2009 January 20 « nuclear-news

Arabs: Israel ammo in Gaza had depleted uranium

Arabs: Israel ammo in Gaza had depleted uranium
By GEORGE JAHN – 20 Jan 09 VIENNA, Austria (AP) — Arab nations accused Israel on Monday of blasting Gaza with ammunition containing depleted uranium and urged the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate reports that traces of it had been found in victims of the shelling.In a letter on behalf of Arab ambassadors accredited in Austria, Prince Mansour Al-Saoud, the Saudi Ambassador, expressed “our deep concern regarding the information … that traces of depleted uranium have been found in Palestinian victims.”

A final draft of the letter was made available to The Associated Press on Monday. It urgently requested IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei to “carry out a radiological and physical assessment in order to verify the presence of depleted uranium in the weaponry used by Israel … in the Gaza Strip.”…………………

…………….It is not the first time Israel has been accused of using ordnance containing depleted uranium, which makes shells and bombs harder and increases their penetrating power. The Israeli army declined comment. But the U.S. and NATO have used uranium-depleted rounds in Bosnia and Iraq.

The Associated Press: Arabs: Israel ammo in Gaza had depleted uranium

January 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Obama’s briefcase of nuclear secrets

Obama’s briefcase of nuclear secrets
THE STANDARD 20 Jan 09 By David Wood and Agencies

It is a simple transfer of immense power. Today, an unobtrusive military officer carrying a briefcase will follow President George W Bush up to Capitol Hill.

After the inauguration ceremony, he will accompany President Barack Obama back to the White House. Inside the briefcase, known as ‘the football’, are codes to identify and authenticate a presidential order that could launch nuclear weapons and ignite a global holocaust.

Terrorist attacks

Routine to most Americans, perhaps astonishing to much of the world, this peaceful passing of ‘the football’ will propel Obama into a maelstrom………………The transfer of nuclear command and control from one US president to another is one of the most important rituals of the inauguration process, but which draws little public attention……………………………

Obama inherits the hot briefcase at volatile times. Iran and North Korea are rushing headlong toward building nuclear arsenals. And the main arms-reduction treaty with Russia expires next year.

The risk of nuclear war will grow during the next 20 years, US intelligence officers concluded last month. Surprise, in this realm, is almost a given.

The Standard | Online Edition :: Obama’s briefcase of nuclear secrets

January 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

What Barack Obama’s inaugaration means for green energy

What Barack Obama’s inaugaration means for green energy
guardian.co.uk 19 January 2009
In a bold departure from past US policies, Barack Obama sees clean energy and ‘green jobs’ as critical in stimulating the economy, writes Keith Schneider from Yale Environment 360, part of the Guardian Environment Network
Even in this era of costly crisis and even more expensive rescue, $50 billion is still a lot of money. That sum — perhaps even more — is what Congressional leaders and aides to President-elect Barack Obama say he will propose to build new transit lines, weatherise buildings, manufacture clean next-generation vehicles, and create new “green collar” jobs.

Even more crucial than the scale of the spending on clean energy is what the President-elect says it represents to his overall economic development strategy. Clean energy projects are a crucial piece of an estimated $700 billion to $1 trillion, two-year stimulus plan to put 3 million people back to work, and the first wave of public investment to transform how America powers itself. Remarkably, it now appears that Obama plans to launch his presidency with a daring idea: To anchor the American economy with energy sources not derived from fossil fuels.

Indeed, the incoming president is proposing to take the conventional relationship between the economy and the environment and stand it on its head. Instead of the economy overshadowing and marginalising environmental concerns, Obama wants to use environmental principles to help drive economic growth.

What Obama’s innaugaration means for green energy | Environment | guardian.co.uk

January 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New U.S.-U.A.E. Deal Raises Eyebrows Amid Concern Over Iran’s Nuclear Program

New U.S.-U.A.E. Deal Raises Eyebrows Amid Concern Over Iran’s Nuclear Program Radio Free Europe 20 Jan 09 –

By Golnaz Esfandiari

The United States has signed an agreement to cooperate in developing a civilian nuclear energy program in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.).

The deal — signed in Washington on January 15 by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her U.A.E. counterpart, Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nayhan — has been promoted by the Bush administration as a major foreign-policy accomplishment and an expression of Washington’s interest in cooperating with countries that are committed to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

But critics are concerned that the agreement, inked as President George W. Bush prepares to leave office, could lead to a nuclear-energy race in the Middle East amid growing concern over Iran’s nuclear activities.

