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Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump plan is being killed off

yucca-mtYucca Mountain funding nears its demise
Government Executive By Darren Goode Congress Daily August 21, 2009
House and Senate Democrats are well on their way to helping the Obama administration kill Nevada’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

Both chambers have approved fiscal 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations bills that match the administration’s $197 million request to let the Energy Department officially keep the project open on paper for a year while funding Energy Secretary Stephen Chu’s blue ribbon panel to develop an alternative plan for storing and managing nuclear waste.

The current 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste are held in temporary surface storage facilities at 131 sites in 39 states.

Yucca Mountain funding nears its demise (8/21/09) — www.GovernmentExecutive.com

August 22, 2009 Posted by | 1, USA, wastes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Texas anti-nuclear groups to take part in legal hearing

Anti-nuke groups win standing in Comanche Peak expansion case
Dallas News Aug 21, 2009  Elizabeth Souder
Several anti-nuclear groups and Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, have won a seat at the table when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decides whether to grant Energy Future Holdings license to expand a North Texas nuclear power plant.

The decision means the NRC must hold a contested hearing after staff has finished reviewing the company’s application for a license to build and operate two new reactors.The review is expected to take until 2012, and the contested hearing could delay a final decision on expansion of the Comanche Peak plant in Glen Rose by a few months, according to NRC spokesman Scott Burnell…………………

……………The groups — Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition, Public Citizen, True Cost of Nukes — and Burnam made 19 contentions, and the licensing board agreed that two of the complaints should be addressed.

The two contentions that the board agreed should be heard are:

That Luminant failed to consider what might happen to the new reactors if there were a severe accident at one of the existing reactors,

And, that the company failed to explore alternatives to nuclear power, including “combinations of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, with technological advances in storage methods and supplemental use of natural gas, to create baseload power,” according to the board’s decision.

TEXAS ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT Blog | The Dallas Morning News

August 22, 2009 Posted by | 1, politics, USA | , , | Leave a comment

A Nuclear Japan would increase nuclear war danger

A Nuclear Japan?
 MND By Sean Varner | Aug 21, 2009

Sixty-four years ago this month, the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastated by the first and only wartime use of nuclear weapons. The death toll totaled approximately 200,000………………………….

…………what if Japan decided to go nuclear? The consequences would be far-reaching:

First, it would be a major blow to the NPT. Japan has served as the epitome of nonproliferation and, as the only victim of nuclear attack, carried a moral authority in its calls for nuclear disarmament. Without that voice, the NPT becomes a largely meritless system of haves and have-nots.

Second, a nuclear arms race would seem almost inevitable. Not only would China and North Korea respond by ramping up capabilities, but South Korea and Taiwan might be compelled to go nuclear as well. The spillover effects would likely ratchet up the arms race between India and Pakistan, too………………..

Not only is it therefore impractical for Japan to go nuclear, but the resulting arms race and cutoff of its fuel sources would likely leave Japan much less secure than it is now.

A Nuclear Japan? :: MND: Your Daily Dose of Counter-Theory

August 22, 2009 Posted by | 1 | Leave a comment

Ionising radiatio -a risk to patients

From worker safety to patient safety

Safety at Work blog Kevin Jones  August 21, 2009

quoting The article by Madan M Rehani

“The risk of cancer from radiation doses imparted through a number of CT scans is not insignificant. Most other radiation effects (such as skin injury, just to name one) can be avoided rather effectively, but this is not true for the risk of cancer. There are estimates of few million excess cancers in the USA over the next two to three decades from about 60 million CT scans done annually.”

From worker safety to patient safety « Safety At Work Blog

August 22, 2009 Posted by | 1 | Leave a comment