New Tracking of a Patient’s Radiation Exposure , WSJ, By LAURA LANDRO, 21 May 13,  During a four-week hospital stay, 29-year-old Josh Page had so many CT scans that he lost track, kidding with his doctor about how much radiation he was exposed to—though he admits he had “no clue.” Now, Intermountain Healthcare, where he was treated for an inflammation of the pancreas and underwent surgery in February, is keeping track for him.

The Salt Lake City-based nonprofit group of 22 hospitals and 185 clinics is launching the first major system of its kind to measure and report patients’ cumulative medical radiation exposure from tests that deliver the highest amount of radiation. This includes CT scans, nuclear medicine scans and interventional radiology exams for the heart. In addition to educating doctors and patients about the risks and benefits of medical radiation, Intermountain will allow them to access their exposure data via its electronic health record.

While the benefits of tests and procedures usually outweigh the slightly increased cancer risk from exposure due to radiation, “the risks should be considered before these imaging tests are performed,” says Keith White, medical director of Intermountain’s Imaging Services. This is particularly true for younger patients, who have a higher risk because they live long enough to see long-term effects…… Federal data shows that in 2006, Americans received seven times more radiation exposure than in the 1980s, with much of the increase coming from CT scans and tests that use small amounts of radioactive material to diagnose and assess coronary artery disease. Since 2006, growth in use of CT scans has slowed amid a push for doctors to order fewer tests, both to reduce costs and protect patients from unnecessary radiation exposure. Concern over the potential cancer risks has already led to widespread changes.
Radiology groups, researchers and equipment suppliers are working to lower radiation exposure through improved software programs, and new machines that deliver reduced doses. The National Institutes of Health is incorporating radiation-dose exposure reports into electronic medical records at its own clinical center.

More on Minimizing Imaging Risks

Dialing Back on Radiation in CT Scans to Lower Risk
New Efforts Look to Cut Radiation
Nashville, Tenn.-based Hospital Corporation of America, HCA -1.41% the largest for profit hospital system, is planning to track patient doses as part of a new Radiation Right campaign. The American College of Radiology is sponsoring a national Dose Index Registry to allow providers to compare their CT doses against national benchmarks, and is a lead sponsor of Image Wisely, a safety campaign.

Radiation doses are measured in units known as millisieverts, or mSv. Atomic bomb survivor data shows a significant association between developing cancer and a radiation exposure about 100 mSv. But it isn’t clear whether the risk is the same from cumulative exposure in smaller doses, such as multiple CT scans each delivering 10 mSvs. The overall risk of getting cancer in anyone’s lifetime is 40% and some experts feel that 100 mSv of medical radiation can increase this by 1%.

For most medical tests, the added cancer risk is so small it can only be measured on a population rather than an individual basis. And even exposure data isn’t a reliable measure because it can vary highly by such factors as age, gender, the body part exposed to radiation and the patient’s size, says James A. Brink, chief radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-chairman of Image Wisely…… http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324767004578489413973896412.html.

Can Older Early-Stage Breast Cancer Patients Skip Radiation? Medscape Today, Kate Johnson May 22, 2013 There is no benefit in adding radiation to tamoxifen therapy in women aged 70 years or older after lumpectomy for early-stage breast cancer, according to extended, long-term results of the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) 9343 trial.

“Irradiation adds no significant benefit in terms of survival, time to distant metastasis, or ultimate breast preservation,” noted author Kevin Hughes, MD, from Harvard Medical School, and colleagues in an article published online ahead of print in theJournal of Clinical Oncology.

Median follow-up for the trial is now 12.6 years, and the 10-year results back up the trial’s previous 5-year data.

As previously reported by Medscape Medical News, those results prompted the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) to adjust its treatment guidelines, so that it no longer recommends radiation therapy after lumpectomy in older women with estrogen receptor (ER)–positive early breast cancer who are receiving endocrine therapy.

However, despite this, the authors note that their initial findings had “little impact” on clinical practice, “with the use of irradiation only slightly diminishing in this population.”…. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/804584

Nuclear Powered Cancer Clusters By Roger Witherspoon April 7, 2010 For the past 20 years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has used an epidemiologically invalid study to reassure the public that the continuous release of radioactive material from power plants into the surrounding regions did not contribute to increases in cancer.

To correct that unsubstantiated claim, the NRC has contracted with the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a two year study of both cancer incidence and mortality around former, current, and proposed nuclear reactor sites. The $5 million study, which is expected to take a year to design and two more years to complete, would be the first, comprehensive, government study of the health implications of the continuous release of radioactive into the air and water around nuclear facilities.

It would replace the 1990 study conducted for the NRC by
the National Institutes of Health – National Cancer Institute titled
“Cancer in Populations Living Near Nuclear Facilities.”  That study
concluded that the continuous release of radioactive gas, liquids, and
particles – both intentionally and accidentally – did not contribute
to the cancer mortality rates in the counties surrounding the 62
reactor sites housing 107 reactors. From an epidemiological
standpoint, that study was flawed in its conception and
implementation, and hampered by a dearth of data…….
Commercial nuclear power plants markedly differ from U.S. Navy
nuclear vessels in the way they handle radioactive emissions.  If Navy
vessels simply pumped their radioactive gasses into the air, in time
the accumulations in the ship would be so great that it would be a
multi billion dollar, radioactive, uninhabitable relic of a warship.
The Navy stores their waste until it can be properly disposed of. But
that is a cost commercial operations avoid.

The new NRC health impact study will look for cancers in
age groupings of 0-5, 0 – 10, 10 – 19, 20 – 39, 40 – 59, and 60 –
older years. It will study both the incidence and mortality from
Leukemia and A-Leukemia; Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s Lymphomas;
multiple myeloma; the digestive organs including stomach, colon,
rectum and liver; the trachea, bronchus and lungs; the prostate,
uterus and ovaries; breast, thyroid, bone and joints; bladder; brain
and central nervous system; and both benign and in-situ
neoplasms.http://spoonsenergymatters.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/nuclear-powered-cancer-clusters/

 (i cludes video)Nuclear Secrets: How America Helped Pakistan Get the Bomb http://www.corbettreport.com/nuclear-secrets-how-america-helped-pakistan-get-the-bomb/   by James Corbett  BoilingFrogsPost.com  May 21, 2013 In this series of Eyeopener reports, we have been exploring the whistleblowers in the national intelligence establishment of the United States that have put their careers (and in some cases even their lives) on the line to shine a spotlight on the fraud, corruption and treason in the highest positions of power in the land. From the abuses of the NSA in its war against the American citizenry to the shocking details of Homeland Security informants participating in murders in Mexico with the full complicity of their government handlers, there is sadly no shortage of stories to explore. Perhaps one of the most unsettling stories, however, concerns what has been for the past half century regarded as one of the primary security threats not just to the United States but to the entire planet: nuclear proliferation.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani national, was working at a centrifuge production facility in the Netherlands in 1974 when he first offered his services to the Pakistani government to offer them help with their nuclear program. After convincing them to develop a uranium-based bomb, he began stealing nuclear designs from the Dutch company he was working for. What followed was a three decade affair in which Khan and the nuclear network he developed not only successfully helped Pakistan acquire the knowledge, equipment and materials to build their own bomb, but allegedly helped to proliferate that technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea as well.

As we explored in a previous edition of the Eyeopener, however, the Khan network was known about and actively protected from its very inception by the CIA.

Amongst the many pieces of evidence that come together to paint this picture of American involvement in helping to protect and even foster Khan’s proliferation network is the extraordinary story of former CIA analyst Richard Barlow, who, as a specialist in counter-proliferation in the 1980s, had a chance to discover and expose the shocking truth: that elements in the highest levels of the intelligence community, the state department, and even the White House knew about Pakistan’s procurement activities but actively turned a blind eye to them.

Shortly after joining the CIA in the mid-1980s, Barlow began amassing reams of evidence related to Pakistan’s nuclear activities. He quickly discovered, however, that senior government officials were actively working to suppress this information in direct violation of national and international proliferation protocols.

In the most egregious incident, Barlow and US Customs carefully developed a sting operation to catch Arshad Pervez, a Pakistani businessman, and Inam ul-Haq, a retired brigadier from the Pakistani army, attempting to purchase materials for a uranium centrifuge from a Pennsylvania company. Pervez was arrested, but ul-Haq, the main target, never arrived. Later, Barlow discovered cables proving that ul-Haq had been tipped off about the sting by high-ranking officials extremely close to the White House. Although the State Department did their best to cover up the incident, Congressman Stephen Solarz secured a closed congressional hearing on the issue at which Barlow was meant to testify about what had happened.

As Barlow told the Boiling Frogs podcast back in 2009, however, no one was interested in him actually telling the truth about what had happened.

Barlow bravely stuck to his guns and refused to mislead Congress on the details of what he had uncovered. As his reward, those offices in charge of America’s covert war in Afghanistan lined up to try and have him fired. Ultimately, he was vindicated: the Pakistani agents from Barlow’s sting operation were convicted and the Solarz Amendment was triggered. Immediately, however, Reagan issued a national security waiver and, in the words of Seymour Hersh, told Pakistan “that it could have its money and its bomb.”

Realizing he was now a marked man, Barlow left the CIA and took a position at the Pentagon, beginning work in the Pentagon’s Office of Non-Proliferation Policy on January 1, 1989 under incoming Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. Despite the fact that the Afghan war was over and the Cold War was all but finished, however, it wasn’t long before he encountered the exact same pressures as before with regards to Pakistan’s nuclear program. This time, the attempts to cover for Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities centered around a $1.6 billion General Dynamics contract for F-16s.

Barlow’s story is chilling because it exposes the grim truth that all of the platitudes and rhetoric about the dangers of proliferation spouted by Washington year after year is precisely that: platitudes and rhetoric. Despite the condescending lectures that are delivered at nuclear security summits about the reckless nature of the Iranian and North Koreans in their nuclear programs, the sober truth is that the world’s largest nuclear superpower has also been responsible for protecting the network that enabled the very proliferation that they now hypocritically seek to condemn.

In most cases, even most national security cases, corruption, hypocrisy and double dealing is dangerous and lamentable. But when it comes to nuclear security, it is the very fate of the planet that hangs in the balance. And what has come of the brave individual who stood up to some of the most powerful political figures in the world to speak the truth on this issue? After an intense smear campaign designed to destroy his personal and professional life, his marriage fell apart and he was unable to find employment in his field of work due to the revocation of his security clearance. In 2005, the authors of an A.Q. Khan biography were shocked to find Barlow living in motor home in Montana with his two dogs.

This is the plight of the whistleblower in the face of the American political establishment. And until the story of Barlow and others like him is exposed and examined with the same vigour that the media now reserves for celebrity scandals and political minutiae, absolutely nothing will change.

DNR Won’t Test For Most Radiation at Bridgeton Landfill http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2013/05/23/dnr-wont-test-for-most-radiation-at-bridgeton-landfill/ May 23, 2013 BRIDGETON, MO (KMOX) - A court-approved plan to dig up parts of a burning Bridgeton landfill and cap it with plastic continues Thursday.

Bridgeton resident and mother of three young children Dawn Chapman says the Missouri Department of Natural Resources told her by telephone no testing is being done for “alpha and beta radiation,” despite the fire’s proximity to buried nuclear waste.

“I don’t want my children exposed to any of this radiation,” she said. “You know, you can say it may or may not be above the ground but the point is it’s not supposed to be there. Children are not supposed to be inhaling radiation coming out of the landfill fire.”

State officials confirm to KMOX they are only testing for “gamma” radiation, not alpha and beta. The reason given is that alpha and beta monitoring requires different equipment and lab work which lasts weeks.

Michigan state Senate says Ontario nuclear waste site ‘raises serious concerns’ The Star, 24 May 13The proposed site, a Senate resolution notes, is less than 1.6 kilometres from the Lake Huron shoreline and “upstream from the main drinking water intakes for southeast Michigan.” State senators in Michigan say that a planned nuclear waste disposal site near Kincardine, Ont., “raises serious concerns.”

VIDEO Solar Powered Wheelchair Wins Award  http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=3758  25 May 13 A team from University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science recently won first place in a 2012 World Cerebral Palsy Day competition for their solar powered wheelchair design.

We first reported on solar wheelchairs back in 2010, when Haidar Taleb had just begun a journey to take him across the United Arab Emirates.

Inspired by roofs on convertible cars, the lightweight solar panels on the U.Va. team’s wheelchair are retractable and don’t significantly add to its length, width, height or weight when stored. A system of hinges on both sides of the chair controls the deployment of the solar panels. The three panels have a conversion efficiency of 15% and a capacity of 160 watts. When fully deployed, the custom solar panels cover an area of over one square meter. The wheelchair can operate for more than 4.5 hours at a speed of 8 kilometres per hour on a fully charged lead acid deep cycle battery, a range increase of more than 40 percent over batteries alone. At a speed of 1.6 km/h and suitable light exposure, the wheelchair and can run “indefinitely”; without needing to utilise battery power.

