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The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Japan’s radioactive used cars

Radioactive second-hand cars dog Japan, BY:THE AUSTRALIAN, RICHARD LLOYD PARRY , October 26, 2011  RUSTING hulks disguised with new paint, and mileage clocks reset – the wiles of the second-hand car dealer are well known.

However, motorists in Japan are facing an unfamiliar peril. They are being offered used cars with low mileage, well-maintained engines and sound bodywork. The only flaw is that they are dangerously radioactive. Continue reading →

October 27, 2011 Posted by | environment, Japan | Leave a comment

Keep Virginia’s ban on uranium mining, say students

 

Uranium and UMWFredericksburg.com  Rusty Dennen, 26 Oct 11, About 75 students, some hoisting “Keep the Ban” signs gathered in front of a podium at the university’s Ball Circle to voice their displeasure about the possibility of the Virginia General Assembly lifting a 1982 moratorium on uranium mining. Graham Givens, student organizer with the Sierra Club-Virginia Chapter exhorted the assorted students, dogs and older activists to make their objections known, calling the mining a “destructive and wasteful process” that will leave a legacy of radioactive waste if allowed by Virginia Uranium Inc. at a site in Pittsylvania County…..

October 27, 2011 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Where Occupy & No Nukes merge & win!!!,

In the United States, the key is to deny the nuclear industry the federal funding without which it can’t build new reactors. …

Atomic energy is, after all, a means of centralizing power in corporate hands. But there is only so far the one-percenters can ride a dead horse, especially if it’s radioactive. ..

 we want to guarantee our energy supply—even if it’s driven by the wind and sun—is controlled by the community, not the corporations. 

And here is where Occupy/No Nukes can jump the power of democracy to a whole new level. 

Where Occupy & No Nukes merge & win!!!, Harvey Wasserman October 23, 2011
The global upheaval that is the Occupy Movement is hopefully in the process of changing—and saving—the world.  Through the astonishing power of creative non-violence, it has the magic and moxie to defeat the failing forces of corporate greed.

A long-term agenda seems to be emerging: social justice, racial and gender equality, ecological survival, true democracy, an end to war, and so much more. “When the power of love overcomes the love of power,” said Jimi Hendrix, “the world will know peace.”

Such a moment must come now in the nick of time, as the corporate ways of greed and violence pitch us to the precipice of self-extinction.  At that edge sits a sinister technology, a poisoned cancerous power that continues to harm us all even as 3 of its cores melt and spew at Fukushima.

Atomic energy, the so-called “Peaceful Atom”, has failed on all fronts.  Continue reading →

October 25, 2011 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Empowering Japanese people with knowledge about nuclear radiation

Journalists must empower those who have to stay near Fukushima plant (Part 4), Mainichi Daily News, 25 Oct 11  Eight days after the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant began to unfold, samples of spinach and raw milk were found to be contaminated with radioactive iodine in amounts exceeding the provisional permissible amount set by the Food Sanitation Act.

Government officials have tried to underplay the dangers with messages such as, “It’s all right as long as you’re not eating 4,200 servings of spinach,” and “Even drinking 1 liter of milk every day will not cause any problems.”

However, the problem boils down to how much radiation we’re exposed to at the dinner table. Continue reading →

October 25, 2011 Posted by | environment, Japan | Leave a comment

Tokai village – the first to get nuclear power, the first to renounce it?

“Nuclear power plants bring in money before they’re even built,” he says, noting their financial lure. “We can’t allow a government policy that mocks the countryside (by trying to win them over with money.) It’s an evil policy, the same as colonialism.

Mayor of Japan’s home of nuclear power hoping to make village a different kind of ‘first’, Mainichi Daily News, Japan October 23, 2011 Amid the ongoing disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, the mayor of the Ibaraki Prefecture village of Tokai, the birthplace of Japanese nuclear power, is calling for the village’s nuclear reactors to be decommissioned. Continue reading →

October 25, 2011 Posted by | incidents | Leave a comment

Florida residents will fund nuclear power’s future, or lack of future!

 

 

the users pay upfront, make the investment and yet somehow the shareholders end up getting the profits   

 FPL rates will rise to pay for nuclear projects, State utility regulators rejected arguments from consumer advocates and agreed to allow utility companies to charge customers so they can invest in plans for nuclear power. MIAMI HERALD, BY MARY ELLEN KLAS, TALLAHASSEE , 24 oct 11, — Florida Power & Light got the go-ahead Monday to tack a new charge to the average household electric bill that will go towards investing in nuclear energy — even if the utility never ends up building any new nuclear power plants. Continue reading →

October 25, 2011 Posted by | business and costs, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Duqu – a new computer worm hacking into classified nuclear information

 

 

 The Duqu worm was designed primarily to steal technical documents, especially to those relating to nuclear power plants and industrial controls systems by masquerading as an image file. Security experts have warned of a similar “Stuxnet 2” attack since Duqu was discovered.      

 Japanese military contractor hacked, Foreign Policy,  By Kedar Pavgi , October 24, 2011  Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a Japanese military contractor, confirmed today that a hacking incident from this past August released confidential information regarding classified warplanes and nuclear power plants. Continue reading →

October 25, 2011 Posted by | Japan, secrets,lies and civil liberties, technology | Leave a comment

Concern for workers exposed to radioactive uranium

Answers sought on uranium at Bethlehem site, Buffalo Business First, October 19, 2011 Three federal lawmakers are calling on health officials to continue investigating working conditions that existed for nearly a quarter century at the former Bethlehem Steel site in Lackawanna. The concern of Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo and New York Sens. Senator Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand is that workers risked their health because of the presence of radioactive uranium at the plant

The lawmakers have written to National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Director John Howard to further investigate and report on the clean-up at Bethlehem Steel. The highly radioactive uranium was processed at the Lackawanna site during the Cold War. Former Bethlehem Steel workers attest that the facility where uranium was rolled was not adequately decontaminated until 1976, despite earlier company reports claiming that the plant was cleaned up in 1952, meaning hundreds of additional workers may have been exposed to dangerous residual radiation…. http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/blog/morning_roundup/2011/10/answers-sought-on-uranium-at-bethlehem.html

October 25, 2011 Posted by | health, USA | Leave a comment

The end of one nasty nuclear relic of the cold war

The America’s nuclear arsenal remains enormous; the U.S. will still have 1,500 atomic weapons, by the time the latest U.S.-Russia nuke treaty runs its course. But with the end of the B-53 comes a belated end to a Cold War relic.

