Gulf News: Jaitapur nuclear plant in seismic zone
Mumbai: A Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) report has criticised the location of the Jaitapur nuclear power plant in the Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra as sitting on an earthquake zone even as the state government plans to hold a public discussion to clear the air for the proposed reactor. Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan plans to rope in atomic energy experts and representatives of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), which will set up the project in collaboration with Areva, a French company, to dispel the “misinformation” created by activists at a public discussion in January. The project will have six 1650 MW reactors to be commissioned in a phased manner from 2018.
Foreign Policy: The nuclear clean-out
The last few months have been busy ones for the nuclear express: trucks, trains and ships have been hauling giant protective casks containing highly-enriched uranium, plutonium, and spent nuclear fuel from vulnerable locations to safe harbors. These delicate operations in the former Soviet bloc point to progress in President Obama’s promise to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials in four years. He may not make the goal, but step-by-step, more and more weapons-useable material is being cleaned out and locked up. Still, there are problems ahead. Over the last two years, the Government Accountability Office has been working on a classified study of the effort to secure vulnerable nuclear materials. An unclassified version (report GAO-11-227) was made public in recent weeks. The GAO says that while the National Security Council has developed a classified seven-page government-wide strategy for meeting Obama's goal of securing all vulnerable materials in four years, the scope of all these nuclear materials creates some uncertainty about whether Obama's ambitious goal can be met. "Several hundred" sites around the world have "significant" amounts of nuclear material, and "a large number of sites were determined to be most vulnerable." The GAO quotes NSC officials as saying "there is a large universe of nuclear material sites around the world and there are many unknowns and uncertainties…"
AFP: EDF's role in US nuclear market is clouded
WASHINGTON — Time may be running out for French energy giant EDF to gain a stronger foothold in the US nuclear sector, after it rejected a government loan deal for a new reactor and lost its local partner. Since parting ways with US firm Constellation in October, EDF has vowed to find a new partner for its American subsidiary Unistar, and to press ahead with construction of a new reactor at Calvert Cliffs, Maryland. But according to several sources familiar with the situation, EDF has missed a golden opportunity by refusing the 7.5 billion dollar loan guarantee from the Department of Energy (DoE) to help build the reactor. The DoE "had offered a term sheet to Unistar and they didn't like the terms," according to an administration source. The French group must find a new local partner because US law requires that firms operating nuclear reactors must be majority US-owned. A spokeswoman for EDF insisted that the group was still "actively engaged with the DoE" to push the project forward. But sources close to the case say EDF faces an uphill struggle.
Morning Star: Nuke plants build without permits
A new alliance of anti-nuclear power campaigners claimed today that work has already begun on two new power stations even before permission to build was granted. Communities Opposed to New Nuclear Energy Development (Conned) brings together groups around seven sites earmarked for possible development. They oppose proposals to build power stations at Hinkley Point in Somerset, Sizewell in Suffolk, Bradwell in Essex, Wylfa on Anglesey, Oldbury In Gloucestershire, Sellafield in Cumbria and Hartlepool in County Durham. Conned aims to raise public awareness about the consequences for health, the environment, safety and security of potential new nuclear power developments, as well as supporting alternative energy strategies. The group has accused the nuclear industry of jumping the gun by commencing site preparations at Hinkley Point and Sizewell. At Hinkley Point, Electricite de France (EdF) has already dug trenches and boreholes across a 430 acre stretch of previously untouched countryside, it claims, moving enough earth "to fill Wembley Stadium twice over."
Scientific American: Abandoned Uranium Mines: An 'Overwhelming Problem' in the Navajo Nation
There's an old uranium mine on rancher Larry Gordy's grazing land near Cameron, Ariz. Like hundreds of other abandoned mines in the Navajo Nation, the United States' largest Indian reservation, it looks as if it might still be in use—tailings, or waste products of uranium processing, are still piled everywhere, and the land isn't fenced off. "It looks like Mars," said Marsha Monestersky, program director of Forgotten People, an advocacy organization for the western region of the vast Navajo Nation, which covers 27,000 square miles in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently embroiled in a massive effort to assess 520 open abandoned uranium mines all over the vast reservation. (Forgotten People says there are even more mines on Navajo land: about 1,300.) Earlier this month, the cleanup got a boost from a bankruptcy settlement with Oklahoma City-based chemical company Tronox Inc., which will give federal and Navajo Nation officials $14.5 million to address the reservation's uranium contamination.
The East African: Uranium being smuggled via EA to Iran – WikiLeaks
Secret messages published by WikiLeaks show great concern on the part of US diplomats with alleged smuggling of uranium from poorly secured mines and nuclear facilities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In one leaked cable from September 2006, the US embassy in Dar es Salaam suggests that uranium from the DRC may be passing through Tanzania en route to Iran. Such trafficking is “common knowledge to two Swiss shipping companies,” this message states, citing “a senior Swiss diplomat” as the source of the allegation. In addition to its worries about Iran’s nuclear programme, the United States fears that raw uranium and processed nuclear material could make its way from Central and East Africa into the hands of terrorist networks. A United Nations report in November revealed that a Rwandan gang operating in the eastern DRC tried unsuccessfully in 2008 to sell six containers of what was claimed to be uranium mined during the Belgian colonial era.
Digital Journal: New study: Fallujah birth defects reach epidemic levels
New research set to be published this week shows birth defects of newborn babies in the Iraqi city of Fallujah have reached epidemic proportions since the city was annihilated six years ago by the US military. The research, to be published this week in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, examined an alarming increase of birth defects in Fallujah and concluded for the first time that the unprecedented levels of newborns with cancers, tumors, skeletal, cardiac and neural-tube defects could be linked to US military assaults on the Iraqi city. Authors of the study, which focused on the genetic health of Fallujah, found deformities in the babies are almost 11 times higher than average rates. Those deformities spiked in the first half of 2010, the Guardian notes. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist, said: “We suspect that the population is chronically exposed to an environmental agent. We don’t know what that environmental factor is, but we are doing more tests to find out,” according to the Guardian. The new study names metals as being a potential source of contamination in Fallujah, especially affecting pregnant mothers. “Metals are involved in regulating genome stability,” the study states. It added: “As environmental effectors, metals are potentially good candidates to cause birth defects,” the Guardian reported. Long an issue of denial, or no response, by the US military, uranium-laced weapons were used extensively in the two battles of Fallujah, in April and yet again in November 2004. It does, however, acknowledge the controversial use of white phosphorous during the assaults.
Typically Spanish: Plutonium Contamination - Palomares runs out of patience
45 years after the nuclear accident above the skies of Palomares in Almería a large area of contaminated land still remains untouched. Four atomic bombs fell in the area when a B52 bomber and tanker refuelling plane had a mid-air collision. Two of the bombs fell on land, two at sea. None of the 1.5 megaton bombs exploded but two of them did leak radioactive plutonium over the area. Two of the bombs were recovered intact from the sea, one a month after the incident in January 1966 by local fishermen. Now with local elections just five months away, the PP Mayor and Senator, Jesús Calcedo, has said that patience has run out, and he has demanded an appointment this month with the United States Embassy in Spain in which he will ask them to meet their responsibilities for a proper clean-up. There had been earlier undertakings from the United States that they would decontaminate the land, at an estimated cost of 31 million €, and remove the plutonium to nuclear cemeteries in their own country.