Built with lightweight materials, while the system may look fragile, it has been designed to operate under conditions more extreme than would be experienced in normal use. The panels and retractable mechanisms account for less than 15% of the completed wheelchair’s unoccupied weight.

Anyone with enough physical dexterity to use a joystick can operate the chair; including retracting and deploying the solar panels. In addition to standard features common to this type of wheelchair, USB power outlets are provided that can power a wide range of small devices.

In a wonderful display of generosity, the team will use their prize money to perform some final tweaks to the chair give it the individual in Turkey who submitted the initial suggestion for a solar-powered wheelchair.
The remaining prize money will be returned to United Cerebral Palsy in support of future World CP Day competitions.

Title: Hanford officials hid leak evidence from advisory panel
Source: KING 5
Author: SUSANNAH FRAME 
Date: May 21, 2013

A government-chartered advisory panel was told last September that materials spotted outside the inner wall of a tank holding radioactive waste at the Hanford Site were possibly the result of a “carbonate buildup,” “cross-contamination” or “rainwater leakage.” [...]

On Aug. 13, the results were sent to multiple [Washington River Protection Solutions] officials showing measurable amounts of Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, two highly radioactive elements that are a byproduct of nuclear fission. Trace amounts of Plutonium 239/240 and Americium-241 were also detected.

A reference to the results in a Leak Assessment Report made public on Nov. 7 says the materials were registering 800,000 dpm (disintegrations per minute), a high level of radioactivity that had never been found in that portion of the tank before. [...]

“This was a very deliberate cover up and I will use the word that we were lied to. There’s no two ways about it, we were lied to,” said state Rep. [Gerry] Pollet. [...]

Anchor: “Susannah, amazing stuff, thank you.”

eventually, someone in America would think of the idea of shutting down nuclear plants, at least till there’s a way to permanently solve the wastes problem

Flaws in the NRC’s review to date, the attorneys general said, include that it has not given adequate consideration to two alternatives:

— A rule saying that after five years cooling in specially constructed pools, the waste would have to be moved to hardened concrete and steel casks on plant grounds. That would leave much less radioactive material in spent fuel pools that have been described as more vulnerable to earthquakes or terrorist attacks.

— “The alternative of not allowing further production of spent fuel until the NRC determines that there is a safe and environmentally acceptable permanent waste repository to receive the additional spent fuel.” Not allowing further production of spent fuel would mean shutting down the entire U.S. nuclear industry.

Federal Nuclear Waste Rules Need To Be Improved, Attorneys General Petition NRC http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/federal-nuclear-waste-rules_n_3328495.html?utm_hp_ref=green AP   By By DAVE GRAM : 05/23/2013  MONTPELIER, Vt.   — Attorneys general in Vermont, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut announced Thursday they are petitioning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a more thorough environmental review of storage of highly radioactive nuclear waste at plant sites.

The Paducah plant cannot legally stay open, and it can’t safely be shut down—a lovely metaphor for the end of the Atomic Age and a perfect nightmare for the people of Kentucky.

Countdown to Nuclear Ruin at Paducah  EcoWatch May 22, 2013 by Geoffrey Sea Disaster is about to strike in western Kentucky, a full-blown nuclear catastrophe involving hundreds of tons of enriched uranium tainted with plutonium, technetium, arsenic, beryllium and a toxic chemical brew. But this nuke calamity will be no fluke. It’s been foreseen, planned, even programmed, the result of an atomic extortion game played out between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the most failed American experiment in privatization, the company that has run the Paducah plant into the poisoned ground, USEC Inc.

“Now that this precise failure has occurred, and there has been a leak of radioactive material, Edison claims that it could simply restart the nuclear plant at 70 percent capacity, and once again circumvent the full safety and licensing process,” Boxer said. “How could they first assert that tube failure would be a ‘disastrous outcome’ and now claim that it is no big deal?”

Senator Boxer Seeks Criminal Probe of San Onofre Nuclear Plant WASHINGTON, DC, May 29, 2013 (ENS) – U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer of California is asking the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into Southern California Edison’s statements to nuclear regulators about replacing steam generators at the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant.

Located on the California coast south of San Clemente, San Onofre has been shut down since January 2012 due to premature wear found on over 3,000 tubes in replacement steam generators and a leak of radioactive material.

