October 4, 2016 – ABC.net.au – Marie Curie – Marie Curie was a brilliant scientist who won the Nobel Peace Prize twice and was famous for her work with radioactivity and X-rays . She was born in Poland but spent most of her professional life in France . What was her life like, what shaped her as a scientist in the days when it was unusual for women to work in this profession? Trevor Chappell spoke with Małgorzata Ewa Rosen– who is Curator of a museum dedicated to Marie Curie (The Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum of Polish Chemical Society in Warsaw).

October 4, 2016 – Triple Pundit – Fukushima Radiation Now Covers the Pacific Ocean – Some rather disturbing news came out this weekend about the impact of the nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima. While the incident took place five years ago and is no longer in the news, that does not mean it has been resolved. A recent report claims radioactive contamination from the accident has now spread across the entire Pacific Ocean, the massive body of water that covers nearly a third of Earth’s surface. Scientists now say the Pacific is at least five to 10 times more radioactive than it was when the U.S. began testing nuclear weapons there. Western Canada experienced levels of radioactive iodine-131 that were 300 times higher than normal background levels since the accident. Pacific herring have been found bleeding from their mouths, gills and eyes. As the contamination made its way across the water, Oregon tuna were found in 2013 with radiation levels triple their previous levels. Starfish began dying off. The following year, California beaches recorded radiation levels that had increased by 500 percent.

October 4, 2016 – The Recorder – Neal, in Rowe, backs federal bill for nuke fuel storage – Congressman Richard E. Neal brought good news to Heath in the form of an $88,343 grant that will pay for up-to-date breathing apparatus for a dozen members of the Heath Fire Department. But any news about how long Rowe will keep storing nuclear waste from the former Yankee Rowe nuclear plant is more complicated. Meeting with Selectmen’s Chairwoman Marilyn Wilson, Yankee Rowe’s Robert Capstick, state Rep. Paul Mark, and members of the Yankee Rowe Spent Fuel Storage and Removal Community Advisory Board, Neal said he has signed on to the Dold bill, which would provide up to $100 million for 13 communities, including Rowe, that have borne the responsibility for temporary storage of spent fuel for dozens of years.

October 4, 2016 – The Engineer – Manchester student makes thorium breakthrough – Elizabeth Wildman, a member of a Manchester research group led by Prof Steve Liddle, found compounds where unusual forms of phosphorus – known as the devil’s element – are stabilised by thorium, a radioactive chemical element named after the Norse god of thunder that can be used as a nuclear fuel. “This has been an exciting experience and I am delighted my work has been recognised in this way,” said Elizabeth. “It seems the Norse god of thunder has tamed the devil’s element.” The research examined how ‘soft’ elements such as phosphorus can interact with thorium in unusual bonding environments. It examined species with single and double thorium-phosphorus bonds, and managed to trap a naked phosphorous atom between two thorium ions. The work was published in the journal Nature Communications.

October 4, 2016 – Daily Dunkin Democrat – Tests underway on creek in Hazelwood area that turned white – Water samples from an eastern Missouri creek that turned white over the weekend are still being tested and it’s too early to conclude what caused the problem, the state Department of Resources said Monday. Coldwater Creek, which runs through the Hazelwood area of St. Louis, has been a source of concern for area residents for years after radioactive contamination was confirmed in several yards that back up to the waterway. The milky white water raised new worries on Sunday morning, but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers insisted Monday that whatever is in the water has nothing to do with the agency’s remediation efforts to remove soil contaminated by remnants of the nation’s early nuclear weapons program.

October 4, 2016 – Doctors Lounge – CT Colonography May Be Useful for Aneurysm Detection – Routine assessment of the aorta during a computed tomography colonography (CTC) may aid in aneurysm detection, according to a study published online Sept. 21 in the Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Oncology. Manar Khashram, M.B.Ch.B., from Christchurch Hospital in New Zealand, and colleagues sought to determine the impact that CTC had on small aneurysm referrals and to compare baseline characteristics of those referred by CTC with those referred by other radiological modalities. The researchers found that 96 of the 566 consecutive patients with small aneurysms (17 percent) had their aneurysm detected by CTC. The rest of the patients with small aneurysms had them detected by other radiological modalities. Patients with small aneurysms detected by CTC were two years older, on average, and were less likely to have a smoking history.

