‘India's lower house
of parliament has passed a controversial
bill which will pave the way for foreign
companies to build nuclear power plants
in India. The legislation is crucial for
American companies wanting to engage in
civil nuclear commerce in India. The lower
house of parliament
passed the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill
Wednesday after the government made several
changes to win the support of the main opposition
Bharatiya Janata Party. The amended bill
triples the cap on compensation in the event
of a nuclear accident to $322 million. It
also extends provisions for liability claims
to suppliers of nuclear reactors. The bill
had been stalled for months by opposition
parties and critics who demanded stricter
liability for companies selling nuclear
reactors if a mishap occurred. India's civil
nuclear market opened up in 2008, when a
landmark atomic energy pact with the United
States led to the lifting of sanctions imposed
for conducting nuclear tests. Prime Minister
Singh says the bill is the last step in
ending the country's nuclear isolation.’
Huntington News: Come
and Get It --- Free Plutonium Sludge to
Fertilize Your Organic Garden
‘Huntington, WV (HNN) - Back in 1999 Joe
Harding told the Washington Post, “Everything
was so safe, so riskless [at the Paducah
enriched uranium gaseous diffusion plant]
… We know the truth, I can feel it in my
body.” Harding is no longer alive; he’s
one of the workers who died of cancer. At
the height of the Cold War in 1952, 1,800
men and women labored in hot, stadium sized
buildings turning trainloads of dusty uranium
powder into material for bombs, Joby Warrick
wrote on August 8, 1999. However, plant
management claimed that workers were safe
due to an “insignificant amount of plutonium”
processed at the Kentucky site. The workers
were not monitored. From 1953 to 1976, the
Post said , 103,000 metric tons of used
uranium were sent to Paducah arriving in
freight cars as fine black powder. Left
from the plutonium –making process, “fission
byproducts like technetium-99 and heavy
metals known as "transuranics":
neptunium and plutonium (which according
the then Institute for Energy and Environmental
Research is 100,000 times more radioactive
per gram than uranium.) Workers were told
respiratory protection was optional, they
almost jokingly “salted” their bread in
the cafeteria with green uranium dust, and
when they got out of bed in the morning
their linens would glow green.’
The Guardian: UK's nuclear
reactor programme falls behind schedule
‘The schedule for the UK's nuclear reactor
building programme has slipped behind already,
the safety regulator has admitted, reinforcing
concerns that the first reactor will not
be built on time. The Health and Safety
Executive (HSE) said it would probably have
to issue an "interim" decision
on the safety of the two new proposed reactor
designs next June, the deadline for its
assessment programme. The regulator expects
significant chunks of extra work will remain
before it can finally approve or reject
the designs, but did not say how long this
would take. Kevin Allars, director of the
assessment programme at the HSE, said that
companies could continue planning and carry
out preparatory construction on proposed
nuclear sites while they waited for a final
decision. But he insisted that construction
of a reactor could not start without its
consent. Allars promised there would be
no repeat of the chaotic construction in
Finland of what was supposed to be Europe's
first new reactor in decades. The Areva
plant is more than three years behind schedule
and more than €2bn (£1.6bn) over budget,
with the Finnish regulator trying to approve
each component of the design while it is
being built. EDF has promised that the UK's
first reactor will be operational in 2018,
although it had originally said it would
be running by the end of 2017.’
The Irish Times: Smuggled
uranium seized in Moldova
‘THREE PEOPLE have been arrested in Moldova
for trying to sell 1.8kg of smuggled uranium,
in the latest case to raise questions about
nuclear security in the former Soviet Union.
Moldovan police say two of those arrested
are former interior ministry officials,
and that they are now searching for four
more members of the group, which sought
to sell the uranium-238 abroad for €9,000,000.
It is not clear if the gang had found buyers
for the uranium, which was stored without
special equipment in the garage of one of
the suspects, some of whom have previous
convictions in Moldova, Russia and Romania
for possessing radioactive material. “Seven
members of the criminal group came under
suspicion of police in the middle of June
when they started to look for ways of selling
the radioactive material,” said Chiril Motpan,
a spokesman for Moldova’s interior ministry.
A US laboratory confirmed that the radioactive
material discovered was uranium-238, which
must be enriched before it can be used in
a nuclear power plant or weapon.’