Last Nuclear ‘Monster Weapon’ Gets Dismantled, Wired.com, By Spencer Ackerman , October 24, 2011   In the 1960s, the skies above the United States were patrolled by agents of the apocalypse. Air Force B-52 Stratofortresses circled the North American continent, 24 hours a day, cradling two megabombs in their bellies. Those B-53 bombs each weighed 10,000 pounds. Were one to drop on the White House, a nine-megaton yield would destroy all life out into suburban Maryland and Virginia.

It was the ultimate Cold War weapon, the one that Major Kong would have ridden into Armageddon at the end of Dr. Strangelove. And on Tuesday, it will no longer exist. Continue reading →

October 25, 2011 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Germany putting serious money into renewable energy

Germany sets aside $130 billion for renewable energy, Online Opinion, By John Daly -, 24 October 2011 German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on 30 May that Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy and Europe’s biggest, would shutter all of its 17 nuclear power plants between 2015 and 2022, an extraordinary commitment, given that they currently produce about 28 percent of the country’s electricity.

Underlining the government’s seriousness in changing the country’s energy matrix, Germany’s Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (German Development Bank) is to underwrite renewable energy and energy efficiency investments in Germany with $137.3 billion over the next five years, Germany Trade and Invest reported. Overall, the German government’s 6th Energy Research Program has made an extraordinary $274.6 billion available for joint funding initiatives in energy storage research over the next three years. Continue reading →

October 25, 2011 Posted by | Germany, politics, renewable | Leave a comment

Security violations at facility for testing laser uranium enrichment technology

NRC fines GE-Hitachi $45K over NC nuke test site, October 21, 2011 Bloomberg By EMERY P. DALESIO,  RALEIGH, N.C. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has fined GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy $45,000 for multiple security violations at a North Carolina facility using classified technology to test whether lasers can be used to enrich uranium. Continue reading →

October 24, 2011 Posted by | safety, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

Florida consumers, led by mayors, oppose nuclear power companies’ bailout

Fla. Mayors Oppose Nuclear “Cost Recovery” Bailout Why the Outrage? Florida Ratepayers Would Have To Pay Additional Hundreds of Millions of Dollars In Advance for New Nuclear Reactors That May Never Be Built  Clean energy.org, Miami, Fla. (October 20, 2011) — The mayors of South Miami and Pinecrest are leading the Florida consumer opposition against the most recent cost recovery request for new nuclear power, which would allow state utilities Florida Power & Light (FPL) and Progress Energy Florida (PEF) to collect more than a third of a billion dollars from Florida families and businesses, including senior citizens, in 2012 for developing new nuclear reactors and expansion of existing nuclear plants.   Continue reading →

October 24, 2011 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Work halted at Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project as protest hunger strike continues

Anti-nuclear protesters’ relay fast enters day 6 at Kudankulam, Net Indian, United News of India, Tirunelveli, October 23, 2011 The third phase of relay hunger strike being observed by protesters against the Kudankulam Nuclear PowerProject (KKNPP) at Idinthakarai coastal hamlet in this district of Tamil Nadu entered the sixth day today.

Hundreds of people, including women, are observing the relay hunger strike in front of St Lourdes Church, demanding that the Centre scrap the project, fearing possible nuclear radiation leakage once the plant begins power production and their displacement from their native villages.

Due to the peoples’ stir, work on the Indo-Russianproject was affected for the 11th consecutive day as scientists and technocrats were not able to reach the site. http://netindian.in/news/2011/10/23/00016703/anti-nuclear-protesters-relay-fast-enters-day-6-kudankulam

October 24, 2011 Posted by | India, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Citizens Forum in Japan challenges nuclear “experts”

 there was widespread criticism after the Fukushima conference — which was organized by Shunichi Yamashita, the vice president of Fukushima Medical University and a “radiological health safety risk management advisor” for Fukushima prefectural government — that its participants assumed from the outset that radioactive contamination from the plant’s wrecked nuclear reactors is minimal.

Citizens’ forum queries nuclear ‘experts’, Japan Times, By TOMOKO OTAKE, 23 Oct 11  To whom does scientific debate belong? That was a central question raised by many of the 200-plus people who attended a citizens’ forum in Tokyo on Oct. 12, as they criticized the ways in which the Japanese government and radiation specialists working for it are assessing and monitoring the health effects of the ongoing nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Continue reading →

October 24, 2011 Posted by | Japan, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Firecauses shutdown of Swedish nuclear reactor

Nuclear reactor stopped at NPP in Sweden due to fire, Voice of Russia, 23 Oct 11, A nuclear reactor at the nuclear power plant in the Swedish city of Oscarshamn has been temporarily shut down due to a fire, local mass media report Sunday.

The fire broke out on the night from Saturday to Sunday in machine unit of the second reactor but was quickly extinguished. According to preliminary data, the fire was caused by the leakage of lubricant.

It is not clear when the reactor will be relaunched.    http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/10/23/59211079.html

October 24, 2011 Posted by | incidents, Sweden | Leave a comment

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