Senator Boxer Tuesday released a 2004 letter by an Edison executive to steam generator manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries that she said presents “major new evidence of misrepresentation and safety lapses by Edison.” Edison replaced steam generators in 2009 and 2010 without review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission because the company said the replacements met a federal test of being the same parts.

But the November 30, 2004 letter from SCE Vice President Dwight E. Nunn released by Boxer, and now posted on the SCE website, states that “although the old and new steam generators will be similar in many respects they aren’t like-for-like replacements.”

The letter expressed worry that the new steam generators, which though similar, would not be “like for like” replacements and could lead to the same kind of potential “disastrous” issues that did, in fact, cause the plant’s shutdown in 2012.

Boxer said, “This correspondence leads me to believe that Edison intentionally misled the public and regulators in order to avoid a full safety review and public hearing in connection with its redesign of the plant.”

“Ultimately, Edison asserted that the replacement was ‘like-for-like,’ enabling them to avoid a full license review and a public hearing,” Boxer said……. Boxer said she is shocked by the Nunn letter’s prediction of a “disastrous outcome.”

“Now that this precise failure has occurred, and there has been a leak of radioactive material, Edison claims that it could simply restart the nuclear plant at 70 percent capacity, and once again circumvent the full safety and licensing process,” Boxer said. “How could they first assert that tube failure would be a ‘disastrous outcome’ and now claim that it is no big deal?”

Boxer told reporters on a conference call Tuesday that she is worried because “San Onofre is over 40 years old, it is on a new earthquake fault, it is in a tsunami area and you’ve got eight million people within 50 miles of the plant.”

San Onofre is located 65 miles south of Los Angeles, with its 3.8 million people and less than 50 miles south of cities in the southern Los Angeles metropolitan area such as Long Beach, Irvine, Huntington Beach and Newport Beach with a combined population of roughly a million people.

The plant is located 55 miles north of San Diego, with its 1.3 million people.

“Given this new information, it is clear to me that in order for this nuclear plant to even be considered for a restart in the future all investigations must be completed and a full license amendment and public hearing process must be required,” Senator Boxer said. …… http://ens-newswire.com/2013/05/29/senator-boxer-seeks-criminal-probe-of-san-onofre-nuclear-plant/

Uranium mining legacy expensive, The Star Phoenix,  By Ann Coxworth, May 30, 2013 “…….The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission recently reviewed plans for continuing management of some of the contaminated sites in northern Saskatchewan – relics of uranium mining activities that took place during the 1960s and 1970s.

The cost of remediating surface waters to levels compatible with Saskatchewan surface water quality objectives is so overwhelming thatwe know it will never happen.

Because the companies that caused the pollution are no longer in existence, these costs now fall to the federal and provincialtaxpayers. The goal of industry and regulators now is simply to prevent the contamination from getting any worse.

One such contaminated region is the Beaverlodge area.

Beaverlodge Lake, just north of Lake Athabasca and east of Uranium
City, is linked to Lake Athabasca through a series of small lakes and
rivers. It is beautiful, and is home to an abundance of fish……..
Beaverlodge Lake, however, is contaminated with the poorly managed
wastes from uranium mining operations that closed down in the early
1980s. Eldorado Nuclear was a federal crown corporation that mined and
milled uranium close to the northeast corner of Beaver-lodge
Lake……
Eldorado no longer exists. The federal government created a new body,
Canada Eldor Inc., to be responsible for liabilities remaining from
Eldorado’s operations.

Canada Eldor has been financing work on continuing monitoring,
decommissioning and planning of remediation of the actual mine and
mill sites. However, this does not include Beaver-lodge Lake itself,
although much of the contamination has drifted downstream into that
lake and, from there, into the smaller lakes and streams that feed
into Lake Athabasca.

The situation is complicated by the fact that other abandoned mine
sites a little further west, owned by other defunct companies, have
also contributed to the problem in Beaverlodge Lake. The end result is
that Beaverlodge, a 57-squarekilometre body of water, is contaminated
with uranium and selenium at levels many times higher than
Saskatchewan surface water quality objectives require. Fish
consumption restrictions now apply…..
In April, Cameco appeared at a public hearing of the CNSC to apply for
a 10year extension of its licence to manage the old Eldorado sites on
behalf of Canada Eldor Inc. Cameco presented a plan for stabilization
of the contamination which, it hopes, would get the sites into a
condition where they could be turned over to Saskatchewan’s
Institutional Control Program, relieving the federal government of
responsibility and of the need for CNSC licensing.

This plan would still leave unacceptably high levels of contamination
in five watersheds. http://www.thestarphoenix.com/Uranium+mining+legacy+expensive/8453403/story.html#ixzz2UvWzGKon

one of the more important factors, surely, is the projected value of the MOX itself, which in turn is a function of long term uranium prices—there would be no point in completing the plant and then making the MOX, as opposed to just dumping the plutonium, if uranium will be dirt-cheap as far ahead as one can see.

 the fate of the MOX plant is but one indicator of retrenchment in the global nuclear fuels market, post-Fukushima

the Japanese nuclear shut-down, which, the Times went on to note, has reduced global demand for nuclear fuels by close to 10 percent, plus Germany’s planned nuclear exit, have cast a pall that now stretches to New Mexico,
Kentucky, and South Carolina.

Restructuring and Retrenchment in Nuclear Fuels http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/restructuring-and-retrenchment-in-nuclear-fuels By Bill Sweet  29 May 2013 In 2000, the United States agreed with Russia to get rid of 34 tons of weapons-grade plutonium. To that end, it embarked on construction of a large plant at Savannah River, S.C.,where the plutonium would be mixed with uranium to make so-called mixed oxide fuel (MOX), suitable for use in nuclear power plants.

Buried in the president’s fiscal 2014 budget request is a line sharply cutting funding for the Savannah River MOX plant, which “may be tantamount to killing it,” a former National Nuclear Security Administration official told Arms Control Today.
The Obama administration is telling Russia that its commitment to
disposing of the excess plutonium is not at issue as such. The United
States may for example opt instead to mix the plutonium with
high-level reactor wastes and ultimately put it in a geological
repository. In any event, real money is at stake: The anticipated
total cost of the MOX facility under construction has ballooned from
$4.8 billion to $7.7 billion, and the expected commissioning of the
plant has slid from 2016 to 2019.
In a project of this scope, many factors obviously are in play, and
the administration has not to our knowledge disclosed in detail why it
is reconsidering the plant. But one of the more important factors, surely, is the projected value of the MOX itself, which in turn is a function of long term uranium prices—there would be no point in completing the plant and then making the MOX, as opposed to just dumping the plutonium, if uranium will be dirt-cheap as far ahead as one can see.
So, from that point of view, the fate of the MOX plant is but one indicator of retrenchment in the global nuclear fuels market, post-Fukushima. Last Friday, the operator of the only American-owned
uranium enrichment plant in the United States announced that its
sprawling Paducah, Kentucky, facility will close for good next month .
The decision is no surprise as such, as the plant employs highly
inefficient and obsolete gaseous diffusion technology, invented during
the Manhattan Project years. But in a booming world market for nuclear
fuels, even a relic like this might have hung on longer.
Three years ago, a state-of-the-art centrifuge enrichment plant in
Eunice, N.M., started operations, though it is is only partially
built. (Eventually it will have enough capacity to supply about half
the reactors in the United States at any one time.) It is being built
and operated by Urenco USA, the North American branch of the European
enrichment consortium. But the consortium, which has been the world
leader in enrichment for many decades, is itself for sale. Its
co-owners—basically the British and Dutch governments, and two top
German utilities—each for its own complicated reasons, wants out.

Urenco is, to be sure, still highly profitable. “Besides fuel,
Urenco’s centrifuges spin off fairly good money: revenue of €1.6
billion (about $2.1 billion last year), yielding earnings of €402
million, for a profit margin of 25 percent,” The New York Times
reported this week. “And its order book stands at €18 billion, which
translates to at least 10 years of steady work. Analysts estimate
Urenco’s market value at about €10 billion.” But the Japanese nuclear shut-down, which, the Times went on to note, has reduced global demand for nuclear fuels by close to 10 percent, plus Germany’s planned nuclear exit, have cast a pall that now stretches to New Mexico,
Kentucky, and South Carolina.

Nye county officials: Uranium waste might require underground concrete container By KEITH ROGERS LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, 30 May 13 Burying a ton of orphaned uranium waste from Tennessee at the Nevada National Security Site might require installing a concrete container to keep its radioactive ingredients out of the environment and its dirty bomb material from falling into the wrong hands, according to Nye County officials who were at a closed-door meeting this week.

It was not supposed to be this way. In 2005 Congress approved subsidies to bolster the nuclear industry and encourage the construction of new plants. It extended a law limiting owner liability in case of accidents and, for the first few new reactors, offered $18 billion in loan guarantees, $2 billion in indemnification against cost overruns and $1 billion in tax breaks.

The NRC streamlined its licensing procedures, hoping to avoid the years of delays that inflated costs for earlier nuclear plants. (Southern ended up paying $8.7 billion for the existing reactors at Vogtle, a far cry from the $660m originally projected.)

None of this has worked as advertised.

Fracked off  Thanks to cheap natural gas, America’s nuclear renaissance is on hold  The Economist, Jun 1st 2013 | BURKE COUNTY, GEORGIA IT IS the sort of thing you would expect to see in China, not in the pine forests of rural Georgia. On the banks of the sluggish Savannah river towers one of the world’s biggest cranes. It is helping build two nuclear reactors, to add to the two already up and running at the Vogtle power plant. It testifies to the mammoth efforts that have been made in recent years to revive America’s nuclear industry—and to the disappointing results.

The half-built reactors at Vogtle are the first new ones to be
approved in America since 1979, when a radioactive leak from Three
Mile Island, a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, ruined the industry’s
already troubled reputation. A consortium of local utilities is paying
for the plant; Westinghouse, a subsidiary of Toshiba, a Japanese
conglomerate, designed the reactors and is helping build them. It is
one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the country, according
to Southern Company, a utility which owns 46% of the new
plant…….All this is impressive, but Vogtle and two more reactors
being built across the river in South Carolina are the last vestiges
of what was heralded, four or five years ago, as America’s “nuclear
renaissance”.

Renaissance postponed

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has received applications for
24 more reactors, to add to the 104 already running (see table). But
none is likely to be built soon. Some are backed by consortia that
have fallen apart; others have been withdrawn. In early May, for
example, Duke Energy, another utility, told the NRC, which must
approve new plants, that it was calling off two of the six reactors it
had planned. Far from building new reactors, utilities are closing
existing ones. Also in May, Dominion power shut a nuclear plant in
Wisconsin that was licensed for another 20 years, “based purely on
economics”.

The culprit is the price of natural gas, which fell from over $13 per
million British thermal units in 2008, when many of the applications
to build new nuclear plants were lodged, to just $2 last year.
Although it has since recovered to over $4, America’s huge reserves of
shale gas should stop it from rising much for years to come. That
makes some old nuclear plants costlier to run than gas-fired ones.
Factoring in the massive expense of building new reactors—the pair at
Vogtle will cost around $15 billion—makes nuclear power even less
competitive. David Crane, the boss of NRG Energy, which scrapped plans
to build two reactors in Texas in 2011 after sinking $331m into the
project, estimates that new gas-fired generation costs $0.04 per
kilowatt-hour, against at least $0.10 for nuclear.

It was not supposed to be this way. In 2005 Congress approved subsidies to bolster the nuclear industry and encourage the
construction of new plants. It extended a law limiting owner liability in case of accidents and, for the first few new reactors, offered $18
billion in loan guarantees, $2 billion in indemnification against cost overruns and $1 billion in tax breaks. The NRC streamlined its
licensing procedures, hoping to avoid the years of delays that inflated costs for earlier nuclear plants. (Southern ended up paying
$8.7 billion for the existing reactors at Vogtle, a far cry from the $660m originally projected.)

None of this has worked as advertised. Because the subsidies are
short-lived, the NRC has been swamped with applications, which it has
processed more slowly than it had hoped. It has quarrelled with the
Vogtle consortium over the design, causing unexpected costs and
delays. The plant is now perhaps 18 months behind schedule and $737m
over budget. That does not include a further $900m that is the subject
of legal dispute, plus the extra financing costs that will come with
these overruns. Meanwhile, the consortium is struggling to agree on
the terms of loan guarantees with the Department of Energy and says it
may not take them up at all…….
Then there is the question of what to do with spent nuclear fuel.
Barack Obama’s energy department scrapped a plan to bury the stuff in
Nevada. (After careful study, it realised that the Senate majority
leader is from that state.) It has not proposed an alternative. The
nuclear accident in Japan in 2011 has made investors more nervous
about nuclear power. Politicians have done little to address such
fears, but continue to insist that America needs an “all-of-the-above”
energy policy.http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21578690-thanks-cheap-natural-gas-americas-nuclear-renaissance-hold-fracked

Radiation dose increased for every organ scanned at CT, particularly in the most vascularized tissues, wrote researchers from the University of Messina in Italy. Average doses rose by one-fifth for the liver, one-third for the spleen and pancreas, and almost three-fourths for the kidneys.

