Enviros sue over uranium mining near Grand Canyon | Greenspace | Los Angeles Times

Enviros sue over uranium mining near Grand Canyon
Los Angeles Times September 30, 2008 Environmental groups are suing Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne for allowing uranium mining on about 1 million acres around Grand Canyon National Park, which critics contend could contaminate ground and surface water as far away as Los Angeles.

Kempthorne is accused of ignoring a ban proposed June 25 by the House Natural Resources Committee on new uranium exploration around the Grand Canyon. Congress enacted emergency withdrawals of land around the park to preserve the Colorado River watershed.

Rising prices for uranium have driven federal agencies to lease more land for mining, despite  documented health problems associated with uranium mining dust, rocks and water

Enviros sue over uranium mining near Grand Canyon | Greenspace | Los Angeles Times

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive

October 1, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment

WXOW News 19 La Crosse, WI – News, Weather and Sports |Nuclear Trash

Nuclear Trash

BARNWELL, S.C. (AP) WXOW19 26 Sept 08 – Low-level radioactive waste is piling up at hospitals and research labs around the country, and that’s worrying experts who fear some of it could be stolen by terrorists and turned into dirty bombs.

The items include radioactive seeds the size of a grain of rice used for treating cancer. There are also pencil-thin nuclear tubes used in industrial gauges. And there’s an array of small capsules and pellets with medical and industrial uses.

For years, truckloads of material from 36 states have been shipped to a landfill in rural South Carolina. There, it was all sealed in concrete and buried.

But effective July 1st, the state ended nearly all disposal of radioactive material at the landfill. That’s left it piling up at the labs, universities, hospitals and businesses where it’s used.

State and federal authorities says the waste is monitored, but they acknowledge checks are infrequent. Government documents show that thousands of items have been lost.

WXOW News 19 La Crosse, WI – News, Weather and Sports |Nuclear Trash

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium

September 26, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment

Toward Freedom – Toward a Movement for Peace and Climate Justice

Toward a Movement for Peace and Climate Justice
TOWARD FREEDOM

by Brian Tokar

Wednesday, 24 September 2008

 -“………………………..

Who is affected by global warming?

Since the first Earth Day, way back in 1970, there has been a serious divide between those who view environmental issues as fundamentally social and political, and those who choose to focus entirely on the technical aspects of individual problems and their narrow, status-quo solutions. In 1970, Earth Day was explicitly cast as an alternative to a continuing focus on the human and ecological ravages of the war in Vietnam, and today it’s no longer surprising to anyone that the day is sponsored by some of the very worst corporate polluters.

As social ecologists have argued since the mid-sixties, however, ecological problems both have serious human consequences, and are thoroughly social and political in origin.[1] With respect to global warming, this contrast is becoming central to understanding where we are and where we may be headed. An understanding of the science and politics of global warming is becoming increasingly central to how we understand issues of social justice, or war and peace, and to how such concerns will play out in the coming decades……………………………………..

……Probably the grimmest tale is contained in the [IPCC’s] report’s chapter on health consequences of climate changes:…………….From Bangladesh to Darfur, we are already seeing the ways in which increased climate instability is exacerbating conflict and even bloodshed among people…………………

False solutions

Over the past year or two, we have been inundated with a plethora of seductive, but ultimately false solutions to the threat of catastrophic climate changes. First, we face a well-orchestrated political push, from the highest levels of the US government, for a revival of nuclear power. Not only do we still, after 50 years, have no clue what to do with monstrous quantities of highly radioactive nuclear waste, but if our societies do commit the massive capital resources needed to build a new generation of nuclear power plants—at least tripling the present number according to many estimates—there will be literally no funds left to develop truly green, solar-based alternatives, even in the long run.

Further, a significant expansion of nuclear power would expose countless more communities to the legacy of cancer that critical scientists such as Ernest Sternglass have documented, and additional indigenous communities to the even more severe consequences of uranium mining and milling

Toward Freedom – Toward a Movement for Peace and Climate Justice

September 25, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment

Documentary showing highlights effects of war

Documentary showing highlights effects of war
“Friendly Fire” to be shown at school
Sauk Centre Herald  23 Sept 08 The film depicts the effects of Gulf War Syndrome and depleted uranium’s role in long-term health problems for soldiers, their newborns and Iraqi civilians.

Friendly Fire, a documentary by Dr. Gary Null, has received critical acclaim for not only bringing to light the long-term physical effects the Persian Gulf War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the military and government’s attempt to cover it up.

The film will be shown free of charge this Sunday night at 7 p.m. at the Sauk Centre High School Auditorium. The event is sponsored by the Veterans Village of Minnesota………………….State rep. Bud Heidgerken (R-Freeport) recently cosponsored a bill that has earmarked $500,000 a year for two years for the testing and treatment of depleted uranium.

Documentary showing highlights effects of war

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium

September 24, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment

Fallout From Soviet Atomic Bombs Persists in Kazakstan

Fallout From Soviet Atomic Bombs Persists in KazakstanBy
Environment News Service Elmira GabidullinaALMATY, Kazakstan, September 18, 2008 (ENS) – “……………………..

The persistence of high background radiation means the legacy of Semipalatinsk lives on. Academic researchers and pressure groups say the incidence of cancer, congenital defects, retarded development and psychiatric disorders in the surrounding area is much higher than in other parts of Kazakstan.

According to the cancer center for East Kazakstan Region, the disease occurs 10 to 15 percent more frequently than the national average, with a high proportion of cases falling within the 50-60 year-old age bracket – people who would have been around when nuclear testing was taking place………………………….. Some 1.7 million people are believed to have health problems caused by exposure to radiation………………..experts warn that low doses and constant exposure can show up as genetic malformations……………………………Kazakstan has a law dating from 1992 which sets out the benefits available to people who suffered as a result of nuclear testing. But strangely, it does not appear to cover soldiers who served in and around the test site.

Fallout From Soviet Atomic Bombs Persists in Kazakstan

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radiation

September 20, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment

News – Health: Wonderfontein report rejected

Wonderfontein report rejected
iol September 19 2008 An anti-nuclear pressure group has rejected an official report that radioactive mining waste in the catchment of Gauteng’s Wonderfontein Spruit poses no risk to the public.

The Pelindaba Working Group said on Friday independent academic reports indicated that radiotoxic contamination from 120 years of mining activities around the catchment had in fact seeped into underground water systems.

“As such it poses a massive health risk to an extremely wide area, to the Vaal Dam system in the south and the Hartbeespoort Dam system in the north,” it said in a statement.

“Hundreds of thousands of people are reliant upon this water”.

The group said authorities had not acknowledged any of the letters it sent asking that borehole water be tested.

News – Health: Wonderfontein report rejected

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radiation

September 20, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment

The Prince Albert Daily Herald: News | Pit problems for Cameco

Pit problems for Cameco
19 Sept 08 MATTHEW GAUKThe Prince Albert Daily HeraldThe sand walls of the radioactive tailings pit at the largest uranium mill in the world have been tumbling down, according to a report to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission…………………the sloughing sand has resulted in a 19 per cent loss of capacity in the pit, leaving a serious waste management problem for Cameco.

The Prince Albert Daily Herald: News | Pit problems for Cameco

September 19, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment

The Canadian National Newspaper: U.S. environmental researchers warn Humans are destroying Mother Earth

U.S. environmental researchers warn Humans are destroying Mother Earth

The Canadian by Jason Miller, American correspondent 16 Sept 08

I am the earth. You are the earth. The Earth is dying. You and I are murderers.
– Ymber Delecto

What a sorry lot we humans are, particularly those of us immersed in the “American Way of Life.” Killing is indeed our business. And business has never been better.

According to the World Resources Institute, 4 species go extinct every hour “due to tropical deforestation alone.”………………………Our dirty little secret here in the U.S. is that we built and buttressed our crumbling empire by unleashing a force so potent and so capable of rendering life on Earth extinct that it makes capitalism’s “slow motion” ecocide look like candy-striping. In 1945 we became the first and only country to harness the power of nuclear fission and utilize it as a weapon of mass destruction……………………………….Nuclear power only produces 20% of the electricity consumed in the U.S., but accounts for a number of staggering problems we simply keep sweeping under the rug for future generations to solve………………………..

Let’s take a closer look at the technology many are ready to embrace as the “remedy for Climate Change.”

Nuclear power is touted as a cheap alternative to coal (and other ways of producing energy). While it is a less expensive means of actually generating electricity once a reactor is online (the operating cost is about half that of a coal-fired plant), there are tremendous fiscal costs associated with building a nuclear facility, removing and storing radioactive waste, and decommissioning a plant once it is retired. (One hasn’t been closed yet but the estimated cost to do so is around $300 million).

And just who’s underwriting these outrageous costs? We the taxpayers!……………………..the threat nuclear energy poses to the environment is so high that calling it “green” is an absurdity one would think had sprung from the mind of Lewis Carroll.
Since nuclear plants rely on large bodies of water to cool reactors (and avoid a melt-down) and discharge about 70% of the heat they generate (as waste), they are vulnerable to droughts and cause significant thermal pollution in the bodies of water that cool them.

Nuclear power production begins to contaminate the environment with radioactivity before the fuel even arrives at the plant. It takes a tonne of uranium ore to produce 3 kilograms of uranium oxide. While the tailings that are left behind emit small levels of radiation, they do release radon gas and radioactive dust at a rate 10,000 times faster than the unmined ore. This nuclear contamination stays in the environment for 100,000 years and over time reaches such high levels that a Los Alamos Laboratory report concluded that we need to, “to zone the land in uranium mining and milling districts to forbid human habitation.”

Nuclear power facilities produce a steady stream of low-level radioactive waste, including gas, solid and liquid. Gaseous and liquid wastes are “cleaned and diluted,” but are eventually released into the environment. Solid wastes are transported to one of three low-level radiation disposal sites in the US where they continue accumulating and emitting radiation into the environment.

About once a year 33% of a reactor’s fuel rods are replaced, producing anywhere from 12 to 30 tonnes of high level nuclear waste. The frightening part is that we’ve been using this “green” technology for 40 years now and still haven’t figured out a safe and permanent means of disposing of its extremely dangerous and lethal by-products.

Temporary pools or dry cask storage (large steel cylinders that require constant monitoring) onsite at nuclear facilities house most of the spent reactor fuel, which will remain a dire threat to the environment for tens of thousands of years.

The Canadian National Newspaper: U.S. environmental researchers warn Humans are destroying Mother Earth

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive

September 16, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment

The Standard – Hong Kong’s First FREE English Newspaper

Scan scare
The STandard  (Hong Kong) Alan Zarembo September 16, 2008

Generating tens of billions of dollars each year, CT scanning has become an economic engine for hospitals and doctors. “It’s gotten into the culture of doctors,” says Geoffrey Rubin, a Stanford University radiologist.

But with the boom has a come a rising concern that the abundant use of radiation is beginning to have a subtle effect on health. Although the risk of a single CT scan is minuscule, even a tiny increase in radiation exposure spread over a large population can eventually add up to tens of thousands of cancer deaths a year.

A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that CT scans administered today could cause up to 2 percent of cancer deaths in two or three decades……………………..

Some researchers estimate that up to a third of scans could have been avoided or replaced by safer technologies, such as ultrasound or magnetic resonance imaging. Scans can cost from a few hundred dollars for a single organ to a few thousand for a full-body image.

Today, scanner manufacturers, including Siemens and General Electric, tout the ease of making money with the devices. Just two scans a day can pay for a machine and its operation over five years.Ten scans a day can bring in more than US$400,000 (HK$3.11 million) a year in profit………………………….

Medical tests are now the biggest source of radiation exposure, recently surpassing background radiation, according to the National Council on Radiation Protection & Measurements in the United States. Of particular concern is the rising use of CT scans for children and pregnant women.

For example, an abdominal scan in a five-year-old carries a 0.1 percent risk of triggering a fatal cancer, nearly 10 times the risk in adults older than 35.

The National Academy of Sciences weighed in on the issue in a 2006 report, saying that there is no safe level of radiation exposure and that even small doses pose some health risks.

The Standard – Hong Kong’s First FREE English Newspaper

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive

September 16, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment

The World from Berlin: Nuclear Slop in Leaky Mine Washes over Berlin – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International

Nuclear Slop in Leaky Mine Washes over Berlin
SPIEGAL ONLINE 5 Sept 08 The nuclear waste scandal involving leaky drums of “radioactive liquor” at a storage facility in a German salt mine called Asse II keeps growing. Commentators see consequences not just for some federal politicians, but also for Germany’s ongoing nuclear debate.
It’s not enough that 130,000 barrels of radioactive waste are sitting rusted and leaking in a converted Lower Saxony salt mine. But it turns out that the severity of the problem, which this week has developed into a full-blown scandal, has long been known — and was overlooked by state environment ministers. As early as 2006, researchers mentioned “radioactive liquor” in a report on the Asse II salt mine to state officials, according to a regional newspaper called the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.
The sorry condition of the storage site has become a political scandal in Berlin,

The World from Berlin: Nuclear Slop in Leaky Mine Washes over Berlin – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium

September 15, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment

Nuclear testing veterans fight for justice – Petersfield Today

Nuclear testing veterans fight for justice:10 September 2008
Petersfield Post (UK) By Mary Bishop Between 1952 and 1957 the United Kingdom carried out a number of atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons in the Pacific Ocean and at Maralinga, Australia, involving more than 20,000 servicemen.Tomorrow, September 11, is the 50th anniversary of the UK’s Nuclear Test Ban – but British serving men are still fighting to gain compensation from the government for cancers and other serious diseases which they claim are caused by the nuclear explosions……………………….”During the actual tests it was a bit worrying when first thing in the morning RAF and Navy personnel went off to sea for their safety while soldiers sat out on the island hoping that the bomb hit its target.” Steve stressed: “Sadly many veterans and their children suffered terrible illnesses from these tests, but after 50 years they are still being refused compensation from governments.

“Surely now, 50 years after these men, many of them national servicemen, were required to face known hazards for the sake of our national security, it is time for the government to honour its duty of care and pay out compensation.”

According to the BNTVA, a survey of 2,500 servicemen carried out in 1999 showed that 30 per cent of the men had died, mostly in their fifties.

The association said that medical evidence showed that the servicemen’s grandchildren were more than five times likely to be born with spina bifida.
More than 200 skeletal abnormalities were reported and more than 100 veterans’ children reported reproductive difficulties.

The High Court action is being supported by Sue Rabbitt Roff, a medical sociologist from Dundee University Medical School,

Nuclear testing veterans fight for justice – Petersfield Today

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium

September 12, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment

CT scans can be better medicine for doctors than for patients – Los Angeles Times

CT scans can be better medicine for doctors than for patients

They provide detailed views of internal organs, but the price is increased doses of radiation.

By Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 7, 2008

“………………………………Doctors in the U.S. ordered 68.7 million CT scans last year, more than triple the number in 1995, according to IMV Medical Information Division, a medical market research group in Des Plaines, Ill.Generating tens of billions of dollars in billing each year, CT scanning has become an economic engine for hospitals and doctors, and the once-exotic million-dollar devices are starting to be found in private practices.”It’s gotten into the culture of doctors,” said Geoffrey Rubin, a Stanford University radiologist.But with the boom has come a rising concern that the abundant use of radiation is beginning to have a subtle effect on the health of the nation.Although the risk of a single CT scan to an individual is minuscule, even a tiny increase in radiation exposure spread over a large population can eventually add up to tens of thousands of cancer deaths a year.A controversial study published last November in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that CT scans administered today could cause up to 2% of cancer deaths in two or three decades…………………………………….Some researchers estimate that up to a third of scans could have been avoided or replaced by safer technologies, such as ultrasound or magnetic resonance imaging.

“In 20 or 30 years, the radiation debate will be like the smoking debate today,” Goldin said. “People will say, ‘Why did I get this imaging in the first place?’ “

CT scans can be better medicine for doctors than for patients – Los Angeles Times

Tags: nuclear.antinuclear, radiation, uranium

September 9, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment

Legalbrief – Vaalputs communities fear nuclear contamination

Representatives from Namaqualand communities living near the Vaalputs national nuclear waste facility in the Northern Cape told Parliament’s Minerals and Energy portfolio committee last week that they feared their water supply was being radioactively contaminated.

Legalbrief – Vaalputs communities fear nuclear contamination

Tags: nuclear.antinuclear, radiation, uranium

September 9, 2008 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment