Radioactive materials getting recycled into goods Improper disposal of equipment is allowing radioactive materials to contaminate metals used to make consumer products.
Bloomberg News November 12, 2008 French authorities made headlines last month when they said as many as 500 sets of radioactive buttons had been installed in elevators throughout France. It wasn’t an isolated case.Improper disposal of industrial equipment and medical scanners containing radioactive materials is allowing nuclear waste to trickle into scrap smelters, contaminating consumer goods, threatening the $140-billion trade in recycled metal and spurring the United Nations to call for increased screening………………………….”The world is waking up very late to this,” said Paul de Bruin, radiation safety chief for Jewometaal Stainless Processing in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the world’s biggest stainless-steel scrap yard.

Jobs to be lost at Uranium One – Union
Canadian-based uranium producing company Uranium One will retrench over 1 000 employees, trade union Solidarity said on Tuesday.

“Solidarity has received an Article 189 notice from Uranium One whereby the group gives notice that the retrenchment process for 1 013 of its 1 175 employees at its Dominion uranium mine outside Klerksdorp will begin”.

Solidarity said that the mine would now be placed on care and maintenance………………The price of uranium dropped considerably in the 11 months between December 2007 and October this year………………Meanwhile the mine had also indicated that it would only pay out the minimum severance pay, of one week’s pay for every year’s service, to employees, Solidarity said.

Efforts to reach Uranium One were unsuccessful. – Sapa

Radioactive water leaks from nuclear submarine HMS Trafalgar
Telegraph.co.uk 12 Nov 08 A British nuclear submarine leaked hundreds of litres of radioactive waste into a river, it has emerged.

Environment watchdogs are investigating the leak at Devonport, in Plymouth, from HMS Trafalgar in which 280 litres of contaminated water were spilled.

The Environment Agency threatened to prosecute the Ministry of Defence or Devonport Management Limited after a series of spills in 2005.

Nuclear waste arrives at German dump

herald sun November 12, 2008

A RADIOACTIVE waste shipment arrived at a German dump today after the biggest anti-nuclear protests in years, pointing up the fierce opposition to reversing Berlin’s phase-out of atomic energy.

The protests, the biggest since 2001 with thousands of police deployed over the weekend, caused the 123 tonnes of nuclear waste to arrive around 20 hours late at the Gorleben disposal site in northern Germany………………………

Earlier this year it emerged that water had leaked into another storage site, at Asse in northern Germany, leading to radioactive contamination in the local area in what was a “catastrophe,” Mr Doerges said.

“For years the public has been lied to. For years we had radioactive contamination around Asse and no one was told … Nuclear power cannot be the answer to the climate problem,” Till Doerges from protest organisers x-tausendmal quer said.

The sun rises slowly for Australian solar
Science Alert By Robin Taylor 12 November 2008

Energetic founder and chairman of solar thermal startup company Ausra, Dr David Mills, says Australia still has a long way to go when it comes to supporting solar technology. After working as a solar energy researcher in Australia for more than 30 years, Dr Mills left last year for the US where he says there is greater support for his solar technology.

However, he highlights that the landscape in Australia has changed tremendously since he left, with federal and state governments now all expressing interest in solar technology.

Govt delaying renewable energy rollout: Greens

ABC News 11 Nov 08 The Greens say Federal Government MPs have stymied plans to develop renewable energy in Australia.

A Government-majority Senate Committee has recommended no immediate action to rollout a national renewable energy feed-in tariff to boost investment.

Instead, it says a uniform tariff should be carefully considered by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG).

Greens Senator Christine Milne says it is a delaying tactic.

“It is a mechanism for delay, it is a mechanism for the lowest common denominator and we will be standing here next year as the United States has zoomed ahead on renewable energy, as Europe continues to zoom ahead of renewable energy, as China does and all the jobs for renewable energy go overseas,” she said.

Senator Milne says a feed-in tariff is the is the right way to increase renewable energy uptake in Australia.

Protest to stop nuclear waste in its tracks

ABC Local Radio AM –  11 November , 2008 

Reporter: Stephanie Kennedy

Protestors have spent the last four days trying to disrupt the train’s journey from a French reprocessing plant. The nuclear cargo is destined for a waste storage facility.

Police used water cannons, tear gas and batons to break up the protestors; and riot officers carried them away one by one.

Germany has no reprocessing facilities of its own.

So it has to send large quantities of used fuel to France and Britain for treatment. Once it’s been processed Germany has a legal obligation to take back the treated waste. waste………………WOLFGANG KOENIG(translated): In the beginning we underestimated the problem, we thought the disposal of nuclear waste could be managed with relatively simple technological solutions. It was dumped into the sea, it was stored at unsafe locations and only in recent years we recognised how difficult it is to store especially the especially highly radioactive heat-generating waste………….The protestors have vowed to continue their actions until the cargo of radioactive waste reaches the storage facility.

Super storms ‘will wash away coast’

AUSTRALIA’S east coast faces unprecedented erosion within the next decade, heading into a storm period made worse by climate change, research predicts.

The seven-year study suggests sandy coasts, such as those in southeast Queensland, northern New South Wales and parts of Sydney are most at risk of major erosion as storms and high tides hit.

The research, conducted by the Griffith Centre for Coastal Management, examined some of the worst storms to hit the east coast since European settlement……………………….researcher Peter Helman said.

“It’s going to cut the coast further inland and it will be more severe than past stormy periods because of the underlying climate change and subsequent sea rises.”

Green group warns of Alice radioactive freight threat

ABC News 11 Nov 08 Anti-nuclear campaigners have warned the Alice Springs Town Council against a plan to increase the amount of radioactive material freighted on the Adelaide to Darwin railway.

The Olympic Dam mine in South Australia has applied to increase the amount of uranium it transports on the line, as well as radioactive copper concentrate.

Dave Sweeney from the Australian Conservation Foundation says the plan would see hundreds of train-loads of radioactive material pass through Alice Springs every year.

He says the risk of a train accident makes the proposal a direct concern for Alice Springs’ municipal authorities.

“Because you can be sure if a train goes off the rails it won’t be bureaucrats in Canberra, and it won’t be Darwin and it won’t certainly be the board of BHP flying in to clean things up,” he said.

“It will be Alice Springs firies. It will be Alice Springs health and hospital workers. It will be Alice Springs coppers.”

Aussie nuclear reactor operating again

The Age 10 Nov 08 Australia’s only nuclear reactor is back in full operation but continued problems have forced multi-million dollar maintenance years ahead of schedule.

The $430 million Open Pool Australian Lightwater (OPAL) reactor has been plagued with problems since it was first powered up in late 2006…………………

The reactor was shut down for 10 months until May of this year because of displacement of fuel plates in the reactor’s core.

© 2008 AAP

Al Gore Urges Obama to Dispense With Non-Renewable Energy
eFuxMedia By Jenny Huntington17:10, November 9th 2008

During his speech at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Al Gore urged president-elect of the United States Barack Obama to take more measures in order to protect the environment from global warming, deeming the current actions aimed at solving this issues as not being drastic enough.

Moreover, Gore stated he believed that Obama should put forward a national plan entailing to get rid of non-renewable energy over the following ten years, thus rendering Americans to get 100 percent of their electricity from renewable and non-carbon sources.

Hospitals faced with radioactive problem

Nuclear waste facility is no longer accepting radioactive waste

tv6 November 08, 2008

MARQUETTE — Low-level radioactive waste is piling up at hospitals.

The Barnwell South Carolina Landfill that served 36 states stopped accepting radioactive waste material in July.

It was one of the places Marquette General Hospital sent trash from its Nuclear Medicine Program.

Police crackdown on German nuclear waste train protests
BERLIN (AFP) 10 Nov 08 — Police wielding truncheons beat back environmentalists Sunday trying to block a train carrying highly radioactive nuclear waste from western France to a dump in Germany, authorities said.In the largest and most violent anti-nuclear protests since 2001 in Germany, activists set fire to barricades on the tracks in the north of the country, which police extinguished with water cannon.Several protesters and police were injured in the confrontation, police said, without giving any numbers of victims.Railroad crews scrambled to repair the damage overnight to allow the shipment of the 23 tonnes of treated, but still extremely toxic, nuclear waste to continue on to the Gorleben disposal centre.The train had resumed its journey after being stopped for nearly 12 hours Saturday near the Franco-German border by three protesters, German police said.About 15,000 demonstrators rallied along the tracks, most of them in the Gorleben region, joined by a caravan of 300 tractors festooned with anti-nuclear banners.Some 16,000 police were deployed across Germany to ensure the load reached the dump safely.Anti-nuclear group x-tausendmal quer, which organised the demonstrations, argues that the shipments are dangerous and that Germany has not found any permanent solution for what to do with the waste from its nuclear reactors.”This is a strong sign of the renaissance of the anti-nuclear movement,” group spokesman Jochen Stay said of the weekend protests.The organisation calls for the quick phase-out of the country’s nuclear power plants.By late Sunday, at least 200 anti-nuclear protesters continued to block access to the dump, having decided to keep up their sit-in until Monday, the earliest the convoy could arrive at the site, according to police.The German government has approved plans to mothball the last of its 17 reactors by about 2020.But Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for slowing down the process over fears it will be impossible to slash greenhouse gas emissions without nuclear energy, which emits no carbon dioxide and produces a quarter of the country’s electricity.The opposition Greens and the far-left Die Linke party called on their members to join the protests.Polls show most Germans oppose nuclear power but skyrocketing energy costs have sparked the calls to reconsider the phase-out.The waste’s odyssey began Friday at the nuclear waste retreatment plant at La Hague in Normandy. The trainload is the 11th of its kind to date.The cargo was halted Saturday for half the day on the French side of the frontier at the station in Lauterbourg when three German militants, two men and a woman, jammed their arms into a block of concrete hidden under the track.Police eventually managed to dislodge them.About 500 demonstrators took part in a sit-in Saturday night at the site. Police reported finding fire accelerant and damage at signal stations which hindered other rail traffic.The shipment was to reach the northern city of Lueneburg late Sunday, 12 hours behind schedule.The cargo will be offloaded onto trucks in the town of Dannenberg 50 kilometre (30 miles) away and is expected to finish the last 20 kilometres of the journey to Gorleben Monday

Thousands in Germany protest against nuclear waste train1 day ago
BERLIN (AFP) 9 Nov 08 — Thousands of protesters took part Saturday in a demonstration at a nuclear waste disposal centre in northern Germany where a trainload of treated waste is due to arrive from France next week.Police put the number at the Gorleben site at 14,000 with the organisers claiming 16,000 environmentalists had turned out, twice the number at a similar protest at the site two years ago.The train, transporting 123 tonnes of waste, left western France Friday and made its way Saturday through the east of the country, where two demonstrations greeted its passage.It is the 11th such trainload of waste to be taken from the retreatment plant at La Hague in Normandy to Germany and is due to arrive Monday.At the border between the two countries three German demonstrators blocked the train by chaining themselves to the track, police said.The high turnout at Gorleben signalled the “rebirth of the anti-nuclear movement in Germany,” said Jochen Stay, spokesman for the organisers of the demonstration.About 10,000 German police officers have been mobilised to protect the train. The waste will be taken by road for the final 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Dannenberg to Gorleben, about 200 kilometres (120) northwest of Berlin.

TIMELINE – Major Russian naval accidents since 1991
Putin, now prime minister, was criticized for his slow response to the Kursk disaster.

In 2003, 11 people also died when a Russian submarine that was being taken out of service sank in the Barents Sea.

Reuters – Twenty people were killed and 21 injured in an accident aboard a Russian nuclear submarine, the navy said on Sunday.

It is the worst accident on a nuclear submarine since the 2000 sinking of the Kursk.

Below is a timeline of Russia’s main naval accidents since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991:

* Aug 12, 2000 – The Russian Oscar-II class submarine Kursk with 118 crew members sinks to the bottom of the Barents Sea after possibly a collision and two explosions on board.

* June 16, 2000 Toxic fuel leaked from a ballistic missile and poisoned several servicemen at a naval base in Russia’s Far East.

* Aug. 28, 2003 – Russia’s K-159 nuclear submarine sank while being towed to a shipyard. Nine crew were killed……………………Sept. 6, 2006 – Fire on board the Viktor-3 class Russian navy submarine St. Daniel of Moscow, moored near the Finnish border, kills two crew members. A few hours later a missile launch failed.

* Nov. 8, 2008 – Twenty people died and 21 were injured on board the Nerpa, classified by NATO as an Akula-class attack submarine, when its fire extinguishing systems unexpectedly went off during sea trials in the Pacific.