“The results are in agreement with our previous data, confirming an increase in organ radiation dose in contrast-enhanced CT compared with unenhanced CT,” wrote Dr. Ernesto Amato and colleagues (AJR, June 2013, Vol. 200:6, pp. 1288-1293)……

Investigators have also found an increase in the frequency of cellular abnormalities in patients who underwent contrast-enhanced radiographic examinations. But the actual increase in dose for any given scan — which depends on iodine uptake; the shape, volume, and position of the organ; and the emitted x-ray energy spectrum — remains unknown, the authors wrote…….

Confirming dose increases

The results were in line with the group’s previous phantom study, and they confirmed significant radiation dose increases in contrast-enhanced CT versus unenhanced CT, Amato and colleagues wrote. The data showed average dose increases of 19% for the liver, 71% for the kidneys, 33% for the spleen and pancreas, and 41% for the thyroid.

“The kidneys showed the maximum among the average dose [increases] (71%, resulting from an attenuation increment of 139 HU),” the authors wrote.”High renal enhancement is, in fact, due to both their high vascularization because they receive 20% to 25% of the cardiac output and the passage of iodine within the renal tubules. In particular, the level of contrast medium within renal tubules can be up to 50 to 100 times higher than that in the blood because of the mechanisms of tubular concentration and secretion.”

Thyroid tissue showed the second highest dose increase (41%) after contrast injection, based on an HU increase of 87%. Also, the dose increases in the thyroid depended on tissue density on unenhanced CT, the group noted. Denser thyroids showed a lower increase in attenuation and, consequently, lower increases in dose.

Because the liver and spleen are richly vascularized, Hounsfield units increased with contrast by 49 HU and 71 HU, respectively, and average dose increased by 19% and 33%……. http://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=dis&ItemID=103565

Time to fix our seriously misaligned nuclear strategy, THE HILL, By Brig. Gen. Stephen A. Cheney, USMC (Ret.), and Matthew Wallin - 05/31/13  In anticipation of the G8 summit next month, we can expect serious discussion to be held about how to address today’s nuclear threats, including proliferation, the risks posed by the Iranian nuclear program and North Korean provocations.

Northern Saskatchewan First Nation signs uranium mining deal worth $600 million http://www.newstalk650.com/story/northern-saskatchewan-first-nation-signs-uranium-mining-deal-worth-600-million/112624 Agreement with mining giants Cameco and Areva calls for First Nation to drop lawsuit over proposed mine by Nigel Maxwell May 31, 2013 The English River First Nation in northern Saskatchewan has signed a deal with Uranium mining giants Cameco and Areva worth $600 million.

How Do We Know Nuclear Bombs Blow Down Forests? Because we built a forest in Nevada and blew it down. Slate, By Ann Finkbeiner  May 31, 2013, “……. Once the United States had built the first atomic bomb in 1945, it then improved it by building the first hydrogen bomb in 1952. It then began working on building more portable bombs, and since the Soviet Union had done the same, the United States also wondered about the bombs’ effects. So in the early 1950s, the government set up models of all the things that bombs could blow up—houses, bridges, cars, pigs, sheep—and exploded bombs near them. The government did this for at least a decade and didn’t stop until it and the rest of the world banned above-ground testing. The tests, many of them at the Nevada Test Site, were called “shots,” and they had names.

The shot called Encore was on May 8, 1953, and among the many effects it tested was what a nuclear bomb would do to a forest. The Nevada Test Site wasn’t replete with forests, so the U.S. Forest Service brought 145 ponderosa pines from a nearby canyon and cemented them into holes lined up in tidy rows in an area called Frenchman Flat, 6,500 feet from ground zero. Then the Department of Defense air-dropped a 27-kiloton bomb that exploded 2,423 feet above the model forest. The heat set fire to the forest, then the blast wave blew down the trees and put out some fires and started others. Here’s the video.

Indian Point Owner Spends Big in Push to Relicense: Report http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2013/may/30/report-entergy-political-spending-soars-push-relicense-indian-point/ Company using ‘front groups’ to win support for aging nuclear plant , May 30, 2013 By Robert Lewis   The owner of Indian Point nuclear plant has thrown millions into lobbying and political donations as it tries to get its facility relicensed for another 20 years, according to a report released today.