted an Entergy spokesman as saying a seal on one of them was showing wear. The time offline marks a rough start to the New Year for plant management, which will attend conferences with NRC representatives Wednesday to discuss preliminary white and yellow findings from last year. The reactor had five unplanned shutdowns in 2011, according to Michigan Public Radio. Last Tuesday the NRC confirmed a preliminary white finding related to a shutdown in May when, according to the agency, improper greasing of an overspeed trip mechanism contributed to a failure of a turbine-driven auxiliary feedwater pump.

January 9, 2012 - Press Information Bureu - No Occupational Worker Left the Job Because of Radiation - The employees working in nuclear power stations in the close proximity of radiation are not prone to any higher rate of occurrence of disease, particularly ‘cancer’, than the general public. Addressing media here today, Dr K.M.Mohandas, Director (CCE) , Tata Memorial Center (TMc) said that the misconception has to be cleared. Quoting a Study which has been conducted by Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) for the period 1995 to 2010, he said that the employees working in nuclear power stations in the close proximity of radiation are not prone to any higher rate of occurrence of disease, particularly ‘cancer’, than the general public. The study covered health profile of its employees at nuclear power stations for over 15 years. According to the scientific studies, the average natural incident rate of cancer amongst the general public is 98.5/lakh among NACIL employees. Dr. Mohandas, while speaking on the radiation and cancer, cited interesting facts based on studies on 17700 workers of the uranium mining in Canada, who have been tracked for over last several decades, are found to be keeping better health than the general public in Canada. This is in sharp contrast to the general public perceptions and indicates and indicates on linkage between nuclear power and occurrence on cancer.

January 9, 2012 - Business Week - India Says Work at Russia-Built Nuclear Plant Remains Stalled - Nuclear Power Corp. of India said work at its plant at Kudankulam in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, being built with Russia’s help, remains at a standstill following continuing protests by villagers near the site. “No work’s happening now,” S.A. Bhardwaj, director of technical services, said in New Delhi today. “Once the agitations are over, it’ll take us about two months to get contract workers back at the site. We can start generating power about four months after that.” The first of two 1,000-megawatt reactors at Kudankulam, which state-owned Rosatom Corp. is helping to build, will start in a couple of weeks, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in Moscow Dec. 16, after meeting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The plant near the southern tip of India is part of 60,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity planned by Singh to battle a shortage of power in Asia’s second-fastest growing major economy. Residents of nearby villages intensified their protest in August, five months after an earthquake in Japan triggered the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.

January 9, 2012 - 4 Traders - General Electric Company : SPECT System Receives FDA Clearance, Brings Affordable Nuclear Medicine Solution to Global Markets - GE Healthcare today announced the Brivo* NM615 has received clearance from the U.S. FDA. An advanced single head Nuclear Medicine gamma camera with SPECT capability, the system gives doctors the ability to lower injected patient dose by as much as 50 percent of those of standard nuclear medicine scanning protocols†, or the potential for patients to spend significantly less time on the table during exams†, without compromising image quality. Made possible through GE's innovative detector design and Evolution* technology, this single head system has the ability to achieve shortened scan times rivaling a dual head system.

January 9, 2012 - CTV - Debris found on Victoria beach possibly from tsunami - Debris believed to be linked to the Japanese tsunami has washed up on the shores of Victoria, B.C., just weeks after residents in Tofino discovered air fresheners and lumber from the east. Victoria resident Beth Hayhurst snapped photos of battered items she recently discovered on a beach, which include bottles with Asian writing and a battered sandal. "In my mind, I do feel some of this is related to the tsunami, but I know there is more coming," Hayhurst told CTV News. "If I'm feeling this way about the small amounts I'm seeing now, relatively speaking, where will this leave our shoreline in a year and a half? " she asked. In December an assortment of cans, bottles and lumber with Japanese writing began turning up on Tofino's shores, although oceanographers' predictions were debris from the tsunami wouldn't arrive on the B.C. coast for at least another year.

January 9, 2012 - Virginian-Pilot - Big question for lawmakers: What to do with uranium? - Officials in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Norfolk are united in opposing efforts this year to lift a ban on uranium mining in Virginia. There's less agreement, however, among the region's state legislators on an issue that's inspired a muscular lobbying campaign and is expected to be a dominant topic in the General Assembly session that starts Wednesday. A survey by The Virginian-Pilot found opinions differ sharply among the local delegation, which may have significant sway in the statewide debate because of mining's possible effects here. Two support lifting the ban, seven oppose doing so, and the majority say they're either undecided or it's too soon for them to make a call. At stake is the right to mine an estimated 119 million pounds of uranium - one of the largest deposits in North America - buried beneath historic Coles Hill farm in Chatham, about 200 miles west of downtown Norfolk. The radioactive ore, when processed, is used to fuel nuclear power plants.

January 9, 2012 - Denver Post - Demand a timely cleanup from Cotter - Justice comes haltingly for "slow-motion technological disasters," a term used by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Our own "SMTD" at the edge of Cañon City began in 1958 at the hands of Cotter Corporation's uranium mill. Unlike a tornado or earthquake with visible damage, Cotter's contamination was gradual and invisible, but no less catastrophic. Cotter announced, 54 years later, that it is terminating its Colorado radioactive materials license. A shocking excess of a billion gallons of groundwater and more than a million cubic yards of soil are still contaminated, according to recent estimates by Cotter and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Cotter was first mandated to clean up the mess by a U.S. District Court in 1988. Our disaster began 20 years before that, when cattle in Lincoln Park were collapsing with crippling molybdenosis from using contaminated wells. There were more than 100 private wells in Lincoln Park's gardening and orchard mecca then, some dug by hand in the 1800s, pumping pristine water from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

January 7-8, 2012 - Webmuenster took the weekend off.

January 6, 2012 - Herald Sun - Trials of radioactive paste to cream cancer in Australia and Europe - Radioactive paste could become a new weapon in the fight against skin cancer. Trials of the radioactive rhenium-188 paste are being held in Australia and Europe. The treatment has been used on 700 patients in Italy with a success rate of up to 95 per cent. The therapy can reportedly be used for basal cell and squamous-cell carcinomas but is not suitable for malignant melanomas. Cancer Council of Australia chief executive Prof Ian Olver said there were an estimated 430,000 non-melanoma skin cancers detected each year in Australia. Skin cancers can be removed through the use of radiotherapy, surgery and freezing of tumors. Prof Olver said the treatment was another way of delivering radiation to the tumour and could be used for tumours that were not amenable to surgery. "It's going to add another weapon against this common cancer," Prof Olver said. "If it's as successful as radiotherapy it's going to be far more convenient than radiotherapy."

January 6, 2012 - Press TV - 'US body scanners can cause death' - Despite frequent claims by the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that their naked body scanners are harmless, a radiation doctor says the surveillance devices can cause death or cancer. The head of radiology at Florida Medical Center, Dr. Edward Dauer, has recently said that body scanners that emit ionizing radiation are, undeniably, a very serious health threat that can even cause cancer. He said the devices are especially carcinogenic for the people over 65 years of age and in women, who are genetically prone to developing breast cancer. "Ionizing means it knocks the electrons out of your body, which breaks your DNA chain, which can cause death or cancer," Dauer said. However, the TSA continues to insist that the scanners, X-ray scanning machines, whose radiation could penetrate passengers' clothes and show hidden objects, emit a minimal amount of ionizing radiation. It argues that the scanners are by no means more dangerous than the 'higher' amounts of background radiation people are exposed to in their ordinary everyday lives. Yet the agency has failed to provide any solid proof to support its claim.

January 6, 2012 - OH&S - Treatment Shows Promise for Toxic Radiation Levels: DARPA - DARPA, the federal advanced research agency, has reported a successful research project for treating previously lethal doses of radiation. The DARPA-funded work used antibiotics along with bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein (BPI), a protein found in immune systems, and showed it fought radiation sickness more effectively than when the two are used separately. (Doctors already use antibiotics to treat radiation sickness; the agency says soldiers may be exposed to high levels of radiation, so countermeasures against high doses are a high priority for the Department of Defense, among others.) The researchers found that the combined treatments increased the survival rates of mice exposed to toxic levels of radiation to nearly 80 percent and were effective up to a day after exposure to radiation. Humans are known to be more sensitive than mice to the endotoxins treated by BPI, so the treatment is potentially more effective in humans, according to DARPA, which said these are commonly used drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in bone marrow transplants and radiation treatment. Because they have a long shelf life, they can be stockpiled for future use.

January 6, 2012 - Nanowerk - The next big step toward atom-specific dynamical chemistry - "Chemistry is inherently dynamical," he answers. "That means, to make inroads in understanding – and ultimately control – we have to understand how atoms combine to form molecules; how electrons and nuclei couple; how molecules interact, react, and transform; how electrical charges flow; and how different forms of energy move within a molecule or across molecular boundaries." The list ends with a final and most important question: "How do all these things behave in a correlated way, 'dynamically' in time and space, both at the electron and atomic levels?" Belkacem's research focuses on creating better ways to track the evolution of energy and charge on the molecular level. For this purpose, one of the sharpest tools in his chemist's kit goes by the jawbreaking name "nonlinear multidimensional spectroscopy." For an outstanding example of the vital questions nonlinear multidimensional electronic spectroscopy can answer, Belkacem points to the work of Graham Fleming, founder of Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division. Fleming has tracked energy flow in photosynthesis, demonstrating the electronic coherence among structures in the photosynthetic reaction centers that transform sunlight energy into chemical energy.

January 6, 2012 - GigaOM - Nuclear: Do we or don’t we? - A recent thrust on Do the Math has been to sort our renewable energy options into “abundant,” “potent,” and “niche” boxes. This is a reflection of my own mathy introduction to the energy scene, the result of which convinced me that we face giant—and ultimately insurmountable—hurdles in our quest to continue a growth trajectory. It is not obvious that we will even manage to maintain today’s energy standards. We have many more sources/topics to cover before moving on to the “now what” phase of Do the Math. Meanwhile, requests for me to address the nuclear story are mounting. So before readers become mutinous, I should interrupt the renewable thread to present my nuclear reaction. It’s a rich topic, and in this post I will only give a tutorial introduction and my big-picture take. A single post can’t possibly address all the nuances, so my main goal here is to demystify what nuclear is all about, build a vocabulary, and set a foundation for further discussion in later posts.

January 6, 2012 - Asbury Park Press - Don't dawdle on spent fuel - The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is inviting the public to tell it what it thinks about its plan to store spent fuel from the nation’s commercial nuclear power plants on-site for as long as 200 years. We’re sure that Jersey Shore residents won’t mind that they will have more than 750 metric tons of radioactive waste stored in Lacey at the Exelon-owned Oyster Creek plant, set to close in 2019, for nearly as long as the United States has been a nation. Two hundred years? Why not a thousand? Or until world’s end? The number of spent fuel rods packed into the elevated pool at the 42-year-old Oyster Creek Generating Station exceeded the design capacity long ago. That has been a major concern of environmentalists because it creates a far greater risk of a massive fire and meltdown.

January 6, 2012 - Cotswold Journal - Contamination set to be removed from homes site - The company behind a new housing development in the Rissingtons has said it will remove any contamination from the site discovered in a land survey. Gladedale Estate was granted permission to build 368 homes in Upper Rissington by the Secretary of State after Cotswold District Council failed to make a decision on the controversial plan. Under the proposals, most of the existing business park buildings and some of the ex-MoD buildings will be demolished to make way for a raft of amenities including a primary school. The former Red Arrows site at nearby Little Rissington was named as one of 15 places in the UK to be contaminated by radioactivity from the Second World War.

January 6, 2012 - Zee News - Prostrate cancer has better chances with proton therapy - Proton therapy, an external beam radiation treatment, is being scientifically proved to be a safe and effective remedy for prostate cancer, according to new American researches. In the first study, researchers at the University of Florida in Jacksonville, prospectively studied 211 men with low, intermediate, and high-risk prostate cancer. The men were treated with proton therapy, a specialized type of external beam radiation therapy that uses protons instead of X-rays. After a two year follow-up, the research team led by Nancy Mendenhall, MD, of the University of Florida Proton Therapy Institute, reported that the treatment was effective and that the gastrointestinal and genitourinary side effects were generally minimal. "This study is important because it will help set normal tissue guidelines in future trials," Dr. Mendenhall, said.

January 6, 2012 - Washington Post - Rumor of N. Korean nuclear explosion prompt brief stock panic in South - A rumor that an explosion accrued at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear facility set off a brief panic Friday in the South Korean stock market, illustrating one of the ways in which Seoul is vulnerable to its neighbor. South Korean government officials found zero evidence that an explosion had actually occurred, and a visiting U.S. diplomat in Tokyo said he’d heard nothing to suggest the rumor was true. Radiation-monitoring devices in the region showed no unusual activity. Still, the rumor reflected concerns — often discussed among nuclear experts — about the unregulated nuclear activity in the North; the possibility that North Korean technicians would struggle to contain an accident if one occurred; and the widely held belief that the government in Pyongyang would neglect to warn the region about spreading radiation.

January 6, 2012 - Industrial Info Resources - Spain Chooses Site For Nuclear Waste Dump - After a delay of seven years, Spain's government has finally chosen the location for the country's nuclear waste facility. The Centralised Temporary Storage (ATC) will be constructed near the small town of Villar de Cañas in the province of Cuenca and will be responsible for housing nuclear waste that is currently stored at numerous nuclear power plants around the country.

January 6, 2012 - SHP - Watchdog gives nuclear power stations ‘all-clear’ in stress tests - In a report submitted to the European Council, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has concluded that there are no major weaknesses in the design and resilience of the UK’s nuclear power stations. In March last year, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, the European Council requested a targeted reassessment of safety at all European nuclear power plants, with a specific focus on the potential impact of extreme natural events on plant safety. Licensees of the 33 operating or shutdown reactors in the UK within the scope of the reassessment programme have carried out the tests and the ONR has reviewed the results. Echoing the findings of a report published in October by HM Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations Mike Weightman, the UK EC ‘stress test’ report confirms that the country’s sites have identified and made improvements to enhance safety by learning from events in Japan. John Donald, a senior nuclear safety inspector at the ONR, said: “To date, no fundamental weaknesses in design and resilience have been identified at UK nuclear power plants, and lessons are being learnt from Fukushima to enhance safety, in line with our regulatory philosophy of continuous improvement.”

January 6, 2012 - PRNewswire - Dr. John Mahmarian Inducted as American Society of Nuclear Cardiology's 2012 President - Dr. John Mahmarian, Director of the Nuclear Cardiology and Computed Tomography (CT) Services at the Methodist DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center in Houston, assumes the presidency of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology (ASNC) this week, praising the Society's members for their ongoing commitment to high quality patient care and vowing to continue ASNC's leadership in developing and promoting nationally recognized standards of care for cardiovascular patients. "Our field rests on a strong foundation of clinical data showing that nuclear cardiology is a valuable tool in diagnosing cardiovascular disease and is a key aid in patient management," said Dr. Mahmarian. "Continuing to refine our guidelines and protocols to match the customized needs of individual patients will only improve patient care and strengthen the role of nuclear cardiology in diagnosing and treating cardiovascular disease."

