Nuclear critics suspect hidden agenda in Sask. medical isotope plan
Nuclear critics suspect hidden agenda in Sask. medical isotope plan , July 10, 2009 CBC News Critics of nuclear development in Saskatchewan say a plan by the provincial government to supply medical isotopes may lead to more substantial nuclear facilities…………………………….
Jim Penna, a retired philosophy professor and a member of the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan, said there are ways of producing isotopes for medical diagnostics that do not require the construction of a nuclear reactor.
Penna said people should be wary of the motives behind the premier’s proposal. Penna said a plan for a research reactor may be the thin edge of the wedge leading to further expansion of the nuclear industry.
“That’s how it’s argued you see,” Penna told CBC News on Thursday. “They do talk about a research reactor … as one of the elements of a nuclear program for Saskatchewan. So this is a way of bringing about their nuclear agenda by piggybacking on the medical isotope issue.”…………………………….
Sandra Morin, environment critic for the Saskatchewan NDP, said Thursday that an economic feasibility study should be prepared, to demonstrate the project’s financial viability.
“We need a much more careful examination of just how much money will be put up by the Saskatchewan taxpayer and whether this is truly a feasible option for our province,” Morin said. “By all accounts, an isotope reactor simply doesn’t make sense from an economic standpoint so I would question the rush for the province to get involved in one.”
Morin also raised questions about one of the people closely involved in Saskatchewan’s pitch to the federal government, Richard Florizone.
Florizone, the vice-president of finance and resources at the University of Saskatchewan, is helping to prepare Saskatchewan’s proposal.
Florizone also chaired the province’s Uranium Development Partnership, the group appointed to look for ways to develop the uranium industry. Their report recommended building a research reactor that could produce medical isotopes.
Morin called the overlap of roles troublesome.
Nuclear critics suspect hidden agenda in Sask. medical isotope plan
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruled that the Green Party of Florida and two other environmental groups could challenge Progress Energy’s plan for two new nuclear reactors. | Ocala.com | Star-Banner | Ocala, FL
Legal challenge to nuclear plant advances Environmental groups opposing Progress’ proposed Levy reactors may argue issues in court, board rules. Ocala.com By Fred Hiers
Friday, July 10, 2009Progress Energy’s road to building its proposed nuclear power plant in Levy County northwest of Dunnellon is becoming anything but smooth.
On Wednesday, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board – an arm of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission – ruled that the Green Party of Florida and two other environmental groups could challenge the utility company’s plan for two new nuclear reactors and had successfully raised major concerns about the plant’s potential environmental impact.
That means Progress Energy will have to argue its case about those environmental issues during a legal hearing, including in oral arguments
The other two environmental organizations that petitioned to be part of future hearings and had objections were the Nuclear Information and Resource Service and the Ecology Party of Florida.
The environmental groups had 12 areas of concern. The licensing board dismissed nine. The remaining three had to do with radioactive waste, how construction would affect the aquifer in the area and the plant’s use and disposal of salt water…………………………
The environmental groups also said the proposed plant should make better plans as to what it would do with its spent radioactive waste and have long-term storage strategies. The utility should also better explain its safety and security procedures for the waste.
The licensing board also agreed with the environmental groups that the utility company should better address the environmental impact of building its plant on a flood plain and its effect on the aquifer and wetlands.
Don’t nuke the climate
International campaign “Don’t nuke the climate” : we need your support
Please answer before the 12th of July 2009.
Register your group
The first partners In December 2009, at the next UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, it will be the world leaders’ duty to aim for an ambitious agreement regarding greenhouse gas emissions cut targets. They should also agree on a relevant budget to finance climate change mitigation and adaptation.Nuclear power has been kept outside of climate change mitigation mechanisms like CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) and JI (Joint Implementation) so far. However, some evidence shows that the nuclear lobby could be preparing its comeback at the next COP to have this dirty energy labeled as clean or carbon-free and thus benefit from new subsidies. Will our leaders let themselves be talked into financing a dangerous, costly and irrelevant technology, which would divert urgently needed money from real solutions to climate change?
