Source: Reuters

Ukrainian authorities denied on Tuesday a report in pro-Kremlin media that a radioactive leak had taken place at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant, Europe's largest.

Life News newswire published documents which it said came from Ukraine's emergencies ministry and showed that a leak at the power plant had led to a spike in radiation over the past two days exceeding permitted norms by 16 times.

Three officials from Ukraine's emergencies ministry, energy ministry and the plant itself told Reuters there had been no leak.

"The plant works normally, there have been no accidents," said an energy ministry official. The officials could not comment if documents published by Life News were authentic. Reuters was not able to verify the documents independently.

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Read more: http://www.firstpost.com/world/ukraine-denies-radioactive-leak-on-zaporizhzhya-nuclear-plant-2023865.html

Source: Guardian

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“The ridiculous thing about this is the advice says once we are home we shouldn’t use public transport or go into crowded places, or if we do it should just be for short journeys of less than an hour, and yet they were quite happy to let us go home disperse from UK airports on the underground, on flights to Glasgow, which just makes a complete mockery of the quarantine arrangements,” Deahl said.

“It just begs the question whether they gave that advice because they didn’t want to spend the money on taking us home. It’s utterly illogical and I’d like to see someone at Public Health England try and justify and explain why – if they said we weren’t to go into crowded places or public transport once we were home – why people could use public transport to get from the airport.”

Deahl, from Newport in Shropshire, was one of 30 NHS volunteers to help tackle the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone. He flew back to Heathrow airport via Casablanca on Sunday night, sitting next to the nurse who has since been diagnosed with early stages of the virus.

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He also criticised the “totally inadequate” facilities for testing at-risk health workers once they landed at Heathrow airport, which he said increased the chances of cross-infection. He said nurses were herded into several overcrowded “tiny poky little offices” and had to wait up to an hour to be checked over. The temperature testing kits that health workers are given to take home had run out by the time he got seen, Deahl said. “The facilities for doing temperatures and the suite of rooms they were using were totally inadequate for the numbers coming through,” he said. “We were all crowded together and queueing together so given what’s happened the chances of cross-infection, just from that experience, were high – just from being herded together at Heathrow in a ridiculously small space.”

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/30/doctor-exposed-ebola-patient-utterly-illogical-quarantine-system

Source: Wicked Local Plymouth

More than 1,300 Plymouth Public Schools employees, from cafeteria workers to top administrators, woke up Friday morning to find that their bank account balances were significantly lower than expected. Not only were their bi-weekly paychecks missing, but two additional weeks of pay had also been withdrawn from their accounts.

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“I can’t believe this was even possible,” one veteran teacher told the Old Colony. “How can they take money out of your account without your permission?”

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“We have hundreds of banks associated with these accounts, and right now we are calling each, informing them of the situation and asking that they return the funds,” Arrighi said Friday.

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Many of the affected employees were angry, both about the potential damage to their financial situations and the way they were informed - or rather not informed - of the debacle.

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Read more: http://plymouth.wickedlocal.com/article/20141230/NEWS/141239929

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Source: Associated Press

The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant stopped sending power to the New England electric grid at just after noon Monday following more than 42 years of producing electricity from the southeastern Vermont town of Vernon.

The shutdown came at 12:12 p.m., as the plant completed its 30th operating cycle when operators inserted control rods into the reactor core and stopped the nuclear reaction process, the plant’s owner said.

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Bill Mohl, the president of Entergy Wholesale Commodities, said economic factors, especially related to the natural gas market in the Northeast, were the primary reason for the shutdown.

“The Northeast has undergone a shift in supply because of shale gas, resulting in sustained low natural gas prices and low wholesale energy prices,” Mohl said in a statement.

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Read more: https://www.wbur.org/2014/12/29/vermont-yankee-power-plant

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Source: Radio Free Europe

Ukraine has shut down a reactor at of its most powerful nuclear power plant for the second time in a month due to an apparent electrical malfunction.

Workers at the Zaporizhzhya power plant disconnected one of the facility's six reactors on December 28, citing a problem with the unit's generator.

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A different reactor was shut down for several days earlier this month after experiencing a short circuit.

The 6,000-megawatt Zaporizhzhya facility is Europe's largest nuclear plant and the fifth-most-powerful in the world.

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Read more: http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-nuclear-reactor-shut-down/26766172.html

Source: Associated Press

Iran’s army said Saturday it has deployed a suicide drone for the first time in massive ongoing military drills near the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf.

Gen. Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, the army’s chief commander of ground forces, described the unmanned aircraft as a “mobile bomb,” according to state media, which said the aerial device is designed to strike air, ground and naval targets.

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The six-day military exercise is being carried out over 850,000 square miles near the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes.

Iran frequently touts advances in its homegrown aerospace industries. It says its most advanced drone, the Shahed-129, can reach much of the Middle East, including Israel. The drone is said to have a range of 1,050 miles and a 24-hour flight capability, and can carry eight bombs or missiles capable of hitting both stationary and moving targets.

Read more: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/dec/28/iranian-military-tests-suicide-drone/