October 4, 2016 – Eurasia Review – Misguided Perceptions On Nuclear Terrorism – Nuclear terrorism in real is a quite petrifying phenomenon, but there is no tangible study available that this threat is genuine in a world where nuclear technology is heavily regulated and secured. Since there is no terrorist incident have yet been reported which involves nuclear weapons, there is disagreement among the analysts that how serious the threat of nuclear terrorism could be. However, such arguments should not be a source of complacency. Few states have played this threat up for political purposes as a lever against countries that are not likeminded. For example the same approach was used after 9/11, when terrorism was being used to achieve certain interests. The main aspect of Nuclear Security Summits started from 2010 and beyond was to highlight the nuclear dangers emanating from Iran and other countries were played up. While there was a narrative against these countries, none of the forums allowed them space to appear and give their perspectives on the issue.

October 4, 2016 – EasternEye – Unease in Marshalls over controversial nuclear case taking on Pakistan, India and UK – AS the Marshall Islands awaits an international court ruling on October 5 over whether its lawsuit against three nuclear powers can proceed, many in the western Pacific nation question the merit of the David-versus-Goliath legal battle. The country of 55,000 people is taking on India, Pakistan and Britain in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), arguing they have failed to comply with the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Initially the lawsuit was even more ambitious – also including China, France, Israel, North Korea, Russia and the United States – none of which recognised the ICJ’s jurisdiction on the matter. The Marshalls has a long, bitter history with nuclear weapons, making it one of the few nations that can argue with credibility before the ICJ about their impact.

October 4, 2016 – Deseret News – Students encouraged to submit artwork for the 2016 National Radon Poster Contest – The Utah Department of Environmental Quality is encouraging schoolchildren to submit artwork for the 2016 National Radon Poster Contest by Oct. 20. Children ages 9-18 enrolled in a public, private, territorial, tribal, Department of Defense or home school are eligible to participate. Members of a sponsoring club, such as a Scouting organization or an art, computer, science or Four-H, also are eligible. The contest focuses on raising awareness of radon, an invisible gas that can cause lung cancer. According to the Department of Environmental Quality, 1 in 3 homes in Utah have elevated levels of radon gas. All posters will be subject to the following judging criteria: content-accuracy, visual communication of topic, reproducibility and originality.

October 4, 2016 – NDTV – Supreme Court to Scrutinise Impact of Mobile Tower Radiation; Seeks Centre’s Report – The Supreme Court Monday initiated a scrutiny of “deleterious” effects of radiation emanating from mobile towers and sought a report from the Centre on several aspects including steps taken to enforce standards for such emissions. “What are adverse impacts of such mobile towers? Is there any agency to monitor? Have you (Department of Telecom) got a system in place to enforce the standards, if any, for radiation from such towers,” a bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices C Nagappan and A M Khanwilkar asked. The bench directed Additional Solicitor General P S Patwalia, appearing for the DoT, to file a report apprising the court about issues including the effects of radiation and steps taken to contain them.

October 4, 2016 – Gas to Power – China to account for over 50% of world nuclear growth through 2040 – Keen to clean up hazardous air pollution, the Chinese government is embracing nuclear power and seeks to shift from coal to gas generation – although fuel costs still make operators favour coal. As for new nuclear, China has an additional 20 reactors under construction, which, if completed, will add more than 22 GW to its existing base.

October 4, 2016 – The Herald-Palladium – Cook Unit 2 offline; $250 million project planned – The Unit 2 reactor at the Cook Nuclear Plant was shut down this morning for a planned refueling and maintenance outage. Work during the outage will include a $250 million project to replace the reactor’s high-pressure turbine and all three low-pressure turbines, said plant spokesman Bill Schalk. That work has been in planning stages for more than five years, he said. The reactor is expected to return to service by the end of the year. The reactor was scheduled to be shut down at midnight. In advance of the outage, power for Unit 2 was reduced to 50 percent Sunday night, he said.

October 4, 2016 – NL Times – Report: Keeping Borssele nuclear plant open can cost €500 mil. – If electricity prices stay at their current level or decline further, losses suffered from the struggling Borssele nuclear plant can amount to 500 million euros, according to an investigation done by consultancy Spring Associates, ANP reports. Only a doubling in the electricity prices would make it worthwhile to keep the plant running, according to the consultancy. They believe the best option is to close the nuclear power plant now and dismantle it later. This would keep the losses from increasing. The dismantling can happen once there is money for it. According to Spring Associates, the same was done with the Dodewaard nuclear power plant. It was closed down and the costs for deconstruction were postponed indefinitely.

October 4, 2016 – The Standard – Kenya not ready to generate nuclear energy – Six years ago, Kenya announced it was going to build a nuclear power plant, which would generate 1,000MW (1GW) of electricity. By 2030, the country hopes to produce 4GW from nuclear sources. This implies that nuclear will at that time account for 19 per cent of Kenya’s total energy output, second to hydroelectric power. I am highly pessimistic about Africa’s largest geothermal energy producer’s capacity to harness and safely utilize nuclear energy.

October 4, 2016 – MassLive – Rowe seeks federal compensation for hosting nuclear waste at former atomic power plant – Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station shut down in 1992, and was demolished and decommissioned by 2007, but the fenced and isolated site on the upper Deerfield River still hosts 127 tons of spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste in 16 concrete casks under 24-hour security. The tiny town of Rowe is one of about a dozen communities nationwide affected by the presence of nuclear waste, but no longer benefiting economically from the presence of a functioning reactor. On Monday, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal and state Sen. Paul Mark (D-Peru) toured the site as guests of the Rowe Board of Selectmen. Mark is a member of the Yankee Rowe Spent Fuel Storage & Removal Citizens Advisory Committee. Neal, who represents the state’s 1st Congressional District, assured local officials that he supports bipartisan legislation in Washington that would compensate communities that are forced to store nuclear waste.

October 4 ,2016 – Inquisitr – Russia Preparing Its Citizens For A Nuclear War With The West As The US Suspends Ceasefire Negotiations – Russia is reportedly preparing its citizens for a full blown nuclear war against the West. The country’s officials and its media have claimed that the West, led by the United States of America, is planning to launch a nuclear attack against Russia, Mirror reports. Russian officials are now trying to prove that they are ready for whatever is to come, as they announced on Friday that Moscow already has enough underground shelters for its 12 million people and the rest of the nation will soon follow on its footsteps. Zvezda, a channel of the country’s defense ministry, had released a headline last week that said “Schizophrenics from America are sharpening nuclear weapons for Moscow.” Also as part of their preparation for war, the country’s officials have announced that a staggering 40 million of its citizens are set to take part in a nuclear disaster drill between October 4 and 7. That is almost a third of Russia’s population. Along with them, almost 200,000 specialists from the “emergency rescue divisions” with 50,000 different equipment are set to be involved in the four-day drill. The Russian Ministry for Civil Defense made the announcement via its official website and has called the 4-day long program a “civil defense, emergency evacuation and disaster preparedness drill”.

October 4, 2016 – The Daily Progress – Reactor at Cook Nuclear Plant getting refueling, maintenance – Officials say a nuclear reactor in southwestern Michigan is being shut down for a refueling and maintenance outage. Cook Nuclear Plant spokesman Bill Schalk says work during the outage for the Unit 2 reactor will include a $250 million project to replace the reactor’s high-pressure turbine and all three low-pressure turbines. The reactor is expected to return to service by the end of the year. Indiana Michigan Power says the work will ensure reliable power generation for decades.

October 4, 2016 – Los Angeles Times – 50 years after ‘we almost lost Detroit,’ America’s nuclear power industry faces even graver doubts – The history of nuclear power in the United States has been marked by numerous milestones, many of them bad — accidents, construction snafus, engineering incompetence, etc., etc. One anniversary of an incident that has cast a long shadow over the nuclear power industry’s claim for safety will be marked this week. On Oct. 5, 1966 — that’s 50 years ago Wednesday — Detroit Edison’s Fermi-1 nuclear plant suffered a partial meltdown, caused by a piece of floating shrapnel inside the container vessel.

