bananas
bananas's JournalU.S. senators lament lack of progress on nuclear deal
Source: The Hindu
Two influential U.S. senators have lamented that even after eight years of the announcement of the landmark civil nuclear agreement, which lifted the U.S. moratorium on nuclear trade with India, New Delhi is yet to provide a workable nuclear liability agreement that will companies to move forward.
In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, the co-chairs of the Senate India Caucus, Mark Warner and John Cornyn, said the agreement was arrived to provide U.S. assistance to India’s civilian nuclear energy programme and expand bilateral cooperation in energy.
“Yet, eight years later, the agreement has not been implemented, and we have yet to see India provide a workable nuclear liability agreement that allows nuclear companies to move forward. We need to finish what we started and realise full commercial potential of this important agreement,” the letter states.
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Read more: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/us-senators-lament-lack-of-progress-on-nuclear-deal/article4966778.ece
"Nukes for Mangoes" was one of Bush's stupidest ideas.
And he had a LOT of stupid ideas.
Drop cases against Kudankulam activist: Court tells Tamil Nadu government
Source: NDTV, Indo-Asian News Service
The Madras High Court today directed the Tamil Nadu government to abide by the Supreme Court direction to withdraw cases filed against those opposing the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP).
The court, however, refused to stay the functioning of the power plant.
The People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), which has been protesting against the project, welcomed the judgment and hoped that the state government would withdraw the cases soon.
City-based advocate P Pugalenthi filed a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking to know what action the state government had taken to comply with the Supreme Court direction to withdraw all cases filed against the protestors, so that peace and normalcy was restored.
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Read more: http://www.ndtv.com/article/south/drop-cases-against-kudankulam-activist-court-tells-tamil-nadu-government-398672
Plan to ship radioactive material to Sweden for recycling cancelled
Source: CTV
A plan to ship 16 radioactive steam generators through the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River for recycling in Sweden has been cancelled after delays caused by public opposition.
An agreement was reached in 2009 between Bruce Power in Tiverton, Ont., and Swedish company Studsvik but company president Duncan Hawthorne said they delayed the plans to allow further discussion with First Nations, Metis and other groups.
The move has been strongly opposed by aboriginal groups, the Bloc Quebecois, the NDP and a number of community organizations over the past two years.
Emma Lui of the Council of Canadians says there are many concerns but the "big one" is the possible threat to the Great Lakes if something went wrong with the shipment.
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Read more: http://london.ctvnews.ca/plan-to-ship-radioactive-material-to-sweden-for-recycling-cancelled-1.1388494
Mayor, environmentalists declare victory of people power over nuclear power
Mayor, environmentalists declare victory of people power over nuclear power
As reported by the Sarnia Observer, the Mayor of Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, Mike Bradley (photo, left), has declared victory in a years-long campaign to block the shipment of radioactive steam generators, by boat on the Great Lakes, from Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Kincardine, Ontario, across the Pacific, to Sweden.
“It's a real testament to citizen power,” said Bradley, who has been a vocal critic of the move, along with a growing list of Ontario mayors, coalition groups, environmental activists, and U.S. Senators. “We're fighting a very large and powerful organization.”
First Nations, including the Mohawks, as well as hundreds of municipalities in Quebec representing millions of citizens along the targeted shipment route, made the difference for the resistance.
Kay Cumbow, the nuclear power watchdog in Michigan who first discovered the risky shipping scheme through her research, then warned and activated others, has said "Thanks to everyone who wrote letters, signed petitions and helped get the word out about the dangers of this scheme that would have put the Great Lakes at risk, endangered workers as well as communities enroute, and would have put radioactive materials into the global recycled metal supply."
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Iran President Chooses New Nuclear Chief Negotiator
Source: Arutz Sheva
Iranian President-elect Hassan Rohani has chosen a new nuclear chief negotiator to represent Iran at talks with the international community, although any nuclear policy is determined strictly by the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Mohammed Forouzandeh currently heads a powerful state charitable foundation and serves as a member of the Supreme National Security Council.
He is also former member of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, a history that would serve him well as the head of the Supreme National Security Council – the other role he will take as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator.
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Rouhani was himself once Iran's leading negotiator with the European Union over the country's secretive nuclear weapons program. A report in 2006 by The Telegraph revealed how the man now hailed by many western commentators as a "moderate" boasted of manipulating European observers during his tenure.
Read more: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/170373#.UfakMY3VArU
Weedkillers tied to depression in farmers
Weedkillers tied to depression in farmers
By Kerry Grens
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Farmers who used weedkillers were more than twice as likely to be treated for depression than farmers who didn't use the chemicals in a new study from France.
Whether the weedkillers are causing depression "is not clear," said Marc Weisskopf, the study's lead author and an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. "But (the result) suggests we should not be ignoring herbicides just because they're targeting plants."
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There was no difference in the risk of having depression among the farmers who had used fungicides or insecticides, compared to those who hadn't used any pesticide.
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Furthermore, farmers who had greater exposure - either more hours or longer years using herbicides - also had a greater chance of having depression than farmers who had used weedkillers less.
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SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1dXuiro American Journal of Epidemiology, online July 12, 2013.
The Y-12 break-in: One year later
The Y-12 break-in: One year later
For decades, the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant relished its nickname, the Fort Knox of Uranium. The self-anointed moniker helped define the type of work that takes place there and underscored the government facility’s top-security image.
Overnight, however, Fort Knox became a laughingstock.
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Instead of being compared to the nation’s gold standard, Y-12 security was suddenly “Second to Nun” and the butt of other jokes and slogans.
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According to Laura Herzog, the senator’s communications director, Corker was told Y-12 officials understood the seriousness of the matter and were taking appropriate corrective actions. “Since then, another incident has occurred, suggesting that the Department of Energy still does not have proper security measures in place at our nuclear weapons facilities,” she said.
Herzog was making reference to a June 6 security breakdown in which a lost and apparently confused driver was waved into the plant at the main entrance, even though she had no security credentials and no business at the weapons plant. Two months before that, a bike rider was arrested on a Y-12 patrol road — not far from where the Plowshares protesters initially broke into the plant — after traversing most of the plant’s northside boundary.
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Asked if she wanted to shut down production of nuclear weapons at Y-12, Rice said, “With all my heart.”
The 83-year-old nun said her only regret was that she waited 70 years to do what she knew was the right thing to do all along.
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Rowhani 'halted nuclear weapon programme': ex-ambassador
Source: Agence France-Presse
Iranian President-elect Hassan Rowhani personally stopped the development of a clandestine nuclear weapon in 2003, a former ambassador to the country said Saturday.
Writing in the International Herald Tribune newspaper, Francois Nicoullaud, France's ambassador to Iran from 2001 to 2005, said he believed Rowhani was the "main actor" in persuading the country's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to halt the secret programme.
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"Based on conversations that I had at the time, as French ambassador to Tehran, with high Iranian officials close to the matter, I firmly believe that Rowhani was the main actor in the process," Nicoullaud wrote. "Of course, Iranians could not admit to a foreigner that such a program ever existed, and I cannot name the officials I spoke to."
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"Uranium enrichment was the visible part of it but there was a hidden section, the manufacture of a nuclear device --once they had produced enriched uranium, how to put it on the head of a missile and how to deliver it to 'friends' in the region --that's the programme Rowhani stopped," the former ambassador said.
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Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/07/27/rowhani-halted-nuclear-weapon-programme-ex-ambassador/
Feds Warn NJ Nuclear Plant Operator Over Firing
Source: Associated Press
Federal regulators are worried that a security manager's firing from a job at a nuclear plant could deter employees and contractors from questioning safety at one of the nation's largest nuclear power stations.
A federal jury in Camden last month concluded that the 2009 firing of Robert Scull was in retaliation for the manager's plan to tell the NRC about his safety concerns at the adjoining Hope Creek and Salem nuclear plants in Lower Alloways Creek Township, south of Wilmington, Del.
Scull said he did not have enough assistants to maintain security of the plants, the second-largest nuclear generating facility in the U.S. He was awarded $400,000 and has since made court filings asking for his old job back.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent a letter to plant operator PSEG Nuclear on Friday asking it to detail what actions the company was taking to ensure the firing doesn't have a chilling effect on other would-be whistleblowers.
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Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/feds-warn-nj-nuclear-plant-operator-firing-19783997
Fishermen lambaste TEPCO over radioactive water leaks
Source: Asahi Shimbun
Representatives of Japan's national fishermen's federation visited Tokyo Electric Power Co. headquarters on July 25 to hand in a letter of protest over the recent leakage of radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant into the sea.
"We are exasperated at the development, which is an act of treason to all fishing industry workers and to all members of the public in Japan," read part of the letter addressed to Naomi Hirose, the corporate president.
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Tetsu Nozaki, head of the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations, also attended the meeting.
Nozaki told reporters the latest development was the biggest scandal since the onset of the nuclear disaster, which was triggered by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
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Read more: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201307260041
Via http://www.simplyinfo.org/?p=10746
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