The agreement must be approved by the incoming administration of Barack Obama before being sent to Congress. From there, Congress will have 90 days to act.
‘Commerce Above Common Sense’

So far, Obama and his team have been silent about the deal, but others in the Democratic camp have been vocal in their opposition to it.

One is Ed Markey, a congressman from Massachusetts who has been a strong critic of nuclear energy. Markey has urged Obama to reject the deal and halt what he has termed “the Bush administration’s policy of placing nuclear commerce above common sense.” He further warned that, “In the Middle East, a nuclear-energy race could be as perilous as a nuclear-arms race.” ……………………..There is also concern that the nuclear technology delivered to the U.A.E. could get to Iran. The country has reportedly been used in the past by nuclear smugglers,

January 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Yucca a Mountain of Nuclear Doubt

Mountain of doubt Will the country’s only planned nuclear waste dump survive Obama?Feature story – From the January 19, 2009 issue of High Country News by Judith Lewis”…………………………..Seventy-seven percent of Nevada voters object to storing nuclear waste in their state, which has no nuclear reactors of its own…………………………..It’s hard to know exactly how much Yucca Mountain had to do with his victory. “Obviously, there’s never one issue that determines how people are going to vote,” says Nevada Rep. Shelley Berkley, a fierce Yucca Mountain opponent. “But I believe there was a strong sense that President-elect Barack Obama presented a clear alternative to John McCain’s manic obsession with putting waste in Yucca Mountain.”

Sen. Reid has now pronounced Yucca Mountain dead, and Berkley believes he’s right. Nick Shapiro, a spokesman for Obama’s transition team, confirmed by e-mail that Obama believes “Yucca Mountain should not and will not move forward.”………………………….The disposal of high-level nuclear waste — mostly leftovers from atomic fission, as opposed to “crapped out” clothes and contaminated tools — has dogged the industry since the dawn of the atomic age. Waste from the very first reactor experiment, in 1942, still taints the groundwater near its burial site in a forest outside of Chicago; spent fuel rods — zirconium-alloy tubes stuffed with uranium pellets — wait in watery cooling pools and dry concrete casks at 121 operating and decommissioned reactors in 39 states…………………………….not only has reprocessing proved to be disastrously polluting, it separates out fissionable plutonium — and plutonium can be used to make bombs. Proliferation concerns made nuclear waste disposal the government’s problem……………………………..Fearing the collapse of an already faltering industry, Congress in 1982 drew up the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, ordering the Energy Department to open a nuclear waste storage facility within 16 years. But Congress did nothing in that time except select Yucca Mountain as the only location worth studying, delaying until 2002 to give the site final approval and allow the Energy Department to at long last apply for a license. As of December 2006, $13.5 billion from utility bills and taxes has gone into researching the site, and utilities have accumulated some 55,000 metric tons of waste. By 2010, the waste will exceed Yucca Mountain’s limit of 70,000 metric tons………………………………..o maintain that energy mix will require replacing and retrofitting the country’s aging fleet of reactors, and to support those efforts without the prospect of Yucca Mountain, the new administration will have to act quickly to locate a waste storage project. That won’t be easy. Congress will need to throw out all previous laws regarding nuclear waste disposal and start the site selection process from scratch. The Energy Department will need to tear up decades of contracts with nuclear energy providers and negotiate new terms for temporary storage. Legislators would then set to work investigating sites

Mountain of doubt — High Country News

January 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A Middle East greeneneregy push

A Middle East green energy push |
Los Angeles Times 19 Jan 09 The oil-rich United Arab Emirates doesn’t have to worry about energy independence. It has enough reserves of crude and natural gas to last it a century at least.Yet this federation of seven states on the Persian Gulf appears to have glimpsed a post-carbon world and is making some surprising moves into renewable energy.On Monday, the government of Abu Dhabi, the largest emirate in terms of land mass, announced that it will generate 7% of its electricity from green sources by 2020. That’s modest compared with California, which is shooting for 33% by 2020. But it’s a start for a tiny place with an outsized carbon footprint that’s starting virtually from zero when it comes to clean energy.The announcement came at the start of the World Future Energy Summit, which Abu Dhabi is hosting this year. The renewable push will be led by Masdar, a clean-technology initiative launched by the Abu Dhabi in 2006. Masdar has already poured billions of petro-dollars into green energy, including investments in a German photovoltaic company and a wind farm off the coast of England. It has already broken ground on Masdar City, a renewable-powered city of 50,000 inhabitants that it hopes to turn into a showcase for sustainability.“The world has reached a tipping point in the acceptance of renewable energy,” said Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, Masdar chief executive, in a speech opening the energy summit.A Middle East green energy push | Greenspace | Los Angeles Times

January 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Senators seek stimulus funds for nuclear cleanup

Senators seek stimulus funds for nuclear cleanup
seattlepi.com By SHANNON DININNY ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER January 19, 2009 RICHLAND, Wash. — Miles of tainted groundwater. Dozens of burial sites, silently brimming with dangerous radioactive waste. Weapons-grade plutonium still to be shipped off the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site.The Hanford nuclear reservation in southeast Washington presents no shortage of work toward cleaning up the site, work that is expected to continue for decades, but managers say they will miss 23 deadlines this year because budgeted funds were insufficient…………………..The federal government retains ownership of the properties, most of them highly contaminated and often near major waterways, threatening public health and the environment. Since the mid-1990s, the Energy Department has spent $7.3 billion to $5.5 billion on environmental cleanup nationally each year.

The longer the cleanup drags on, the more technically challenging and expensive it gets, said Susan Gordon, director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability in Washington D.C………………………………..At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in northern California, EPA fined the Energy Department $105,000 for failing to clean up groundwater contaminated by hazardous chemicals, plus $10,000 a week until the department resumes the effort………………………….

A House stimulus bill released last week includes $500 million for such cleanup. Senators in states with significant cleanup responsibilities are pushing for $6 billion over four years, $1.5 billion a year.

Hanford, where overall cleanup costs are expected to top $50 billion, gets about $2 billion of the Energy Department’s total cleanup budget annually.

Some work could be accelerated with additional money, said David Brockman, manager of the agency’s Richland operations office, which oversees half of the Hanford cleanup. He cited work to pump-and-treat contaminated groundwater, cleanup of two aging pools that once contained spent nuclear fuel and efforts to retrieve highly radioactive waste from the site’s central plateau.

Cleanup of the plateau, which holds some of the most dangerous waste, has slowed because it is farther from Columbia River, the principal waterway in the Pacific Northwest.

Senators seek stimulus funds for nuclear cleanup

January 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The benefits of an intercontinental energy grid

The benefits of an intercontinental energy grid – Science Alert By Stewart Taggart 20 January 2009Imagine an Asian electricity grid anchored by China at one end and Australia on the other. The grid would carry and distribute hemispheric solar, geothermal, wind and wave energy. The vision is big. But so’s the problem of climate change.

Start by looking at Asia’s energy status quo. Fossil fuels dominate. Renewable energy development is sporadic. National grids aren’t interconnected. Carbon costs aren’t applied. Vision is lacking.

Now, apply sensible economic and technological rationalisation. What pops out is a networked Asian electricity backbone in which efficiency, price and environmental-friendliness count. A regional grid would offer a frictionless exchange of kilowatthours akin to the frictionless exchange of electrons the Internet has brought.

The plan would entail building a 10,000-kilometer long electricity transmission system stretching from Beijing to the Great Australian Bight. Australian concentrating solar power, geothermal, wind and wave energy would flow northward. It would be joined by the harnessed geothermal power of Indonesia’s volcanoes. This torrent of Austro-Indonesian low emission energy would then wend its way across a wind farm-lined South China Sea to China. Or the transmission system could go by land through a Southeast Asia regional High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) power line paralleling existing power lines in Malaysia, Thailand and Laos……………………Renewable energy delivered via a ubiquitous regional grid represents a market-based, clean energy dream-team. It’s like rolling the Internet’s packet switching, eBay’s auction methodogy and carbon priced consumer behaviour modification into one. Lastly, since everyone will be drinking from the same well, there’ll be a premium on cooperative, multilateral good-neighborliness…………………………Energy and water loom as 21st Century flashpoints. Tethering Asia to a common watering hole makes more sense than gunboat ‘go it alone’ fights over resources. Civilized, rules-based sharing seems much smarter. Wouldn’t you agree?

The benefits of an intercontinental energy grid (ScienceAlert)

January 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment