nuclear-news

latest news on the uranium/nuclear industry

Kazakhstan’s radioactive disaster continues

Radioactive fallout from nuclear blasts have given Semey and neighboring villages abnormally high rates of cancer and birth defects.

Local oncology centers are screening tens of thousands of patients, trying to detect and treat tumors at early stages. People living in the area are still predisposed to breast and pulmonary cancer.

We are getting more and more disabled infants, each passing day their number increases. Environmental factors work slowly – we can see their effects in 10 or 20 years, in the first, second, third or fourth generation.”

VIDEO Kazakhstan’s Nuclear Legacy Euro News, 14/04/10 http://www.euronews.com/2010/04/14/kazakhstan-s-nuclear-legacy/  At the elderly care home in Semipalatinsk, we met 85 year old Praskovya. Semipalatinsk, or Semey, is a city 150 kilometers from the main Soviet nuclear weapons test site.

Praskovya is a former warehouse manager who used to work in a small town bordering the restricted area in the 1950s. She witnessed one of the nuclear explosions: “We were curious, so we went outside to watch. When the explosion happened, it looked like a large bowl, with black smoke and flames coming from the bowl. Then it rolled into a ball, and
a smoke column went up, and at the top, the mushroom appeared. And then the soldiers came and made us leave the street, shouting “it’s not allowed, it’s not allowed”. But we already saw everything interesting. And then everyone got health problems. Read more »

May 17, 2012 Posted by | health, Kazakhstan | Leave a Comment

Japanese govt’s nuclear push with Kazakhstan, and the global nuclear industry web

A complex web of agreements across national borders links many of the biggest players in the nuclear industry.

 “Japan hasn’t used the Fukushima disaster as an opportunity to push for renewable energy or energy efficiency,”   “Instead, it has used the time since the disaster to push for the restart of nuclear reactors.”

How Long Will Japan’s Nuclear Recess Be? Enter KazakhstanTruth Out , 15 May 2012  By Steve Horn,    ”……Japan Announces Big Nuclear Deal with Kazakhstan Unmentioned by all but two news outlets was the fact that a day before the announcement, the Japanese government signed a deal with Kazakhstan’s state-owned nuclear giant, KazAtomProm, to begin supplying Japan with more nuclear fuel starting in 2013. Read more »

May 17, 2012 Posted by | Japan, Kazakhstan, politics international | Leave a Comment

Iran poses no nuclear threat. But what about Kazakhstan?

Uranium Diplomacy:The US Double-Standard in Kazakhstan and Iran, THE REAL NEWS, 18 APRIL 2012  By Allen Ruff and Steve Horn [This is a slightly revised version of  "Uranium Double-Standard: The U.S., Kazakhstan and Iran," that originally appeared at Nation of Change. It is the second installment of an ongoing series on U.S. involvement in Kazakhstan. The first originally appeared at Truthout and is also available here.]

Iran’s alleged “nuclear threat” has taken center stage among diplomats, military men, and politicians in Washington, Tel Aviv, and the West at-large.
Despite the fact that investigative journalists Seymour HershGareth Porter and others have meticulously documented the fact that Iran, in fact, poses no nuclear threat at all, the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress have laid down multiple rounds of harsh sanctions as a means to “deter” Iran from reaching its “nuclear capacity.”
The most recent round featured a call to boycott Iran’s oil industry by President Obama.
While rhetorical attention remains focused on Iran’s “threat”, there is an “elephant in the room”: Kazakhstan’s booming uranium mining and expanding nuclear industry –  a massive effort involving U.S. multinational corporations and an authoritarian regime increasingly tied to Washington.
Double standards have long reigned supreme in U.S. foreign policy. Few examples illustrate that better than the contrast between Washington’s stance toward the nuclear ambitions of Iran and Kazakhstan…… Read more »

April 19, 2012 Posted by | Kazakhstan, politics international | Leave a Comment

Kazakhstan says Japan will continue to buy its uranium

Japan to Purchase Contracted Kazakh Uranium, Kazatomprom Says Bloomberg,  By Nariman Gizitdinov and Yuriy Humber - Feb 23, 2012 Kazatomprom (KZAP), the state nuclear company in the world’s biggest uranium-producing nation, said its Japanese customers will take delivery of the fuel they agreed to buy even as the country idles its atomic stations.

The supply contracts with Japan haven’t changed, Chief Executive Officer Vladimir Shkolnik told reporters in Almaty, Kazakhstan, today without identifying the buyers…..
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-24/japan-to-purchase-contracted-kazakh-uranium-kazatomprom-says.html

February 25, 2012 Posted by | business and costs, Kazakhstan, Uranium | Leave a Comment

Nuclear bomb testing – a horror that is hard to ban

Perhaps because its people understand firsthand the horrors of living with the effects of nuclear testing, Kazakhstan has fully supported efforts to ban nuclear testing and nuclear weaponry, and has given up its nuclear arsenal. 

