Nuclear waste issues freeze permits for U.S. power plants

"There are currently 104 operating nuclear reactors at 64 plants across the country. Half are over 30 years old."

 http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/09/news/economy/nuclear-plants-waste/index.htm?iid=HP_LN&hpt=hp_t3

AN Open Letter to Virginia Activists on Keep the Uranium Ban in VA

Comment:  Please vote to keep the Ban in VA plus write the leaders of VA and tell them to keep the ban too!

AN Open Letter to Virginia Activists on Keep the Uranium Ban in VA
Greetings

We need everyone's participation to prevail against the imminent threat of uranium mining in Virginia.

Lifting the moratorium would open the floodgates to numerous mining opportunists throughout Virginia and with questionable safety nets and oversight. If mining happens then Virginia will become environmentally defiled forever. Contaminated water sources would bring a blight upon Virginia and compromise the health of its citizens for many generations. Watershed left in the wake of mining would stand as a ready vehicle to deliver contaminants of mining wastes as containment structures fail in future years. It is a set up for perpetual if not immediate disaster. The nightmare of "dead zones" and "sacrificial area" is but a vote away. Virginians are largely unaware of the environmental implications associated with uranium mining. The bulk of information presented by the media has been paid for by VUI (Virginia Uranium Incorporated). We need to change that.

We are asking for your help in this grass roots effort to keep the ban on mining Virginia intact.
We are asking you to spread the word, to call your state representatives and implore them to "keep the ban".
We are asking you to write letters to the editor stating your concerns.
-call and write your representatives
-lobby them
-Bring the message to church, business,schools
-Visit your town council, board of supervisors, etc. Ask for and expect a resolution condemning the mining of Virginia
-Organize a local chapter to stand united.
-Do what you can to bring this subject out of the closet and fully exposed as the pestilent folly for which it is.

The mining proponents are hoping that we will apathetically sleep through this corporate rollover. But we are waking up. We realize the value of our water and air. We feel the potential and power within ourselves to stand firm and protect this land as inheritors of a sacred place. A victory in " keeping the ban" will bolster our efforts on every environmental front. The unity we will achieve will strengthen all of our environmental efforts to keep Virginia clean and its citizens healthy.

Thank You
Friend of the Keep the Ban

I include here links pertaining to this issue:
http://keeptheban.org/
http://keeptheban.org/?page_id=237
 (Please note that there is a statewide petition which you can sign online at this site.)

The Endangered Roanoke River Needs Your Help!
https://secure3.convio.net/citnet/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=603
Informative Blogs:

http://www.pecva.org/anx/index.cfm/1,391,0,44,html/Uranium
http://www.southernenvironment.org/virginia/uranium_mining_in_virginia/
http://lifeincva.blogspot.com/
http://uraniumfreevirginia.blogspot.com/
http://virginiaagainsturanium.blogspot.com/
http://prideva.blogspot.com/
http://wise-uranium.org/
http://dls.state.va.us/groups/cec/Uranium/meetings.htm
http://danvilleregionalfoundation.org/news/2010/20100618-UraniumStudyProposals.php
http://www2.godanriver.com/news/2010/apr/01/virginia_beach_outlines_uranium_concerns-ar-270571/

http://www.earthworksaction.org/pubs/ComparisonsReportFinal.pdf
Comparison of Predicted and Actual Water Quality at Hardrock Mines

http://204.12.38.203/archives/34/lewis.pdf
Keeping Agriculture Alive in the Shadow of a Uranium Mine: Potential Effects and Regulatory Solutions for Virginia

THE TRINITY TEST: "Hanford nuclear reservation - the largest contaminated area in the world!"

FOR THOSE who grew up after World War II, the prospect of nuclear annihilation was an indelible part of the era. I and my classmates practiced kneeling by school lockers with our coats over our heads to protect us from flying glass, laughing at the absurdity. We watched first-aid films in health class showing bodies strewn in radioactive rubble. There was a fallout shelter in my junior-high basement, and another in the basement of The Seattle Times.

THE FIRST PLUTONIUM to leave the Hanford nuclear reservation was a nitrate syrup sealed in a heavy stainless-steel container and carried in the back seat of a sedan along the Columbia River to a train in Portland. As shipments increased, the Manhattan Project switched to more formal military escort.

The bomb's development was incredibly rapid, and no state was more intimately involved than Washington.

Shortly before World War II began, German physicists discovered that atoms could be split, or fissioned, resulting in the release of huge amounts of energy. The news electrified physicists around the world. By 1940, researchers in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, the Soviet Union and Japan were working on the problem of sustaining a chain reaction for a possible weapon.

Japan did not have the uranium to make a bomb, but its investigation of the possibility of building one did not end until physicist Yoshio Nishina's laboratory was firebombed by U.S. planes on April 12, 1945.

Not only did physicists almost immediately recognize the military potential of nuclear fission, but they also began in 1942 the theoretical work on a hydrogen bomb based on the fusion of hydrogen into helium, which powers the sun and stars. The H-bomb would have the power of a thousand Hiroshima bombs. Because of its technical difficulty, it was 10 more years before that new escalation in destructive power was tested.

Since the United States had the world's biggest economy and was remote from the actual battlefields, only America had the ability to sustain an atom-bomb project during World War II. Germany never vigorously pursued the project, and top Nazis remained relatively ignorant of the bomb's potential. When physicist Werner Heisenberg held a briefing for Hitler's leadership in 1942, a secretary sent the wrong agenda and as a result key leaders didn't bother to show up.

American scientists, in contrast, convinced political leaders of the incredible latent nuclear power in matter. But even with Einstein lending his prestige by signing a letter to Roosevelt warning of the military implications of nuclear energy, the project languished until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

That it subsequently succeeded is one of the most amazing science and technology stories in history. Making the necessary bomb fuel was enormously difficult.

The most common radioactive element in nature is uranium-238, making up about 99 percent of the earth's supply of uranium. Because U-238 has a half-life of about 4.5 billion years - about as old as Earth - only half of what was present when Earth was formed has decayed away. That is why the planet still has so many uranium deposits and the United States could open 400 mines during the Cold War and extract 60 million tons of ore for weapons alone.

Uranium-238 does not sustain a fission chain reaction, however, and must be modified into an isotope that can. U-238 fuel can be bombarded in a nuclear reactor to make U-235, the fuel for the Hiroshima bomb.

That isotope was made and separated at labs in Oak Ridge, Tenn., during World War II.

There was an alternative. In 1941, a University of California chemist named Glenn Seaborg created an element with an even bigger potential for explosive power. Since the previously discovered uranium had taken its name from Uranus and neptunium from Neptune, Seaborg named his discovery plutonium: after the planet Pluto and, coincidentally, the Greek god of the dead.

Not knowing which fuel could be successfully manufactured or fabricated into a bomb, the United States decided to pursue both. While Oak Ridge would make U-235, a secret complex near the remote Eastern Washington hamlet of Hanford would make plutonium.

Fuel rods of uranium were irradiated in Hanford reactors to make about a dime-sized button of plutonium for every two tons of fuel. The elusive substance then had to be recovered by dissolving the fuel rods in acid and isolating the plutonium in a complex, messy series of steps.

Read more:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/special/trinity/articles/part1.html

Groups: Foreign Companies, Workers are Big Early Winners Under Federal Loan Guarantees for Nuclear Reactors

Comment:  Demand our leaders to stop giving taxpayer's monies away to any companies but we really do not want any form of Nuke Plants paid for by taxpayers and we will fight to stop our taxpayer's monies going to France or Japan Nukes!  No to Nukes!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 1, 2010

Groups: Foreign Companies, Workers are Big Early Winners Under Federal Loan Guarantees for Nuclear Reactors

WASHINGTON, D.C. — July 1, 2010 — The notion that taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for more nuclear power means energy independence in the United States is a hoax that could cost unwary U.S. taxpayers tens of billions of dollars while richly benefiting profitable foreign corporations and non-U.S. workers, according to a new report from the nonprofit Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS).

Titled Nuclear Power: Implications of Loan Guarantees for Reactors With Foreign Control and Foreign Jobs, the NIRS report notes that:

•Two of the next three reactors in line for taxpayer-backed loan guarantee bailouts — Calvert Cliffs Unit 3 in Maryland and South Texas Project Units 3 and 4 in Texas — have substantial foreign ownership involving French and Japanese companies.
•One of the two already awarded taxpayer-backed nuclear loan guarantees — for a uranium enrichment facility in Idaho — is a project of the French company AREVA.

•All 18 currently pending reactor projects in the U.S. feature reactors that are designed by French and Japanese companies. Nearly all of the immediate employment benefits of the loan guarantees will flow to non-U.S. workers, since virtually all major reactor components are made outside of the United States by foreign companies.
Additionally, of $18.5 billion currently authorized for nuclear loan guarantees, the Department of Energy (DOE) has given out $8.3 billion, leaving $10.2 billion, which DOE says is only enough for one project.

The Obama administration has stuck $9 billion in additional loan guarantee authority in the House version of the war supplemental, which the House may vote on by the end of this week. This means the bill to fund U.S. war efforts may be used to subsidize foreign-controlled nuclear reactor projects and related overseas employment.

Michael Mariotte, executive director, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said: "Nuclear power is U.S.-made power only in the same way that a shirt made in China is 'American' because you buy it at a Wal-Mart in this country.

The bailout of the nuclear industry with taxpayer-backed financing of loan guarantees is in no way a triumph for U.S. energy independence.

Instead, it is a huge publicly backed corporate welfare arrangement for foreign-owned companies and non-U.S. workers.

The non-U.S. companies that stand to be the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer-backed loan guarantees are both massive in size and profitable.

If American taxpayers were upset about bailing out U.S. banks and car companies, they should be furious about being put at risk in order to fatten the bottom line of overseas nuclear companies."


A CLOSER LOOK AT THE NEXT LOAN GUARANTEE CANDIDATES

In February 2010, President Obama announced that the first federal loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors would be offered to the Vogtle Units 3 and 4 that the Southern Company is planning to build in Georgia. The company announced on June 18, 2010, that it had reached agreement with the Department of Energy on the secret terms of the guarantees. The Vogtle units are slated to use reactors supplied by Westinghouse Electric, a subsidiary of Japan's Toshiba Corp.

In May 2010, the Energy Department announced a $2 billion loan guarantee for a uranium enrichment facility in Idaho proposed by the French company AREVA.

DOE has not formally announced which other reactor projects might be granted loan guarantees, but the signs are that they would be the following:

•UniStar Nuclear's Calvert Cliffs project;
•Nuclear Innovation North America's South Texas project; and
•SCANA Corporation's Virgil C. Summer project.

The operators of both Calvert Cliffs and South Texas include substantially foreign-controlled ownership, while the operator of the V.C. Summer project is a U.S. company. Calvert Cliffs is slated to use a reactor supplied by France's AREVA, South Texas will be supplied by Japan's Toshiba, and V.C. Summer will be supplied by the Westinghouse Electric unit of Toshiba.

For the full text of the NIRS report, go to http://www.nirs.org/
Read more:
http://www.nirs.org/press/07-01-2010/2

Mothers for Peace takes NRC back to federal court for flaunting federal laws

Comment:  The NRC is so secretive and loves to protect the nukes!  No to Nuke Power!
February 11, 2009

MOTHERS FOR PEACE TAKES NRC BACK TO FEDERAL COURT FOR FLAUNTING FEDERAL LAWS

The San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace (MFP) on February 9, 2009 filed an Initial Brief with the Ninth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. Attorney Diane Curran accuses the NRC of illegal secrecy and of refusing to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Atomic Energy Act (AEA).

MFP asserts that, in approving a license for the Diablo Canyon Spent Fuel Storage Installation (“ISFSI” or dry cask storage facility), the NRC should have granted MFP a closed hearing on the adequacy of the NRC’s Environmental Assessment (EA), which was a mere eight pages in length. The NRC claimed that security considerations ruled out a hearing, even though at a closed hearing only those with the required security clearance would be present. MFP attorney Diane Curran has the necessary clearance.

MFP also accuses the NRC of unlawfully using secret criteria to deny the possible environmental impacts of an attack on the dry casks at Diablo Canyon.

The NRC illegally ruled that there was no requirement to do a complete Environmental Impact Statement, claiming irrationally that even a successful terrorist attack would have “no significant impact” on the environment.

The NRC violated both NEPA and a June, 2006 ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court in favor of MFP when the regulators excluded from consideration credible attack scenarios on the dry casks at Diablo Canyon that could have devastating environmental impacts. Under NEPA, environmental impacts that are “reasonably foreseeable” and have “catastrophic consequences, even if their probability of occurrence is low” must be taken into account.

According to MFP spokesperson Jane Swanson, "Mothers for Peace has been a vigilant advocate for safety and environmental protection at Diablo Canyon for over three decades. We do not accept the NRC's view that the only group it must consult about how to address the impacts of an attack on the Diablo Canyon facility is Pacific Gas and Electric Company. As neighbors of the plant who would be severely impacted by a successful attack, we are entitled to be part of the decision-making process."

SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT The following is the complete wording of pages 29 - 32 of the Initial Brief, which has a total length of 95 pages. The more detailed legal arguments are on pages 33 – 55. The complete brief will soon be accessible on the NRC website and at mothersforpeace.org.