January 6, 2012 - Baltimore Sun - Calvert Cliffs reactor challenge to be aired - Federal regulators plan a hearing Jan. 26 on a challenge to a French company's bid to build a third reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant, and will take public comments the day before. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will air contentions by four anti-nuclear groups that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has not adequately weighed alternatives to building the facility. The hearing begins at 9:30 a.m. in the Albright Building, 205 Main St. in Prince Frederick. Two separate sessions for the public to comment on UniStar's application will be held at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. Jan. 25 at the Calvert Marine Museum 14150 Solomons Island Road in Solomons. Pre-registration is required to speak there.

January 6, 2012 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - DNFSB finds deficiencies in Y-12 work planning - As a follow-up to previous reviews at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, including an April evaluation of conduct of operations, staff of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board took an Aug. 16-18 look at Y-12's work planning and control process for maintenance and production work. In a newly released staff report, the board identified a number of weaknesses and deficiencies and said, if not corrected, they could impact the Oak Ridge plant's conduct of operations and other areas. In a Dec. 29 letter to NNSA Administrator Tom D'Agostino, DNFSB Chairman Peter Winokur said the safety board was encouraged by contractor B&W Y-12's recent actions to address weaknesses identified during the August review at Y-12. Those actions included issuance of a Work Planning and Control Performance Improvement Plan, Winokur's letter stated.

January 6, 2012 - West Kentucky Star - USEC Might Return Plant Facilities to DOE in May - There is a possibility that USEC might turn over its facilities at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant to the Department of Energy in May, unless a trio of issues are resolved. That was the view expressed in a letter that USEC sent to the DOE and its employees on Dec. 22, according to Steve Penrod, USEC Vice President. The letter was intended to make sure the DOE was aware of the their situation, since there is uncertainty about its arrangements with TVA for electrical power, future demand for product, and the potential re-enrichment of depleted uranium tails. USEC is putting together a contingency plan, just in case. The letter stated the company had not yet made a decision on extending its operation in Paducah, with 1,200 employees. USEC Spokeswoman Georgann Lookofsy told the Paducah Sun that the letter has nothing to do with employee or company performance.

January 6, 2012 - Toledo Blade - Protesters stage skit before Davis-Besse hearing - Ninety minutes before a meeting was to start to discuss cracks found at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant, anti-nuclear protesters Thursday staged a brief skit that reiterated their misgivings about the plant’s resumed operation. Kevin Kamps, a leader of Takoma Park, Md.-based Beyond Nuclear, said the skit featuring the Homer Simpson and Mr. Burns cartoon characters, King Kong, and the Besse plant as a cracking egg was “absurd, zany street theater to blow off a little steam before we head off to a very serious meeting.” They also mocked Thursday night’s 6:30 p.m. meeting — at which some 250 people have arrived for — as a dog-and-pony show. Characters in the skit, which was conducted with the power plant as a backdrop, pretended to repair the building’s cracks with “nuclear-grade duct tape” and “nuclear-grade Gorilla Glue” while three-eyed fish danced nearby.

January 6, 2012 - Pioneer Press - Chlorine leak at Prairie Island nuclear plant posed no danger, Xcel says - A non-radiological spill of a chemical adjacent to a vital area prompted Xcel Energy officials to declare an alert. The Department of Public Safety has activated its Emergency Operations Center and is monitoring the situation. Officials at Xcel Energy's Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant near Red Wing, Minn., cleaned up a chlorine leak Thursday evening after it triggered the plant's first emergency alert in its four decades of operation. Although the public was never in danger and no injuries were reported to plant workers, the alert caused schools in nearby Prescott and Ellsworth, Wis., to delay opening for two hours Thursday morning. The alert, the second-lowest of four emergency classifications set by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is supposed to ensure that emergency personnel are ready to assist the plant and to provide off-site officials with current information, according to Xcel Energy.

January 6, 2012 - Washington Examiner - NM, LANL reach agreement on cleanup - State environmental officials have reached agreement with Los Alamos National Laboratory to expedite the cleanup of thousands of barrels of radioactive waste. Environment Department Secretary Jim Martin told a special meeting of the lab's Citizen's Advisory Board that it has agreed to have all of the barrels currently stored above ground removed by June 30, 2014. Any newly generated waste will have to be removed by the end of 2014. The toxic waste made national headlines this summer when the massive Las Conchas wildfire raged near the premier nuclear facility for more than a week, at one point lapping at the edges of lab property. Associate environmental programs director Michael Graham says the fire made it clear the presence of the waste posed a "significant risk to the public."

January 6, 2012 - Orange County Register - Powering up: San Onofre nuclear plant to boost output - Massive new turbines expected to increase electrical output from the San Onofre nuclear plant will be installed starting this month, part of a $280 million upgrade for the plant's two reactors. The installation will begin with the unit 2 reactor, to be powered down for a maintenance outage. The plant's other reactor, unit 3, will get its new turbine in the fall. The blades of a new high-pressure turbine that should increase electrical output from the San Onofre nuclear plant's unit 2 reactor. New turbines will be installed during maintenance outages for both the unit 2 and unit 3 reactors. Together, the new turbines will deliver enough increased output to power 31,000 typical homes. The latest upgrade follows a far more massive project completed in 2010: replacement of four 640-ton steam generators, two for each reactor, at a cost of $674 million. The old steam generator parts were shipped to a nuclear disposal site in Utah aboard a 192-wheeled vehicle in a series of cross-country trips beginning last year, and should be finished this year.

January 6, 2012 - Counter Punch - Nuclear Agency Squabbling Throws Smokescreen Over Safety Lapses - Four of the five commissioners at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission have charged their boss, Chairman Gregory Jaczko, with “causing serious damage to this institution.” That is tough talk coming from an agency where mismanagement under previous chairmanships actually did serious damage, not only to the regulatory integrity of the institution, but to safety integrity at nuclear reactors. For example, in April 2000, the Commission had photographic evidence of extensive corrosive leakage that put the Davis-Besse reactor near Toledo, Ohio within a hair’s breadth of a meltdown. Yet, despite lava-like formations of rust roiling off the top of the reactor pressure vessel, the NRC allowed the reactor to restart, giving it the green light for two more years of operation. The NRC clearly needed a top to bottom safety shakeup. That’s when Chairman Jaczko showed up. The grumbling over Jaczko is a convenient smokescreen to draw attention away from the fact that, for the first time in decades, the NRC actually has a Chairman who, in his own words, is “a very passionate person about safety” at the country’s 104 operating nuclear reactors. That shows up the other four, who, much of the time, adhere to an old culture of capitulation to the demands of the nuclear power industry, a practice which almost invariably diminishes safety.

January 6, 2012 - Las Vegas Review-Journal - 'Nuclear waste here? Why not?' - As reported shortly before Christmas, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have produced a handful of studies into geologic formations that might replace the scuttled Yucca Mountain site for disposal of highly radioactive wastes. A 114-page report issued in August, for instance, has revived discussion about possibly burying nuclear waste in granite deposits that are prevalent along the eastern seaboard and the upper Midwest. Former Gov. Madeleine Kunin of Vermont told the Associated Press her state was not interested the last time the government looked at granite for nuclear waste storage, and she doubted Vermont would be any more welcoming now. But in an editorial published today, the Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune said Minnesota and Wisconsin should keep an open mind. The headline: "Nuclear waste here? Actually, why not?" "If the Northland and the Great Lakes region really does have ideally solid granite, if our geologic stability is equally as ideal, and if the waste can be stored safely, then, well — well, let’s not say no just yet," the paper said.

January 5, 2012 - The Messenger - Gregory Jaczko must go - Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko should have been fired by President Barack Obama months ago. We can only assume politics in some form kept him in office. But there is no partisanship involved in complaints by the NRC's other four members, two Republicans and two Democrats. All four signed a letter to Obama expressing "grave concerns" about Jaczko. Jaczko withheld information from his fellow commissioners regarding the proposal for a nuclear waste repository in Nevada. He has "intimidated and bullied" NRC staff, according to the letter. He has ignored opinions of the majority of commission members and told NRC staff to withhold information from him. Again, four of the commission's five members agree on that. Jaczko himself is the only dissenter. In terms of the public's safety, the NRC is among the government's most important agencies. It needs an honest, capable leader. That means Jaczko should be fired.

January 5, 2012 - Business Recorder - US nuclear regulatory chief loses top aide - The embattled head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who last month endured a bitter public airing of grievances from colleagues, has lost his top aide, who resigned last month to take a new job. The staff shake-up in the personal office of NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko was announced internally at the end of December, the agency said. Joshua Batkin, who was Jaczko's chief of staff for seven years, has taken a job at the International Code Council, which works with the construction industry. He previously worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "It is now time for me to seek out new challenges that will allow me to re-balance my work and family responsibilities," said Batkin, who has three young children, in his resignation letter. Jaczko named Angela Coggins as his new chief of staff. Coggins also has worked for Jaczko since 2005, first as legal counsel and more recent as policy director. Jaczko has regularly clashed with the other four commissioners at the helm of the agency on policy issues. His colleagues took the unusual step in October of complaining to the White House about behaviour they described as "increasingly problematic and erratic." At back-to-back hearings on Capitol Hill last month, Jaczko was painted as a bully who has verbally abused senior female staff, allegations he and Democratic lawmakers refuted.

January 5, 2012 - Mansfield News Journal - Pick up a radon test kit from health dept. - Radon test kits are available without charge this month from the Mansfield/Ontario/Richland County Health Department, 555 Lexington Ave. Radon is a radioactive gas that comes from the soil. It is odorless, colorless, chemically inactive and a natural product of the disintegration of uranium. Radon usually does not present a health risk outdoors because it is diluted in the open air. Indoors, however, it can build up to dangerous levels. One of every 15 homes is estimated to have high radon levels, which is the second leading cause of lung cancer (after smoking) in the United States. According to Matt Work, the department's director of environmental health, home testing kits are the best way for a home owner to find out if there's a problem. "If a reading of 4.0 picocuries per liter of air or higher (the EPA suggested action level) is indicated by the initial short-term test, we recommend a second, longer-term test to properly evaluate the extent of the problem." Work said. "In most cases the control measures are reasonably inexpensive such as improving air circulation, sealing of cracks in basement floors or walls and venting of sumps."

January 5, 2012 - Mainichi Daily News - Kashiwa stops operation of incinerator again as radioactive ash fills up storage - The municipal government here suspended the operation of one of its main incinerators again on Jan. 5 as a storage facility at the waste disposal factory was filled up with incinerated ash contaminated with radioactive substances emitted from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. The operation of the city's Nambu (south) Clean Center had previously been suspended for about two months from last September. It is not clear when the city can resume operation of the incinerator this time because it has not been able to secure new space to store incinerated radioactive ash. According to the Kashiwa Municipal Government, the Nambu Clean Center is storing about 200 metric tons (about 1,049 waste drums) of incinerated ash whose radiation levels are higher than the national limit of 8,000 becquerels per kilogram for landfill. The storage space there is now filled with drums, and there is also about 30 tons of incinerated ash left in the incinerator.

January 5, 2012 - Blog for Iowa - Vote NO on New Nuclear Power in Iowa - The 2012 legislative session is only a few days away, convening on Jan. 9. HF561/SF390 is still active and enables utility companies to charge their ratepayers before a new nuclear reactor would produce any electricity in Iowa. MidAmerican Energy has stated it will cost ratepayers at least an additional 10 percent of their monthly electricity bill for every $1 billion the energy company spends on the plant. This is comparable to imposing a new tax and MidAmerican Energy should be required to invest its own money into this dangerous project– not receive subsidies from ratepayers in addition to subsidies from tax payers. The bill also changes the way the Iowa Utilities Board would regulate nuclear power. There is no justifiable reason to give nuclear power an unfair advantage over other sources of electricity. Nuclear power should be required to succeed or fail on its own merits. Tell your Iowa Senator to vote NO on any legislation that enables additional nuclear power in Iowa or enables utilities to charge its customers before electricity from a new power plant is produced.

January 5, 2012 - Nuclear Street - Areva to Supply Fuel to Monticello Nuclear Plant In $500 Million Deal - Areva will supply a decade’s worth of fuel to Minnesota’s Monticello nuclear plant under a contract announced Wednesday. Starting in 2015, Areva will deliver its ATRIUM 10XM fuel to the Xcel Energy plant. The $500 million contract includes uranium, enrichment, fuel fabrication and related engineering services. “This contract represents the start of a productive working relationship between AREVA and Xcel Energy, one we believe will benefit our customers by controlling fuel costs,” Xcel’s chief nuclear officer Dennis Koehl said in an Areva release. The plant northwest of Minneapolis uses a single 579 megawatt General Electric type 3 boiling water reactor with Mark I containment, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It was first licensed in 1981, and a license renewal granted in 2006 will allow it to operate until 2030. Refuelings are scheduled every 24 months, and Monticello last shut down for maintenance last year, according to Xcel. Other work completed during the nine-week outage included a power uprate, replacement of eight control rod blades, a new security access facility and rewiring work to meet new NRC fire protection regulations.

January 5, 2012 - WHTC 1450 - Feds Want to Take Closer Look at Palisades Plant - Closer scrutiny of the Palisades Power Plant may be forthcoming by federal investigators after the Covert-based facility was downgraded this week by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It’s based on a May incident in which plant employees didn’t properly follow procedures when a water pump malfunctioned. An appeal of the downgrade by operator Entergy Nuclear was rejected. The rating could go even lower once a final federal review of a September incident that was more serious in nature is completed. The NRC isn’t just concerned with the equipment failures but that operators may have caused some of them. Entergy is being told to fix their problems, follow procedures and expect another inspection.

January 5, 2012 - Reuters - German power grids say coping with shortfalls - German power transmission grid operator TenneT and the national energy regulator said successful handling of a power shortfall on Dec. 8-9 showed that networks will be able to cope with overstretched conditions this winter. They were responding to a media report on the incident that highlighted the potential difficulties in maintaining a stable power supply, a situation closely watched in Europe, since Germany shut 40 percent of its nuclear capacity last year. This arose from a political U-turn after Japan's Fukushima disaster, leading to the loss of a big slice of stable power feed, which grid firms must balance to safeguard crucial supply. "A little over 1,000 megawatts (MW) of Austrian capacity was being called on during those two days to account for a regional shortfall, while the Gundremmingen C nuclear reactor happened to be offline," said a spokeswoman for TenneT in Bavaria on Thursday. "Power supply generally is not under threat," she said.

January 5, 2012 - Reuters - Bulgaria says nuclear plant ready for emergencies - Bulgaria's sole nuclear power plant, Kozloduy, is ready to take action in case of natural disasters, technical failure or a combination of both, a report by the country's Nuclear Regulation Agency showed on Thursday. The Balkan country conducted so-called stress tests at Kozloduy on the Danube after the European Union mandated the safety checks in response to Japan's Fukushima disaster in March 2011. "The organisation for emergency planning, the resources of the plant to act in emergency conditions, as well as the current operational and technical measures confirm Kozloduy's readiness to manage serious breakdowns," the report said.

January 5, 2012 - Newark Advocat - Radon's role in lung cancer? It depends - It's widely known radon can cause potential health problems in homes. Certainly you know if you're a homeowner in Granville, it's tested with each real-estate transaction. Radon especially is prevalent in Licking County. "Generally speaking, close to three out of four homes will have a radon level that's above the EPA action level," Licking County Health Commissioner Joe Ebel said. But just how dangerous is the presence of this gas in a typical Granville residence? "There's a lot of controversy about radon in terms of residential exposure," said Dr. Eric N. Pucht, MD, a pulmonologist for the past 10 years with Licking Memorial Health Systems. Pucht and Ebel agree that, if nothing else, radon's presence increases the possibility of lung cancer. When it's combined with smoking cigarettes, the risk is even higher. Other factors are the intensity of the gas and the length of time a person is exposed to it.

