uranium news

Shot at nuclear fuel truck troubles watchdog group
By TOM FOWLER
 Houston Chronicle Aug. 28, 2009

Shotgun damage to a truck carrying uranium fuel rods to a Texas nuclear power plant last year posed little, if any, immediate radiation danger, but it highlights potential problems the industry could face, a nuclear power industry watchdog says.

The shotgun damage was discovered on the driver’s side of the truck on the morning of Sept. 20, as it delivered eight uranium fuel rods to the South Texas Project nuclear power plant near Bay City, according to a safety report filed at the plant last year.

The driver of the truck, operated by the Utah firm EnergySolutions, said he heard what sounded like a tire blowout several hours earlier while driving through another state. He stopped the truck to check but didn’t see the door damage…………………

………..a fuel rod that has been in a reactor and undergone fission is highly radioactive and can deliver lethal doses within minutes. That’s why trucks carrying spent fuel have much higher security specifications than vehicles that carry new fuel rods, said Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Shot at nuclear fuel truck troubles watchdog group | Business | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle

India’s generation of children crippled by uranium waste
Observer investigation uncovers link between dramatic rise in birth defects in Punjab and pollution from coal-fired power stations
Guardian.co.uk  The Observer by Gethin Chamberlain 30 August 2009

Their heads are too large or too small, their limbs too short or too bent. For some, their brains never grew, speech never came and their lives are likely to be cut short: these are the children it appears that India would rather the world did not see, the victims of a scandal with potential implications far beyond the country’s borders………………………

Health workers in the Punjabi cities of Bathinda and Faridkot knew something was terribly wrong when they saw a sharp increase in the number of birth defects, physical and mental abnormalities, and cancers. They suspected that children were being slowly poisoned.

But it was only when a visiting scientist arranged for tests to be carried out at a German laboratory that the true nature of their plight became clear. The results were unequivocal. The children had massive levels of uranium in their bodies, in one case more than 60 times the maximum safe limit.

The results were both momentous and mysterious………………..if a few hundred children – spread over a large area – were contaminated, how many thousands more might also be affected? Those are questions the Indian authorities appear determined not to answer. Staff at the clinics say they were visited and threatened with closure if they spoke out. The South African scientist whose curiosity exposed the scandal says she has been warned by the authorities that she may not be allowed back into the country.But an Observer investigation has now uncovered disturbing evidence to suggest a link between the contamination and the region’s coal-fired power stations………………………

India’s reluctance to acknowledge the problem is hardly unexpected: the country is heavily committed to an expansion of thermal plants in Punjab and other states. Neither was it any surprise when a team of scientists from the Department of Atomic Energy visited the area and concluded that while the concentration of uranium in drinking water was “slightly high”, there was “nothing to worry” about. Yet some tests recorded levels of uranium in the ground water as high as 224mcg/l (micrograms per litre) – 15 times higher than the safe level of 15mcg/l recommended by the WHO. (The US Environmental Protection Agency sets a maximum safe level of 20mcg/l.)…………………………

There have also been claims that the contamination may have been exacerbated by depleted uranium carried on the wind from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At a seminar in Amritsar in April, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, a former chief of the naval staff, suggested that areas within a 1,000-mile radius of Kabul – including Punjab – may be affected by depleted uranium. Although the prevailing monsoon winds blow either from the north-east or the south-west, there are times when a depression originating in the Mediterranean can result in rainfall in Punjab.

India’s generation of children crippled by uranium waste | World news | The Observer

BHP Billiton, the world’s richest mining company, plunders Australia’s precious — and FINITE — artesian water resource without cost, oversight or regulation.Australia is a desert land and the nation is presently suffering from extreme water shortages. The largest river system in the nation, the Murray-Darling, is in a critical condition — outflows to the sea have all but ceased and vital lake systems are now dust bowls; YET the plundering Transnational, BHP continues to steal high quality water for its uranium, pollution producing mine, Olympic Dam.

BHP Billiton have helped themselves to

424,303,039,808

litres

of FREE water from the Great Artesian Basin since 1982

Sydney households pay

$

776,474,562

for the same volume of water

The massive theft of water is causing environmental damage through: land and water salinisation encouragement of the spread of pest plants and animals reduced pressure in some naturally occurring artesian springs

Since 1999 the Australian Government has spent

$

80,372,743

of tax payer money in an attempt to repair the damage

addthis_pub = ‘watertheft’;

Related press & references
BHP: 30 million litres of water per day for free
Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative (GABSI)
Howard urged to make BHP mine pay for water

The Stolen Water

Give more radiation risk info, BHP told
The Age August 24, 2009 – 10:24AMBHP Billiton has been told by governments to provide more information on radiation risks of the proposed expansion of the company’s Olympic Dam mine.The South Australian and Northern Territory governments have both called for the BHP Billiton to address radiation concerns associated with the company’s planned expansion of the uranium, copper and gold mine in the north of SA.The SA government has described as inadequate several aspects of the company’s draft environmental impact statement (EIS) regarding the proposed expansion.

The SA, Northern Territory and federal governments are expected to decide in the middle of next year whether to approve the expansion of the Olympic Dam mine.

Submissions to the company’s draft EIS were made public on Monday, with the SA government listing 368 areas of concern.

Among them, the SA government’s submission demanded further detailed investigation of the radiation risk to mine workers and the community of Roxby Downs, near the Olympic Dam site.

The NT government submission called for further information regarding radiation risks to workers at the Port of Darwin.

The SA government also said BHP Billiton’s EIS contained inadequate marine surveys regarding potential risks to discharge in the upper Spencer Gulf………………..The SA government called on the company to further investigate the mine expansion impact on underground aquifers and marine and road transport in the region………………..

The NT government submission said the draft EIS did not sufficiently address emergency procedures for a transport accident along the Olympic Dam to Darwin rail line, particularly in remote areas.

Give more radiation risk info, BHP told

A uranium hole in the heart
Green Left Daniel Clarke, Alice Springs 23 August 2009
Canadian company Cameco and Australian-owned Paladin, the two businesses involved in the joint venture, hope to build Australia’s fifth uranium mine — well inside the Alice Springs water catchment boundary.

In July, environment minister Peter Garrett approved the nation’s fourth uranium mine at the Four Mile site in South Australia. The Angela Pamela exploratory licence is part of the NT’s push to expand its mining industry in response to a global surge in demand for uranium.

But a growing chorus of Alice Springs residents and tourism operators say the health risks of a uranium mine outweigh any economic benefits.

Family and medical groups have expressed grave concerns about Cameco’s recent history of radioactive leaks and flooding accidents in its uranium mines.
If built, the Angela Pamela uranium mine will be less than 15 kilometres away from existing and proposed bore fields for the Alice Springs’ drinking water.

Cameco, the world’s largest producer of uranium, flooded its Cigar Lake mine in Canada in 2006, leaving the world’s single largest uranium deposit underwater. Efforts to remove the water have so far failed.

In 2007, the company detected a radioactive leak at its Port Hope conversion plant. A similar leak was uncovered in 2001. Last year it paid US$1.4 million to the US state of Wyoming for failing to comply with a host of environmental standards at its Smith Ranch-Highland facility.
…………. Arid Lands Environment Centre coordinator Jimmy Cocking ..”“Both the nuclear industry and the government are relying on the fact that because we’re so far away from the big cities this issue will be out of sight, out of mind.

“If this is allowed to happen a lot of families will leave the town and we need to stop this now before exploration is finished and a full mining application is submitted.

“Who really wants to go to a place where if the wind blows up from the south — like it does here almost every day — there’s a possibility that you’re breathing in radioactive dust?”…………………..

Beyond Nuclear Initiative campaigner Nat Wasley said it was “ludicrous” for the federal and territory governments to use the Ranger uranium mine as an example of good practice.

“The Commonwealth’s own scientist revealed in March that 100,000 litres of contaminated water is leaking from the [Ranger] mine into the ground beneath Kakadu every day”, she told GLW.

“If those are the problems they’re having at the most heavily regulated uranium mine in Australia, if not the world, one can only imagine what might happen down the track at Alice Springs.”

Green Left – A uranium hole in the heart

Schacht lobbied Rann for miner *Michael Owen, SA political reporter
 | August 20, 2009A rticle from: The Australian
LOBBYIST and former Labor senator Chris Schacht was headhunted to join the board of a uranium exploration company, which was seeking to have a drilling ban lifted and its mining licence renewed by the Rann government.

After his appointment to the board of Marathon Resources, Mr Schacht lobbied Premier Mike Rann and Mineral Resources Minister Paul Holloway in private meetings and during trips to China, including one last October.

Mr Schacht, who company documents show was appointed to the board on January 23 last year, is a shareholder in Marathon and a former consultant for the company controlled by Queensland coal magnate Ken Talbot.

The Rann government refused to respond to inquiries from The Australian about its dealings with Marathon, including whether Mr Holloway had been lobbied by Mr Schacht or other company representatives.

Marathon chairman Peter Williams said after a board meeting in Adelaide yesterday that Mr Schacht had lobbied Mr Rann and Mr Holloway.

The company also employs a lobbyist firm, but Mr Williams refused to disclose the name of the firm.

The Rann government is under pressure because of its lack of action to regulate the activities of lobbyists and establish a lobbyists’ register, as the Rudd government and other states have done.

Adding to that pressure has been the Premier’s refusal to establish an independent commission against corruption, as every other state except Victoria has done, in the wake of events in Queensland.

Yesterday’s revelations about the extent of lobbying by Mr Schacht, a Keating government minister and former ALP state secretary, comes before Marathon’s mining exploration licence expires on October 10, and as the government prepares to consider lifting a drilling ban imposed in February last year.

The indefinite suspension on drilling came after the company was caught in December 2007 dumping uranium drilling waste in the environmentally sensitive Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary, 700km north of Adelaide.

A month later, Mr Schacht was appointed to the company’s board. Marathon aims to develop its Mount Gee uranium project in the northern Flinders Ranges, which is estimated to contain more than 40 million tonnes of uranium ore.

Conservationists and tourist operators want Marathon barred from the sanctuary and its drill sites at Mount Gee, a listed geological monument.

Company insiders said Mr Schacht had lobbied Mr Holloway and Mr Rann on behalf of the company during trips with them to China, and in private meetings, as the state government stood to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties.

Mr Schacht said that as a company director he could not comment.

Mr Williams said there were “regular” meetings with the government, including with Mr Holloway. “We secured Chris’s involvement before the problems came up … Of course he’s had lots of discussions with them (Rann and Holloway), and there’s no undue influence at all”.

Schacht lobbied Rann for miner | The Australian