In San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, this Court [the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals] overturned an NRC decision which refused, as a matter of law, to consider the environmental impacts of attacks in its licensing decisions for proposed nuclear facilities. On remand, the NRC prepared a supplemental EA for the Diablo Canyon ISFSI that purported to consider all “plausible” attacks on the facility, yet reached the patently absurd conclusion that the environmental effects of an attack on the facility would be negligible. The EA Supplement gave no indication that the NRC had addressed credible attack scenarios involving penetration of a storage module and ignition of a fire in the spent fuel, leading to the airborne release of a large quantity of radioactive cesium, widespread land contamination, and potentially devastating environmental and health effects.

No longer able to claim that an environmental analysis of attack impacts was not legally required, the Commission now attempted to erect an impregnable legal barrier to any criticisms of its decision not to prepare an EIS regarding the environmental impacts of an attack on the Diablo Canyon ISFSI: the Commission refused to admit for a hearing any contentions that questioned whether it had given adequate consideration to attack scenarios that could cause significant adverse environmental impacts, on the ground that to admit such a contention would require the NRC to unlawfully disclose to SLOMFP sensitive security information protected by federal law.

While federal law does prohibit unrestricted public disclosure of sensitive security information, however, it contains no prohibition against the disclosure of sensitive security information to interested parties in a closed and protected hearing. The NRC had a statutory obligation, under NEPA, to fully consider environmental issues in its decision-making process by granting SLOMFP the closed hearing to which it was entitled under the AEA.

BACKGROUND The precedent-setting case began in 2002, when the NRC refused to evaluate the environmental impacts of an attack on the proposed dry cask facility before issuing a permit to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) to store spent fuel on the site. In 2006, the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered the NRC to do such a study in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). In response, the NRC Staff produced an extremely abbreviated 8-page environmental assessment that claimed the impacts of a successful attack would be “insignificant”. MFP's expert witness, Dr. Gordon Thompson of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, contended that the agency’s technical analysts erred by assuming a cask could be punctured without also recognizing that its contents could be ignited, allowing a large quantity of radioactive cesium and other contaminants to become airborne and transported over a broad geographic area. The resulting damage to public health and the environment would cost billions of dollars.

Read more:
http://mothersforpeace.org/20090211nrc

Uranium leak No 2 in France

Comment:  The French has our VA leaders ear and telling the false truths about how Great France is with Nuke Power and Uranium Mining, well not true!

18/07/08 11:56 CET

France is investigating its second low-level radioactive leak in ten days, this time at a plant in Romans-sur-Isere in the south east of the country.

The plant, which processes uranium products for power stations and research reactors, is operated by a subsidiary of Areva, the French nuclear giant in charge of the site of the first leak.

The French environment minister Jean-Louis Borloo said: “I want transparent information on the water-tables.

Read more:
http://www.euronews.net/2008/07/18/uranium-leak-no-2-in-france/

Declare your independence" from risky nuclear loan guarantees before the 4th of July!

Comment:  No to nuke monies from the Federal government paid for by taxpayers, No to the Climate Bill, full of taxpayer's monies for nukes!


Declare your independence" from risky nuclear loan guarantees before the 4th of July!

There is still time to act against expanded nuclear power loan guarantees before the U.S. House finalizes its supplemental war funding and disaster relief bill by its Independence Day recess.

The U.S. House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Dave Obey (Democrat-Wisconsin), is considering an emergency supplemental war funding and disaster relief bill. The Obama administration has pushed for $9 billion in additional nuclear power loan guarantees to be attached as a rider onto this bill, thus attempting to rush part of a $36 billion expansion request to the nuclear power loan guarantee program, originally requested for next year's Fiscal Year 2011 budget, onto this fiscal year's budget.

Given that the $8.33 billion in atomic power loan guarantees granted by the U.S. Dept. of Energy for two new reactors at Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, announced by President Obama himself last February (and just accepted by Southern Company), would come from the U.S. Federal Financing Bank, this program appears poised to extract not only loan guarantees from taxpayers, but even the loans themselves. Wall Street investment firms are still too burned by atomic defaults from the 1970s and 1980s -- the largest managerial disaster in business history according to Forbes magazine -- to risk their own funds on new reactors, despite the federal loan guarantees!

Ironically, the House will try to pass this supplemental appropriations bill before it leaves for the 4th of July Independence Day recess. There is even the possibility that the U.S. House Appropriations Committee will be bypassed, and the bill will go directly to the House floor for passage. Such short cuts make a mockery of due process -- consideration by the committee of jurisdiction. As the U.S. Declaration of Independence says, when government becomes inimical to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it is the right and duty of citizens to alter or abolish government. Thus, it's high time for taxpayers to declare their independence from the nuclear relapse, and just say no to risky atomic loan guarantees!

As Taxpayers for Common Sense argues, such an emergency supplemental war funding and disaster relief bill is no place for energy loan guarantees to be attached in the first place. But then again, the entire $54.5 billion in nuclear power loan guarantees that the Obama administration has requested is a risk to taxpayers that should be blocked, no matter what piece of legislation it is attached to.

Act now! Call your U.S. Representative via the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121: urge them to weigh in with their House colleagues on the Appropriations Committee, especially Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-WI), to block expanded nuclear power loan guarantees; urge that they vote against any bill that includes atomic loan guarantees.

9 US Congress Members oppose $9 billion nuclear loan guarantee expansion in emergency war funding bill


Nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives -- Donna Edwards (D-MD), Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), John Hall (D-NY), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Shelley Berkley (D-NV), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), and Peter Welch (D-VT) -- sent a letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-WI) on June 22nd, expressing opposition to the inclusion of $9 billion in expanded federal loan guarantees for new nuclear power reactors.

The provision is attached as a rider to an emergency war funding bill, which the Members regard as improper.

Please consider calling one or more of the signatories via the Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to thank them for their good action to protect taxpayer pocketbooks from nuclear power's financial risks.

The House Appropriations Committee may act on this issue by the beginning of its Independence Day recess which begins July 3rd, so phone your own U.S. Representative via the Switchboard number above as well, to urge them to express similar opposition to expanded nuclear power loan guarantees to Chairman Obey and other Members of the House Appropriations Committee.

Obama's post-Gulf oil catastrophe call for "clean energy" tacit push for taxpayer-backed atomic expansion


Although President Barack Obama did not say the words "nuclear power" in his first ever Oval Office address to the nation on June 15th, his call for an accelerated "transition to clean energy" in response to the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history -- the worsening oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico -- represents a tacit push for the expansion of atomic energy.

This would only take place by transferring the financial risks and even direct costs (not to mention the radiological risks) squarely on the backs of taxpayers.

 Obama said "Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill –- a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses."

He failed to mention that the 2009 Waxman-Markey climate-energy bill would carve out up to 30% of federal "Clean Energy Deployment Administration" funding and support -- loan guarantees, outright loans, and other subsidies -- for new atomic reactors and other nuclear facilities such as uranium enrichment plants.