January 5, 2012 - OpEdNews - Radiation Checker: the gift that keeps on giving - Guess what I got tucked in to my holiday stocking? A brand new, sleek-lined Geiger counter that plugs in to your iPhone or iPad and within seconds detects radiation levels. It was the gift that topped my list - with its pencil-like probe (14 centimeters long) that plugs in to the iPhone and uses a special app called "Geiger Bot." My second choice for Christmas was the Geiger Camera app; same idea but works via the phone camera. To easily check radiation levels right in our own backyard is more than a curious pastime. It's a survival check that became imperative last March for hundreds of thousands of Japanese who lived near the TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) Fukshima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plants, reactors crippled by an earthquake and tsunami. The dual disasters ultimately caused a triple meltdown that released dangerously high levels of radioactive substances. Today, almost ten months later, Fukushima will go down in history as the worst nuclear disaster since the Chrenobyl meltdown in 1986.

January 5, 2012 - Japan Times - Domestic robots failed to ride to rescue after No. 1 plant blew - After the March 11 tsunami slammed into the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and wrecked three reactors, many people expected the nation's cutting-edge robotic technologies to ride to the rescue. That, however, turned out to be wishful thinking, and the public was left wondering why Japanese robots, such as Honda Motor Co.'s Asimo humanoid, weren't sent to the power plant to assist firefighters and workers trying to bring the crippled reactors under control. In the early stages of the nuclear crisis, many people actually sent messages to the Asimo Twitter account run by Honda Motor Co., asking why the robot wasn't participating in recovery efforts led by the government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co.. The reply they received, however, said only that "Asimo is still in development, but Honda hopes it will be a helper to people someday, maybe in (similar) dangerous situations like this."

January 5, 2012 - East Hampton-Portland Patch - NU Could Take Control of Haddam Neck Fuel Rod Facility - Northeast Utilities will take control of the spent fuel rod facility at the site of the former Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant in Haddam Neck under a proposed merger that is under consideration by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NU, the parent company of Connecticut Light & Power, would become the majority owner of the site following a proposed merger between its subsidiaries, including CL&P, with one of the minority owners of the Haddam Neck spent fuel rod site, NStar. The NRC, which monitors and oversees the spent fuel rod facility on the Connecticut River, recently approved an application to transfer the license for the fuel rod facility to NU, pending the proposed merger.

January 5, 2012 - Dobbs Ferry Daily - Clearwater: Indian Point Evacuation Plans Inadequate - The long process of relicensing the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plants in Buchanan will likely see definitive action in 2012. A hearing in front of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board is set for the summer of 2012. The licenses for Indian Point Reactors Number 2 and 3 are set to expire in 2013 and 2015 respectively. Environmental agencies, such as Riverkeeper and Clearwater, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have come out against the relicensing of the plants. The latest contentions filed by Clearwater assert that if a disaster occurred that necessitated residents to evacuate from the 10 mile evacuation zone, minorities, low-income residents and many elderly would be disproportionately affected.

January 5, 2012 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - Oak Ridge plants manage for tough times - The past decade has been pretty doggone prosperous for Oak Ridge's government operations, so a downturn of sorts was inevitable. So far, most of the key programs are surviving a tightening federal budget, but that doesn't mean there haven't been impacts. There have, and there will be more. Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason said there was probably a net loss of about 200 jobs at ORNL during calendar year 2011. About 400 jobs were cut, either through voluntary or involuntary reductions on the lab's payroll, but there also were about 200 new hires, he said. About 220 people were approved for the most recent Voluntary Separation Program. In announcing that program, Mason had said the lab might have to eliminate as many as 350 jobs but wouldn't move forward with any involuntary layoffs until the details of the fiscal year 2012 budget became clearer. Shortly before the holidays, Mason indicated that some additional impacts could be expected, but he didn't provide numbers or specify programs most likely to be hit.

January 5, 2012 - Grand Forks Herald - Planting nuclear power in the Red River Valley - Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Duane Sand of North Dakota said Tuesday that America needs to commit to building 20 new nuclear power plants in the next 20 years, and one of them should be in the Red River Valley. Sand, 46, told the Herald’s editorial board that the nation now has 104 nuclear power plants, which add up to less than 1 percent of all power plants but produce nearly one-quarter of domestic power. The U.S. Navy Reserves commander who served on three nuclear submarines said many of those plants will reach the end of their 60-year maximum lifespan in the next two decades and will need to be decommissioned. “So we’re going to have to build more nuclear power, and with current federal rules and regulations against coal, it’s going to have to be more nuclear power,” he said.

January 5, 2012 - KIFI - More Layoffs At Idaho Cleanup Project - There have been more layoffs at the Idaho Cleanup Project on the Idaho National Laboratory site. It's earlier than most workers expected. The layoffs come after more than 200 employees lost their jobs at the end of September. CWI operates the cleanup project. A number of “force account” employees have been laid off. The laid off employees include tradesmen and construction workers who were erecting soft sided buildings around pits of radioactive material buried on the site in the 1950s. "We received direction from our customer the Department of Energy to suspend some of our clean up work due to a budget scenario," said CWI spokesman Erik Simpson. The employees who have been let go were working at the Radioactive Waste Complex on the INL site. Employees are a part of is called the Accelerated Retrieval Project which involves the excavation of radioactive waste.

January 5, 2012 - San Clemente Patch - $280M Nuke Plant Project Adds Efficiency, Safety, Officials Say - The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is poised to embark on a $280-million project to improve efficiency and safety at the plant. For openers, workers will install new turbines, built with more aerodynamic blades to capture more steam energy, which will improve the plant's efficiency by about 40 megawatts, or 3 percent. That might not sound like much, but because San Onofre generates so much electricity, 3 percent is enough to power 26,000 homes. Also set for installation this year are two reactor heads that look like inverted steel bowls with dozens of tubes sticking out. Each tube contains a rod that moves up and down among the nuclear material in the reactors. This allows the nuclear reaction to take place, producing heat to boil the water. Steam from the boiling water turns the turbines to create electricity.

January 4, 2012 - Nuclear Street - Video Outlines Possible Design for Small Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor - With its waste-management and non-proliferation benefits, liquid thorium fuel has been a much-discussed alternative to low-enriched uranium for powering future nuclear plant designs. Once exposed to “ignition” neutrons from a small amount of fissile material, like uranium-235, the fertile thorium-232 breeds uranium-233. It then fissions, creating heat and producing more fissile material. At the 3rd Thorium Energy Alliance Conference last year, Thorenco founder Charles S. “Rusty” Holden offered a look at how a small reactor using a thorium fuel might be designed, with an eye toward the requirements of U.S. regulators. The 40 megawatt reactor would feature a roughly five-foot by five-foot core, traditional control rods to reduce or stop the reaction, a system to capture reactor poisons and passive safety features.

January 4, 2012 - KVVU 5 - Vegas nuclear history museum adds 'National' label - The Las Vegas museum that enshrines the efforts of nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site officially received national museum distinction. Administrators for the museum said thanks to the recent signing of the Defense Authorization Act, the Atomic Testing Museum could not be called the National Atomic Testing Museum. Museum chair Troy Wade recognized efforts by Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Joe Heck for throwing support in getting the museum this recognition. "The entire Museum family is grateful to Sen. Reid for taking the lead in obtaining this unique designation for our museum," said Wade. "Without his sponsorship in the Senate, the language would likely have been removed." Wade recognized Rep. Heck, who inserted the language needed for it to pass Conference review in the House. Las Vegas' atomic testing museum is now one of 36 museums with "national" distinction. Wade said the National label will bolster the attraction's exposure to visitors to Las Vegas. For more information on the National Atomic Testing Museum, visit at www.atomictestingmuseum.org.

January 4, 2012 - Bloomberg News - China's Mothers Rethink Anti-Radiation Clothing - Two years ago, as I waited for an appointment in Beijing, I watched a secretary place an apron over her enlarged belly. I asked if she was cold and she replied, “No, I’m pregnant.” She then explained that the apron concealed a metal mesh that protected her unborn child from the electromagnetic radiation coming from her computer. That sounded bonkers to me. But when I mentioned this curious encounter to Chinese friends, I learned that an entire industry of “protective” maternity clothing has thrived in China for almost 20 years. Anti-electromagnetic radiation jumpers are just as necessary for a modern Chinese pregnancy as folic acid supplements. This is despite any scientific evidence proving that electromagnetic radiation harms fetuses -- some Chinese families simply believe that it does. On Dec. 17, “Truth,” a popular news program on the state-owned CCTV network, aired an investigation into the anti-radiation clothing industry’s claims that its best products block 99.9999 percent of radiation coming from computers, televisions, mobile phones, microwaves or any other modern electronic device. Scientist Chen Feng, allegedly recommended by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led the investigation and reported that a “silver ion” maternity suit (the brand wasn't revealed) blocked 90 percent of incoming radiation. That’s not quite the 99.9999 percent claimed.

January 4, 2012 - The Engineer - Fraunhofer researchers create faster optoelectronic sensor - Researchers in Germany have developed a way around the limits of current low-cost optical sensors for very sensitive applications. Work at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems (IMS) has led to an optoelectronic component that can provide higher processing speeds when producing images for low-light applications such as X-ray detection and astronomy. Modern digital camera equipment often makes use of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors, which are cheaper to produce than other technology and use less power. But while other electronic components keep getting smaller, optical CMOS chips are limited in areas where minimal light is available because they need sufficiently large pixels to capture enough information.

January 4, 2012 - Examiner - Illinois: New radiation detectors in squad cars a threat to civil rights - The Illlinois Terrorism Task Force (ITTF) Science and Technology Committee has launched the first ever statewide effort to outfit first responders with personal radiation detectors (PRD) devices. The ITTF, working together with the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System, (ILEAS) the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) Nuclear Safety Division and Argonne National Laboratory to develop the pesonal size radiation detectors. ILEAS purchased 6,200 cell phone-sized detectors for police and fire vehicles across the state. In the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, 2,000 of the devices were sent to Japan to help responders. The Chicago Police Department acknowleges the agecy's paticipation in the personal radiation detector (PRD) pilot and that CPD has obtained 'a number' of PRDs from the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System agency for deployment within the City.

January 4, 2012 - Huntington News - Who's Monitoring Waste Dumped into Pacific Ocean and What's an Acceptable Risk Level ... or Is There One - Fairewinds Associates nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen discusses the long path ahead for stabilizing the Japanese nuclear plant. Among his worries --- A severe aftershock earthquake. In the second of a two part news report Gundersen shares the risks going forward in 2012, including Japanese to dilute and incinerate radioactive materials. The problems--- radioactivity goes up the stack into the air and the dumping of nuclear waste into Toyko Bay. Greenpeace's London Convention passed a rule that prevents dumping. Here, Gundersen explains that the plan likely violates the "intent" of the convention. Is the Japanese government and the IAEA protecting the nuclear industry and not the people of Japan by claiming that Fukushima is stable when it is not? Fairewinds' chief engineer Arnie Gundersen outlines major inconsistencies and double-speak by the IAEA, Japanese Government, and TEPCO claiming that the Fukushima accident is over. Dynamic versus static equilibrium, escalated dose exposures to the Japanese children and nuclear workers, and the blending of radioactive materials with non-contaminated material and spreading this contaminated ash throughout Japan are only a small part of this ongoing nuclear tragedy.

January 4, 2012 - JDSupra - Unnecessary Testing Happens When Doctors Own Medical Equipment - When a diagnostic test result is negative, usually it’s cause for relief. But when the preliminary results of a study showed that nearly 9 in 10 MRI scans were negative, eyebrows were raised. Not because the test results were questionable, but because of who owned the equipment used to conduct them. As described in a story on MedPage Today, the study, presented at a meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, involved patients who were sent for testing by physicians who had a financial interest in the MRI equipment. It also showed that doctors with a financial stake in the device referred much younger patients for the test than those referred by practitioners who did not benefit financially from use of the imaging equipment.

January 4, 2012 - Tri-City Herald - Former Hanford worker pleads guilty to timecard fraud - A former Hanford worker has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the federal government after admitting being paid at least $90,000 for overtime he falsely claimed. Christian Careaga made his first appearance Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Yakima. He is the second Hanford worker to plead guilty after a federal investigation of timecard fraud at the Hanford tank farms under former contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group. The tank farms store 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in underground tanks until the waste left from weapons plutonium production can be treated for disposal. Careaga may be required to pay a fine of up to $90,000. Court documents do not make clear whether the fine covers overtime pay only for hours not worked or all his claimed overtime.

January 4, 2012 - Mainichi Daily News - Gov't opens nuclear decontamination office in Fukushima city - The Environment Ministry opened an office in the city of Fukushima on Wednesday to spearhead the work of cleaning up buildings, soil and waste contaminated with radioactive materials in areas affected by the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The launch of the office follows Sunday's full-fledged effectuation of a nuclear decontamination law which was partially enacted last August. With a staff of around 70, the office will act as a liaison between the central government and municipalities where cleanup efforts are needed as a result of the disaster at the nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

January 4, 2012 - The Fonecast - Radiation Research Trust told that mobile warnings are likely to cause unjustifiable distress - The UK Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints against a poster for the EM Radiation Research Trust. The advertisement showed a mobile phone in the front pocket of a pair of jeans, with a warning message that said “Medical experts are warning men not to keep their mobile phones in their pockets as this can have a direct effect on their fertility”. In its response to the ASA, the EM Radiation Research Trust referred to a report from 2000 that recommended a ‘precautionary approach’ to mobile phone use. It believed there were two areas of high risk when using a mobile phone: holding a mobile phone against the body, such as against the head when making a call, and keeping a mobile phone near to male genitals, when the phone was stored in a trouser pocket. The advertising message was intended to publicise its concerns in a serious but light-hearted manner. The ASA said EM Radiation had not demonstrated their conclusions were widely accepted within the medical community, as implied by the claim made in the ad. It also considered that the claimed link between mobile phones being kept in pockets and problems with male fertility was likely to cause fear and distress in male consumers, particularly as the ads were being displayed in toilets. Because this claim wasn’t widely accepted within the medical community, the ASA concluded that the ad was likely to cause unjustifiable distress and said it should not appear again in its current form.

January 4, 2012 - The Indypendent - Christmas in the Radiation Zone - It's the first thing you notice. Electric orange, ripe and luscious persimmons hang from every bough. As we drive through the country and over the glittering, snow-specked mountain range from Fukushima city to Soma on the northeast coast of Japan, we pass many persimmon trees dotting the landscape, all laden with fruit, ready for harvesting. But this year, the persimmons of Fukushima prefecture will remain untouched. Bounty only for microbial decomposers, they are a silent reminder of the slow-burning, far-reaching menace of a nuclear accident. Since March 11, local people, long skilled in farming this verdant and fertile region, have added expertise about the effects of radiation to their library of stored knowledge. The persimmons are deemed unsafe, irradiated by the releases from the stricken nuclear plant at Fukushima-Daiichi, 15 miles south of here. I am told the persimmons, which, when peeled and dried by a traditional process, are called hoshigaki, were a local specialty. Now, they have particularly high levels of radioactive contamination.

