2010 April « nuclear-news

Burn injuries from radioactive scrap metal

Radiation leak injures five in Delhi scrap shop EMOIZ.COM 10 April 2010, NEW DELHI: Five persons were admitted in a local hospital with burn injuries and other ailments after continuous exposure to radiation at a scrap dealers shop in West Delhi.A 1-kilometre radius around the shop has been cordoned off as a precautionary measure, a senior officer said.

According to the officer, the five victims slept at the scrap dealers shop, where some radioactive material, reportedly medical waste equipment, was dumped some five days ago in West Delhi.

According to officials, skin of two men had turned black due to exposure to the radioactive material all five victims have burn injuries and rashes on their bodies.

Radiation leak injures five in Delhi scrap shop | EMOIZ.COM

April 10, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | India, safety | antinuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive | Leave a comment

Spread of radioactive materials increases nuclear danger

Radiation poisoning a reminder of need for better ‘nuclear security, The Hindu , ‘Siddharth Varadarajan and R. Ramachandran, Apr 10, 2010, The Hindu : Front Page : Radiation poisoning a reminder of need for better ‘nuclear security’ New Delhi: Coming on the eve of next week’s Nuclear Security Summit, the news of people being sickened by cobalt-60 in a Delhi market is an embarrassing reminder of weaknesses in the Indian system of tracking minor radioactive substances………. Continue reading →

April 10, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | India, safety | antinuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear technology, nuclear weapons, radioactive, uranium | Leave a comment

Cobalt-60 – another radioactive isotope from the nuclear industry

Cobalt-60 Radiation in Delhi : What is Cobalt 60 ? India Buzzing 9 April 2010,Cobalt-60 (60Co) is a radioactive isotope of cobalt. Due to its short half life of 5.27 years 60Co is not found in nature. It is produced artificially by neutron activation of 59Co. 60Co decays by negative beta decay to the stable isotope nickel-60 (60Ni). The activated Ni-atom emits two gamma rays with energies of 1.17 and 1.33 MeV.

Cobalt-60 Radiation in Delhi : What is Cobalt 60 ? | India Buzzing

April 10, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, wastes | antinuclear, radiation, radioactive | Leave a comment

Renewable energy gets big boost in Ontario

Ontario Issues $8 Billion in Renewable Energy Contracts – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com April 9, 2010, By JOHN LORIN An Ontario government agency yesterday announced $8 billion in new renewable energy deals under the province’s bulked up feed-in tariff program, with 184 wind, solar, hydro and landfill gas projects winning long-term contracts to provide a total of about 2,500 megawatts of green power…..

Ontario Issues $8 Billion in Renewable Energy Contracts – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com

April 10, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, renewable | energy efficiency, renewable energy, renewables, solar, wind | Leave a comment

New arms control treaty gives nuclear armed bombers free rein

It is a ballistic missile focused treaty that essentially removes strategic bombers from arms control.

The dodgy accounting of nuclear diplomacy, guardian.co.uk, Julian Borger, 9 April 2010, The new arms control treaty signed in Prague contains new counting methods that call into question its real scope Take down the flags, put away the champagne, etc. The text of the new Start treaty is out on the US state department website, and the small print confirms the warnings of its sternest critics. Dodgy new counting rules mean that the real reductions in deployed nuclear weapons could turn out to be far less than the 30% advertised. Indeed, they could add up to nothing at all. Continue reading →

April 9, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Russia, USA | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear technology, nuclear weapons | Leave a comment

Israeli nuclear scientists refused USA visas

Obama Administration Denies Visas to Israeli Nuclear Scientists PAJAMAS MEDIA, Roger L. Simon 9 April 2010, The Obama administration is now denying U.S. visas to Israeli scientists who work at that nation’s Dimona nuclear reactor. This startling reversal of traditional policy was reported April 7, 2010, in the Israeli website/newspaper NRG/Maariv (link to the original Hebrew here and to an exclusive Pajamas Media translation here). This could be yet another flashpoint in the increasingly sensitive relations between the administration, the American Jewish community, and Israel……

Roger L. Simon » BREAKING: Obama Administration Denies Visas to Israeli Nuclear Scientists

April 9, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, politics international | antinuclear, nuclear | Leave a comment

‘Third Generation’ Nuclear Reactors have same old problems – wastes, weapons proliferation

Why James Hansen is wrong on nuclear power | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, By Renfrey Clarke April 8, 2010 “….. Third-generation reactors are in essence evolved versions of the pressurised-water installations that provide almost all of today’s nuclear energy. Now being built for the first time, “third-generation” plants are arguably still at the pre-commercial stage…. Continue reading →

April 9, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, technology | antinuclear, climate change, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear renaissance, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear technology, nuclear weapons, radiation, radioactive, reactors, uranium | Leave a comment

Doubtful that U.S. Senate will pass the U.S. – Russia Disarmament Treaty

Unclear As Of Now if Senate Will Have Votes to Ratify New Disarmament Treaty ABC News, Political Punch April 08, 2010 Senate sources tell ABC News that it’s unclear if the Senate has the votes to pass the nuclear disarmament treaty that President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed just hours ago.

The ambiguity confirms what has seemed a constant refrain of concern from the White House about whether the votes are there.

Unclear As Of Now if Senate Will Have Votes to Ratify New Disarmament Treaty – Political Punch

April 9, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | antinuclear, nuclear weapons | Leave a comment

USA’s nuclear weapons New START and its dodgy arithmetic

New START and Nuclear Midnight, RealClearWorld, By Daniel McGroarty 8 April 2010, What accounts for the dampening of enthusiasm of pro-disarmament groups for New START? Call it a kind of fuzzy math: The White House has been careful to characterize the new warhead levels as 30 percent below the warhead limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty. But both the U.S. and Russian arsenals are well below those limits now, having retired weapons without replacing them…..

Add to that a new rule for counting nuclear-capable strategic bombers: Under New START, each bomber counts as one warhead – regardless of how many nuclear weapons it can deliver. With U.S. and Russian bomber capacities varying from 6 to 20 nuclear warheads, that’s a quick way to cut the warhead count without scrapping any weapons…….As the Federation of American Scientists’ Hans Kristensen reports: “… The [New START] counting rule would ‘hide’ approximately 450 and 860 warheads, respectively, or 1,310 warheads. That’s more warheads than Britain, China, France, India, Israel, and Pakistan possess combined!” Expect to hear more about that from the world’s non-nuclear nations at next month’s Non-Proliferation Treaty conference……As the Atomic Scientists like to say, the clock is ticking.

RealClearWorld – New START and Nuclear Midnight

April 9, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | antinuclear, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear weapons | Leave a comment

Court verdict against South Australian govt in treatment of uranium protestors

Payout for protesters locked in shipping container – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) 9 April 2010, The South Australian Government has been ordered to pay $724,000 to 10 people involved in a protest at the Beverley uranium mine a decade ago.

The Supreme Court has found the nine uranium protesters and a cameraman were assaulted and all but one falsely imprisoned in a shipping container………Payout for protesters locked in shipping container – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

April 9, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, Legal | antinuclear, AUSTRALIA, nuclear costs, uranium | Leave a comment

Nuclear power no good against global warming

Why James Hansen is wrong on nuclear power | Links April 8, 2010 With both third- and fourth-generation nuclear plants outside the time bracket, what is left for environmentalists who hanker after nuclear power? The only option for them is the one embraced by the French and Chinese governments, and now, it seems, by the Obama administration in the US: an accelerated roll-out of second-generation nuclear plants, built to standardised designs following rushed or non-existent consultation with the plants’ future neighbours. Continue reading →

April 9, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, climate change | antinuclear, climate change, energy efficiency, renewable energy, renewables | Leave a comment

Growth of Wind Energy in USA

Wind Energy: Yet Another Reason for Industrial Policy Daily Kos by Meteor Blades – Apr 08, 2010 TA decade ago, the federal Energy Information Administration predicted that the installed capacity of wind turbines in the United States would, at best, reach 20,000 megawatts by 2020. It was one of the EIA’s patented underestimates of renewable energy sources. This morning, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) released its annual report [pdf]. Installed U.S. wind capacity as of December 2009: 35,000 megawatts. Of that, 10,000 megawatts were installed in 2009, the most in U.S. history, and 39% of the total new electricity-generating capacity installed last year, second behind natural gas. Some 3000 megawatts are currently under construction.

Daily Kos: Wind Energy: Yet Another Reason for Industrial Policy

April 9, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | renewable, USA | climate change, energy efficiency, renewable energy, renewables, wind | Leave a comment

Chile’s highly enriched uranium and the earthquake

Bomb Chasers: How a Potential Nuke Was Rescued from the Chile Quake – TIME By Eben Harrell Apr. 08, 2010 “….The Chilean earthquake carried the power of 10,000 Hiroshima bombs. It severed power and communication lines, closed highways, sparked looting and led the country’s President to declare a state of emergency. Within minutes of the quake, Bieniawski had gathered the NNSA officials in a hotel lobby, where the group spent the next four hours trying to make contact with two sites — a military base and research reactor — where the uranium had been stored. Continue reading →

April 9, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, SOUTH AMERICA | Leave a comment

USA’s poor security of its own enriched uranium and dead nuke weapons

Will U.S. Inaction on its own Nuclear Security Issues Compromise Summit Success?Across the Aisle: The PSA Blog, by Peter Stockton and Ingrid Drake | April 7th, 2010 “…..Frankly, if we want other nations to follow, we have to lead by example. Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is a prime target for nuclear terrorists: with about 100 pounds it is possible to make an improvised nuclear device that could create a blast on par with the one that devastated Hiroshima. Yet, the U.S. has the world’s second largest stock of HEU and plutonium. Continue reading →

April 9, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | antinuclear, enriched, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear technology, nuclear wastes, nuclear weapons, plutonium, radioactive, uranium | Leave a comment

Nuclear Weapons Proliferation is the biggest risk with Integral Fast Reactors

Why James Hansen is wrong on nuclear power | Links April 8, 2010 Hansen Nuclear Power ….. Renfrey’s article understates the WMD proliferation risks associated with integral fast reactors (IFRs). The plutonium/waste mixture from IFRs could be processed in a conventional reprocessing plant without too much trouble, especially since proliferators would take simple steps (reducing the irradiation time) to maximise the proportion of plutonium-239 and to reduce the difficulty and hazards of transporting and processing the material. Continue reading →

April 9, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | antinuclear, depleted, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear technology, nuclear weapons, radiation, radioactive, reactors, uranium | Leave a comment