Obama also failed to mention that the Kerry-Lieberman "climate" bill in the Senate -- more of a dirty energy subsidy bill, including, ironically, support for expanded offshore oil drilling -- contains a long list of taxpayer giveaways to the nuclear power industry, as revealed in analyses by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

The Kerry-Lieberman bill would include the $36 billion expansion of the nuclear loan guarantee program funding requested from Congress by Energy Secretary Chu for the Fiscal Year 2011 budget, $9 billion of which the Obama administration is trying to rush onto the Fiscal Year 2010 budget by attaching a rider onto the emergency supplemental war funding and disaster relief bill currently before the U.S. House Appropriations Committee.

Also not mentioned in Obama's speech was the Bingaman energy bill, passed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last summer: its version of the federal "Clean Energy Deployment Administration" is significantly worse than the House version, allowing for unlimited loan guarantees for nuclear power, without congressional oversight -- granting the Department of Energy veritable blank check writing authority for the nuclear relapse.

Contact the White House comment line at (202) 456-1111, or fill out its web form at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact ; urge President Obama to stop seeking to expand atomic energy at taxpayer risk and expense.

Read more:
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/nuclear-costs-whatsnew/2010/6/17/declare-your-independence-from-risky-nuclear-loan-guarantees.html

French nuclear policy clouded in secrecy

Comment:  Virginia should not be kissing up to the French, we want true green power, not nuke power!  Just listen to the excuses the French makes about the problems in Nuke power!

October 2009

Several kilos of plutonium have been discovered at an Areva nuclear plant in Cadarache, in France.

Environmentalists have long complained that the nuclear industry, which fulfills 75 percent of France's energy needs, is shrouded in secret:


Click Title or Read the complete post at link below:

http://www.allvoices.com/s/event-4401971/aHR0cDovL3d3dy50cnV2ZW8uY29tL251Y2xlYXItZW5lcmd5LWZyZW5jaC1udWNsZWFyLXBvbGljeS1jbG91ZGVkLWluL2lkLzE4NDYzNzQ4NzY=

Dave Lindorff: Pentagon Dirty Bombers, Depleted Uranium in the USA

Comment:  Depleted Uranium will be our Middle East's VAs agent orange (Vietnam VA)!  Pray for our troops and all our Veterans!

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Mon, 10/26/2009 - 2:11pm. Dave Lindorff

The Nuclear Regulator Commission will be holding hearings tomorrow and Wednesday in Hawaii on an application by the U.S. Army for a permit to have depleted uranium at its Pohakuloa Training Area, a vast stretch of flat land in what's called the "saddle" between the sacred mountains of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on Hawaii's Big Island, and at the Schofield Barracks on the island of Oahu.

 In fact, what the Army is asking for is a permit to leave in place the DU left over from years of test firing of M101 mortar "spotting rounds," that each contained close to half a pound of depleted uranium (DU). The Army, which originally denied that any DU weapons had been used at either location, now says that as many as 2, 000 rounds of M101 DU mortars might have been fired at Pohakuloa alone.

But that's only a small part of the story.

The Army is actually seeking a master permit from the NRC to cover all the sites where it has fired DU weapons, including penetrator shells that, unlike the M101, are designed to hit targets and burn on impact, turning the DU in the warhead into a fine dust of uranium oxide.

Among the sites identified by the NRC as being contaminated with DU are: Ft. Hood, TX; Ft. Benning, GA; Ft. Campbell, KY; Ft. Knox, KY; Ft. Lewis, WA; Ft. Riley, KS; Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD; Ft. Dix, NJ; and Makua Military Reservation, HI.

Other locations identified as having DU weapons contamination are: China Lake Air Warfare Center, CA; Eglin AFB, FL; Nellis AFB, NV; Davis-Monthan AFB; Kirkland AFB, NM; White Sands Missile Range, NM; Ethan Allen Firing Range, VT; and New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

An application for a 99-year permit to test DU weapons at the NM Institute Of Mining and Technology claimed that that site's test area was "so contaminated with DU…as to preclude any other use"!

DU weapons have also been used by the Navy at Vieques Island off Puerto Rico (the Navy claimed it was a "mistake."

The Pentagon continues a long history of claiming that DU is not dangerous, although this official stance is belied by the warnings it has given to its troops (though not to civilians in battle zones), to stay well clear of tanks and other equipment destroyed by U.S. tanks, which used DU weapons as the ordnance of choice in both the Gulf War and the current Iraq War.

Read the complete post at or click Title:

http://blog.buzzflash.com/lindorff/284

Bill to ban the importation of foreign nuclear waste into Utah takes small step forward

Comment: We have enough nuke waste and we should take on overseas junk!

By Brock Vergakis, AP
October 27th, 2009

Bill to ban foreign nuke waste makes small advance

SALT LAKE CITY — A bill designed to keep foreign countries from disposing their nuclear waste in the United States is taking a small but significant step toward getting a U.S. House committee vote for the first time.

On Thursday, the Radioactive Import Deterrence Act will undergo a process known as markup, where members of a House subcommittee will debate and recommend changes to the bill before it advances.

The bill to ban the importation of low-level radioactive waste was drafted in response to a Utah company’s plan to import up to 20,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from Italy’s shuttered nuclear power program through the ports of Charleston, S.C., or New Orleans. After processing in Tennessee, about 1,600 tons would be disposed of in EnergySolutions Inc.’s facility in the western Utah desert.

Read the complete post at or click Title:

http://blog.taragana.com/n/bill-to-ban-the-importation-of-foreign-nuclear-waste-into-utah-takes-small-step-forward-208667/

Radioactive tritium found off nuclear test site for first time

Comment: People who make bombs to kill people and use the excuse, let us bomb Japan and save a million of our people from war. The government brought the military people home and exposes them to Nuke Bombs! Logic, heck no, how many of our family members have died from these mad scientists! In addition, our government is still killing our families with depleted uranium in the Gulf War! Now nuke water is still killing people! No to Nuke Power!

By Mary Manning

Tue, Oct 20, 2009 (3:01 p.m.)

Scientists have found radioactive tritium from nuclear tests in Nevada contaminating groundwater off the Nevada Test Site for the first time.

However, state and federal studies indicated the contaminated groundwater would leave the nuclear site within 50 years.

A groundwater sample taken in a new well drilled on Air Force land contained tritium at about 12,500 picocuries per liter, below the federal Environmental Protection Agency Safe Drinking Water Act limit of 20,000 picocuries per liter. A picocurrie is a measure of radiation in liquid.

The Energy Department predicted in February that groundwater contamination would leave the Test Site boundary near Pahute Mesa, in the northwest corner of the sprawling site about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The nearest public water source to the new government test well, completed Oct. 12, is 14 miles away!

Click to Read Whole Story: http://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/oct/20/radioactive-tritium-found-nuclear-test-site-first-/

Finnish TVO set for long row with Areva, Siemens

by Staff Writers
Helsinki (AFP) Oct 20, 2009

Finnish utility TVO said Tuesday it expected a lengthy dispute with France's Areva and Germany's Siemens over cost over-runs and delays in their construction of a Finnish nuclear reactor.

The plant being built in Olkiluoto, western Finland, was originally scheduled to start operating this year, but the project has fallen more than three years behind its original schedule, prompting a bitter fight between the three companies.

In a financial report for January-September published on Monday, TVO said it had demanded that Areva and Siemens pay compensation of around 1.4 billion euros (2.1 billion dollars) for the delays.

Meanwhile Areva and Siemens have asked for around one billion euros from TVO, arguing that the project has encountered "more rigorous security requirements" than initially foreseen.

Last week TVO said the new reactor's start date could be delayed beyond June 2012 and said it had asked for a new timetable from Areva and Siemens.

The Finnish firm posted in the first nine months of this year a loss of 30.4 million euros on turnover of 226 million euros.

Read whole article:
http://www.nuclearpowerdaily.com/reports/Finnish_TVO_set_for_long_row_with_Areva_Siemens_999.html

Obama's Radioactive Regulator

Why did the White House pick a cheerleader for nuclear energy to oversee the industry?
—By Kate Sheppard

Oct 20, 2009

Should a booster of nuclear power with undisclosed business connections to nuclear energy firms be allowed to regulate the industry? By nominating William Magwood to serve on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, President Barack Obama is doing just that.

Magwood served as the head of the Office of Nuclear Energy within the Department of Energy from 1998 to 2005, and in that capacity was the US government's senior nuclear technology official. But both before and after his time in government, he has worked as an enthusiastic advocate for nuclear interests in the private sector—including for at least one company likely to have business before the NRC in the near future. Good-government groups say that this background should preclude him from serving as a regulator for an agency whose stated mission is to "regulate the nation's civilian use of byproduct, source, and special nuclear materials to ensure adequate protection of public health and safety, to promote the common defense and security, and to protect the environment."

"William Magwood has devoted his career to promoting nuclear power," said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste watchdog at Beyond Nuclear. "The NRC is supposed to be a safety regulator. They're not supposed to advocate for expansion."

Click below to read whole article:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/10/obamas-radioactive-regulator

Radioactive Rabbit Poop Part Of Hanford Nuclear Reservation Cleanup (VIDEO)

Check out Rachel Maddow's segment below for more information on this operation, and the radioactive rabbits:




First Posted: 10-19-09 09:01 AM Updated: 10-19-09 10:40 AM

The Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state produced most of the plutonium our nation used during the atomic bomb through the 1980s. This production also led to massive amounts of toxic waste.

The area is the focus of the largest environmental cleanup operation in the country right now, and that includes scrubbing all the rabbit feces because it is radioactive.

Jackrabbits have taken quite a liking to the nuclear sludge, which contains a radioactive salt that they can't get enough of. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: jackrabbits routinely burrowed into those sites. They found the salt, liked it, and licked it. Then, they pooped it, leaving slightly radioactive scat all over the ground.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/19/radioactive-rabbit-poop-p_n_325716.html

Can We Afford More Subsidies for Nuclear Power?

Comment: No to Nuke Power!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 20, 2009
3:38 PM

CONTACT: Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)
Meghan Crosby
Assistant Press Secretary
202-331-6943
mcrosby@ucsusa.org

WASHINGTON - October 20 - The Senate may finally start debating climate and energy legislation now that Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) have introduced the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.

But the addition of a nuclear provision to the bill raises some questions. What will be the fate of the so-called nuclear power renaissance, and to what extent will taxpayers be asked to underwrite it?

But is nuclear power a climate solution we can afford? The short answer, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), is no.

As UCS Nuclear Energy and Climate Change Project Manager Ellen Vancko notes, “Even if you discount nuclear power’s current security and safety problems, the skyrocketing cost of construction could be the industry’s Achilles’ heel.”

Wall Street has made it clear that it will not finance the nuclear industry’s expansion without federal loan guarantees because of the high risks and uncertain costs associated with such investments.

A recent Moody’s report characterized investments new nuclear plants as a “bet the farm” risk, stating that companies that build new reactors will take on a higher business and operating risk profile, which will threaten their credit ratings.

To circumvent these financing challenges, the nuclear industry is supporting legislation that was passed by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in June.

That bill, S. 1462, would underwrite the industry’s expansion by creating a new Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA). Although CEDA’s provisions are poorly understood, the implications of this pending legislation are enormous, according to UCS.

A recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report concluded that S. 1462 would exempt the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Guarantee Program, which was established under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, from Federal Credit Reform Act provisions requiring such programs to be funded each year by congressional appropriation.

“The effect of this exemption,” the CBO stated, “would be to give DOE permanent authority to guarantee such loans without further legislative action or limitations.”

That means DOE could give virtually unlimited loan guarantees to expensive and risky new technologies, all underwritten by taxpayers without congressional oversight. (For the CBO report, go to www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=10637.)

“The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Energy Department could hand out more than $130 billion to nuclear and fossil fuel energy projects,” Vancko said. “That’s a lot of money.

But what is even more alarming is that CBO’s calculation is based solely on pending Energy Department loan guarantee applications. It does not include an estimation of the hundreds of billions of dollars in additional loan guarantees that could be approved by a new energy bank if this program becomes law.”

Vancko recently co-authored a briefing paper, “Nuclear Power: A Resurgence We Can’t Afford,” which is available at:

www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-power-resurgence.html.

In it she provides a clear-eyed look at the nuclear industry’s history of cost overruns, projections of current reactor construction costs, comparisons with cleaner, more cost-effective low-carbon energy options, and the potential risks to taxpayers from overly generous federal subsidies and loan guarantees. Another UCS briefing paper from earlier this year, “Nuclear Loan Guarantees: Another Taxpayer Bailout Ahead?,” should also be of interest.

For that report, go to www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-loan-guarantees.html.

Ellen Vancko is available for interviews. Please call Elliott Negin at 202-331-5439.
.###
The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/10/20-13

Media Mayhem: Nuking climate change

Comment: This blog agrees with the following groups: Clean Water Action, Environmental Working Group, Greenpeace, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club, NO TO NUKE POWER, YES TO TRUE GREEN POWER! The following groups are traitors and need to be tar and feather with nuke waste: The Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists! NO TO THE SO CALL CLIMATE CHANGE, NEW NAME "NUKE CLIMATE CHANGE PAID FOR BY AMERICAN TAXPAYERS!"

When people like John Kerry back nuclear subsidies, green activists find themselves in a difficult position.

By Ken EdelsteinMon, Oct 19 2009 at 6:32 AM EST

Nuclear power once was the greenie’s ultimate litmus test.

Pro-nuke? You must have been an industry toady willing to relegate future generations to radioactive Armageddon. Anti-nuke? You must have righteously understood that the only future to sense in our world would be one graced with windmills, solar panels, peace, love and flowers.

If environmentalism were a religion, the nuclear industry was its devil

How much less politically radioactive nuclear power has become was underscored Oct. 11 in a Sunday New York Times op-ed co-written by Sen. John Kerry. As Massachusetts’ lieutenant governor and then as senator.

The NYT op-ed generated buzz because Kerry wrote it with a Republican colleague, Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. It signaled that some Republicans actually might support a climate bill this year if it contained significant compromises, and that Democrats might agree to such compromises to get the bill passed.

A lot of those compromises have to do with nukes. In the article, Kerry and Graham argue that nuclear power must be part of the mix in addressing climate change. Not only that, they say, nukes deserve special favors. “While we invest in renewable energy sources like wind and solar,” they write:
In many ways, Kerry’s support for nuclear subsidies demonstrates just how desperately he and others view the prospect of climate change. It’s not that nuclear plants have become any safer. There are still myriad questions surrounding them: Where will we dispose of the waste? How can we find enough water to cool them? What about the terrorist threat? What about the prospect of nuclear proliferation? And how can we justify subsidizing loan guarantees and insurance backups for a wealthy industry surrounded by so many questions?

But as the nuclear industry’s twin bête noires -- the Chernobyl disaster and the Three Mile Island accident -- fade from memory, the threat of climate change looms larger and scarier. Nuclear power, its advocates note, pumps virtually no greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

The whole new reality creates quite a predicament for environmentalists. Yes, politics does make strange bedfellows, but usually they don’t require Geiger counters. The nuclear industry’s lead trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), owns an appropriate reputation for greenwashing PR on the order of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy.

In the typical doublespeak fashion of moneyed Washington special interests, NEI has crafted slick marketing campaigns to appropriate the phrase “clean energy.” It backs an industry front group called the “Clean and Safe Energy Coalition” and a speakers’ bureau called Clean Energy America. With the start of this year’s National Hockey League season, NEI struck a sponsorship deal with the Washington Capitals; there’s nothing like rink-side signs that say “Clean Air Energy” to get your message across to members of Congress who happen to be hockey fans.

Most environmental organizations still argue against the increased subsidies needed to kick-start nuclear power plants. Among the foes are Clean Water Action, Environmental Working Group, Greenpeace, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club. They note that steering resources into safer, renewable energy -- such as wind, solar and conservation -- seems to bode better for both the environment and for the economy.

The anti-nuclear movement still has strong pop-cultural pull among environmentalists. Last week, NukeFree.org -- a group backed by Jackson Brown, Bonnie Raitt and other celebrities -- organized a “National Call In Day” to pressure Congress not to include nuclear subsidies in climate legislation.

Other environmental groups shouldn’t be described exactly as pro-nuke, but they are keeping their options open. The Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists -- all highly respected organizations with a strong bent toward research and policies -- have said they’re at least willing to consider nuclear energy as part of broader legislation.

The thing is that the Senate climate change bill introduced last month by Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer already contains quite a few gifts for the nuclear industry, including job training, regulatory reform, subsidies and $18.5 billion in loan guarantees. That’s more generous than the House-approved Waxman-Markey bill. (For more on this, visit MNN’s politics channel.)

So the compromises create yet another predicament for environmentalists. If the climate legislation ends up so much more generous to the nuclear energy than it is to emerging renewable industries -- such as wind, solar and conservation -- some will have to consider whether to withdraw their support, and to rely on the Environmental Protection Agency to push for regulation.

Either that, or strike their deal with the devil.

Journalist Ken Edelstein writes the Media Mayhem column for the Mother Nature Network. From various coffee shops in Atlanta, he publishes an environmental news site at MyGreenATL.com.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/energy/stories/media-mayhem-nuking-climate-change#comment-8497

The medical and economic costs of nuclear power

October 15, 2009
by Dr Helen Caldicott

Jennifer Nordstrom, co-ordinator of the Carbon-Free Nuclear-Free project has noted “Telling states to build new nuclear plants to combat global warming is like telling a patient to smoke to lose weight.”

A recent study sponsored by the German government (the KiKK study - Kaatsch P, Spix C, Schultze-Rath R, et al. Leukemia in young children living in the vicinity of German nuclear power plants. Int J Cancer. 2008; 1220:721-726,) examined children who lived near 16 of the country’s commercial nuclear power plants.

The results revealed a strongly increased risk of all childhood cancers, particularly leukaemia, the closer the proximity of the children’s residence to the reactor. In particular, the study found that children less than the age five years, living within a 5km radius of the power plant exhaust stacks were more than twice as likely to develop leukaemia compared with those children residing more that 5km away. The KiKK team studied other carcinogenic factors which may be responsible for the cancer clusters but none were found.

Another large study (Baker PJ, Hoel DG. Meta-analysis of standardized incidence and mortality rates of childhood leukemia in proximity to nuclear facilities. Eur J Cancer Care. 2007:16:355-363) - a meta-analysis of the incidence and mortality rates of childhood leukaemia in children living near 138 nuclear facilities in Britain, Canada, Spain, Germany, the US and Japan also demonstrated a statistically significant rate of leukaemia in children less than nine years of age.

A further large review (Laurier D, Jacob S, Bernier MO, et al. Epidemiological studies of leukemia in children and young adults around nuclear facilities: A critical review. Rad Prot Dosim. 2008; 132:182- 190) of children and young adults living near 198 nuclear sites in 10 countries was found to be compatible with the study described above.

It is important to note that the sensitivity to the damaging effects of radiation in early embryonic and fetal life is much higher than in adults, and young children are also particularly vulnerable.

The radioactive elements “routinely” emitted from nuclear power plant stacks into the air can be inhaled, or ingested when they concentrate in the food chain - in vegetables and fruit, -and then further concentrated in various internal organs in humans.

Similarly, the millions of gallons of cooling water flushed daily from a nuclear reactor into the always adjoining water source (lake, river or sea) contaminate it with radioactive materials which bio-concentrate hundreds of times in the aquatic food chain.

Unfortunately, radioactive elements are invisible to the human senses - taste, smell, and sight. Also unfortunately, the incubation time for radiation-induced cancer is five to 60 years, a long, silent latent period. No cancer ever denotes its specific cause.

Among these biologically active elements that are routinely released from nuclear power plants are tritium which lasts for more than 100 years (there is no limit to the amount of tritium that escapes); xenon, krypton. and argon which decay to cesium and strontium; carbon 14 which remains radioactive for thousands of years; cesium 137 - radioactive for hundreds of years; and iodine 129, which has a half life of 15.7 million years.