January 4, 2012 - The New Age - Mine dumps’ ‘toxic threat’ - Despite intensive and extensive investigations undertaken and reports issued by several government departments several years ago into the health hazards associated with a toxic environment in the Johannesburg region, the situation persists with little to no remedial action taken to date. “The contaminated areas have been identified and the need for comprehensive monitoring and study, as well as toxicological and epidemiological studies in affected communities, is imperative,” Mariette Liefferink from the Federation for a Sustainable Environment told The New Age. This means the health of some of Johannesburg’s residents and many communities living downstream and upwind of the city’s mine dumps could be under threat from potentially dangerous levels of uranium in some water supplies, windblown radioactive dust and radon gas. Water supplies from the Upper Wonderfonteinspruit catchment area, stretching from Johannesburg to Potchefstroom, and including the West Rand Goldfield, are contaminated with potentially dangerous levels of uranium.

January 4, 2012 - USNRC Press Release (01/03/2012) - NRC seeks public comment on assumptions for environmental study of extended storage of spent nuclear fuel - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission seeks public comment on a report updating preliminary assumptions for an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) the agency will develop to analyze the effects of storing spent nuclear fuel from the nation’s commercial power reactors for as much as 200 years. The EIS will be part of the agency’s effort to update its Waste Confidence Decision and Rule, last updated in 2010. The report being made available for comment is an early effort to obtain public input about the general scope of the EIS before the NRC formally initiates the EIS “scoping” process. The EIS will include analyses of environmental impacts that are directly related to the long-term handling, storage and transportation of commercial spent fuel and high-level waste.

January 4, 2012 - Knoxville News-Sentinel - New issue in troubled nuke cleanup at ORNL - I reported back in October that the first shipments of highly radioactive soils from a trouble-plagued cleanup site at Oak Ridge National Laboratory had departed the lab en route to the government's Nevada National Security Site for disposal. That effort reportedly went well, but new problems have arisen in the years-long plan to excavate Tank W-1A, the original source of the hot area in ORNL's central campus. According to a recently released Nov. 25 report by staff of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 67 boxes had been filled with contaminated soils and 54 of the boxes had been shipped to Nevada. It noted that the plan was to remove the underground tank (once used to store liquid radioactive waste) in early December. But Dennis Hill, a spokesman for UCOR, the Department of Energy's cleanup manager in Oak Ridge, confirmed the removal didn't happen. It seems like a situation where the project takes two steps forward and one or two steps back.

January 4, 2012 - North Kitsap Herald - Trial for nuclear resisters at Trident Submarine Base starts Wednesday - Eleven nuclear resisters, members of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, will appear in Kitsap County District Court this week in two separate trials for their acts of civil resistance to the Trident nuclear weapons system, according to a release by the Ground Zero Center. Anne Hall, Betsy Lamb, Brenda McMillen and Tom Rogers, a former submarine commander turned antinuclear protester who lives in Poulsbo, were arrested for blocking the main entrance road to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor on Aug. 8. Their trial starts Jan. 4 in Kitsap County District Court. They are charged with being “pedestrians in the roadway,” a traffic infraction. The four moved a 44-foot long inflatable Trident II D-5 missile replica onto the roadway in an attempt to symbolically close the base as a statement against the U.S. government’s continued deployment of the first strike nuclear weapons system. The Trident submarine base at Bangor contains the largest concentration of operational nuclear weapons, according to Leonard Eiger, media coordinator for the Ground Zero Center.

January 4, 2012 - National Cancer Benefits Center for Downwinders - See If You Qualify for $50,000 - If you or a family member have had internal cancer or leukemia within the last fifty years (even if family member is deceased) or if you get cancer and lived in any of the following counties for a period of at least two years between January 21, 1951 and October 31, 1958 or during the entire month of July 1962. In ARIZONA - Apache, Coconino, Gila, Navajo, Yavapai. In NEVADA - Eureka, Lander, Lincoln, Nye, White Pine or the northern portion of Clark. In UTAH - Beaver, Garfield, Iron, Kane, Millard, Piute, San Juan, Sevier, Washington or Wayne you may qualify for $50,000 tax free. The following are Primary cancers that are covered under this program: Bile ducts, Bladder, Brain, Breast(male and female), Colon/Rectal, Esophagus, Gall Bladder, Leukemia’s(other than CLL or chronic lymphocytic leukemia), Liver(except if there is evidence of cirrhosis or Hepatitis B), Lung, Multiple Myeloma, Nasal Pharynx, Lymphomas(other than Hodgkin's disease), Ovary, Pancreas, Salivary Gland, Small Intestine, Stomach and Thyroid. This is not a class action lawsuit. This program has been approved and the compensation made available by the United States Congress.

January 4, 2012 - Politico - Energy's 10 big questions for 2012; (8) Is there a future for Yucca Mountain? - A federal court in D.C. will hear arguments in a lawsuit led by Yucca supporters against the NRC over whether the agency can be compelled to complete its now-boxed review of the nuclear waste project without funding from Congress and with a president looking to nix it. If the court sides with Yucca supporters, the NRC might be forced — given the information already produced — into approving the project. But should the court side with the NRC, Yucca Mountain may actually stay dead.

January 4, 2012 - The Free Press - 2012 is the year to finally bury nuke power  - The year 2012 has opened with news that Fukushima's radioactive cloud may already have killed some 14,000 Americans, according to a major study just published in the International Journal of Health Services. Some 100 million tons of tsunami trash---much of it radiated by Fukushima fallout---has begun contaminating the beaches of our west coast. Germany and Japan, the world's third and fourth largest economies, along with numerous others countries, have definitively turned away from the "Peaceful Atom." But it hasn't yet been buried. That's up to us. And 2012 is the year to do it. We are already very close. The mythical "Nuclear Renaissance" has been gutted by Fukushima, low gas prices and the escalating Solartopian revolution in green energy. Solar panels, wind turbines, sustainable bio-fuels, geo-thermal, ocean thermal, increased efficiency and much more have simply priced atomic energy out of the market. There is virtually no private money to build new reactors---except where there are huge government subsidies and guarantees. In 2012 we must make those all go away.

January 3, 2012 - The Independent - High radiation puts child X-ray patients at risk - Patients are being exposed to unnecessarily high doses of radiation during common X-rays and scans because some hospitals have out-of-date equipment and inadequately trained staff. Variations between hospitals are so great that adult patients are exposed up to five times as much radiation for identical procedures. Children face the biggest risk, experiencing much larger variations as outside specialist units there are few clinicians with paediatric expertise or equipment. The British Institute of Radiology will tackle the issue head-on later this month by considering ways to drive up local standards and reduce variations across the country. Forcing hospitals to collate and publish radiation exposure results, which would allow the public and health professionals to compare departments, could help drive up standards, according to some clinicians and patients. But many experts are against publicly 'naming and shaming' hospitals due to the complex factors involved in radiology procedures which they argue would not be reflected in simplistic league tables.

January 3, 2011 - Charleston Post and Courier - Halt nuclear panel meltdown - Arrogant, abusive, volatile and arbitrary in his use of authority -- those are harsh words. And Gregory Jaczko has been described as such and worse by the people who have worked with and for him at the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The chairman of the NRC has been excoriated by scientists who have seen years of research effectively discarded as Mr. Jaczko wantonly terminated the national nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. He has been castigated by congressmen who support a rational system for nuclear waste disposal -- as mandated by Congress and four previous administrations. The NRC inspector general concluded that Mr. Jaczko has manipulated policy by withholding information from his fellow commissioners. The IG described Mr. Jaczko's actions as unprofessional and "wrong."

January 3, 2012 - Tri-City Herald - Work begins to empty another Hanford tank - Hanford workers have begun emptying another underground tank of radioactive waste at Hanford, making this the first time in more than a decade that two tanks are being emptied simultaneously, according to Hanford officials. Pumping on Tank C-112 began last week, helping end the year on a positive note, despite Hanford workers not completing waste retrieval for any tank in 2011. A tank has not been emptied to regulatory standards since spring 2007. However, significant progress has been made to remove waste, said Chris Kemp, deputy project director for the Department of Energy. While getting the last of the waste out that is required to declare a tank empty to regulatory standards has been difficult, almost 2 million gallons of radioactive waste have been retrieved from single-shell tanks and transferred to newer, double-shell tanks to await treatment since 2002.

January 3, 2012 - Next Big Future - Toshiba has a device that removes 97% of cesium from radioactive soil - Toshiba Corp says it has developed a revolutionary new technology designed to decontaminate radioactive soil from the area surrounding the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The technology was originally designed to purify radioactive water at the nuclear power plant, but its developers say it also removes 97% of cesium from radioactive soil. Toshiba said in a statement that the device is currently capable of dealing with 1.7 tons of radioactive soil per day, but it is theoretically possible for a machine capable of processing 100 times that amount. The device uses crystalline adsorbents that have the ability to selectivity remove radioactive ions from liquids, soil and waste.

January 3, 2012 - Times of India - DRDO works on next-generation radiological defence equipment - DRDO chief controller Dr W Selvamurthy said NBC defence inventory held by armed forces include 64 products for detection, protection, medical management and decontamination, both at individual and collective levels. With early detection being of critical importance, well-equipped rapid response teams need to be stationed in all major centres to handle NBC threats. DRDO has collaborated with the home ministry to formulate and upgrade standard operating protocols (SOPs) to deal with "all NBC eventualities". "Non-state actors either independently or in collusion with state adversaries (read Pakistan) can employ NBC materials as a low-cost, high impact option to destabilize India...We have to be prepared," said Dr Selvamurthy.

January 3, 2012 - Marketwire - US Ecology Declares Quarterly Dividend of $0.18 per Share - US Ecology, Inc. (the "Company") /quotes/zigman/117082/quotes/nls/ecol ECOL +0.97% today declared that stockholders of record on January 13, 2012 will receive a quarterly cash dividend of $0.18 per common share, payable on January 20, 2012. The Company has 18.3 million shares outstanding and estimates that approximately $3.3 million in cash will be paid out for the declared quarterly dividend. About US Ecology, Inc. US Ecology, Inc., through its subsidiaries, provides radioactive, hazardous, PCB and non-hazardous industrial waste management and recycling services to commercial and government entities, such as refineries and chemical production facilities, manufacturers, electric utilities, steel mills, medical and academic institutions and waste brokers. Headquartered in Boise, Idaho, the Company is one of the oldest radioactive and hazardous waste services companies in the North America.

January 3, 2012 - Lawrenceville Patch - January is Radon Action Month in Lawrence Township - The following is a news release issued by the Lawrence Township Health Department. According to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Radon Tier Report, at least 25 percent of homes in Lawrence Township are predicted to be above the acceptable limits for radon. In cooperation with the DEP Radon Program, Lawrence Township Health Department has designated January “Radon Action Month.”

January 3, 2012 - Bloomberg News - TSA Scanner Argument Grounded by Delta Shuttle - One of the great joys of flying the Delta Shuttle to Washington, D.C., out of the Marine Air Terminal at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport -- oh, what am I saying? There are no joys associated with flying the Delta Shuttle from LaGuardia, or from anywhere. Let me try this again: One of the small consolations of flying the Delta Shuttle out of LaGuardia is the absence, at the Marine Air Terminal, of the Transportation Security Administration’s patented Let’s-Look-At- Passengers-Naked-While-They-Raise-Their-Hands-Like-We’re- Mugging-Them Machines. (This is not, by the way, how the federal government refers to these devices.) The TSA deploys two types of advanced passenger- screening machines in U.S. airports: Millimeter-wave whole- body imagers and so-called backscatter X-ray devices, both of which can detect non-metallic objects under a person’s clothing. These very expensive machines are crucial to the TSA’s protocol, which is why it strikes me as strange that the security checkpoint at the Marine Air Terminal goes without one, and instead relies on an old-fashioned metal detector.

January 3, 2012 - NRCU - New-generation radiation monitoring systems introduced at Rivne NPP - A radiation monitoring system based on the program technology complex Vulkan (developed by LLC Westron, Kharkiv) is functioning here. Automated personal dosimetry measurement of exposure levels via electronic means was introduced; new boards of radiation monitoring were installed; laboratory diagnostics of hazardous environments is carried out. One of the main facilities is also the complex of an automated radiation environment control. It implements environmental monitoring in the thirty-kilometer surveillance zone in Rivne and Volyn regions (western Ukraine).

January 3, 2012 - Nuclear Engineering International - L-3 MAPPS wins Pilgrim simulator upgrade contract - In December, L-3 MAPPS was awarded a contract by Entergy Nuclear to upgrade the existing Pilgrim nuclear power station (PNPS) full scope simulator and to supply an additional classroom simulator. The project has already begun and the upgraded simulator is scheduled to be operational in the summer of 2012. The Pilgrim simulator, which was originally supplied by L-3 in 1987, will be upgraded with L-3’s Orchid simulation technology. The simulator currently runs on SGI computers with the IRIX operating system. Once upgraded, the simulator’s servers and instructor station will operate on PCs running the Windows operating system and L-3 MAPPS’ Orchid simulation environment.

January 3, 2012 - Reuters - Slovak nuclear power plants pass stress tests - Slovakia's four nuclear reactors have passed so-called stress tests against potential severe accidents, earthquakes, floods and other extreme events, the country's nuclear regulator reported on Tuesday. The analysis followed Japan's Fukushima disaster in March 2011 which spurred the European Union to mandate safety tests of the European Union's 143 reactors. The Slovak regulator released its report a day after the neighboring Czech Republic announced that the nuclear power plants of utility CEZ at Temelin and Dukovany had passed the EU-mandated stress tests. The Slovak tests included an analysis of unexpected incidents such as quakes, floods, power failures, a long-term interruption of the water supply and other system checks.

January 3, 2012 - Burlington Free Press - Despite law, Vermont not billing Entergy back for lawsuit - Last year, the Legislature passed a bill saying the state could bill Entergy Corp. back for costs the state incurred defending itself from Entergy’s lawsuit against the state, but for all the bluffing lawmakers and the Shumlin administration did over the move, there has been no billing. The state routinely bills companies back for costs related to regulatory applications, including those involving Entergy, owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. It is, however, not routine at all to bill back court costs to somebody who is suing you. Entergy sued the state, challenging its authority to decide whether Vermont Yankee can continue operating after its certificate of public good expires in March. That authority rests with the federal government, Entergy claims. Though many thought a decision in the lawsuit would come by year’s end, it has yet to emerge. Attorney General Bill Sorrell said his office has not billed Entergy back, and he conceded that’s because the concept is shaky.

January 3, 2012 - Nuclear Engineering International - NRC cites Brunswick for inadequate flooding protection - The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has determined that fuel oil tank rooms serving the Brunswick nuclear plant’s emergency diesel generators were not properly protected from possible flooding, according to a 30 December statement. The finding of “low to moderate safety significance” will result in increased NRC inspection and oversight of the facility. The Brunswick nuclear plant in North Carolina comprises two 990 MW boiling water reactors and is operated by Carolina Power & Light Co. (CPL). The violation, which involved the failure to identify and correct conditions in the fuel oil tank rooms that made them susceptible to flooding during hurricane, was identified by an NRC inspector and was detailed in a 29 November inspection report. The violation was identified as “white”, having “low to moderate safety significance.”

