Nuclear-&-Uranium

By Ahni / Intercontinental Cry There was a major victory this week in the struggle to protect the Koongarra uranium deposit in Australia’s Northern Territory. The Northern Land Council, which represents native title claimants in the Arnhem Land region of Northern Territory, announced its decision to extend the boundaries of the world-heritage-listed Kakadu National Park to include the 1,200 hectare uranium deposit. When the National Park was founded in 1979, the Australian government decided to leave Koongarra out, clearly recognizing the potential market value of the deposit. Located in the heart of Kakadu, the deposit is estimated to hold 14,540 tonnes of uranium ore worth approximately $5 billion. ...

By the Associated Press Thousands of Japanese marched to celebrate the switching off of the last of their nation’s 50 nuclear reactors on Saturday, waving banners shaped as giant fish that have become a potent anti-nuclear symbol. Japan will be without electricity from nuclear power for the first time in four decades when the reactor at Tomari nuclear plant on the northern island of Hokkaido goes offline for routine maintenance. ...

By Rob Edwards / The Guardian Hundreds of sites across England and Wales could be contaminated with radioactive waste from old military bases and factories, according to a new government report. Up to 1,000 sites could be polluted, though the best guess is that between 150 and 250 are, says a report on contaminated land by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), released last month, but previously unreported. ...

By Agence France-Presse Radioactive iodine was found in kelp off the US West Coast following last year’s earthquake-triggered Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown, according to a new study. It was already known that radioactive iodine 131 (131-I), carried in the atmosphere, made it across the Pacific within days of the March 11, 2011 tsunami disaster, albeit in minuscule amounts. But marine biologists at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) discovered the radioactive isotope in ocean kelp, which is “one of the strongest plant accumulators of iodine,” within a month of the accident. ...

By Matthew Stein / TruthOut There are nearly 450 nuclear reactors in the world, with hundreds more being planned or under construction. There are 104 of these reactors in the United States and 195 in Europe. Imagine what havoc it would wreak on our civilization and the planet’s ecosystems if we were to suddenly witness not just one or two nuclear meltdowns, but 400 or more! How likely is it that our world might experience an event that could ultimately cause hundreds of reactors to fail and melt down at approximately the same time? I venture to say that, unless we take significant protective measures, this apocalyptic scenario is not only possible, but probable. ...

By the Associated Press A 93-year-old anti-nuclear activist was among more than 130 protesters arrested at the corporate headquarters of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant on the first day of the plant’s operation after the expiration of its 40-year license. Frances Crowe, of Northampton, Mass., said she wants Vermont Yankee to cease operations because she feels it’s a threat to the people who live nearby. “As I was walking down, all I could think of was Fukushima and the suffering of all the people, and I don’t want that to happen to New England,” Crowe said, referring to the Japanese nuclear reactor damaged last year after an earthquake and tsunami. ...

By Jeemon Jacob / Tehelka Tamil Nadu government started “operation Koodankulam “on Monday 19 March, arresting 203 protesters and blocking all entry points to the coastal villages surrounding the nuclear power plant. Police arrested 185 men including parish priest Father Suseelan at Kottupuli village where they were protesting against the deployment of police forces. They were taken to Tirunelveli Armed Reserve Camp. Later police arrested 18 men from Koodankulam on charges of staging protests and violating Section 144 of the Indian Penal Code. ...

By Oliver Milman / The Guardian The Australian government has passed legislation that will create the country’s first nuclear waste dump, despite fierce opposition from environmental and Aboriginal groups. The passage of the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010 through the Senate paves the way for a highly controversial plan to store nuclear waste in Muckaty Station, a remote Aboriginal community in the arid central region of the Northern Territory. ...

By Rob Edwards / The Guardian As many as 12 of Britain’s 19 civil nuclear sites are at risk of flooding and coastal erosion because of climate change, according to an unpublished government analysis obtained by the Guardian. Nine of the sites have been assessed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as being vulnerable now, with others in danger from rising sea levels and storms in future decades. They include all of the eight sites proposed for new nuclear power stations around the coast, as well as numerous radioactive waste stores, operating reactors and defunct nuclear facilities. ...

By Akiko Okazaki / The Asahi Shimbun A mind-boggling 40,000 trillion becquerels of radioactive cesium, or twice the amount previously thought, may have spewed from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after the March 11 disaster, scientists say. Michio Aoyama, a senior researcher at the Meteorological Research Institute, released the finding at a scientific symposium in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Feb. 28. The figure, which represents about 20 percent of the discharge during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, is twice as large as previous estimates by research institutions both in Japan and overseas. ...