Tritium combines directly in the DNA molecule of the gene and can induce fetal deformities and various cancers in both animals and humans; cesium causes muscle sarcomas and brain cancers; and strontium - a calcium analogue - migrates to bone where it can induce bone cancer or leukaemia. Finally radioactive iodine causes thyroid cancer.

This situation is made worse by the fact that we are all - including populations living within the vicinity of nuclear reactors - routinely exposed to carcinogenic chemicals in our daily lives, many of which enhance the carcinogenic effects of radioactivity. There are now 80,000 chemicals in common use.

Turning from the human health costs to the monetary, another relevant study related to the nuclear power debate examined the economic feasibility of a “nuclear renaissance” at this time. The World Nuclear Industry Status Report published in August 2009 states that the nuclear industry continues to face steadily increasing construction costs and future cost estimates. The AREVA French-designed reactor project in Olkiluoto Finland is three years behind schedule and 55 per cent over budget (US$7 billion).

The average age of operating reactors globally is 25 years, while the average age of 123 reactors already closed is 22 years only. In addition to the 52 reactors currently under construction, another 43 reactors would have to be planned, built and started by 2015 - one every six weeks, and another 192 units over the following 10 years - one every 19 days - in order to maintain the same number that are operating today.

None of the new countries wanting nuclear power have the appropriate nuclear regulations, independent regulators, the domestic maintenance capacity and the skilled workforce to run a nuclear reactor.

Furthermore some of these countries either have a government hostile to the concept of nuclear power (Norway, Malaysia, Thailand), hostile public opinion (Italy and Turkey), major economic problems (Poland), earthquake or volcanic risks (Indonesia) or some have an absolute lack of all necessary infrastructure (Venezuela).

And there is one other major bottleneck for new reactors - only one corporation in the world, Japan Steel Works, can manufacture large steel forgings for many reactor pressure vessels.

These problems, together with the global financial crisis mean that the prospects of funding for the nuclear industry - most of which is government sourced - looks grim. .

US, efforts to forge the nuclear industry renaissance has been thwarted in eight states from Kentucky to Minnesota to Hawaii, Illinois, West Virginia, California, Missouri and Wisconsin.

When the Yucca Mountain repository for high level waste was vetoed by President Obama, Dave Kraft, Director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service in Chicago said “Authorising construction of nuclear reactors without first constructing a radioactive waste disposal is like authorising the construction of a new Sears tower without the bathrooms. Neither makes sense; both threaten public health and safety.”

How does this state of affairs relate to Australia? Well, as we know Australia sits on 40 per cent of the world’s high grade uranium; the ALP, in its wisdom, has determined that there should be no restrictions on uranium mining proceeding throughout the country.

There are more than 60 potential uranium mines in Western Australia alone.
In the light of these two studies it is difficult to understand how Kevin Rudd and the Labor Government can have no moral scruples about our uranium exports.

Dr Helen Caldicott, has devoted the last 38 years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction. She is also the Founding President of the Physicians for Social Responsibility which, with other national groups won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. She is President of people for a Nuclear Free Australia and a member of the Spanish Scientific Committee advising the Spanish Prime Minister.

Helen Caldicott is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Helen Caldicott

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15673

Even Rabbit Droppings Count in Nuclear Cleanup

October 15, 2009
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — Anything that hops, burrows, buzzes, crawls or grazes near a nuclear weapons plant may be capable of setting off a Geiger counter. And at the Hanford nuclear reservation, one of the dirtiest of them all, its droppings alone might be enough to trigger alarms.
A government contractor at Hanford, in south-central Washington State, just spent a week mapping radioactive rabbit feces with detectors mounted on a helicopter flying 50 feet over the desert scrub. An onboard computer used GPS technology to record each location so workers could return later to scoop up the droppings for disposal as low-level radioactive waste.

The Hanford site, overseen by the federal Department of Energy, produced roughly two-thirds of the plutonium used in the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, beginning in World War II and ending in the 1980s. Today it is the focus of the nation’s largest environmental cleanup, an effort that has cost tens of billions of dollars and is expected to continue for decades.

The area had, however, been used by rabbits that had also burrowed into other areas that were contaminated. Many of the contaminants were in the form of salts, which attract wildlife. The rabbits carried strontium and cesium, which emit gamma rays, back out of the area in their digestive tracts.

The flights were far less expensive than other strategies, said Dee Millikin, a spokeswoman for the contractor, a subsidiary of the engineering and environmental consulting company CH2M Hill.

Walking through the area with radiation detectors would have taken eight months longer and cost $1 million, she said.

The flights were first reported by The Tri-City Herald newspaper of Kennewick, Wash.

The rabbits themselves are not a target of the operation: the area from which they picked up the contamination was paved over years ago, so the source was sealed off, Ms. Millikin said.

Rabbits were not the only biological vectors contaminated by the nuclear residue. Mice and badgers also picked it up, she said, and coyotes feed on the contaminated smaller animals. “It’s basically a circle-of-life situation,” she said, adding that researchers have also found traces of radioactive materials in fish of the adjacent Columbia River.

Yet roaming rabbits appear to account for the overwhelming bulk of the radioactive excrement located in the flights, Ms. Millikin said.

Technicians have monitored rodents and waterfowl at Hanford for radiation since 1947, and have identified about 5,400 incidents of “biological intrusion.” It is not only animals; tumbleweeds have roots deep enough to pull up radioactive material and then carry it as they blow away, said John Price, who monitors conditions at Hanford for the Washington State Department of Ecology.

Marylia Kelley, the executive director of a California group called Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, said the rabbit cleanup was “kind of funny, in a sick way.”

Hanford is not the only reactor site that has prompted concern about contamination spreading to animals, Ms. Kelley said. .

At that site, she said, contamination has been somewhat harder to track because it is mostly plutonium, whose main emission is alpha particles that travel only a few inches in air, unlike the gamma rays from cesium and strontium at Hanford.

Radiation is also a concern at the Savannah River nuclear site in South Carolina, where neighbors can enter a lottery every year to be allowed to hunt deer.

“If they find something that was above the limit, they take out that part of the carcass and allow the guy to go on his merry way with the rest of it,” said Robert Alvarez, an environmental expert and former Energy Department official.

In the 1980s, researchers found turtles contaminated with radioactive materials on a hog farm near the Savannah River plant.

As the federal government pursues cleanups at various nuclear sites, experts have deliberately contaminated a species to further their efforts: honeybees.
Workers position a hive at a suspect area and wait to see what the bees come back with. Researchers can measure the radioactive content of the bees’ honey or wax, but “the recommended sample is the bee itself,” the agency said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/science/earth/15rabbit.html?_r=1&sq=nucle&scp=2&pagewanted=print

NATIONAL DON'T NUKE THE CLIMATE CALL-IN DAY--THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15

Subject: Tomorrow is Nat'l Call-In Day--Keep the Senate's phones ringing
Nuclear Information and Resource Service

NATIONAL DON'T NUKE THE CLIMATE CALL-IN DAY--THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15


PICK UP THE PHONE! KEEP THOSE SENATE PHONES RINGING!