January 3, 2012 - Nuclear Engineering International - Belarus-Russia nuclear agreement ratified - On 21 December the Belarus parliament ratified the Belarusian-Russian agreement which provides for Russia to supply an export loan for Belarus’ nuclear power station construction project. First deputy finance minister Vladimir Amarin stated that the loan would be up to $10 billion. It will be provided for 25 years, with the option to postpone the repayment by ten years at most. The loan will be taken up in installments untill 2021, the projected build period, so that the debt will be accumulated during those ten years alongside the construction of the nuclear power plant. This arrangement will allow Belarus to keep its foreign debt at an economically safe level despite its considerable volume of borrowings at present.

January 3, 2012 - M&C - All French nuclear plants cleared in post-Fukushima stress tests - France's nuclear safety authority on Tuesday gave the green light for all the country's nuclear plants to remain in operation, including a controversial 34-year-plant on the border with Germany. Publishing the findings of stress tests carried out in the wake of Japan's post-tsunami Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, the authority said the nuclear plants presented 'a sufficient level of safety so it (the ASN) requested the immediate closure of none of them.' At the same time, the authority said their continued operation required that 'their robustness, faced with extreme situations, be increased beyond current safety margins as soon as possible.'

January 3, 2012 - Views and News - Nuclear sub fire sparks concerns - A fire on board a Russian nuclear submarine in Murmansk last week has sparked concerns from Norwegian environmental activists and pollution authorities. They claim the Russians failed to issue warnings about possible nuclear contamination. “The Russians should have alerted Norwegian authorities about the fire,” Nils Bøhmer, a nuclear physicist at the Norwegian environmental organization Bellona, told newspaper Aftenposten. He urged Norway’s Foreign Ministry to complain to their counterparts in Russia. Russian and Norwegian authorities agreed in the early 1990s to warn each other about possible radioactive emissions. To date, however, Russia has never issued any warnings and none came last week either, even after TV footage showed flames and smoke from the fire on board the nuclear submarine Jekaterinaburg. The submarine, built in 1984, was berthed at Murmansk when the fire broke out on Thursday. Russian authorities were quick to issue assurances that radioactivity in the area was normal after news of the fire broke, and they claimed there was no danger the fire would reach the submarine’s nuclear reactor. Submarine crew members were evacuated, they said, and there were no injuries, but that report was later revised. By Saturday, Russian authorities reported that crew members were still on board and at least nine were injured.

January 3, 2012 - Japan Times - Mothers first to shed food-safety complacency - The disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and the threat of radioactive fallout changed the lives of many people, including Mizuho Nakayama and other mothers of young children whose primary goal suddenly became that of keeping their kids out of harm's way. Once career-oriented, Nakayama, 41, quit her full-time job in August and now devotes her life to doing her utmost to minimize her 3-year-old son's exposure to the various dangerous isotopes released amid the three meltdowns at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant. Her efforts range from preparing foods with what she hopes are the safest ingredients to becoming a key member of a group of mothers based in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, worried about radiation. When she bakes bread or cream stew, for example, she goes out of her way to pick ingredients that come from outside the Tohoku or Kanto regions. "It takes double the time it used to prepare a meal now," Nakayama said. "My priorities have changed. My child comes first now," she said. "When it comes to radiation problems, our only option is self-protection."

January 3, 2012 - Asbury Park Press - NRC to review Oyster Creek vents - Federal regulators have agreed to a request by environmentalists to review General Electric Mark 1 reactors, which are the type used at the Oyster Creek Generating Station. A safety panel for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission posted notice Monday on the Federal Register that it has accepted a request by three environmental groups, including 8,000 petitioners, to review whether approvals by the federal agency for venting systems at General Electric Mark I reactors should be revoked. The reactor is also the same type that was in operation at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, which suffered a meltdown and fire last March. Members of Beyond Nuclear, New Jersey Environmental Federation and the Brick-based Grandmothers, Mothers, and More for Energy Safety, known as GRAMMES, all support the review.

January 3, 2012 - Times & Democrat - Tritium program reaches goal ahead of schedule - A four-month project to accelerate production commitments has been successfully completed at the Savannah River Site. The National Nuclear Security Administration Savannah River Site Office and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions Tritium Programs were recently recognized for the effort that quadrupled the facility's standard production output. The Reservoir Acceleration Project called for all tritium production and shipping commitments through February 2012 to be completed by the end of November 2011. "This is a significant accomplishment for the Savannah River Site that demonstrates the responsiveness and flexibility of this team," NNSA SRSO Manager Doug Dearolph said. "It's through dedication and hard work such as this that our nation is able to maintain its strength and dedication to a safe and dependable weapons stockpile."

January 3, 2012 - Augusta Chronicle - Plant Vogtle combined operating license expected - The coming year will include many firsts for the nuclear industry, all focusing on Georgia, where the expansion of Plant Vogtle is scheduled to begin in earnest. The $14.8 billion project marks the first new commercial power reactors to be built in the United States in a generation, and is unfolding in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan that raised new questions about nuclear safety and construction standards. The catalyst that will allow the project to move forward will be the issuance of the first “combined operating license” developed by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to simultaneously authorize the construction and the operation of new reactors. The Vogtle project also heralds the American debut of the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor, a new design that features a cooling reservoir above the reactor vessel that can be fed into the unit by gravity in the event of an emergency. Because other proposed nuclear expansions in the U.S. will use the same design, the Vogtle project has been designated as the NRC’s official “reference site” for future AP1000 construction.

January 3, 2012 - In These Times - The Secret of Rocky Flats: The Never-Ending Story of a Cold War Plutonium Plant - When the Green Bay Packers score, fans pound thunderously on the corrugated metal wall of the patio at the Rocky Flats Lounge. Newcomers to the area would likely never guess that in decades past, the tavern between Denver and Boulder would be packed with workers involved in a secretive, controversial and dangerous industry…and that the expanse of wind-swept, weedy, rubble-strewn land across the highway from the tavern was where private contractors working for the U.S. government constructed atomic bombs out of tons of plutonium and other radioactive and toxic elements. Weapons production halted at the Rocky Flats plant in 1992, and most of the buildings have been dissembled and 80 percent of the area is officially designated a wildlife refuge. But as journalist and University of Colorado Professor Len Ackland told me recently, "the Rocky Flats story is still going on."

December 24, 2011 - January 2, 2012 - IEM Closed for the Holidays.

December 23, 2011 - Next Big Future - DNA Repair Mechanism works much better at low radiation doses - Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), through a combination of time-lapse live imaging and mathematical modeling of a special line of human breast cells, have found evidence to suggest that for low dose levels of ionizing radiation, cancer risks may not be directly proportional to dose. This contradicts the standard model for predicting biological damage from ionizing radiation – the linear-no-threshold hypothesis or LNT – which holds that risk is directly proportional to dose at all levels of irradiation. Our data show that at lower doses of ionizing radiation, DNA repair mechanisms work much better than at higher doses,” says Mina Bissell, a world-renowned breast cancer researcher with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division. “This non-linear DNA damage response casts doubt on the general assumption that any amount of ionizing radiation is harmful and additive.”

December 23, 2011 - Lincoln County Record - Commissioners approve Yucca Mountain study - Mike Baughman, executive director of the Lincoln County Regional Development Authority, tells county commissioners of the need for strategic plans to capitalize on prospective beneficial economic impacts that might be developed if the Yucca Mountain project should someday become a reality. A plan to prepare a strategic plan for capitalizing upon the prospective beneficial economic impacts associated with development and operation of the Yucca Mountain repository and other activities on the Nevada Test Site and Nevada Test and Training Range, was presented to County Commissioners at their regular meeting Dec. 5 in Pioche. Mike Baughman, executive director of the Lincoln County Regional Development Authority, made the presentation of a letter of memorandum to commissioners. Baughman has said numerous times at commission meetings, he feels Yucca Mountain is not totally dead, it might be revived some day, possibly under a different administration in Washington. A budget of $50,000 was approved by commissioners for the Development Authority’s use to in 2012 to enable studies and provide reports regarding Lincoln County’s estimated economic and fiscal benefits associated with the proposed Yucca Mountain geologic repository system. He presented a two-page scope of work LCRDA would be looking at.

December 23, 2011 - Mainichi Daily News - Toshiba, IHI develop mobile radiation-tainted water treatment system - Toshiba Corp. and IHI Corp. said Thursday they have developed a mobile system for the treatment of water contaminated with radiation outside of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The SARRY-Aqua system to reduce radioactive cesium operates in a container that can be loaded on a trailer and transported to contaminated reservoirs or swimming pools to treat water on the spot. The new system can process 1 ton of water containing radioactive cesium of 500 becquerels per kilogram and reduce it to 10 becquerels per kilogram in an hour. It can treat a total of around 200 tons using absorbent in four drums, according to the companies. It is around a 20th of the size of an earlier SARRY system that has been used to decontaminate highly radioactive water at the Fukushima plant. SARRY is an acronym for simplified active water retrieve and recovery system.

December 23, 2011 - Deseret Morning News - Contract protests erupt over Moab tailings removal - Work to remove more than 11 million tons of remaining radioactive tailings near the banks of the Colorado River will continue on schedule, despite a protest war over a lucrative remediation contract. With $121 million at stake in a five-year contract awarded by the United States Department of Energy, the losing bidders have struck back in protest, wanting to secure more work to remove what remains from the waste left by a now-defunct uranium mine. Both EnergySolutions and Gonzales-Stoller have filed protests over a bid being awarded to a competitor company called Portage, for cleanup of the former Atlas mill site. To date, a little more than 4.8 million tons have been removed. EnergySolutions had the initial contract when the cleanup first began in 2009, but that $98.7-million contract was set to expire Dec. 31.

December 23, 2011 - The Guardian - Technetium - This week's element is technetium, a naturally radioactive metal denoted by the chemical symbol, Tc, and the atomic number 43. Technetium, whose longest-lived isotope has a half-life of 4.2 million years, is vanishingly rare on earth. Interestingly, based on the spectral lines from light given off by stars, we can see a number of isotopes of technetium are common in stars. For this reason and because this element has a much shorter lifespan than do stars, we've concluded that the stars themselves are the birthplace of this element. Technetium is created on earth from radioactive decay of molybdenum-99 (half-life; 67 hours) or by humans bombarding uranium-235 with neutrons. Because of its short half-life, technetium does not and never has played any biological role since it vanished (due to radioactive decay) long before life appeared on earth. However, technetium-99m (half-life; 6 hours), which results from molybdenum-99 decay, is important in medical imaging and diagnostics, particularly for detecting a number of rare and elusive cancers as well as damage to the heart muscle resulting from heart attack. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this element is its elusiveness: occupying the empty box beneath manganese on the periodic table, its existence had been predicted long before anyone found it. But despite numerous intensive efforts to isolate this element, its eventual discovery by Emilio Segrè in 1937 was accidental.

December 23, 2011 - Egyptian Gazette - Beware of foreign objects - Stealing a box containing radioactive material is a crime, while leaving such a dangerous container unguarded in a public place such as Alexandra’s University’s Faculty of Medicine is a much bigger crime that needs invesgating. The head of the Egyptian Atomic Energy Agency has tried to reassure the public by announcing that it’s ready to deal with any possible radiation leaks, adding that the Ministry of Health is responsible for such dangerous boxes not being protected properly. The EAEA continues to warn citizens not to touch or open any foreign objects they might find in the street, where thieves would most probably dump such boxes, once they realise how dangerous they are. The incident at Alexandria University is not the first caused by the poor security measures taken by the concerned authorities, when storing or transporting dangerous containers and cylinders. A few years ago some cylinders containing radioactive material fell off the back of a truck, the kind used to transport vegetables or cattle, in the middle of a busy highway! Such accidents should set the alarm bells ringing about the lack of proper security. They also raise questions about Egypt’s ability to create a project for producing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes on the North Coast.

December 23, 2011 - SwissInfo.ch - Cern discovers a boson, but not the Higgs - Scientists at the Cern physics research centre outside Geneva have made their first new particle discovery using the massive Large Hadron Collider (LHC) atom smasher. The sub-atomic particle known as Chi-b (3P) was uncovered in the debris from colliding protons. The finding should help scientists better understand the forces that hold matter together. The Chi-b(3P) comprises two relatively heavy particles, the beauty quark and its antiquark, which are bonded by the so-called "strong" force, which also causes the atomic nucleus to stick together, say researchers. Quarks are the building blocks of protons and neutrons, which in turn are the building blocks of atoms. The Chi-b(3P) is a heavier version of a particle that was first observed around 25 years ago. "People have thought this more excited state should exist for years but nobody has managed to see it until now," Professor Roger Jones, who works on the Atlas detector at the LHC, told BBC News. "It's also interesting for what it tells us about the forces that hold the quark and the anti-quark together - the strong nuclear force. And that's the same force that holds, for instance, the atomic nucleus together with its protons and the neutrons."

December 23, 2011 - The Patch - Local Jeweler Wins Entrepreneur Mag's 'Reader's Choice Award - A Malden jewelry designer has won Entrepreneur Magazine's Reader's Choice Award for the best 'indie merchant' for the unique wares she sells on her etsy.com store. Caitlin Mason, 25, first made the customizable necklace – which can spell short words with tiles from the periodic table of elements – for a friend's gift to a girlfriend in medical school, using the symbols for Flourine, Radium, Nitrogen, Cerium and Sulfur to spell her name: "FRaNCeS." Readers voted on 12 different items, with Mason reaching 22 per cent of the votes. “The Table of Elements necklace quickly emerged as your favorite this holiday season,” the magazine's special projects editor Colleen DeBaise wrote.

December 23, 2011 - Power Engineering - Markey Blasts Vote to Override NRC's Jaczko, Allow Acceleration of AP1000 Nuke Reactor - Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) released the following statement after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) voted to approve the final rule for the Westinghouse AP1000 design and which also granted a rule change requested by Southern Company to allow construction to begin before the NRC staff have incorporated and published all reactor design changes adopted by the Commission today. One of NRC's longest-serving staff warned in NRC documents that the reactor's containment could shatter "like a glass cup" due to flaws in the design of the shield building if impacted by an earthquake or commercial aircraft. In the publicly released votes on the matter, Chairman Greg Jaczko disapproved the proposal to allow the acceleration of reactor construction, Commissioner George Apostolakis voted to approve it, and Commissioner William Magwood's vote did not refer to it. In the final vote, Chairman Jaczko was overridden by his colleagues. "Today, the NRC has presented its holiday gifts to the nuclear industry," said Rep. Markey, top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee and a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "Instead of doing all they should to protect nuclear reactors against seismically-induced ground acceleration, these Commissioners voted to approve the acceleration of reactor construction. While they continue to slow walk the implementation of recommendations of the NRC professional staff's Near-Term Task Force on Fukushima, they have fast-tracked construction of a reactor whose shield building could 'shatter like a glass cup' if impacted by an earthquake or other natural or man-made impact."

December 23, 2011 - Reno Gazette Journal - Tribe's environmental ordinance plan draws rebuttals - An announcement made Tuesday by the Yerington Paiute Tribe that it is developing Tribal Environmental Ordinances as a first step to potentially develop the authority to put the Anaconda Mine on the National Priorities list has drawn rebuttals from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Peri & Sons Farms that the tribe has made false statements in its press release. The Tribe issued a press release on Tuesday announcing that it is developing Tribal Environmental Ordinances designed to protect both air and water quality on the Yerington Paiute Tribal Reservation and Colony.

Recember 23, 2011 - CRIEnglish.com - Authorities Declare Radiation Suits Safe - Radiation suits have been in the news recently following reports that they do more harm than good. But authorities disagree. China Central Television recently ran a report claiming radiation suits actually increase the amount of radiation the body absorbs. They say experiments show radiation enters from the ends of sleeves and necklines, accelerating absorption through the skin. But the Shanghai Radiation-proof Association held a press conference on Thursday, claiming that radiation suits help fend off electromagnetic radiation, rather than attracting it to the body. Li Guodong, an advisor from China's National Technical Committee on Electromagnetic Shielding Material of Standardization Administration in Shanghai, says the alleged absorption of radiation waves by the skin is reduced every time it is reflected between the skin and the suit, so the amount that reaches the body is negligible. Li added that radiation disappears within 3-5 millimeters after entering the skin, so will not reach vital parts in the human body.

December 23, 2011 - Times of India - Soon, mobile phones in India will carry radiation tags - Over 900 million mobile subscribers will soon be direct beneficiaries of stringent new government norms to control harmful radiation from mobile handsets, a tacit admission that the present radiation levels are injurious to health. The government wants to enforce education of consumers about the benefits of the hands-free option and choosing SMS over voice calls or keeping mobile calls as brief as possible, with special health warnings for children, adolescents, pregnant women, and those with any kind of medical implants. A very large majority of subscribers have no information or recourse relating to health hazards from possible harmful Electro-Magnetic Frequency (EMF) radiation emitting from mobile handsets. Radio frequency (RF) is the primary medium of mobile communication.

December 23, 2011 - CalorieLab - MRI Scan May Be Better for Heart Patients - A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan may be a good alternative to angiogram and SPECT for diagnosing coronary heart disease, say British researchers from the University of Leeds. The most commonly used methods for diagnosing suspected heart disease are currently an angiogram, an invasive procedure involving dye injection into heart arteries, and a non-invasive imaging test known as SPECT. Both tests involve ionizing radiation, but MRI doesn't. The five-year study, published in Lancet, found that MRI is a reliable way to detect signs of significant coronary heart disease. The research also showed that MRI is better than SPECT for finding coronary heart disease and for ruling out heart disease in healthy patients.

December 23, 2011 - Japan Times - Evacuation order to face criticism - A government panel investigating the Fukushima nuclear crisis is expected to state in an upcoming report that the evacuation order issued shortly after the accident began was irrational, sources said. The government ordered people living within 20 km of the plant to evacuate, but the panel believes the order led some residents to move to areas where radiation was actually higher and generated mass confusion, the sources said. The prime minister's office received its first fallout estimate on March 23 — or 11 days after the first hydrogen explosion occurred at the Fukushima complex. The estimate was based on data from the government's special computerized System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI).

December 23, 2011 - World Nuclear News - Westinghouse secures AP1000 approval - American nuclear safety regulators have approved an amendment to the AP1000 reactor design, in a major step towards US deployment of the model. Construction on new reactors could begin very soon. The issuance of the final ruling was the major outstanding prerequisite before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will be able to grant licenses to construct and operate AP1000 power plants. This is expected shortly for two separate projects, each envisaging two AP1000 units: Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia, under the management of Southern Nuclear; and South Carolina Electric & Gas's (SCE&G's) VC Summer 3 and 4.

December 23, 2011 - Industrial Fuels and Power - Belarus likely to stop power imports after first nuclear power plant online - Belarus is likely to stop importing electricity after its first-ever nuclear power plant is completed in the Hrodna region, Alyaksandr Mikhalevich, a member of the Belarusian National Academy of Sciences, told reporters in Minsk. He described the construction of the nuclear facility as an “import substitution project despite the fact that the design and the fuel are Russian.” Belarus has imported 10-30% of its power requirements since the 1990s. Half of its power plants are out-of-date facilities built in the 1960s-70s and peak utilisation rates only reach just over 60%. “It turns out that the generation of power by these plants costs us more than the import of cheaper electricity in Russia and Ukraine,” Mikhalevich said. Belarus has exported virtually no electricity but plans to start doing so after the completion of the nuclear power plant, according to the scientist.

December 23, 2011 - Jacksonville Business Journal - Defense Dept. awards $57M to Mayport, NAS Jacksonville - The Department of Defense .Department of Defense Latest from The Business Journals Feds arraign Coos Bay defense department supplierCongress directs DOD to use commercial data centersDOD to revamp investment review boards Follow this company .awarded Jacksonville $57 million for military construction projects in its fiscal 2012 budget. Naval Station Mayport .Naval Station Mayport Latest from The Business Journals Navy signs costly contract for biofuel What do you love about our city?Defense dollars keep Northeast Florida work going Follow this company .received $17.7 million for projects geared toward stationing a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The department also carved out $39.9 million in construction funding for Naval Air Station Jacksonville .Naval Air Station Jacksonville Latest from The Business Journals Navy signs costly contract for biofuel What do you love about our city?Rollins-PCI to build .5M Navy Federal Credit Union branch Follow this company. The flow of federal defense dollars means an economic boost to the city and a step forward on the path toward having a nuclear aircraft carrier homeported at Mayport by 2019.

December 23, 2011 - Associated Press - New Toshiba reactor model gets U.S. nod - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved Toshiba Corp.'s AP1000 reactor design, paving the way for the first new reactor construction license to be issued in more than 30 years. The five-member agency voted unanimously Thursday in favor of certifying the reactor's design. Southern Co. and Scana Corp. are seeking permission to use the next-generation reactors to expand nuclear power output at existing sites in Georgia and South Carolina. The certification "marks an important milestone toward constructing the first U.S. nuclear reactors in three decades," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday in a statement. The NRC hasn't given permission to build a new reactor in the U.S. since the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979.

December 23, 2011 - Pittsburgh Business Times - Westinghouse casts ‘pretty wide net’ in employee search - Westinghouse is always on the lookout for people with nuclear backgrounds, who often end up being the most difficult workers to find. As a result, the company is open to reaching out to people in a variety of ways. John Orfanopoulos, the company’s manager of talent acquisition, spoke to the Business Times about some of those ways. How wide is your search for hard-to-fill positions? We cast a pretty wide net. Our biggest advantage is having so many industry experts and tenured Westinghouse employees that have great networks.

December 23, 2011 - Bloomberg News - Latvia Expects to Get 15-20% Stake in Lithuanian Nuclear Plant - Latvia wants to take a stake of between 15 percent and 20 percent in a nuclear power plant being planned for construction in neighboring Lithuania, Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis. “Our intention is to be a part of this project, and right now we are discussing on a technical level on what share exactly in the project we will take,” Dombrovskis said in an interview in Riga today. “I would expect it to be somewhere of the range of 15 percent to 20 percent.” Lithuania is planning to build a new atomic plant in Visaginas by 2020, together with Latvia and Estonia and a strategic investor, Hitachi Ltd., Japan’s second-largest builder of nuclear reactors. Lithuania wants to control at least 34 percent of the plant, while the three other partners would split the rest.

December 23, 2011 - Men's Fitness - Balance Bracelets May Be Poisoning You (Or Slowly Making You a Superhero) - We've all seen the ads and infomercials for the rubber bracelets that contain some type of metal or "negative ions" claiming to improve balance or increase performance among athletes. Regardless of whether you believe the positive hype or not, people who sport these "super" bracelets are being advised not to wear them due to radioactive contamination. According to a health and science report from The Jerusalem Post, The Health Ministry and the Environmental Protection Ministry issued the warning after radiological and analytic labs found the bracelets to contain the radioactive material thorium 232, which produces a level of uranium that is higher than what's permitted by international standards. In a statement by the ministry issued to the Post, wearers of the bracelet should stop "until there is proof that they do not contain radioactive contamination." Thorium had been previously used as an alloying material and light source for things such as gas mantles, but due to radioactivity concerns, use of the material has become much more uncommon.

December 22, 2011 - Business Week - Billionaire Ambani Invests in Gates-Funded Nuclear Company - Reliance Industries Ltd., operator of the world’s biggest oil refinery complex, has invested in Terra Power LLC, a nuclear design and engineering company partly funded by Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates. The minority investment was made through a unit and is one of various in the “broader energy sector,” Reliance said in an e-mailed statement today. The Mumbai-based energy explorer and refiner, controlled by billionaire Chairman Mukesh Ambani, didn’t disclose the size of the investment. Gates, ranked the world’s second-richest man in March by Forbes magazine, visited China earlier this month to promote a new technology for fourth-generation nuclear reactors developed by Terra Power. Reliance, India’s biggest company by market value, is seeking to widen its businesses as slowing economic growth globally cuts fuel demand and as output from India’s biggest natural gas deposit declines.

December 22, 2011 - OUPblog - The controversy of the neutrino - Neutrinos are perhaps the most enigmatic particles in the universe. Formed in certain radioactive decays, they pass through most matter with ease. These tiny, ghostly particles are formed in millions in the Sun and pass through us constantly. For a long time they were thought to be massless, and passing as they do like ghosts they were not regarded as significant. Now we know they have a very small mass, and there are strong indications that they are very important indeed. It is speculated that a heavy form of neutrino, that is both matter and antimatter, may have shaped the balance of matter and antimatter in the early universe. In these videos, Frank Close, author of Neutrino, talks about the successes and controversies of neutrino research.

December 22, 2011 - Vitals - Experts discount claims of U.S. deaths from Japan radiation - A provocative new study released this week suggests as many as 14,000 Americans may have died as a result of exposure to radioactive particles blown here from Japan after theFukushima nuclear reactor meltdown in March. But even though the report is gaining some attention, experts say there is no scientific basis for its claims.  The study, published in the International Journal of Health Services, was based on mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and compared death rates before and after the cloud of radioactive air rising out of the crippled reactor hit U.S. shores. Joseph Mangano, the lead author of the new report, says the number of deaths in the spring of 2011 was 4.46 percent higher than in the previous spring and the most likely cause was the higher levels of radiation. Mangano also found an increase of 2.34 percent in the winter of 2011 compared to the previous year, but he called that increase “standard,” as opposed to the beginning of a trend. Mangano said he couldn’t prove that the higher than expected death rate was due to radiation, but he said he believed it was the leading contender. He was unable to point to any studies showing how low levels of radiation in the U.S. would cause death. While U.S. deaths did rise in 2011, radiation doesn't make sense as the cause, experts say. “There’s nothing in the radiation health effects research to substantiate those claims,” said Bernadette Burden, a spokesperson for the CDC. Radiation expert Andrew Maidment said that the levels of radiation that blew over the U.S. were too low to have caused any deaths – especially in such a short period of time following the disaster.

December 22, 2011 - Mainichi Daily News - TEPCO builds temporary storage facility for highly radioactive nuclear waste - A temporary storage facility for steel vessels containing nuclear waste, under construction on the premises of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, is pictured in early December. (Photo courtesy of Tokyo Electric Power Co.)Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said on Dec. 21 that it has completed the construction of a temporary storage facility for highly radioactive nuclear waste produced in the process of purifying contaminated water at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. The facility built on the premises of the troubled nuclear power complex is capable of storing up to 744 steel containers, called "vessels," that contain radioactive substances including cesium. Each vessel measures about 1.4 meters in diameter and is about 2.4 to 3.5 meters high. Contaminated water is purified through vessels that have pumice stones inside that can absorb radioactive substances. Vessels are replaced with new ones when levels of radiation in them get high. TEPCO, the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear power station, had to look for storage spaces for vessels filled with highly radioactive nuclear waste. Several vessels need to be replaced each week, and a total of 316 vessels had already been used by Dec. 20.

December 22, 2011 - PRWeb - RadSite Announces Availability of Enhanced Online Directory of Certified Imaging Providers - RadSite™, a leading provider of assessment and accreditation services in the imaging industry, announces the availability of its online directory of RadSite-certified imaging providers located throughout the U.S. "Part of our mission is to ensure imaging providers offer high-quality imaging through a series of approval processes relative to imaging equipment, operation and interpretation," says Cherrill Farnsworth, chair of the RadSite board of directors. RadSite's safety initiatives include a review of radiation safety policies and procedures as well as a radiation safety educational program. "We are pleased to be at the forefront of a number of consumer-centered initiatives to promote patient safety." According to Junellen Neese, RadSite's director of product development, "Through the enhanced online directory, thousands of RadSite-certified facilities can be located online by zip code or facility name. It serves as a means of recognizing those providers who have achieved RadSite certification as well as providing a directory of quality-certified providers for consumers."

December 22, 2011 - Nanowerk News - Demonstration of ultra-high speed piezoelectric thin film with nanodomain structure - The Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI), Tokyo Institute of Technology, the National Institute for Materials Science, and Kyoto University confirmed for the first time in the world that it is possible to achieve ultra-high speed switching in a time of 200 nanoseconds (2/10 millionths of a second) with a new piezoelectric thin film which possesses nanodomains (see paper in Applied Physics Letters: "ARTIKEL"). The new material is expected to enable higher speeds in operation changes (switching). Piezoelectric thin films utilize the property of structural change in response to electrical signals, and are used as a power source for micro devices (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, MEMS) in ink jet printers. However, switching time cannot be adequately controlled with the current generation of piezoelectric thin films. If it is possible to realize high speed switching, expansion to industrial applications and development of higher performance products can be expected. Therefore, using the high brightness synchrotron radiation of Japan's large-scale synchrotron radiation facility SPring-8, this research group investigated the nanodomain structural changes that occur when an electrical field is applied at high speed to a ferroelectric thin film, which is one type of piezoelectric. As a result, the group succeeded in confirming for the first time in the world that the nanodomain crystal orientation of this thin film changes in a time of 2/10 millionths of a second, or 200 nanoseconds (200 ns).

December 22, 2011 - Autopia - Questions Linger on Safety of Airport Body Scanners - Airline passengers will face the long lines, interminable delays and frustrating backups that come with holiday travel. Through it all, they’ll also have to decide whether to submit to one of the 500-plus x-ray or radio wave scanners found in airports nationwide and wonder about their safety. Much of the debate surrounding the increasingly common security scanners revolves around their effectiveness and privacy. But the health implications are coming to the fore as the European Union bans x-ray scanners because of health concerns. Many EU nations will instead use millimeter-wave, lower frequency scanners. Both types use a beam of electromagnetic energy to create an image of a passenger — sans clothing — in an effort to detect weapons and other contraband. Millimeter wave scanners use a portion of the spectrum close to microwaves, while x-ray scanners, of course, use the higher frequency x-ray portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Both devices collect the scattered waves that reflect off the body to create an image. The dose of radiation from the x-ray scanners is very low. But whether it is low enough to be harmless remains a lingering question.

December 22, 2011 - Tri-City Herald - New Hanford kickback, fraud indictments filed - Former congressional candidate Shane Fast has been indicted in federal court for allegedly paying $40,000 in kickbacks to Hanford employees purchasing goods for the federal nuclear reservation. In addition, his nephew has been indicted after being accused of participating in the alleged scheme. And in an unrelated case, a former worker at the Hanford tank farms has been indicted for conspiracy to defraud the government after being accused of claiming overtime he did not work. He is the second former Hanford tank farm worker known to be indicted for the alleged conspiracy. Fast owned Fast Pipe and Supply in Pasco, a subcontractor for Fluor Hanford, a previous Hanford prime contractor. He has been indicted on one count of conspiracy to violate the anti-kickback act, seven counts of violating the anti-kickback act and one count of mail fraud.

December 22, 2011 - Guardian Environment Network - Japanese mothers rise up against nuclear power - Japan's nuclear power industry, which once ignored opposition, now finds its existence threatened by women angered by official opaqueness on radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after it was struck by an earthquake-driven tsunami in March. "Mothers are at the forefront of various grassroots movements that are working together to stop the operation of all nuclear plants in Japan from 2012," Aileen Miyoko Smith, head of Green Action, a non- governmental organisation (NGO) that promotes renewable energy told IPS. More than 100 anti-nuclear demonstrators, most of them women, met with officials of the Nuclear Safety Commission this week and handed over a statement calling for a transparent investigation into the accident and a permanent shutdown of all nuclear power plants.

December 22, 2011 - Nuclear Street - Justice Department OKs Exelon-Constellation Merger - A deal that would create the largest civilian power reactor fleet in the country took another step forward Wednesday as the Justice Department approved the merger between Exelon and Constellation Energy. The DOJ's antitrust division filed papers with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking approval for the merger, according to a Constellation release. The approval followed agreements to divest assets and take other steps to allay concerns about the merged company's power in electricity markets. "With DOJ's action, we are pleased to have reached yet another important milestone in completing our merger with Constellation," Exelon President Christopher M. Crane said in the release. "We continue to expect that we will finalize the merger in early 2012."

December 22, 2011 - French Tribune - Qatar University Eager to Work with CERN - It has been recently revealed that Ilham al –Qaradawi, nuclear physics professor from Qatar University said that the institution was waiting for the reopening of the physics programmes so that they are able to participate in the international research projects with aid of the positron physics knowledge. He also said that they would like to be a part of the nuclear research by the European Organization with CERN for the development of new scientific landmarks with a detailed study on ISOLDE and antimatter, who are both in need of positron physics labs, for their efficient research.

December 22, 2011 - Stuff.co.nz - Muttonbirds in radiation study - New Zealand muttonbirds are being studied to see if they were affected by radiation from Japan's damaged nuclear power plant. Samples are being taken from the birds as part of the research into the effects of radiation from the Fukushima plant, which was severely damaged following the earthquake and tsunamis which hit the country in March. The research aims to determine the degree to which the mutton bird population was exposed to radiation. Experts have said the Fukushima disaster was responsible for the largest single release of radioactivity into the ocean, threatening wildlife and fisheries in the region. Millions of the birds, known as sooty shearwaters, come to this country to breed during the summer months before heading north during the colder southern months. However, it is not thought there would be any radioactivity problems for Stewart Island residents who harvest mutton bird chicks in the autumn.

December 22, 2011 - MIT News - Modeling the spread of radioactivity in seawater - When earthquake-triggered tsunami waves hit Japan in March, the surging water overtopped seawalls and caused massive damage. On top of the loss of life and general destruction, the disaster resulted in a release of radioactive seawater. Researchers Changsheng Chen of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and Robert Beardsley of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute are investigating where that radioactivity may spread, using a mathematical model they developed in part through funding by the MIT Sea Grant College Program. The meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant released several different types of radioactive particles, but scientist are most interested in tracking a particularly persistent radioactive particle known as cesium-137. This chemical has a half-life of 30 years — in other words, it takes about three decades for the particle’s radioactivity to fall by half. If ingested, cesium-137 accumulates in living tissue, and it can travel up the food chain if one animal consumes a plant or animal that ingested contaminated particles.

December 22, 2011 - Asbury Park Press - NJ: Oyster Creek nuclear plant can use creek water - New Jersey environmental officials have kept their end of a deal with the owners of the nation’s oldest nuclear power plant. The Oyster Creek plant will shut down 10 years earlier than expected. And in return, its owners won’t have to build costly cooling towers. On Wednesday, the state Department of Environmental protection gave plant owners Exelon Corp. a permit that lets it keep drawing creek water to cool the plant, and allows it to discharge heated water back into the creek and Barnegat Bay. The hot water is suspected of contributing to algae blooms and increased numbers of stinging jellyfish in the bay. The state says the early closure is a good trade-off for not requiring cooling towers, but environmentalists say the deal is bad for the bay.

December 22, 2011 - PoliticalNews.me - Sens. Portman, Brown Introduce Path Forward to Advance Piketon's American Centrifuge Project - U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Rob Portman (R-OH) outlined path forward to advance USEC’s American Centrifuge Project (ACP) in Piketon, Ohio. Brown and Portman spoke with Energy Secretary Steven Chu and agreed to work with the Administration to advance the project. Following the call, the senators announced bipartisan legislation that would utilize existing resources to provide $150 million in Research Development & Deployment funds for ACP. “Our fight for the American Centrifuge Project and the 4,000 Ohio jobs it would create is far from over,” Brown and Portman said. “Today we spoke with Energy Secretary Chu. During our conversation with the Secretary, we agreed that we would work together with him to ensure that the American Centrifuge Project has the funding necessary to continue its important work.”

December 22, 2011 - Jamestown Sun - Nuclear power here worth some thought - Duane Sand just might be on to something. The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from North Dakota has never been short of ideas, but his latest one might be both timely and feasible. In a wide-ranging discussion Tuesday with The Forum’s Editorial Board, Sand outlined his proposal for a nuclear plant in North Dakota and nine more across the nation. A commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve, Sand served on three nuclear submarines. He’s a student of nuclear energy — its pitfalls, myths and potential. He knows his stuff about the subject and sincerely believes eastern North Dakota would be an ideal site for the start of a new era of nuclear power. It’s not so wild a dream.

December 22, 2011 - Tri-City Herald - 5 violations reported during shutdown at Columbia Generating Station - The nation's nuclear watchdog said five safety violations occurred during this year's maintenance shutdown of the Columbia Generating Station near Richland. Federal safety inspectors classified in a Nov. 2 report three of the events as "more than minor" and called them "violations." All events were determined to be in the "green" category, the lowest on a four-color scale. Because of the low risk factor and the corrective actions that already had been taken, plant operator Energy Northwest will not be cited by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to a letter sent to the company last week. Backup safety systems remained intact during each event and operators never were at risk of losing control, according to the report. Energy Northwest welcomes the agency's inspections, said spokesman Michael Paoli. The plant near Richland still is in the highest category on every safety measure regulated by the NRC, he said.

December 21, 2011 - Oxford University Press - This Day in World History; December 21, 1898; Curies discover radium - Working in an old shed on a sample of pitchblende, or uraninite, using chemical processes to separate different elements, the wife and husband team finally reached their breakthrough. They isolated a new element more radioactive than the uranium studied two years before and called it radium. Five days after their discovery, Marie and Pierre Curie published the first announcement of their find in the weekly notes of a French scientific journal. Marie Sklodowska Curie was born in Poland and came to France in 1891, at age twenty-four, to study physics, chemistry, and mathematics. She advanced rapidly and in 1895 met and married Pierre Curie, an accomplished laboratory physicist and teacher. Searching for a subject for her doctoral research, Marie was intrigued by Henri Becquerel’s announcement in 1896 that uranium gave off some form of energy similar to the X-rays discovered the year before by Wilhelm Röntgen. She began looking for other elements that gave off similar rays, quickly identifying the known element thorium as one. Pierre joined her in the work, and in June 1898, they announced the discovery of a previously unknown element they named polonium after Marie’s homeland, which they found in pitchblende. In the article announcing this find, they coined the term radioactivity for the new phenomenon. Continuing work on pitchblende, they discovered radium later in the year.

December 21, 2011 - Las Vegas Sun - Jaczko should be removed from post - Your defense of Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko’s behavior in your editorial about the Wednesday hearing, in which all five commissioners testified, was shocking. There had already been an internal NRC inspector general’s report that Chairman Jaczko created a “chilled” environment where scientists and engineers were fearful for their jobs if they presented conclusions that were not aligned with the chairman’s views. Then his fellow commissioners, who are individuals with excellent credentials, described the same behavior under oath. I believe there is no worse offense than for scientific information to be tainted by the views of organization management — this should not happen anywhere, let alone in the United States. Intimidation, harassment and fear of retribution should never exist in the workplace, whether in a public or private organization. There is no excuse for Chairman Jaczko still having a job.

December 21, 2011 - Mail Online - Astronomers puzzle over 'cosmic bauble' - or is Nasa just telling us it's Christmas? - Two of earth's most powerful telescopes have discovered a highly unusual - and unusually festive - 'cosmic ornament' in a satellite galaxy of our own. Data from Nasa's Chandra X-ray space telescope and ESA's Newton have been combined to discover a young pulsar - a super-dense neutron star that emits pulses of energy - in the remains of a supernova. It's a highly odd object, as it rotates far more slowly than most similar pulsars - and astronomers are baffled as to why such a young star should be so 'relaxed' Astronomers are struggling to understand why the pulsar - in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way - 'spins' so slowly.

Dece,ber 21. 2011 - Press TV - '1000s die in US due to Japan N-crisis' - A scientific study has found that an estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the US are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant. According to an article published in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services, the estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the US during the 14 weeks following the Fukushima disaster in March are comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. Over that period, the number of deaths, compared with the same period in 2010, was up 4.46 percent, the article said. According to the article, most of the deaths were infants, under the age of one. Studies show that despite infant deaths decreasing by more than 8% this year in the weeks leading up to the Fukushima disaster - the fatalities increased by nearly 2% in the weeks following the nuclear crisis in Japan.

December 21, 2011 - AZoRobotics - CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery and TomoTherapy Widely Accepted at Medical Centers - CyberKnife and TomoTherapy are amongst the most widely accepted radiation oncology therapies across the world. Around 23 top medical centers have installed the CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System and TomoTherapy System for delivering personalised treatments for cancer patients. The types of centres that are using these systems range from small rural community centres to large academic centres. One of the physicians at the Swedish Radiosurgery Center in Seattle explained that these two cancer treatment systems are designed to allow the physician to customize the treatment method according to the patient’s requirements. The treatment techniques provided by these systems include static three-dimensional conformal and stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT). TomoTherapy provides a precise image guidance feature for accurate treatment administration for cancer patients. The CyberKnife system is equipped with automatic abilities for tracking and detecting the tumours and the patient movement. In the USA, medical centers such as the St. John Medical Center, Swedish Medical Center and Centre hospitalier de l’Universite de Montreal (CHUM) have installed both the systems. Japan and Italy are amongst the other countries that have installed both the systems at various medical centers. The CEO of Accuray explained that the CyberKnife system is best suited for treating patients in their early stages of cancer or having localised tumours, while the TomoTherapy is suitable for treating patients in advanced stages of cancer or having complicated tumours. A combination of these two systems offers comprehensive treatment for all oncological treatment requirements.

December 21, 2011 - Globe & Mail - Cutting-edge tech speeds up radiation therapy - Radiation to treat cancer can be life-saving. But anyone who’s ever had the therapy will say the experience isn’t exactly pleasant: alone on a hard bed in a darkened room for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, sometimes wearing an immobilization device, instructed to stay as still as possible – and to relax. But that’s set to change. New technology could make radiation a smoother process for patients, and a far more efficient procedure for radiation therapists. Melanie Davidson and Gordon Chan, medical physicists at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre’s Odette Cancer Centre, have recently started treating cancer patients with volumetric modulated arc therapy, or VMAT. After two years spent testing the technique on those with prostate cancer, the doctors say the advantages of the system over conventional forms of radiotherapy are dramatic.

December 21, 2011 - Times of India - Freedom from cell tower radiation soon? - Sixteen years after the introduction of mobile telephony in India, the government is finally readying the first set of guidelines on electromagnetic field (EMF) radiation from mobile base stations mounted on cellular phone towers.NEW DELHI: Sixteen years after the introduction of mobile telephony in India, the government is finally readying the first set of guidelines on electromagnetic field (EMF) radiation from mobile base stations mounted on cellular phone towers. India has roughly 4 lakh mobile towers according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). These towers also consume a huge amount of energy-about 2.7 crore units of electricity and over 200 crore litres of diesel daily. According to Trai, the 3G/BWA rollout will require extra 1 lakh towers to cater to a total of 100 crore subscribers by 2014. An inter-ministerial committee has concluded that the exposure limit for the radio frequency field (base station emissions) should be fixed at one-tenth of the existing levels. Provisions for continuous online monitoring and display of radiation levels in mobile network frequency range at prominent places in metros/cities, and online data transfer to a central server will need to be ensured.

December 21, 2011 - Press TV - More UK sites contaminated by radiation - Fifteen sites across Britain, some of which are accessible to the public, have been contaminated by radioactivity remained from the military hardware of the World War II. Ministry of Defence (MoD) revealed that more sites in Britain, including current and previous air and naval bases, were identified as contaminated lands. Dozens of the sites are now accessible for the ordinary people and are even grown into homes or businesses. The unsafe sites named by MoD include former SAS headquarters in Hereford, former HMS Daedalus in Portsmouth and RAF Little Rissington in Gloucestershire. According to MoD's report, the contamination was originated from radium used to cover the dials of jets and some other equipment. It was in scrap burnt and dumped in the sites in the 1940s and 1950s, and continues to be radioactive for thousands of years. MoD has come under the constant pressure of many environment critics to reveal the lists of the contaminated sites after it was disclosed that Dalgety Bay in Fife was contaminated with dangerous radioactivity.

December 21, 2011 - Your Nuclear News - Carmanah Solar Lighting Boosts Security at Nuclear Power Facility - In an order valued at nearly $400,000 USD, a large US power utility in the Southwestern United States has selected the EverGEN 1530 solar LED outdoor lighting system for the second installment in a perimeter fence security lighting project. The solar lighting systems by Carmanah (TSX: CMH)(Pink Sheets: CMHXF) are being employed to increase the security of a nuclear power generating facility by providing backup safety lighting in the unlikely event of power failure, allowing the facility to maintain critical security functions that are mandated by Homeland Security. The combined value of both orders by the power utility represents over $1.5 million in solar security lighting. “It’s clear that Carmanah solar lighting products are meeting the needs of the North American market when major power utility companies are adopting our technology”.

December 21, 2011 - Nuclear Street - EcoSys Wins Software Contract for Constellation Nuclear Fleet - EcoSys announced Tuesday that it will provide cost management software for Constellation Energy Nuclear Group's five reactors at the Calvert Cliffs, Ginna and Nine Mile Point nuclear plants. The utility, which is in the advanced stages of a merger with Exelon, will use EcoSys' Enterprise Planning and Controls for project cost management and project controls reporting. The system uses Web-based spreadsheets, built-in dashboards and automated reports to help managers gauge program performance. According to an EcoSys release, Constellation will use the software for capital projects as well as operations and maintenance. Its functionality includes forecasting, purchase order management, earned value management and a range of other tools. Constellation will use it in tandem with its existing software, which includes Oracle's Primavera P6 and E-Business Suite.

December 21, 2011 - Citizens for Legitimate Government - 230 tons of radioactive sewage found in tunnel at Fukushima nuclear plant - Some nuclear safety experts: Japanese government lied 19 Dec 2011 there is about 230 tons of radiation sewage in the tunnel of centralized reject processing facility at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. Although Japanese Prime minister Noda Yoshihiko said that there is no more crisis on Dec. 16, some of the nuclear safety experts stressed that Japanese government lied. According to Japanese mass media report, the employees who were in charge of checking the nuclear plant found that there was radiation sewage in the tunnel on Dec. 18, about 50 centimeters in height.