Politics Clouds Efforts to Ban Nuclear Testing, By Elizabeth Whitman, UNITED NATIONS, Sep 5, 2011 (IPS) – On Aug. 29, 1949, the Soviet Union conducted the first of 456 nuclear tests in Semipalatinsk in Eastern Kazakhstan, at the site where it ultimately held over two-thirds of all Soviet nuclear tests without warning inhabitants of the region of the impact of exposure to these tests.On Aug. 29, 1991 the site closed, yet the devastating health and environmental effects continue to plague the region to this day. Read more »

September 6, 2011 Posted by | Kazakhstan, politics international | Leave a Comment

Kazakhtsan – land of nuclear human nuclear radiation guinea pigs

 

 

As for the locals, they were little more than guinea pigs…. it is so hard to prove the link between nuclear fallout and the diseases that may strike afterwards.According to Dr. Marat Sandybaev, head of the local oncology centre, cancer rates in the area are still twice as high as the national average, and it is estimated that birth defects are up to 10 times higher.

 

Bringing life to a nuclear wasteland Can a nuclear test site be reclaimed? The Soviets detonated hundreds of bombs in Kazakhstan, poisoning the land and people. Louise Gray of the Telegraph travels to the notorious Polygon site and reports on plans to restore the region By Louise Gray, The Telegraph September 4, 2011 “…. Between 1949 and 1989, the Soviet Union detonated more than 456 nuclear devices on the Semipalatinsk test site, better known as the “Polygon.” Read more »

September 5, 2011 Posted by | health, Kazakhstan | Leave a Comment

Kazakhstan’s land of danger due to nuclear testing

Soviet nuclear legacy surfaces at atomic museum  , By Keith Rogers, LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, Sep. 3, 2011 Kazakhstan is grappling with lingering health issues and trying to rehabilitate the land 20 years after nuclear weapons testing stopped at the former Soviet Union’s proving ground .

Heavily contaminated areas of the Semipalatinsk nuclear site are closed to access by Kazaks who used the land for farming and grazing. The government, with the United States, is working to keep dangerous materials out of sinister hands, said Erlan Idrissov, Kazakhstan’s ambassador to the United States.

“All those years we have been trying to make a full assessment of the dangers that were brought to the land by nuclear testing,” Read more »

September 5, 2011 Posted by | environment, Kazakhstan | Leave a Comment

Cancer and birth deformities in city near to 456 nuclear bomb tests

City that suffered most calls for an end to nuclear testing, Telegraph, By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent, Semipalatinsk, 29 Aug 2011, The people of Semey will gather for a strange celebration today. Under a huge statue of a mushroom cloud they will commemorate the end of a chilling experiment on their own people and call for a complete ban on nuclear testing.

Between 1949 and 1989 this area of eastern Kazakhstan was used by the former Soviet Union to test 456 nuclear bombs. The local population was not told about the risks to their lives – or indeed the health of their grandchildren.

It is estimated some 1.5 million people were affected by the fallout and decades on doctors blame high rates of cancer and birth deformity on the continuing effects of radiation. Read more »

August 29, 2011 Posted by | health, Kazakhstan | Leave a Comment

Another nuclear crisis would wipe out investment in uranium

While currently abandonment of nuclear power remains an option limited to affluent countries, one more cataclysm may nail the coffin lid of the nuclear power industry shut for good…., as another nuclear debacle in the U.S. following in the wake 1979’s Three Mile Island accident will undoubtedly prove too much, even for Madison Ave.’s PR spin doctors. No NPPS have been built in the U.S. since Three Mile Island and should bad things happen at Ft. Calhoun, where the Missouri’s water’s are still rising, the global market for uranium fuel for NPPs worldwide is going to crater, beginning with the U.S.

Kazakhstan’s Uranium Industry Could Lose Its Luster, By. John Daily,  OilPrice.com, 18 June 11-- What a difference a year and a tsunami make!

Western investors have been salivating over the post-Soviet space’s energy riches since the 1991 collapse of communism. While focusing on the Caspian’s hydrocarbon reserves other mineralogical riches awaited development as well, none more so than Kazakhstan’s vast uranium deposits. Read more »

June 19, 2011 Posted by | business and costs, Kazakhstan, Uranium | Leave a Comment

Highly secret transport of Highly Enriched Uranium to secret Russian facility

In the largest such operation ever mounted, U.S. and Kazakh officials transferred 11 tons of highly enriched uranium and 3 tons of plutonium some 1,890 miles by rail and road across the Central Asian country………….

U.S., Kazakhstan complete secret transfer of nuclear materials, KansasCity.com,  By JONATHAN S. LANDAY, McClatchy Newspapers, 18 Nov 10, WASHINGTON – Working under extraordinary secrecy, the U.S. and Kazakh governments in the past year have moved nuclear material that could have been used to make more than 770 bombs from a location feared vulnerable to terrorist attack to a new high-security facility. Read more »

November 18, 2010 Posted by | Kazakhstan, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Uranium | , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Kazakhstan has paid a high price for hosting nuclear weapons

Why Kazakhstan Is Front and Center at the Global Nuclear Security Summit THE HUFFINGTON POST, Al Eisele, 11 April 2010, “………..The radioactive fallout from all the above ground and atmospheric tests left Mrs. Koloskova with health problems and occasional nightmares. “I don’t know what happened with me, but from that moment, I felt headaches and nervous disorders, and I imagined it many times,” she said.

But she was one of the lucky ones. Still vigorous and able to walk with aid of a cane, she was not afflicted with any of the horrific tumors or the radiation-caused genetic mutilations and birth defects that affected many residents of Semey and other settlements near the 7,000-square-mile test site known as the Polygon, Russian for “firing range.”

Her story, and those of thousands of others like her, is the reason why Kazakhstan, a Central Asia country unknown to most Americans, is standing front and center among the 47 nations represented at the two-day Global Nuclear Security Summit beginning Monday in Washington…….

[Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev]  was the first foreign leader to renounce the possession and use of nuclear weapons. Al Eisele: Why Kazakhstan Is Front and Center at the Global Nuclear Security Summit

April 13, 2010 Posted by | Kazakhstan, politics international | , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Crooked dealings in uranium-rich Kazakhstan

Kazakhs accuse ex-uranium boss of money laundering

Mining Weekly, -2010-03-04By: Reuters
4th March 2010 , ASTANA – Kazakhstan on Thursday accused a former uranium tycoon of money laundering and said its security service had launched a new criminal probe into his affairs in a case that has shaken confidence in the Central Asian state.

One of Kazakhstan’s most prominent business figures, Mukhtar Dzhakishev was arrested last year on accusations of corruption, theft and illegal sales of uranium assets to foreign companies…..

Kazakhstan, hit hard by global economic slowdown, wants to attract fresh foreign investment as well as bolster the role of the state in strategic industries such as uranium and oil.

It has also alarmed human rights groups who have questioned Kazakhstan’s methods of fighting corruption in a country where President Nursultan Nazarbayev, in power for two decades, tolerates little political dissent.http://www.miningweekly.com/article/kazakhs-accuse-ex-uranium-boss-of-money-laundering-2010-03-04

March 5, 2010 Posted by | Kazakhstan, secrets,lies and civil liberties | , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Alleged uranium deal between Kazakhstan and Iran

Russia to probe alleged Iran uranium deal with Kazakhstan

Sources: RIA Novosti, Associated Press

December 31, 2009 Washington,   (WashingtonTV)—Russia said on Thursday that it had no knowledge of an alleged uranium deal between Iran and Kazakhstan, but it will look into the allegations. Read more »

December 31, 2009 Posted by | Kazakhstan, secrets,lies and civil liberties | , , , | Leave a Comment

Uranium corruption in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan to take former uranium boss to court over thef tKazakh prosecutors have filed a criminal court case against the former uranium boss Dzhakishev over corruption, they said World Bulletin 10 December 2009.……………Charges of illegally selling uranium deposits that had previously caused concerns among foreign investors have not been included in the case and will be investigated separately, the Kazakh Prosecutor General’s office said.

Kazakhstan to take former uranium boss to court over theft [ WORLD BULLETIN- TURKEY NEWS, WORLD NEWS ]

December 11, 2009 Posted by | Kazakhstan, secrets,lies and civil liberties | , , , | Leave a Comment

France’s pro-nuke President dismisses human rights concerns

Sarkozy-salesFrance, Kazakhs ink military transit, energy deals By PETER LEONARD (AP) –Associated Press Writer Angela Charlton contributed to this report from Paris., Kazakhstan 6 Oct 09 French President Nicolas Sarkozy scored a diplomatic coup Tuesday during a visit to energy-rich Kazakhstan, overseeing an agreement to allow military hardware for French forces fighting in Afghanistan to pass through Kazakh territory and clinching a raft of lucrative energy deals.Facing criticism over its human rights record, Kazakhstan won a measure of support from Sarkozy…………. Read more »

October 7, 2009 Posted by | 1, Kazakhstan, secrets,lies and civil liberties, spinbuster | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

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