February 10, 2012

From the Greenville News

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday approved the nation’s first new nuclear power plant in more than three decades, and a spokesman said it should rule within weeks on plans for a similar project in South Carolina.

The NRC voted 4-1 to approve Southern Co.’s request to build two nuclear reactors at its Vogtle site near Augusta, Ga., just over the South Carolina line, clearing the way for the reactors to begin operating as soon as 2016 and 2017.

The NRC last approved construction of a nuclear plant in 1978, a year before a partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania raised fears of a radiation release and brought new reactor orders nearly to a halt.

Legislation to cut $100 billion from a “bloated” U.S. nuclear weapons budget over the next decade includes a provision to halt further funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s $4.8 billion mixed oxide fuel plant under construction at Savannah River Site.

The Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures (SANE) Act of 2012, introduced Wednesday by U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and about 30 co-sponsors, also would cut the current nuclear submarine fleet, reduce the nation’s ICBM missile inventory, delay construction of new nuclear-capable bombers and end current nuclear strike bomber missions.

for immediate release: Thursday, January 26, 2012

for further information, contact:

Bob Schaeffer: 239-395-6773

Katherine Fuchs: 202-544-0217, ext. 2503

local contacts listed at end of advisory

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future report released today received mixed reviews from groups that monitor sites where large quantities of radioactive waste are stored. The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) said major flaws in the report include the Commission’s “failure to advocate prompt removal of commercial spent fuel from reactor cooling pools with placement in hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS) to safeguard commercial spent fuel at nuclear power plants.” ANA and hundreds of community groups had told the Commission that HOSS could protect the heavily reactive material for the decades needed to develop a scientifically sound and publicly acceptable waste disposal program.

31 JANUARY 2012 

Article Highlights:

January 29, 2012

By LeRoy Moore and Robert Del Tredici

Whether to build the Jefferson Parkway or to turn Rocky Flats into a playground, the determining factor should not be commercial or residential development. The determining factor should be hot particles of plutonium.

A hot particle of plutonium is one that can lodge in air sacs of a lung or be moved via blood elsewhere in the organism. Wherever it resides in the body it irradiates surrounding tissue. A single particle of plutonium can damage more than 10,000 cells within its range.

Nobel chemist Glenn Seaborg, who discovered plutonium in 1941, called it "fiendishly toxic, even in small amounts." Physicist Jeremy Bernstein recently declared plutonium "the world's most dangerous element."

Press Conference Advisory:  Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 9:15 am

Rotunda, Roundhouse at the corner of Old Santa Fe Trail and Paseo de Peralta 

  

Topic: Map Documenting Community Water Concerns to be Released as Part of Legislative Day for People of Faith Concerned about Clean Air, Water and Earth 

  

Contact: Joan Brown, Partnership for Earth Spirituality

              505-266-6966 (Albuquerque), joankansas@swcp.com 

               Joni Arends, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety 

              505-986-1973 (Santa Fe), jarends@nuclearactive.org 

            

A map documenting community and people of faith concerns for water will be released Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 9:15 in the Rotunda of the State Capitol. The document release is part of a Legislative Day for People of Faith Concerned for Water, Land, Air and People. The project was initiated by people of faith and communities concerned about water and funded by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy – Northeast Community. 

January 22, 2012

By Rob Pavey
From the Augusta Chronicle

The government’s $4.8 billion quest to rid itself of tons of high-grade plutonium from old nuclear bombs is veering in new directions this year.

The broad plan is to build a mammoth mixed oxide, or “MOX” plant at Savannah River Site, where the material will be rendered forever unusable in weapons by blending it into commercial nuclear reactor fuel.

January 17, 2012

By H. Darr Beiser
From the USA TODAY

HANFORD SITE, Wash. – Seven decades after scientists came here during World War II to create plutonium for the first atomic bomb, a new generation is struggling with an even more daunting task: cleaning up the radioactive mess.

The U.S. government is building a treatment plant to stabilize and contain 56 million gallons of waste left from a half-century of nuclear weapons production. The radioactive sludge is so dangerous that a few hours of exposure could be fatal. A major leak could contaminate water supplies serving millions across the Northwest. The cleanup is the most complex and costly environmental restoration ever attempted.

And the project is not going well.