Nuclear Power & Radiation

This week a blue-ribbon commission on nuclear waste will hold two days of hearings on alternatives to the now-stalled Yucca Mountain disposal site.

"The amount of plutonium buried at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State is nearly three times what the federal government previously reported, a new analysis indicates, suggesting that a cleanup to protect future generations will be far more challenging than planners had assumed."

"Women who worked in the Grand Junction offices of the former Atomic Energy Commission have been diagnosed with diseases that would be compensable under the radiation exposure compensation law and related legislation, except for the fact they were employed by the federal government."

"Emerging details of accidental radiation exposure at an Ontario nuclear power plant  have triggered an order to investigate the possibility of similar incidents across the country, while raising doubts about safety at Canada’s only privately owned operator."

"In a setback for the Obama administration, a panel of judges at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled on Tuesday that the Energy Department could not withdraw its application to open a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada."

"The days of unregulated production and government secrecy are gone. But as the uranium industry revives in the West, health problems from the last boom still plague communities, and victims are still fighting for recognition."

"A competition between nuclear waste dumps has pulled the Nuclear Regulatory Commission into an unusual reconsideration of its rules to allow moderately radioactive materials to be diluted into a milder category that is easier to bury."

"The owners of a closed uranium mine near Golden have been ordered by the state health department to stop discharging polluted water into a creek that flows into a Denver-area reservoir."

"A nuclear reactor where a hidden leak caused near-catastrophic corrosion in 2002 has experienced a second bout of the same problem."