This is why we now propose you to support the international campaign “Don’t nuke the climate” which will be initiated by the Réseau “Sortir du nucléaire” (French Network for Nuclear Phase-out). A campaign document will be edited at a large scale (several hundreds of thousand copies) by September 2009. It will include petition postcards to be signed by citizens, which will be gathered and then presented in Copenhagen during a media-oriented action. Beside, we will ask citizens to send us pictures to make a huge mosaic showing the face(s) of world citizens’ refusal of nuke as a solution to global warming.
We would highly appreciate to see your logo on this document and on the dedicated website, our aim being to distribute this campaign as broadly as possible, not only in France, but also in Europe and maybe further. Our last campaign on this topic, in year 2008, has already gathered 27 partners at a national level. However, the issue is global and requires international committment. We know some of you are already active on the issue of nukes and global warming, and hope this campaign could contribute in joining our efforts to allow the antinuclear voice to be heard even stronger in Copenhagen.Like already many organizations, do not hesitate to register your NGO as a partner of the campaign “Don’t nuke the climate”The writing work is in progress and your remarks will be welcomed.
Nuclear dawn delayed in Finland
Nuclear dawn delayed in Finland By Rob Broomby BBC World Service, 10 July Olkiluoto, Finland
When it is finished, Finland’s Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) nuclear reactor will be the biggest the world has ever seen, the excavation site alone is the size of 55 football fields.
It was to have been a pilot project for bigger, better, cleaner, Generation III reactors, which would lead the charge back to nuclear power in a continent which had gone cold on atomic energy after the accidents at Chernobyl and Thee Mile Island.
But hopes of an early nuclear dawn on the Baltic coast are fading – the May start up date came and went and the OL3 is now not expected to begin pumping out electricity until 2012 – three years later than planned and about $2.4bn dollars (1.7bn euros) over budget.
The soaring cranes tell the tale: this project is far from complete.
There have been a string of problems starting with the concrete, then the welding.
Now, the safety regulator is questioning the designs for the reactor’s nerve centre – the Instrumentation and Control system……………………..
Even Philippe Knoche, Areva’s chief operating officer, admits things have not been going well.
“It’s no secret that Areva is losing money on this project,” he tells me……………………………..the EPR could be struck-off the list of reactor designs approved for use in the UK, a devastating blow to the French company and the British nuclear programme.
Conflict on African continent hampers mining industries
Conflict on continent hampers mining industries Mining Weekly
By:Megan Wait 10 July 09Foreign nations’ and companies’ interests in African resources also lead to negative effects. Many foreign companies on the continent are primarily extractive. This means that the countries are seen as suppliers of raw materials, which are exported for processing to other countries. This prevents the esta- blishment of manufacturing and service industries in these countries, which inhibits job creation. The export taxes also create expenses for the country, which is chroni- cally strapped for revenue.Meanwhile, French nuclear company Areva’s subsidiary, uranium explorer UraMin, reports that the company, although at peace with the government, is concerned about its uranium-excavating project Bakouma, in the Central African Republic (CAR)……………………………….The negative perception of the political, societal and economic situation in Africa, weak leadership and poor governance, and the lack of regional coherence and identity create structural problems that continue the cycle of poverty and insecurity.
Nuke plant blames maintenance problems for leak
Nuke plant blames maintenance problems for leak philly.com Jul. 9, 2009 The Associated PressLACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. – Officials at a New Jersey nuclear power plant say a maintenance problem is to blame for a tritium leak this year.The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a statement explaining what operators of Lacey Township’s Oyster Creek plant say went wrong.A 1991 report indicated two pipes had been recoated. But a new analysis finds they were not completely recoated and were prone to corrosion.
