Scotland’s “mass walk-on” protest against firing of depleted uranium weapons
Dundrennan depleted uranium protest staged http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-24835544 6 Nov 13 The last DU tests were carried out at Dundrennan five years ago Campaigners have held a “mass walk-on” at the Dundrennan range in protest at the test firing of depleted uranium (DU) weapons into the Solway Firth.
It was part of an international day of action and followed concerns about serious health issues resulting from the use of such weapons in war zones.
The last DU tests at the south of Scotland range were in 2008. Earlier this year the Ministry of Defence said it had no plans to restart firing in the area.
One of the campaigners, Rachel Thompson, said the protest had been well supported from across Scotland and beyond. “We have found that depleted uranium is one of those issues people really do care about,” she said.
“They knew when they started that Scottish people did not want this to happen.” She said the protest wanted to make the link between that objection and the consequences of the use of such weapons in Iraq.
Uranium project in trouble – will apply for $2 billion govt loan
Uranium project faces more money quandaries Politico, By DARIUS DIXON | 11/6/13
A major project aimed at maintaining the nation’s ability to enrich its own uranium may soon find itself in another cash crunch.
USEC, the company behind the American Centrifuge Project, said Tuesday that it will enter a period of fiscal uncertainty after the end of the year, when it’s scheduled to finish a cost-share agreement with the Energy Department aimed at demonstrating the project’s technology. The company plans to reapply for a $2 billion loan guarantee from the agency as early as December, but that will leave a gap when USEC may not have the money to keep working on the Ohio project while DOE studies the application.
“In light of our liquidity, we do not have the ability to continue to fund ACP at its current levels beyond the end of 2013 without additional government support,” USEC President and CEO John Welch said Tuesday on a call with investors. “Even with their support, our ability to provide funding in 2014 will be limited.”
He said the company “could make a decision to demobilize or terminate the project in the near term.”…….
“In light of our liquidity, we do not have the ability to continue to fund ACP at its current levels beyond the end of 2013 without additional government support,” USEC President and CEO John Welch said Tuesday on a call with investors. “Even with their support, our ability to provide funding in 2014 will be limited.”
He said the company “could make a decision to demobilize or terminate the project in the near term.”
: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/uranium-project-faces-more-money-quandaries-99407.html#ixzz2jzXqnI26
Uranium miner at Grand Canyon halting, due to poor uranium market
Work for uranium mine near Grand Canyon hits pause Arizona Daily Star, 7 Nov 13 The Associated Press FLAGSTAFF — A uranium mining company that was sinking a shaft for a mine south of Grand Canyon National Park has put the work on hold, citing market conditions and the expense of litigation. Energy Fuels Resources Inc. said the operation will be on standby until December 2014 or until a ruling is issued in a federal case challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s decision to allow development of the Canyon Mine near Tusayan. The company had planned to start extracting 83,000 tons of ore to produce 1.6 million pounds of processed uranium, or yellow cake, in 2015 but now will have to re-evaluate the timeframe….
….Prices for uranium have dropped to the mid-$30s per pound on the spot market, among the lowest in the past five years. http://azstarnet.com/ap/state/work-for-uranium-mine-near-grand-canyon-hits-pause/article_643f8e19-f2a1-565e-ad6b-7acb0ac2a625.html
Iran DOES have a legal right to enrich uranium
Bottom line: At present Iran has the legal right under treaty to enrich uranium. It may be persuaded to give up that right in negotiations, but there is at present no justification for holding it to this unreasonable demand.
Does Iran Have the Right to Enrich Uranium? The Answer Is Yes Dissident Voice, by William O. Beeman / November 2nd, 2013 Now that serious talks with Iran over its nuclear program are underway, one seemingly insurmountable issue is whether Iran 
has the right to enrich uranium. The short answer is: Yes.
Those who are trying to torpedo the ongoing talks, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, want Iran to be forced to agree to the whole monty–a complete cessation of uranium enrichment and a dismantling of all enrichment facilities.
Iran claims that it has the inalienable right to enrich uranium as guaranteed in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which it is a signatory.
The NPT treaty language is quite clear. In Article IV of the treaty it states: “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.” Continue reading
Hungary the 12th country to have highly enriched uranium HEU converted to LEU
UNITED STATES, INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS REMOVE LAST REMAINING WEAPONS-USABLE HIGHLY ENRICHED URANIUM FROM HUNGARY, SET NUCLEAR SECURITY MILESTONE EIN News Desk 4 Nov 13,WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Energy today announced under a multi-year international effort coordinated between Hungary, the United States, the Russian Federation, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the successful removal of all remaining highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Hungary. This makes Hungary the twelfth country to completely eliminate HEU from its borders since President Obama’s 2009 announcement of an international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world……..
The final 49.2 kilograms of remaining HEU in Hungary were removed over a series of three secure air shipments during the past six weeks and transported to Russia. Previously, the four participants returned 190 kilograms of HEU from Hungary to Russia via three shipments – in 2008, 2009, and 2012. The material will be transported to Russia where it will be downblended into low enriched uranium (LEU) for use in nuclear power reactors.
The other eleven countries and locations that have completely removed HEU under this effort are Austria, Chile, Czech Republic, Libya, Mexico, Romania, Serbia, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, and Vietnam. To date, the Department has removed or dispositioned more than 5,000 kilograms of HEU and plutonium from more than 40 countries around the world and has removed all HEU from 25 countries. A fact sheet on the Department’s efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism is available here…….. http://www.einnews.com/pr_news/174969858/united-states-international-partners-remove-last-remaining-weapons-usable-highly-enriched-uranium-from-hungary-set-nuclear-security-milestone
Unanswered questions about proposed uranium mine in South Dakota
Uranium mine hearings reveal questions about proposed project Rapid City Journal 3 Nov 13 After two weeks of public testimony, one thing has become clear about the proposed uranium mine that would operate near Edgemont: many things about the project remain unclear.
The process paperwork and permit applications …..
“It consists of nearly 80,000 pages of documents, very complex documents,” said Hickey, who represents the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary. ,,,,,,
As a pair of governor-appointed state permit boards decide whether to allow uranium mining to South Dakota, the stakes couldn’t be higher, and yet the issue couldn’t be murkier. As he testified at last week’s hearings, John Mays, vice president of engineering for Powertech, didn’t ease the concerns of opponents who worry over potential groundwater contamination.
Under questioning, Mays refused to commit Powertech to cleaning water in the mining area to its pre-mining condition. Mays said it was a primary goal, but not a requirement.
Nor would Mays specify what other heavy metals might be extracted along with uranium and then injected back into the aquifers.
Mays testified that only uranium and vanadium — another metal the company hopes to mine — are certain to circulate in and out of the ground. As for arsenic, selenium, molybdenum, and other potentially harmful metals, Mays wouldn’t say.
“What you’re telling this board is that you don’t really know what’s in that ore yet?” Bruce Ellison asked Mays. Ellison is an attorney for Clean Water Alliance, a group of mining opponents. “You haven’t done enough testing?” Continue reading
Depleted uranium and nuclear wastes – the perfect opportunity for “dirty bombs”
Nuclear Power Dirty Bomb The Market Oracle, Oct 28, 2013 By: Andrew_McKillop “……RECYCLE, REUSE AND DEFEND THE ECONOMY Nuclear waste business, as we know, is not business friendly and leads to the very basic reflex of simply dumping a considerable and growing part of the world’s unmanageable nuclear wastes from the current world fleet of around 436 operating civil reactors (depending on how many Japanese reactors are brought 
back into service). Proliferation risks are deliberately restricted to only conventional explosive nuclear weapons and their radioactive materials – totally ignoring both Depleted Uranium weapons using “recycled” nuclear wastes, and the potential future Dirty Bomb targets of active and “partly decommissioned” reactors lurking on the horizon. These with almost no possible doubt will be prime targets in coming civil wars and international wars. These nuclear war options are above all cheap, and of course very dirty.
Since the 1991 Gulf War 1 against Iraq, the war against Afghanistan starting in 2001, and the second war against Iraq of 2003 at least 2500 tons of Depleted Uranium weapons have been used by the US, UK and France in these “delightfully far away” over the horizon wars against lesser races and nations. Depleted Uranium ordnance, to date has caused a conservatively estimated 10 000 cancer deaths, and as many as 50 000 still-living cancer victims in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This has easily calculated economic consequences. When this concerns free market white democrat middle class consumers, the same types of cancers are costed at roughly $ 40 000 for a cancer death and $ 25 000-per-year for surviving cancer sufferers.
The “cute idea” of recycling nuclear wastes as DU ordnance has a cosy market-friendly smell, to some, but the economic damage that these filthy weapons generate smells a lot worse. Those who profit from misery and death will finally pay. The same weapons can be turned around and used on them……… http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article42864.html
Climate change now enables dangerous uranium mining in Greenland
“Uranium mining at Kuannersuit (Kvanefjeldet) will leave behind millions of tonnes of tailings containing some of the most toxic radioactive substances,” wrote Mikkel Myrup, the chairman of Avataq, an environmental watchdog group. ”The waste will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years and in the long term, the mining could cause comprehensive radioactive contamination, which—because of the health risks—would make it dangerous to live in and make it necessary to ban fishing, hunting, agriculture and animal husbandry in significant parts of Southern Greenland.”
Greenland Has Melted So Much That We Can Mine It for Uranium Now Motherboard, By Brian Merchant 28 Oct 13, Climate change has finally melted enough of Greenland to allow mining companies to exploit its natural resources. And it’s got a lot. The remote, increasingly well-named island nation has a payload of uranium and rare earth elements buried beneath its quickly-thinning ice sheets.
Last year, nearly 97 percent of Greenland’s ice cover melted during the summer. That hadn’t happened for 123 years. And while big melts like that are thought to happen from time to time, scientists think Greenland is melting six times faster than it would have if humans didn’t load the atmosphere up with coal and oil pollution. Clearly, not everyone is disappointed with the result.
As with the other major industries circling the warming Arctic like a vulture—oil and shipping companies being the biggest—mining corporations have long licked their chops at the prospect of digging into Greenland’s untapped mineral reserves……
Greenland’s parliament just voted to allow Australia and China to start mining away. The vote was as close as they come: 15 for, 14 against, with the common call for jobs and economic growth winning out over immense environmental concerns. Continue reading
Radioactive thorium 232 and cerium found in bodies of cancer victims
The nuclear physicist Evandro Lodi Rizzini of Brescia University and CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) found elevated levels of radioactive thorium 232 and cerium (proving that the thorium was man-made) in the tissues of 15 of 18 bodies of Quirra-area shepherds who died of cancer between 1995 and 2000.
On March 24, 2012 Fiordalisi indicted twenty people on charges of “willful omission of precautions against injury and aggravated disasters or because they falsely certified the absence of pollution with the aim to “hide the environmental disaster.” The documents from Fiordalisi’s investigation have now been turned over to a tribunal for prosecution. Read More Here… http://www.nonukes.it/rna/nothorium/news200.html
Russia’s control over American uranium sites
Moscow’s American uranium Politico, By MATT BAKER | 10/18/13 The state-owned Russian nuclear energy company that built Iran’s nuclear reactor in Bushehr is about to finalize a transaction that will give Russia absolute control over one of America’s largest uranium mining sites.
On Oct. 18, nuclear energy juggernaut Rosatom will complete a corporate deal giving it 100 percent control over Canada-based uranium mining company Uranium One, including the company’s U.S. operations in Wyoming, the epicenter of U.S. uranium production. Moscow’s acquisition of Uranium One will also provide Rosatom — the world’s leading builder of nuclear power plants — with uranium exploration rights in Arizona, Colorado, and Utah……
Rosatom’s nuclear projects also include ventures with China and Venezuela, two countries with less-than-friendly relations with the United States. Russian news agencies also quoted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in May 2010 as saying that he discussed with then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev the possibility of building nuclear power plants in Syria.
To put it mildly, with a client roster like this, questions abound regarding Rosatom’s acquisition of Uranium One. When Rosatom acquired its first controlling shares in 2010, the deal came under congressional fire. Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla), Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), Peter King (R-N.Y.), and Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) penned a letter to then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warning that “signing over control of this U.S. uranium processing facility to the Russian government unnecessarily jeopardizes U.S. security interests.”……
Fast-forward three years, and the proposed transfer of 100 percent control of Uranium One to Rosatom has barely elicited a peep from Congress or the administration. Nor has it raised an eyebrow in Ottawa. In March, Rosatom received approval from the Supreme Court of Ontario, Canada. …..
While the American regulatory regime is a trusted system, the regime in Moscow is not. Russia has a history of transferring dangerous materials and technologies to rogue regimes, and Rosatom, according to a 2007 report on nuclear nonproliferation by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), “denied [GAO’s] request for access to facilities under its control.”……..
given Russia’s track record, can we trust Rosatom to play by our rules?
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/moscows-american-uranium-98472.html#ixzz2i9L6m700
Thousands march in Niger to protest against AREVA
5,000 march against French uranium miner in Niger http://www.mining.com/5000-march-against-french-uranium-miner-in-niger-17954/Frik Els | October 12, 2013 Thousand of protestors marched against French uranium miner Areva (EPA:AREVA) in the remote town of Arlit in Niger on Saturday.
Areva has been operating in Niger for more than 50 years with two sites, Somair and Cominak, currently producing, and its long-term deal with the government of Niger is up for renegotiation at the end of 2013.
The roughly 5,000 protesters in Arlit were out in support of a Niger government audit to determine how to better distribute revenues from the two mines Reuters reports:
“We’re showing Areva that we are fed up and we’re demonstrating our support for the government in the contract renewal negotiations,” Azaoua Mamane, an Arlit civil society spokesman, said in an interview with a private radio station.
“We don’t have enough drinking water while the company pumps 20 million cubic meters of water each year for free. The government must negotiate a win-win partnership,” Mamane said.
The two mines together produce 4,500 tonnes of uranium for export to France and another project at Imouraren, which will be the largest uranium mine in Africa, is set to start operations in 2015.The Somair mine was back to full production in August, after a suicide attack in May killed one worker and injured 14 partially shutting down mining.
Prices for uranium are languishing at 8-year lows of $34 a pound and have not recovered since the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011
Unless Japan restarts nuclear reactors, uranium industry could be finshed
“Due to the huge impact of reduced demand from Japan, the reactor-restart story is likely to continue to be the main factor affecting the spot uranium price over the coming few months,
No Nukes, No Uranium BARRON’s By RHIANNON HOYLE 6 Oct 13 Japan’s 2011 disaster at Fukushima still weighs on national energy policies worldwide, as well as the commodity’s price. DJ-AIG Commodity Indexes Uranium prices are edging higher after a recent plunge to nearly eight-year lows, but that’s no reason for investors to pile in.
Demand for the nuclear fuel isn’t ramping up as expected. Japan, a major uranium user, has been slow to restart nuclear operations after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, and stockpiles of U3O8—the most actively traded compound of uranium—are growing.
Prices were down 22% when they hit their nadir last month. At $34 a pound, the commodity was worth just half what it had traded for prior to Fukushima.
Uranium is now trading at about $35 a pound as prices gravitate back toward the material’s production cost, which some analysts estimate to be $40 a pound. Continue reading
Niger aiming to get more taxes from Areva’s uranium mning
Niger’s Hedges Bets on French Uranium Assets Oil Price.com. By Editorial Dept | Fri, 04 October 2013 Bottom Line: Under constant threat of terrorist attacks in the security nightmare of Niger, French nuclear group Areva will now face an audit of its uranium mines as the Nigerien government seeks a better deal.
Analysis: Areva has two mines in Niger: Somair and Cominak. Together these two facilities produce about one-third of France’s nuclear power. But the 10-year contract for these mines ends this year, and the government of Niger is planning to take advantage of that by auditing the company and determining how it can get a better deal. The plan will be to increase tax revenues from Areva and to force it into more significant investments in infrastructure. Areva was operating at a loss last year, but is eyeing over 1.1 billion euros in operating profits for this year—and Niger is hoping to get a bigger chunk of this through taxes and infrastructure deals. The government of Niger already owns a 36.4% stake in Somair and a 31% stake in Cominak. Areva will now be audited first based on claims from some groups that it is not transparently reporting its revenues and operating costs. A third mine that is under construction—Areva’s Imouraren uranium mine—is also under scrutiny. The government of Niger has warned that the company will face fines if there are any further delays to the opening of this mine, now slated for 2015.
Recommendation: This could all play into the security question due to the level of government corruption in Niger,…(furher reading -subscription only) http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Nigers-Hedges-Bets-on-French-Uranium-Assets.html
Does USA even need the super-expensive new uranium processing facility ?
Costs for new nuclear facility skyrocket as critics question its creation By Barnini Chakraborty October 04, 2013 FoxNews.com WASHINGTON – Plans for a new facility that will handle, dismantle and secure nuclear material are in a major meltdown.
The price tag attached to the country’s largest uranium processing facility under the direction of the Department of Energy has climbed to more than 19 times its original estimate. What’s worse is that much of the Tennessee complex, according to the government’s own calculations, isn’t needed and the rest will most likely be outdated when the facility becomes fully operational — two decades from now. Continue reading
Film: Uranium in situ mining, radiation in water, cancer
The mining companies know that if the leaching solution breaks into an aquifer, the water is contaminated and cannot be corrected. They cannot and will not guarantee it but will only promise to use the best available technology and make the best possible effort to correct the problem. Then as always, they will walk away with the ore and the profits and leave local residents and federal taxpayers to deal with the aftermath.
Hot Water: The Uranium Industry’s Dirty Little Story The only thing green about nuclear power are the people who think it’s safe. Lizabeth Rogers Activist Post 2 Oct 13,
HOT WATER Documentary Trailer
How many do you know today?
I began this odyssey, innocently enough in July 2009 when I led a filmmaking crew to South Dakota to investigate what we had heard was an abandoned uranium mine which had contaminated local groundwater and made local ranchers, their children and even their livestock sick. Continue reading
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