Nuclear ships ‘threat to Gulf’ Gulf Daily News Bahrain By MANDEEP SINGH 10 March 08 - “THE region is at a serious risk of a major catastrophe due to military nuclear-powered and armed ships and submarines entering Gulf waters, an expert warned yesterday.The vessels “come and go as they please” with no one to monitor them, said Regional Organisation for the Protection of the Marine Environment executive secretary Dr Abdulrehman Al Awadhi.
‘If there is a radiation leak in any of these vessels, it would spell disaster for the area,‘ Dr Al Awadhi told the GDN.
‘When the ship is in port or even in the waters off port, by the time anything could be done, it would be too late.’….……………….He said while it was true that those on board the vessels would also be affected, ‘the damage to people like you and me, the damage to the environment and the effects on the region’s fragile ecology would be tremendous’………………………..”.
 Nuclear super-fuel gets too hot to handle
New Scientist Rob Edwards14 April 2008
“IT SEEMS like a no-brainer. Make uranium burn stronger, hotter and longer in nuclear reactors, and you’ll need less fuel, and there’ll be less waste to deal with when it has been exhausted.
For decades, nuclear operators have done just that, but emerging safety and waste-disposal issues are raising questions about this approach. The latest high-efficiency fuel may prove to be unstable in an emergency, and so poses a greater risk of leakage of radioactive material into the environment. What’s more, the waste fuel is more radioactive, meaning it could prove even more difficult than existing waste to store in underground repositories………………………………………..”
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 ‘  Shambolic’ Sellafield in crisis again after damning safety report
THE INDEPENDENT By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
3 February 2008
“Britain’s most notorious nuclear installation was plunged into crisis last week, when vital equipment broke down just as it was recovering from an accident that shut it for two years. Sellafield’s Thorp reprocessing plant has been closed again, while starting only its second job since the shutdown.
And the Cumbrian complex’s crisis is compounded by an excoriating report which shows that its facilities for handling nuclear waste are a shambles and that its safety procedures for preventing accidents – which could kill hundreds of thousands of Britons – are ‘not fully adequate’
The latest incident, which took place on Monday, could not have happened at a worst time for Sellafield or for the nuclear industry as a whole as it tries to generate the confidence needed to persuade investors to build a new generation of atomic power stations
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……………….The stinging report, by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, reveals the extent of the mess. After reprocessing, highly dangerous radioactive liquid waste is concentrated through evaporation and stored above ground in 21 giant steel tanks before being ‘vitrified’ - bound into glass for disposal. But the report shows that every stage of this process is in crisis.
Two of the three evaporators have been shut due to safety problems, and there are continuing ‘difficulties’ with vitrification.
But the most alarming issue is the failure of equipment needed to cool the waste, which could, at worst, lead to an explosion, scattering radioactivity across much of the country. Studies suggest that for every tank that exploded 210,000 people would die from cancer…………………………………………” |
Safety issues cloud nuclear renaissance Developing nations’ track record gives cause for concern San Francisco Chronucle George Jahn, Associated PressGeorge Jahn, Associated Press January 20, 2008 – “………………………………some countries hopping on the nuclear bandwagon have abysmal industrial safety records and corrupt ways that give many pause for thought……………….
………..Of the more than 100 nuclear reactors now being built, planned or on order, about half are in China, India and other developing nations. Argentina, Brazil and South Africa plan to expand existing programs; and Vietnam, Thailand, Egypt and Turkey are among the countries considering building their first reactors……………
……………The concerns are hardly limited to developing countries. Japan’s nuclear power industry has yet to recover from revelations five years ago of dozens of cases of false reporting on the inspections of nuclear reactor cracks.
The Swedish operators of a German reactor came under fire last summer for delays in informing the public about a fire at the plant. And a potentially disastrous partial breakdown of a Bulgarian nuclear plant’s emergency shutdown mechanism in 2006 went unreported for two months until whistle-blowers made it public.
Nuclear transparency will be an even greater problem for countries such as China that have tight government controls on information.
Those who mistrust the current nuclear revival are still haunted by the 1986 meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor and the Soviet Union’s attempts to hide the full extent of the catastrophe. Further back in the collective memory is the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979……………
……….worries persist that bad habits of the past could reflect on nuclear operational safety.
In China, for instance, thousands die annually in the world’s most dangerous coal mines and thousands more in fires, explosions and other accidents often blamed on insufficient safety equipment and workers ignoring safety rules.
Chinese state media on Saturday reported that nearly 3,800 people died in mine accidents last year. While that is about 20 percent less than in 2006, it still leaves China’s mines the world’s deadliest…………………………….
Countries with nuclear power are obligated to report all incidents to the IAEA. But the study said most Asian governments vastly underreport industrial accidents to the U.N.’s International Labor Organization – fewer than 1 percent in China’s case
Separately, China and India shared 70th place in the 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index, published by the Transparency International think tank that ranked 163 nations, with the least corrupt first and the most last. Vietnam occupied the 111th spot, and Indonesia – which, like Hanoi, wants to build a nuclear reactor – came in 130th……………………………..
….Hans-Holger Rogner, head of the IAEA’s planning and economic studies section, says he is ’suspicious when people say the next (reactor) generation will be safer than the one we have’……………..”
From cocaine to plutonium: mafia clan accused of trafficking nuclear waste - Tom Kington in Rome
Tuesday October 9, 2007
The Guardian – “Authorities in Italy are investigating a mafia clan accused of trafficking nuclear waste and trying to make plutonium.
The ‘Ndrangheta mafia, which gained notoriety in August for its blood feud killings of six men in Germany, is alleged to have made illegal shipments of radioactive waste to Somalia, as well as seeking the “clandestine production” of other nuclear material.
Two of the Calabrian clan’s members are being investigated, along with eight former employees of the state energy research agency Enea………………………………” |
Will it shake Jakarta’s NUCLEAR DREAM? Yesterday’s quakes throw spotlight on plant’s position within Pacific Ring of Fire
Electric News September 14, 2007
“WHEN Indonesia recently announced plans to build a nuclear plant in Java, experts said it was a bad idea. Yesterday, Indonesians got another reminder of how potentially bad an idea it could be.
Two massive earthquakes – one measuring 8.4 in magnitude and the other, 6.6 – shook the Sumatra region in the evening, killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens of others.
A 3m-high wave reportedly hit Padang about 20 minutes after the quake. Buildings also collapsed and communication lines broke down.
The quakes prompted Indonesian authorities to issue two tsunami alerts…………….
…………….RUPTURE POSSIBLE A quake like the one that happened yesterday could rupture a reactor and cause a radiation leak that could spread to densely-populated areas, such as Jakarta, which is about 450km away from the proposed site.
In the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, scientists estimated that radioactive fallout from the damaged plant affected areas more than 2,000kmaway…………………………………”
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Next Tokai quake could be massive
BY TAKASHI SOEDA, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN 09/05/2007
“The heavily populated Tokai region, which experts say is due for a major earthquake within 30 years, has experienced at least three ’super’ temblors of unimaginable destruction during the past 5,000 years, according to a study.
Unlike so-called Tokai earthquakes that occur every 100 years or so, a ’super’ earthquake is one that causes dramatic change to the landscape through shifts in the Earth’s crust.
The envisaged Tokai quake, whose epicenter would be in the Bay of Suruga facing Shizuoka Prefecture, has an anticipated 87-percent likelihood of hitting by 2037, according to a government taskforce…………………….
……………The team drilled more than 10 meters at eight sites in an area about 2 kilometers east of the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant……………………….”. Worse than Chernobyl: ‘dirty timebomb’ ticking in a rusting Russian nuclear dump threatens Europe - 20,000 discarded uranium fuel rods stored in the Arctic Circle are corroding. The possible result? Detonation of a massive radioactive bomb experts say could rival the 1986 disaster. – The Independent, Rachel Shields, 10 June 2007 – “A decaying Russian nuclear dump inside the Arctic Circle is threatening to catch fire or explode, turning it into a ‘dirty bomb’ that could impact the whole of northern Europe, including the British Isles.
Experts are warning that sea water and intense cold are corroding a storage facility at Andreeva Bay, on the Kola Peninsula near Murmansk. It contains more than 20,000 discarded fuel rods from nuclear submarines and some nuclear-powered icebreakers. A Norwegian environmental group, Bellona, says it has obtained a copy of a secret report by the Russian nuclear agency, Rosatom, which speaks of an “uncontrolled nuclear reaction”……………………
…….The three storage tanks contain more than 32 tons of radioactive material. But the Kola Peninsula is littered with relics of Soviet nuclear facilities, housing more than 100 tons of nuclear waste – the largest concentration in the world.Experts predict that a major explosion at Andreeva Bay could destroy all life in a 32-mile radius, including Murmansk and a sliver of Norway, whose border is only 28 miles away. But a much wider area of Norway, north-west Russia and Finland would be rendered uninhabitable for at least 20 years, and huge quantities of radioactive material would be dumped into the Barents Sea………………………………………………”
Key radiological sites still unsecured - WASHINGTON, March 14 (UPI) – “Just four of 20 nuclear waste storage sites in Russia and Ukraine have been secured, making the remainder vulnerable to thieves and terrorists. The U.S. Energy Department has spent more than $108 million since 2001 helping secure 368 radiological sites in 40 foreign countries.However, some 70 percent of them are medical sites with a single source of radiation to be secured rather than the higher risk commercial, industrial and waste sites that are more expensive to secure, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.Meanwhile, 16 of 20 nuclear waste sites in the former Soviet Union are not secured, and some high-risk countries have not given DOE permission to undertake security upgrades at all. There are also more than 700 highly radioactive radioisotope thermoelectric generators — which power lighthouses and weather stations — in the former Soviet Union that are either operational or abandoned, but not secured. ‘DOE says this probably represents largest supply of unsecured radioactive material in the world,’states the report.Loose radioactive materials pose a security concern because with little technological expertise they can be packed in a bomb with conventional explosives and detonated. The radiological fallout could kill additional people beyond the radius of the initial blast, render areas uninhabitable for long periods of time and cause economic devastation.
THE UNTHINKABLE – Can the United States be made safe from nuclear terrorism? – The New Yorker …by STEVE COLL – 6/3/07 (This is a long article exploring the complicated problem of the safety, and safety precautions, regarding radioactive materials)” ……………………………………..The term “dirty bomb” can refer to a wide variety of devices, but generally it describes one that would use a conventional explosive such as dynamite to release radioactive material into the air. The initial explosion and its subsequent plume might kill or sicken a dozen or perhaps as many as a few hundred people, depending on such factors as wind and the bomb-maker’s skill. If the weapon was particularly well made, employing one of the most potent and long-lived types of radioactive materials that are used in medicine and in the food industry, it might also cause considerable economic damage-perhaps rendering a number of city blocks uninhabitable. Radioactive ground contamination cannot easily be scrubbed away, so it might be necessary to tear down scores of buildings and cart the rubble to disposal sites. It’s easy to imagine what the impact of such an attack would be if the contaminated area was, say, a quarter of the East Village, or the Seventh Arrondissement of Paris………………………The available evidence suggests that while jihadi leaders might like to acquire a proper fission weapon, their pragmatic plans seem to run to dirty bombs-a more plausible ambition.Among other things, the international nuclear black market holds more promise for dirty-bomb builders than for those who are interested in fission weapons. In all the cases of nuclear smuggling reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency since the collapse of the Soviet Union, none have involved significant amounts of fissionable materials………………..The Bush Administration has not assigned the same urgency to the dirty-bomb threat that it has to the threat of a terrorist attack using a fission weapon…………………………… The Bush Administration’s fixation on radiation sensors has not been accompanied by a comparably ambitious drive to fund, for example, increased inspections of companies that hold commercial nuclear material that could be used to build dirty bombs, and, as a result, the country’s regulatory system in this area remains strikingly weak………………………….. The final official list contains only fifteen risky isotopes. (Other commercial isotopes, such as polonium, which was employed in London last autumn to murder the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, can kill individuals or small groups but cannot cause damaging long-term ground contamination; these materials are not classified as a security risk.)
MINING SAFETY 