Nuke plant blames maintenance problems for leak | AP | 07/09/2009
Swedish nuclear watchdog puts plant on probation amid safety concerns |
Swedish nuclear watchdog puts plant on probation amid safety concerns
Detsche Welle 9 July 09 After a series of incidents that could endanger the security at a nuclear plant in Sweden, officials in the Scandinavian country have called for new security measures.
The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM) has placed the Ringhals nuclear plant, in the southwest of the country, under special supervision after a series of incidents.
“The agency has on several occasions pointed out deficiencies that have been followed by measures from Ringhals, but the problems still remain,” said Swedish Radiation Safety Authority official Leif Karlsson……………
……………Sweden at one time had as many as 12 nuclear reactors in operation, but decommissioned two reactors at the Barseback plant in southern Sweden in an effort to cut back on nuclear energy. The current center-right government has announced that the country will continue relying on nuclear plants, disregarding a 1980 referendum in which Sweden decided to gradually phase them out.
‘Let’s take steps to bring green choices within the reach of everyone’
From The Times (UK)
July 8, 2009
On day three of our series on the low-carbon economy, Conservative politician Zac Goldsmith tells Robin Pagnamenta that private enterprise has a key role to play
Which concrete measures can governments introduce to support the growth of a low-carbon economy in Britain?
Many green choices are still the preserve of the committed or the well-off. With the right incentives and signals, an intelligent government could make pollution and waste a liability and at the same time bring those green choices within reach of us all. Until that happens, green will always be a marginal niche.
Broadly, the Government needs to put a price on pollution, waste and the use of scarce resources, and to invest proceeds into the alternatives. For example, if a new tax is introduced – at the point of purchase – on the “dirtiest” cars, it should be used to bring down the cost of the “cleanest” cars.
That would clean up the car fleet very quickly, and without punishing people for decisions they’ve already taken.
We also need to make better use of subsidies. In my view they should exist to stimulate new technologies and to fund research not yet attractive to the market. The German system of feed-in tariffs is one way we could support green energy technologies, by shortening the payback time………
……………… Should nuclear energy play a role in the low-carbon economy?
If it was up to me, I wouldn’t block nuclear per se, but I would absolutely oppose any use of taxpayer funds to prop it up. That includes dealing with waste, security concerns and so on. I don’t believe it’s right for the Government to use taxpayer funds to support old technologies, no matter how powerful their lobby groups. The job of the Government is to provide energy solutions at the lowest cost and in the cleanest way. That will never, in my view, be nuclear.
Don’t forget there has never been a nuclear power plant that wasn’t constructed and run at the public’s expense. In a free market, nuclear wouldn’t exist. On that basis I would like to see subsidies diverted elsewhere, and, logically, that would mean nuclear has almost certainly had its day.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article6665944.ece
Overweight Get More Radiation and Doctors Admit Ignorance to Damage Caused
Overweight Get More Radiation and Doctors Admit Ignorance to Damage Caused
NaturalNews.com July 08, 2009 by: Jane Jones “………………….Recently, it was uncovered that obese patients are receiving up to 4000 percent more exposure to radiation with each X-ray – and in the ambitious medical world, the number of X-rays people receive is also increasing. The increase of radiation exposure appears to be done on the basis of logic: more radiation is needed to get an accurate exposure due to the excess fat getting in the way.
While more radiation might actually help get a usable x-ray, the question of what damage it’s causing the patient is one an MIT doctor admits hasn’t even been looked at. The question of it being an acceptable risk has also been neglected.
We know that radiation is dangerous. We know that radiation even from X-rays is dangerous…………
……………..Resources:
Obese Get Higher Doses of Radiation for X-Rays
http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/2009063…
Radiation Damage
http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/…
http://www.naturalnews.com/026570_doctors_overweight_X-rays.html
Vattenfall sacks head of defective nuclear plant
Vattenfall sacks head of defective nuclear plant
Deutsche Welle 08.07.2009
Four days after a technical failure shut down a nuclear power station in northern Germany, operator Vattenfall admitted to having made a mistake, while Social Democrats and Green are urging a boycott.
Vattenfall admitted that a mistake had been made at the Kruemmel nuclear power station and confirmed that it had fired the plant manager. The Swedish operators said the head of the reactor had broken an agreement with German authorities to install discharge detectors on a transformer.
It was a short-circuit on one of the transformers that caused the Kruemmel plant to shut down last weekend, thus restricting power supplies across much of the city of Hamburg.
Vattenfall has now said it will not repair the electrical transformers, responsible for the supply of power to on-site machinery, but will replace them entirely. As a result, the reactor will not resume operations for several months.
The latest incident at Kruemmel, just one of many problems that have dogged the plant over the past years, has sparked furious political debate over the security of nuclear fuel technology.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4464985,00.html
Tactical Nuclear Weapons, the Menace No One Is Talking About
Politics Daily David Wood 8 July 07 “…………………………Presidents Obama and Medvedev, who agreed on the outlines of the treaty at their Moscow summit, seem to have overlooked thousands of nasty nuclear weapons bristling right under their noses in Europe: Russian and American tactical nukes. About 4,500 of these war-fighting weapons, mostly bombs and short-range missile warheads, are stored in Europe and in western Russia. They are not a subject of the strategic nuclear arms talks announced in Moscow. In fact, they are not part of any arms control treaty or negotiation.
The security of the facilities where they are stored, including underground U.S. bunkers across Western Europe, has come under question. The Russians have at least eight times as many of these weapons as the United States has deployed in Europe, an imbalance that a panel of senior American experts recently called “stark and worrisome.”
In the shifting geopolitics of post-Cold War Europe, tactical nuclear weapons play an increasingly important role in Russian military doctrine, a brute reminder of Russian power against the growing influence of the West along its borders. For instance, the Russians are working to fit tactical nuclear warheads onto submarine-launched cruise missiles, a weapon that “will play a key role” in Russian strategy, according to Vice Adm. Oleg Bursev of the Russian General Staff. “Their range and precision are gradually increasing,” he said this spring.
………………………….. These are bombs carried on ordinary jets, like F-16s, and mounted on short-range ballistic missiles. This class of weapons might still include the nuclear land mines and nuclear artillery shells that were deployed by the tens of thousands in Europe during the Cold War. The United States and Russia both say they’ve gotten rid of these weapons, but intelligence services on each side harbor doubts.
The U.S. tactical weapons, mostly B-61 thermonuclear bombs, are stored in underground vaults in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy, and Turkey, where they are under the control of U.S. Air Force munitions support squadrons.
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/07/08/tactical-nuclear-weapons-the-menace-no-one-is-talking-about/
Can Nuclear Power Take The Heat?
Can Nuclear Power Take The Heat? The New Republic -Bradford Plumer 7 July 09 Via Climate Progress, the London Times reports that France’s nuclear fleet is once again running into water and heat trouble during the summer……………………….These summer shutdowns are becoming more and more common, and don’t bode well for the future, given that temperatures in Europe have been creeping up faster than the global average, according to a recent European Environmental Agency report, and will almost certainly keep climbing as the world warms. Some countries, like France, Germany, and Spain, have responded to this problem in the past by overriding their own environmental laws and allowing plants to dump hotter water into the rivers—the downside is that this can cause considerable damage to river life.
Nor is this just Europe’s problem: In 2006, Exelon had to cut the power at a nuclear plant in Illinois when the Mississippi River got too warm to be used as cooling water. According to the recent NOAA synthesis report on climate-change impacts in the United States, one of the things we can expect to see across the country in the coming decades is a much greater frequency of hotter-than-90°F (32°C) days—precisely the point at which France’s plants keep running into trouble. Meanwhile, as the AP reported last year, if droughts become more frequent, that could mean additional trouble for nearly one-quarter of the nation’s nuclear plants.
Reprocessing is no solution
Reprocessing is no solution
Rutland Herald July 7, 2009 “………………The Bush administration began the new push for a Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. In 1979 a United States naval nuclear engineer and president, Jimmy Carter, ended this dangerous program.Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel was supposed to be one alternative to lots and lots of mining forever and forever. The biggest experiment in reprocessing was at Sellafield in Britain. In 2005, after decades of contamination and leaks and general spewing of horrible matter into the ocean, air, and land around the reprocessing plant, Sellafield was shut down because a bigger-than-usual leak of fuel dissolved in nitric acid —some tens of thousands of gallons — was discovered. It contained enough plutonium to make about 20 nuclear bombs.A nuclear dump site just six miles from the famous Champagne vineyards in France is leaking radioactive waste into the groundwater. According to the French nuclear safety authority, the “wall of a storage cell fissured” while concrete was being added to a recent layer of nuclear waste.It showed levels of radioactivity leaking from another dump site run by the same company in Normandy — at up to 90 times above European safety limits.That waste has seeped into underground water used by farmers, with contamination spreading into the countryside and threatening dairy production. The Champagne site will receive a total of 4,000 terabequerels of tritium — more than three times the amount of tritiumwaste as the dump site in Normandy.
Reprocessing is not a new idea. In fact, more than $40 billion has been spent globally on reprocessing technologies that have never become commercially successful. A 1996 report by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the costs of reprocessing and transmutation of irradiated fuel from waste produced by existing U.S. reactors alone easily could be more than $100 billion, in the addition to the cost of a geologic repository.
A new face of nuclear medicine
A new face of nuclear medicine Heart Institute makes own medical isotopes By Tom Spears, The Ottawa Citizen J uly 7, 2009 “…………………In the institute’s basement, there’s a machine with a name like a carnival ride — the cyclotron — that produces medical isotopes (radioactive atoms) without a nuclear reactor.
To anyone who has toured a nuclear reactor building, the contrast is startling. Reactors are huge machines in earthquake-proof buildings running 24 hours a day, surrounded by layer upon layer of security and shutdown systems, and with radioactive waste that will last for millennia.
They cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build (even the smallest ones), and the last pair built in Canada flunked their safety tests last year and therefore have never operated.
The cyclotron at the Heart Institute is a big metal box in a room that measures about eight by 10 metres. You can walk right up to it safely while it’s running.
At night, the staff just turn it off and go home.
This is a new face of nuclear medicine, making medical isotopes that will make pictures of the heart, brain, bones and so on.
De Kemp continues his explanation of the glowing blobs on a compu
Inexplicable leukemias rock small German rural region
Inexplicable leukemias rock small German rural region Google News By Arnaud Bouvier – 7 July 09 GEESTHACHT, Germany (AFP) — For 20 years, children from a small rural northern German region — where Alfred Nobel invented dynamite — have been contracting leukemia at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world and no one knows exactly why.Nineteen cases of leukemia among children under 15 have been recorded since 1989 in the region of Elbmarsch, some 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the city of Hamburg, three or four times the average rate.”Such a high rate of leukemia is unique in the world,” according to Hayo Dieckmann, a health official in the nearby town of Lueneburg who is also a medical doctor…………………………………………..
Campaigners, however, point out that within two kilometres of the region lie the Kruemmel nuclear power station and the GKSS scientific research centre, both of which they believe are to blame for the leukemia outbreaks.
The “citizens’ association against leukemia in Elbmarsch” (BI) believes that a nuclear accident took place at the GKSS centre, only six months after the devastating meltdown at Chernobyl.
The campaigners say that a radiation leak occurred at the centre — which operates a small nuclear reactor for research purposes — on September 12, 1986, which was later covered up by the authorities……………………………
Campaigners also point an accusing finger at the Kruemmel nuclear power plant which reopened on June 24 after a fire broke out there two years ago.
The plant hit headlines again at the weekend in the wake of two further malfunctions, one of which plunged part of Hamburg into darkness and knocked out the city’s traffic lights.
At the end of 2007, a national survey of nuclear power stations in Germany showed that the risk of contracting cancer rose dramatically for children living near a power plant.
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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