nuclear-news

A majority in the Danish parliament is prepared for the first time to repeal Denmark’s so-called zero-tolerance policy on the radioactive metal, according to media reports.

The world’s fifth largest uranium deposit, Kvanefjeld, is situated in the south of Greenland and if the Danish self-ruled territory makes a formal request to exploit it, Denmark could become one of the biggest exporters of the radioactive metal.

Uranium is created as a byproduct when extracting many valuable and strategically important metals used in for example mobile phones. Uranium is also used for nuclear power and atomic bombs.

Because of the security political significance, Greenland will have to ask Denmark for permission before the zero-tolerance policy can be repealed.

“We have to approach this positively. We would be caught in a very weird Danish role if we block Greenland’s wish,” foreign policy spokesperson Rasmus Helveg Petersen from the Social Liberals, one of the parties constituting the Danish government, told the newspaper Politiken.

New report to be published

Greenland, a former Danish colony, was granted home rule in 1979. Thirty years later, Greenland assumed self-determination with responsibility for judicial affairs, police, and natural resources, but the Danish government is still in charge of foreign affairs, financial policy and security.

In spring, a report by the Greenlandic Directory for Raw Materials on uranium’s effect on the environment and public health will be published. If the report doesn’t point to major issues, there is likely to be a majority in Greenland’s parliament for extracting uranium.

“We support uranium mines as long as these are handled in a proper way and in collaboration with Denmark,” said Greenland’s Deputy Prime Minister Jens Frederiksen, a member of the Democratic Party.

“If everybody else can sell uranium, then we might as well. There’s a lot of money in it,” he said.

[More on a failing uranium industrycan be found here https://nuclear-news.net/2013/01/29/petition-to-save-nuclear-news-net-and-antinuclearnews-net/ ]

Meanwhile, Greenland’s Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist said his party Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) wants a public debate in Greenland on uranium first.

“Until there is a good reason for repealing the zero-tolerance policy, we will keep our zero-tolerance policy,” Kleist said.

U-turn on uranium

Uranium is a toxic and radioactive metal and uranium exposure can affect a person’s kidney, brain, liver and heart. Many studies have also found workers working with uranium in mines to have a higher risk of developing lung cancer.

The main use of uranium in the civilian sector is to fuel nuclear power plants and its large-scale exploitation could potentially change Denmark’s position on the international stage.

“This is a huge turning point in the kingdom’s foreign policy,” said uranium expert Cindy Vestergaard from the Danish Institute for International Studies.

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From the handout, this was what TEPCO had planned:

How did this happen? TEPCO chose the location because there wasn’t supposed to be anything, according to the original drawings. However, as repairs and renovations were done over the years, the original drawings from the time the reactor was built became obsolete.

Don’t they have the drawings of those repairs and renovations? Yes they do.But those drawings were stored in one of the buildings that was devastated by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and declared too dangerous to enter. There is no information as to whether anyone has gone back in to retrieve any document or data from the main building. Probably not, because, as we know well by now, TEPCO carefully abides by the rules and regulations from the authorities:

(Photo of the 2nd floor of the main building, Fukushima I Nuke Plant)

Independent journalist Ryuichi Kino tweeted:

福島第一の現況の把握が難しいことは、以前からわかっていた。原子炉の基本的な構造は設計当初のままだが、配管や細かい設備などは後から追加、修正をうけて、元の状況とは大きく変わっている。だからこれまでも、構造物に手を着ける作業は慎重に進められた。

It has been known that it is difficult to completely grasp the condition of Fukushima I Nuke Plant. The basic structures of reactors have been the same since the plans were drawn up, but pipes and other small facilities were added and modified later, making the current condition vastly different from the original condition. Therefore, any work that has to do with the structures have been carried out very carefully.

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The installation of two 300-tonne tanks has taken the project to build Russia’s first floating nuclear power plant a step further towards completion.

The tanks, which provide a shielded housing for the reactor vessels and their cooling circuits, were manufactured by Baltiysky Zavod shipyard, which is constructing the plant for Rosenergoatom. They were lowered into the reactor compartment of the Akademik Lomonosov over two days in an operation made complicated by ice on the Neva river. Baltiysky Zavod general director Alexander Voznesensky described the installation of the tanks as a milestone in the project.

Akademik Lomonosov is Rosenergoatom’s first-of-a-kind floating nuclear power plant and will contain two 35 MWe KLT-40S nuclear reactors. The vessel’s keel was laid in April 2007 at Sevmash in Severodvinsk, but the project was subsequently transferred to the Baltiysky Zavod. The 21,500 tonne hull was launched in 2010, although construction work was frozen in mid-2011 amid bankruptcy proceedings against the shipyard. The company was subsequently acquired by state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation and Rosenergoatom signed a new contract with Baltiysky Zavod shipyard for the completion of the first floating nuclear power plant in December 2012. It is now scheduled for commissioning in 2016.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-New_milestone_for_floating_nuclear_plant-2901137.html

Launch of Russia’s first floating nuclear plant pushed back several years – again

Hindered by contract delays,bankruptcy proceedings, and switching ownership of the company that is building it, plans to launch Russia’s first floating nuclear power plant have again been scuttled, with the new launch date pushed back from this year to 2016, Bellona has learned.

Charles Digges, 14/12-2012

In all, Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom wishes to produce six 70 megawatt floating nuclear power plants (FNPPs), which it says are designed to deliver power to far flung regionsalong its own northern Arctic coast, and says further that the plants are a hot item on the wish list of foreign customers, mainly China.

Many of these potential foreign customers had been hoping Russia would meet its originally promised deadline for FNPP delivery of 2010.

Environmental outcry over FNPPs has been present since their inception. Russia has neither the means nor infrastructure to ensure their safe operation, has made no plans for disposing of their spent nuclear fuel (SNF), and has not taken into consideration the enormous nuclear proliferation risks posed by placing nuclear reactors in remote areas.

Furthermore, officials apparently have not considered their vulnerability to terrorist attacks while on site or during transportation to their intended locations.

But the fates of shifting shipyards, bankruptcy of the shipyard to where the first floating nuclear power plant was transferred, and the acquisition of the foundering shipyard by other financial holdings have not been kind to the timely launch of one of Rosatom’s pet projects – and have more than once shed doubt on whether the environmentally dicey project would be completed at all.

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Investigative Journalist Youssef Jajili is urgently seeking the help of the international press and human rights organizations to shed light on his case to prevent the Moroccan courts from sentencing him to time in a harsh prison and imposing hefty fines that could force the closure of his award-winning independent weekly investigative magazine. Jajili, 29, has been charged with criminal defamation in response to bold journalism that exposes corruption and human rights abuses within the Moroccan government.  Immediate action is required as Jajili’s trial is set to start on Monday, January 28, 2013.

http://www.babyheart.org/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kharkiv-Center-of-Cardiac-Surgery/243380055675270?ref=stream&viewer_id=685379936

SHORT VIDEO HERE OF OPERATING ROOM….

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200427953689524&set=vb.225990650786992&type=2&theater

Today in the ICU of the Kharkov children’s heart unit.— at Kharkiv Center of Cardiac Surgery.

Chronic Cs-137 incorporation
in children’s organs

Y. I. Bandazhevsky

S W I S S   M E D   W K LY 2 0 0 3 ; 1 3 3 : 4 8 8 – 4 9 0 ·   w w w. s m w. c h

EXTRACT

In Belarus’s Gomel region, which was heavily contaminated by fallout from the Chernobyl disaster, we have studied the evolution of the Cs-137 load in the organisms of the rural population, in particular children, since 1990. Children have a higher average burden of Cs-137 compared with that of adults living in the same community.

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On the same day that I learned Fukushima had decided to stop support for people moving away, I received notice that my son’s exam for thyroid cancer had revealed small tumors. (An A2 rating for the thyroid cancer test indicates growths or tumors from 5.0 to 20 mm in size.) I’m shocked and scared — and I worry about how the radiation is affecting my kids.

Many families in Fukushima are juggling difficult decisions, made worse by fears about radiation — whether to keep their kids in a school with classmates they know, or leave behind their homeland of generations and move away. The state’s housing support is what enables many families who couldn’t otherwise afford it, the chance to move away.

In a recent poll conducted by the city of Fukushima, 90% of Fukushima residents said they were “somewhat worried” or “very worried” about the impact of radiation on the health of their family members. And nearly half of families with young kids said that “even now, they would like to move away” due to fears about radiation.

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Санкт-Петербург, Russian Federation

A unique Saint-Petersburg hospital #31, where many critically ill children are treated every year, is falling prey to the top Russian officials – federal judges.The hospital is to be transformed from a public clinic to the exclusive medical center serving only the needs of judges of the Supreme and Higher Arbitration Courts of Russia.

A typical bunch of Russian judges circa 2002.. [Arclight]

Just a few months ago the hospital was renovated and re-equipped.

Hospital #31 is not only famous for its exceptionally qualified team, but also for its strong ties with charitable foundations. Private foundations are financing a major part of the patients’ expenses on high-cost treatment, helping those who would otherwise be unable to afford it. Additionally, the hospital treats adult patients.

The head of the hospital’s Pediatric Oncology and Hematology Department, Margarita Belogurova says:

«Every year about a hundred children are diagnosed with Cancer in Saint-Petersburg, and half of them are treated here. In ten years we decreased the mortality rate in our department from 75% to 25%, We have some absolutely unique departments, highly qualified doctors and a well-developed system of charity support. I think people who decided to tear our hospital apart, imagine it as a simple process: like moving a bed from one corner to another. But it is absolutely not true! If the hospital is to be disbanded, this decision will destroy a unique environment in which the kids are treated, we’ll lose many excellent doctors and valuable ties between our departments will be destroyed. I hope that the federal government will change its decision».

The patients’ parents refuse to believe that Russian officials can simply take it all away from young patients on just a foolish whim.

«I can hardly comprehend that such cynicism is at all possible. Federal judges are rich people, well provided with social services in the country. They have everything. Why are they taking away from our children the last thing they have left? Do these judges need our hospital that much? Many parents want to act somehow, but we all know that when we try to protest peacefully to draw attention to this issue, we will just get arrested for the unsanctioned action. We will protest anyway, though, because you can’t take away the only hope for these children. And this hospital is the last hope for many kids, including my son, Kirill. If this hospital is closed, I will have to sell my apartment to pay for my son’s treatment, and I have two other kids. So, where are we supposed to live then? The government provides almost no help, and now it even puts my child’s life in danger», – says the outraged Oleg Kostin, an engineer from Saint-Petersburg and a father of a 14-year old Kirill.

We demand to stop the hospital’s transfer to the judges. We demand complete adandonment of such plans. Tearing the hospital apart, which means transferring its departments to multiple locations around Saint-Petersburg, is unacceptable, because it will destroy most important things: integrity, the hospital team and fine-tuned cooperation mechanisms established in the facility. These things are necessary to provide quality medical care in a timely fashion.

We are appealing to the humanity of the Head of the Department of Presidential Affairs, Mr. Kozhin and St-Petersburg governor, G. Poltavchenko.

Please sign the petition here..

https://www.change.org/petitions/save-hospital-no31-in-st-petersburg-do-not-reform-it-into-a-vip-medical-facility-for-russian-judges-%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B031#

PLEASE SORT IT OUT MR PUTIN!!