October 4, 2016 – ScientistLive – 3D-printed ‘AbdoMan’ could transform radiotherapy – A 3D-printed human torso is helping doctors safely and reliably model ‘internal radiation’ treatments for cancer. AbdoMan, created by a team at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, replicates the uptake of radioactivity within the abdomen of a human patient. Researchers fill AbdoMan with a radioactive solution to replicate the complex distribution of radioactivity in tumours and normal tissue within a body organ, such as the liver. This allows them to create images that simulate the distribution of the radiation doses delivered by internal forms of radiotherapy. Researchers at the University of Oxford, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the company Sirtex Medical Limited will use AbdoMan to model radiation doses from Y-90 resin microspheres – an internal radiation therapy that delivers radiation directly to liver tumours.

October 4, 2016 – New York Daily News – Sen. Schumer pushes feds to fix lax laws that allow almost anyone to get radioactive bomb-making materials – The feds need to revamp nuclear licensing rules to restrict terrorists from getting their hands on radioactive materials that can be used to make a dirty bomb, Sen. Schumer said Sunday. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission currently has rules that are so lax almost anyone can buy dangerous amounts of radioactive materials, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report cited by Schumer. “The GAO did the right thing by exposing this ‘dirty bomb’ secret and now we must finish the job by pushing to close this loophole while taking a hard look at just who is being granted access to these dangerous materials,” Schumer said. The call for better nuclear oversight comes a little over two weeks after suspected bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, detonated bombs in Seaside Park, N.J. and in Chelsea 11 hours later on Sept. 17.

October 4, 2016 – WRDW 12 – Nuclear waste shipment from Canada to Savannah River Site have been suspended – A shipment of liquid high-level nuclear waste from Canada to the Savannah River Site was postponed. Officials with the SRS said several environmental groups filed a lawsuit in August 2016 seeking a full Environmental Impact Statement of the proposed waste shipments from Ontario to SRS. The DOE did not prepare the statement and only prepared a supplement analysis that was conducted without public input. “For over three years since our initial request, DOE has staunchly refused to allow formal public input into a full EIS on the unnecessary import of highly radioactive waste liquid waste from Canada and we are optimistic that our initial victory in halting the shipments will yield the EIS we are seeking,” said Tom Clements, director of SRS Watch.

October 4, 2016 – Key West News – FPL starts plume work at Turkey Point – Florida Power & Light has started the process to draw back hyper-saline water generated from the Turkey Point nuclear power plant cooling canals that is threatening the Florida Keys water supply. Several years ago, FPL dug a deep well at the plant just north of the Keys and the company, starting last week, began using it to draw back the saltwater plume from the Biscyane Bay.

October 4, 2016 – MIT News – Benoit Forget: Unraveling complexities of nuclear reactors – In order to devise new designs for safer, more efficient nuclear reactors, it is essential to be able to simulate the reactors’ performance at a very high level of detail. But because the nuclear reactions taking place in these reactor cores are quite complex, such simulations can strain the capabilities of even the most advanced supercomputer systems. That’s a challenge that Benoit Forget has been tackling throughout his research career: how to provide efficient, high-fidelity simulations on modern computing architectures, and thus enable the development of the next generation of reactors. Addressing those challenges has earned Forget tenure in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, where he is now an associate professor.

October 4, 2016 – San Antonio Express News – Do nuclear plants have a future in low-carbon world? – Nuclear power is not only emissions-free, but also generates constant streams of electricity, regardless of whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. And with pressure building to cut carbon emissions, the threat of nuclear power plants going out of business is prompting government regulators to tinker with power markets and look at direct subsidies.

October 4, 2016 – KRWG – Trinity Test Site Tour Met With Protest – New Mexico residents living near the site of the first atomic bomb have held their annual demonstration as visitors caravanned into the Trinity Test Site for a tour. The Alamogordo Daily News reports Tularosa Basin Downwinders protested Saturday as caravanners enter the site that is opened twice a year to visitors. The group says the 1945 Trinity Test irreparably altered the gene pools of residents in surrounding communities such as the historic Hispanic village of Tularosa. Members say descendants have been plagued with cancer and other illnesses.

October 4, 2015 – Albuquerque Journal – Ground fall at WIPP – Worker safety at WIPP is at front and center after a collapsed portion of the ceiling was discovered earlier this week.
According to a letter sent to WIPP employees from Nuclear Waste Partnership president Phil Breidenbach on Friday, the ground fall occurred at the entrance to Panel 4, which has been sealed since 2010. A U.S. Department of Energy spokesman said the ground fall was discovered on Sept. 27 during an inspection, but it is unknown when the collapse actually occurred.