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TOKYO (AP) -- A panel investigating Japan's nuclear disaster said Saturday that the ex-prime minister and his aides caused confusion at the height of last year's crisis by heavily interfering in the damaged and leaking plant's operation. Shuya Nomura, a member of the parliamentary panel, said that Naoto Kan's aides made numerous calls to the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, often asking basic questions and distracting workers, thus causing more confusion. They did not follow the official line of communication -- through the regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency -- under the country's nuclear disaster management law, he said.

Radioactive fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster continues to show up at dangerously high levels in the city of Tokyo, which is located roughly 200 miles from the actual disaster site. According to an analysis of five random soil samples recently taken by nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen, the soil around Tokyo is so contaminated with Fukushima radiation that it would be considered nuclear waste here in the U.S. During a recent trip to Tokyo, Gundersen collected soil samples from a sidewalk, a children's playground, a rooftop, a patch of moss by the side of a road, and the lawn...

A $670 million overhaul at California’s San Onofre nuclear plant was expressly intended to avoid the types of ailments that have sidelined its twin reactors. San Onofre’s twin reactors have been idle for more than three months in the midst of a federal probe into what went wrong with hundreds of tubes that snake through the generators. Some were so eroded after a brief run in operation they can no longer function safely. Less than a month before a tube break in January prompted Southern California Edison to take the plant offline, engineers writing in a trade magazine touted a...

Any discussion of Japan and nuclear power is complicated by that country's history as the only nation ever to suffer a nuclear attack. That event continues to haunt the venerable Pacific nation. This is an immutable truth that one must accept regardless of which side one is on concerning the legitimacy of the US attack 67 years ago. That said, the Japanese nation nevertheless staked much of its economic destiny on nuclear power. Beginning more than four decades ago, