Nuclear Power & Radiation

"Levels of radioactive tritium have risen rapidly in recent weeks in the groundwater surrounding Vermont’s sole nuclear power plant, leading both longtime supporters and foes of the reactor to question whether it will be allowed to keep operating."

"Talks on a landmark treaty to cut Cold War nuclear arsenals are nearly complete, U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev agreed in a telephone call on Wednesday."

"Americans today receive far more medical radiation than ever before. The average lifetime dose of diagnostic radiation has increased sevenfold since 1980, and more than half of all cancer patients receive radiation therapy. Without a doubt, radiation saves countless lives, and serious accidents are rare. But patients often know little about the harm that can result when safety rules are violated and ever more powerful and technologically complex machines go awry."

"Vermonters have been getting a lesson in radioactive tritium over the past two weeks because of the discovery of contamination at Vermont Yankee. Vermonters are not alone. Other Entergy reactors -- including plants in Massachusetts and New York -- also have similar leaks."

"Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest U.S. energy company, 'knew or should have known' that drilling pipes it sent to a Louisiana pipe yard were contaminated with dangerous radioactive material, a witness testified in court."

"Joliet is pushing the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to more than double the concentration of cancer-causing radium it's allowed to dump onto farmland in the south suburbs, expanding the potential for deadly radon gas in these increasingly urban communities."

"If CPS Energy, San Antonio’s City-owned utility, took a solitary human form, it would be a headless corpse bouncing gently under a white hospital sheet on its way to the morgue."

"While President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget proposal is expected to sound a death knell for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, the administration has so far failed to launch the blue-ribbon commission it promised almost a year ago to decide on a waste-disposal alternative."

"The infighting among the federal officials in charge of the Savannah River Site, a federally owned nuclear site in South Carolina that won one of the country’s biggest pots of stimulus money, is so severe that it threatens to undermine public confidence in their work, a federal watchdog warned Thursday."