AND KEEP THOSE E-MAILS/FAXES COMING TOO!


TALKING POINTS BELOW

October 14, 2009

Dear Friends,

Tomorrow is the National Don't Nuke the Climate Call-In Day!
Please call both of your Senators offices and tell them to keep nuclear power out of the Senate climate bill. Recent events, like the John Kerry/Lindsay Graham op-ed in Sunday's New York Times calling for more nuclear power in the bill, add to the urgency of this call-in day.

Help keep the Senate's phones ringing all day long!
Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121.

And keep your letters and faxes to your Senators coming, and keep forwarding the action url to all of your lists: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5502/t/5846/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=2137

Post it on your Facebook pages, Tweet it, spread the word every way possible.

More than 4,000 letters already have been sent to the Senate this week--but we'll need more than that to beat the nuclear lobbyists.

And with 16,000+ people on this e-mail list, that means a lot of you haven't yet taken action, and haven't yet helped reach the millions more people across this country who also want to keep nuclear out of the climate bill.

So take action today. E-mail and/or fax your Senators here. Then spread the word to every list you have, everyone you can think of.

And take action tomorrow. Call both your Senators offices at

202-224-3121.

The basic talking point is simple. If you only get 30 seconds with your Senators' offices, or an answering machine, just tell them: No nuclear power in the Senate climate bill, no more taxpayer dollars to support the failed nuclear industry.

But if you get a little more time, below are some talking points you may want to use. These also will be useful for drafting letters to the editor, op-eds, blog postings and the like--all of which will be very helpful as well. The more noise and publicity we can make, the better off we'll be.

Talking Points

*Nuclear power already receives a competitive advantage when a price is placed on carbon. If the nuclear industry cannot compete with such an advantage, that's its own problem, taxpayers should not be expected to provide more help to the industry.

*Projected costs for new reactors are stratospheric. In early 2006, the Nuclear Energy Institute predicted costs for the first few new reactors would run $2,000/kw, going down to $1,500/kw over time. Instead, recent estimates include Turkey Point (Florida) at $8,200/kw and Calvert Cliffs-3 (Maryland) and Bell Bend (Pennsylvania) at about $9,000/kw, or $13-15 billion. For example, see: http://www.bellbend.com/faqs.htm

*Cost overruns have been a constant with the nuclear industry. A 1986 Department of Energy study found the average cost overrun for the first 75 U.S. reactors was 207%. Reactors coming online after 1986 typically experienced even larger overruns. The only two reactors now under construction in the West-Areva reactors in Finland and France-are currently 75% and 20% over-budget, with years to go before construction completion.

*Electricity from new reactors, as expected with such enormous costs, would make the 1980s concept of "rate shock" seem quaint. An August 2009 report from the California Energy Commission, for example, predicts kilowatt/hour costs for nuclear electricity as high as 27-34 cents/kwh-nearly a tripling from today's prevailing rate of less than 12 cents/kwh. This report is available at: http://www.energy.ca.gov/2009publications/CEC-200-2009-017/CEC-200-2009-017-SD.PDF

*Nuclear power is not carbon-free. The nuclear fuel chain is responsible for fairly significant carbon emissions--at least three times those of wind power, for example. A recent study by Virginia Tech professor Benjamin Sovacool on this subject is available here: http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/sovacool_nuclear_ghg.pdf

*Nuclear reactors use enormous amounts of water, and water will become an increasingly precious resource in years to come, especially as we grapple with a warming climate. Allocating water to nuclear reactors now means less water for people and agriculture down the road. An August 2009 Virginia Tech study notes 36 states are projected to experience water shortages during the next decade. http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/water/sr46waterdependency.pdf

*Nuclear power is not even the only baseload alternative, as some in the industry claim. As cited in the August 6, 2009 Wall Street Journal for example, Spain is building large baseload solar thermal power plants for about $5,200/kw. While expensive, this is still $2,000/kw cheaper than the current low estimates for new reactor construction.

*Congress must not pre-judge the administration's re-evaluation of radioactive waste policy, which has not yet even begun. Specifically, no money should be spent on expensive, dangerous technologies like reprocessing, especially when the future direction of waste policy is unknown.

Tomorrow, NIRS staff will be going door-to-door in the Senate office buildings, delivering the thousands of postcards you sent to us (Thanks!) and the list of 629 U.S. organizations that have signed on to the simple statement on nuclear power and climate change. We hope to hear those phones ringing in every office we visit!

Thanks for all you do, but this week, let's all try to do just a little bit more....
Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
www.nirs.org
nirsnet@nirs.org

US Energy Secretary: To Push For More Nuclear Loan Guarantees

Comment: Everybody needs to make calls tomorrow against Nukes, see the above articles! No To Nuke Power! No To Chu!

Oct 14, 2009
By Ian Talley, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday he will push for billions of dollars in new loan guarantee authority to help rejuvenate a domestic industry and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Although companies have submitted 18 new nuclear power plant license applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy only has authority for $18.5 billion, enough for four to five plants.

"If you really want to restart the American nuclear energy industry in a serious way...we (need to) send signals to the industry that the U.S. is serious about investing in nuclear power plants," Chu said in an interview on the sidelines of a conference here.

Pressing for new nuclear power plants may help the administration win over the handful of Republican senators needed to help pass a landmark climate bill into law. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for example, supports a cap on emissions in principle, but said government support for nuclear power is essential for him to consider backing a bill that would cut greenhouse gases.

Although it's nowhere near the 100 new nuclear power plants that the GOP has called for, Chu said "there's real interest out there (for) another four to five or more, we could easily do."

"It's part of how we're going to get to the carbon reductions we need in order to avoid the worst of climate change," Chu said.

The Energy Secretary said the loan guarantees would help revitalize a U.S.- based nuclear industry, given that most of the major companies that build reactors are now owned by international companies.

"It's also an American leadership issue," the Secretary said. "We were the pioneers in the nuclear industry...We are no longer the world leaders," he said.

Chu also said a new blue ribbon panel that will determine the nation's future nuclear waste energy policy would be appointed "soon." Although there were still "complications," he was pressing for the panel to convene as quickly as possible.

The delay in determining the waste issue after the administration decided to cancels plans for a central storage site in Nevada is one of many stumbling blocks that has dogged the industry.

-By Ian Talley, Dow Jones Newswires; (202) 862 9285; ian.talley@dowjones.com;

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=200909241923dowjonesdjonline000687&title=us-energy-s