December 21, 2011 - Chattanooga Times Free Press - Tritium detected in Sequoyah groundwater - TVA's nuclear troubles seem to be mounting. The utility now has active safety concern flags from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission raised at all three of its operating nuclear plants. Additionally, Tennessee Valley Authority officials acknowledged on Tuesday they have found elevated levels of tritium in a groundwater sample taken from a monitoring well at the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant. TVA spokesman Ray Golden said there is no indication the radioactive material has migrated in groundwater beyond the Soddy-Daisy plant's property, which borders the Tennessee River. Golden also said a new Watts Bar Nuclear Plant "white" safety finding was raised in September by NRC inspectors and TVA was notified last week. Golden said it was an equipment issue and is associated with the nuclear security division at Watts Bar, not the plant's operating system.

December 21, 2011 - Associated Press - Nuclear waste site hunt could point to granite - The likely death of a planned nuclear waste site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain has left federal agencies looking for a possible replacement. A national laboratory working for the U.S. Department of Energy is now eying granite deposits stretching from Georgia to Maine as potential sites, along with big sections of Minnesota and Wisconsin where that rock is prevalent. Three decades after the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act said the federal government would handle disposal of high-level radioactive waste, the United States still has no agreed-upon solution for where and how to dispose of about 70,000 metric tons of it. About 10 percent is from the military's nuclear weapons programs; most of the rest is piling up at commercial reactor sites around the country.

December 21, 2011 - Roll Call News - Reid Went to Mat to Get Jaczko on NRC - After pulling out all the stops and twice putting blanket holds on executive branch nominations to get Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko in place, it’s no surprise that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is sticking by his man. “Greg Jaczko, as everyone knows worked for me, is actually a very brilliant man,” the Nevada Democrat said last week. “His No. 1 concern during the entire time he’s been at the NRC is nuclear safety,” Reid continued. “We are so fortunate as a country, and really as a world, to have the good work that he did following the terrible disaster we had in Japan. He focused on safety. I am sorry to say a number of people that work with him, as commissioners, are not concerned about safety. They are concerned about the nuclear industry. He is concerned about the American people, the so-called consumer.”

December 21, 2011 - Bloomberg News - NRC Head Jaczko Satisfied With Response to Fukushima Crisis - U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko said he’s satisfied with Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501)’s efforts to end the crisis at the wrecked Fukushima atomic plant. The melted fuel in the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has cooled enough to prevent any further releases of radiation beyond the station, Jaczko told reporters today in Tokyo after a visit to the station. He spoke four days after Japanese officials declared that the reactors, which were damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, have been brought to a state known as cold shutdown. Some nuclear scientists disputed that the term accurately described conditions at the plant. Jaczko called the declaration a “tremendous milestone.” “I feel very comfortable that they have completed really the requirements that are necessary to move on to the next stage,” he said. “There’s really no energy left in the reactor to have an off-site release of radiation.”

December 21 2011 - POGO - POGO Submits Recommendations for Improving DOE Scientific Integrity - Late last week, POGO submitted a letter to the Department of Energy (DOE), urging the Department to strengthen its scientific integrity policies, make documents relating to allegations of scientific misconduct available to the public, and improve oversight of contractors' investigations of alleged misconduct by establishing an Office of Research Integrity (ORI). A 2009 memorandum issued by President Obama asked government agencies and departments to come up with recommendations to improve “transparency in the preparation, identification and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking,” and submit them to the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). In a follow-up announcement on October 3, agencies and departments were asked to submit their final draft policies by December 17 for review by OSTP. On December 16, DOE submitted its “draft final” plan on scientific integrity to OSTP. DOE told POGO it will now go through another round of revisions. While DOE did share its preliminary response to OSTP with POGO, which is essentially an inventory of their current scientific integrity policies, they have thus far not made the draft final plan public. POGO joins the Union of Concerned Scientists in urging DOE and all other agencies to make their plans public, following the example of a handful of other departments and agencies. One of the areas in which POGO strongly recommends strengthening scientific integrity at DOE—and other departments and agencies—is in the oversight of contractors’ investigations of alleged research misconduct. In its letter, POGO pressed DOE to strengthen its oversight and make the process more transparent.

December 21, 2011 - Fremont News-Messenger - Kucinich concerned with cracks at Davis-Besse - While a FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company spokeswoman says the company's Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station is safe, not everyone is convinced. U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has indicated he is not satisfied with and does not trust information FirstEnergy has disseminated about cracks in the plant's shield building. "FirstEnergy continues to try to prioritize profits over safety," Kucinich wrote in a news release Wednesday. Kucinich said he and staff found discrepancies between statements issued by FirstEnergy and information from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the government agency charged with overseeing nuclear energy operations in the nation.

December 21, 2011 - St. Louis Business Journal - Ameren asks for 20-year extension for Callaway nuclear plant  - Ameren Missouri filed an application with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission .U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Latest from The Business Journals Babcock & Wilcox joint venture wins maintenance contract for Progress Energy nuclear plantsNRC transfers control of Progress Energy nuclear facilities to Duke EnergyProgress Energy nuclear facilities control transferred to Duke Energy Follow this company .(NRC) to extend its operating license of the Callaway Energy Center for 20 years. The power plant's current 40-year license expires in 2024. The extension would allow the facility to remain operational until 2044. Cleveland Reasoner, vice president of engineering, said the 1,500-page application to the NRC will ensure the plant continues to operate as normal. “We’re confident that this is a high quality application that provides the necessary information to enable Callaway to continue providing safe, reliable, low-cost electricity beyond the term of the original license,” he said in a statement.

December 21, 2011 - Tehachapi News - Tehachapi’s nuclear connection - The United States Navy currently operates 103 total nuclear power plants including 73 submarines, 11 aircraft carriers (USS Enterprise has eight reactors and all others have two each), and four training/research prototype plants. Tehachapi has three young men who have been accepted into the Navy Nuclear Power Training Command Center. The training is in three phases: A School, Power School and Prototype, aka “the pipeline.” Michael Devlin and Jason Kerns are in school at Goose Creek, South Carolina. One of their instructors there is a Bakersfield native, Chief Pelletier. Pelletier made chief in 7 1/2 years - considered quick in the Navy. Ben Lokey has completed his training in Ballston Spa, New York, and will be reporting to the U.S. aircraft carrier the Carl Vinson on Wednesday Dec. 21. The ship is in the Persian Gulf area and Lokey will be flown out to the carrier. To be eligible to be in the nuclear program you have to qualify in the top 3 to 5 percent of all Navy enlistment scores. The Nuclear program requires that your enlistment is extended to six years, as the first two years are dedicated to an intense training/schooling to become nuclear qualified.

December 20, 2011 - Nutrition Horizon - Wayne State Study Finds Soybean Compounds Enhances Effects of Cancer Radiotherapy - A Wayne State University researcher has shown that compounds found in soybeans can make radiation treatment of lung cancer tumors more effective while helping to preserve normal tissue. A team led by Gilda Hillman, Ph.D., professor of radiation oncology at Wayne State University's School of Medicine and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, had shown previously that soy isoflavones, a natural, nontoxic component of soybeans, increase the ability of radiation to kill cancer cells in prostate tumors by blocking DNA repair mechanisms and molecular survival pathways, which are turned on by the cancer cells to survive the damage radiation causes. At the same time, isoflavones act to reduce damage caused by radiation to surrounding cells of normal, noncancerous tissue. This was shown in a clinical trial conducted at WSU and Karmanos for prostate cancer patients treated with radiotherapy and soy tablets.

December 20, 2011 - OEN - Nuclear Power to be Banned in California! - California is a beautiful place. There really is no place like it. There are the primal, serene beaches, the rolling valleys and towering mountains all within a couple hours drive. The elements of California, not only make it a beautiful place to be, but an ecologically and agriculturally rich region. California is beautiful and not simply because of it diverse environment, but also for its politics. Not necessarily that there are a bunch of proverbial free thinkers, though that is nice. California politics is beautiful because law allows people to gather signatures of endorsement and to make law be voted on. If the California nuclear initiative is passed all Californians will have the opportunity to vote on whether or not nuclear power plants on the pristine California beaches should be shut down until they can find a place to put the used fuel, which is alarmingly radioactive considering the term "used.' In Fukushima the storage pools for used nuclear material was on site and much on top of the reactors where the explosions took place resulting in the worst nuclear disaster and biggest single release of radioactive debris and particulate ever. The California nuclear initiative is a preventative act against the likelihood of accident or inevitability of catastrophe of one magnitude or another. California is a beautiful place and allows for the preservation of that beauty. Please, if you are in California or know someone in California distribute this among your Californian friends, for in their hands is the power to promote or prohibit nuclear power. This is what government does and the people should direct what government promotes and prohibits, not the other way to.

December 20, 2011 - Bloomberg News - NRC Head Jaczko Satisfied With Response to Fukushima Disaster - U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko said he’s satisfied with Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s efforts to end the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Jaczko said the melted fuel in the reactors has cooled enough to prevent any further releases of radiation beyond the station. He was speaking to reporters today in Tokyo after a visit to the wrecked Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant.

December 20, 2011 - WTOP - Body scanners can see perspiration as a potential weapon - While X-ray body scanners used in airports face concerns about potentially increasing cancer cases, a safer type of scanner has been plagued by another problem: a high rate of false alarms. The scanner, known as the millimeter-wave machine, uses low-level electromagnetic waves that, unlike X-rays, have not been linked to cancer. The Transportation Security Administration already uses the millimeter-wave machine and says both types of scanners are highly effective at detecting explosives hidden under clothing. But two of Europe's largest countries, France and Germany, have decided to forgo the millimeter-wave scanners because of false alarms triggered by folds in clothing, buttons and even sweat. In Germany, the false positive rate was 54 percent, meaning that every other person who went through the scanner had to undergo at least a limited pat-down that found nothing. Jan Korte, a German parliament member who focuses on homeland security, called the millimeter-wave scanner "a defective product."

December 20, 2011 - Space Daily - RXTE Detects Heartbeat of Smallest Black Hole Candidate - An international team of astronomers has identified a candidate for the smallest-known black hole using data from NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). The evidence comes from a specific type of X-ray pattern, nicknamed a “heartbeat” because of its resemblance to an electrocardiogram. The pattern until now has been recorded in only one other black hole system. Named IGR J17091-3624 after the astronomical coordinates of its sky position, the binary system combines a normal star with a black hole that may weigh less than three times the sun’s mass. That is near the theoretical mass boundary where black holes become possible.

December 20, 2011 - Haaretz - U.S. official: North Korea leader died just as deal was struck to halt nuclear program - Senior U.S. official says Obama administration was about to secure deal to transfer food aid to North Korea in return of the suspension of the country's controversial uranium enrichment program. The United States was about to announce a deal that would put a stop to North Korea's uranium enrichment program when it was announced that the country's leader, Kim Jong Il, had died, a senior U.S. official told CBS on Tuesday. The Obama administration, according to the official, was due to announce that the U.S. would make a large donation of food aid to North Korea, and in turn North Korea was to announce the suspension of its controversial uranium enrichment program.

December 20, 2011 - Roll Call News - Reid Went to Mat to Get Jaczko on NRC - Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko has come under fire recently from his fellow NRC commissioners regarding alleged problems with his leaders. After pulling out all the stops and twice putting blanket holds on executive branch nominations to get Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko in place, it’s no surprise that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is sticking by his man. “Greg Jaczko, as everyone knows worked for me, is actually a very brilliant man,” the Nevada Democrat said last week. “His No. 1 concern during the entire time he’s been at the NRC is nuclear safety,” Reid continued. “We are so fortunate as a country, and really as a world, to have the good work that he did following the terrible disaster we had in Japan. He focused on safety. I am sorry to say a number of people that work with him, as commissioners, are not concerned about safety. They are concerned about the nuclear industry. He is concerned about the American people, the so-called consumer.”

December 20, 2011 - Hereford Times - "Low-level" radioactive material found on former Hereford SAS base -  Low-level radioactive material has been found at the former Hereford home of the SAS, the Government has said. Radium-226, described as a “low-level contaminant”, has been identified on the city’s Stirling Lines base, used by the Special Air Service until 1999 when it moved to its current Credenhill home. Giving a written statement in the House of Commons yesterday, Minister for Defence Personnel, Welfare & Veterans, Andrew Robathan revealed that Stirling Lines, now occupied by housing, is one of nine military sites in the UK contaminated with radium-226. “In each of these cases the principal source of contamination was found to be radium-226, a low-level contaminant,” he said in response to a question by Scottish National Party member Angus Robertson.

December 20, 2011 - Fairbanks Daily News-Miner - Radiation levels - Born and raised here and I cannot believe we have borough employees driving around testing the smoke in the air from our wood stoves and not giving us the readings on the radiation that is raining and snowing down on us from Fukushima. It would be nice if they tested our wood smoke in the air and also published the readings on the radiation here. Would like to have a “fall out” reading on the Chitina salmon and moose next year please, and a “walk through” reading in the grocery store aisles. Perhaps a classroom or student could take this on as a science fair project and public service?

December 20, 2011 - Industrial Info Resources - Areva Halts Nuclear Projects to Reduce Debts, an Industrial Info News Alert - Europe's largest nuclear engineering firm, Areva S.A. (EPA:CEI) (Paris, France), will cancel planned expansions at a number of unspecified French nuclear plants as part of a major cost-cutting exercise to get the company out of financial difficulties. The French company, which expects operating losses for this year to amount to around EUR 1.6 billion ($2.1 billion), blamed the impact that the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has had on nuclear build projects and its uranium mining operations.

December 20, 2011 - Agence France Presse - Small fire at Japan nuclear lab; no radiation leak - A building housing an experimental nuclear reactor in Japan caught fire today, but there was no leak of radioactive materials, officials said, amid nervousness over Japan's atomic industry. The quasi-public Japan Atomic Energy Agency said sound insulation on the ceiling of a building housing a reactor in central Ibaraki prefecture caught fire around 9:30 am (local time). Sparks from welding tools ignited the glass wool insulation as a maintenance crew worked to place a covering over the roof, said an agency spokesman. The reactor has been stopped for routine inspection since February. Firefighters were at the scene, but the fire died out on its own two hours after starting, the spokesman added. "There was no change to monitoring posts around the reactor," the spokesman said.

December 20, 2011 - Saint Paul Business Journal - Feds put Minnesota on short list for nuclear-waste storage - Almost 30 years after the federal government started looking for a place to store the nation's nuclear waste, Minnesota has turned up on its short list. For years, the Yucca Mountain in Nevada was the only site considered, but the Obama Administration has told the federal Energy Department to find another spot because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is opposed to the site, The Washington Post reports. So the government is now looking at places with granite deposits, including areas from Georgia to Maine, and the Lake Superior region of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Government officials say they also like Minnesota because there is little seismic activity in the state.

December 20, 2011 - Jerusalem Post - Public warned against ‘radioactive bracelets' - Bracelets of EQ type worn for “improving balance” found to have high amount of uranium concentrations. As a cautionary measure, the Health Ministry and the Environmental Protection Ministry issued a public warning on Monday not to wear bracelets that release radioactivity. The bracelets do not issue significant amounts of radiation, the ministries said, and there is no significant danger, “but at the same time, we recommend not to wear them.” The bracelets are of the EQ type, worn for “improving balance.” They are made from the radioactive material thorium 232 with a higher concentration than permitted. After the bracelets were exam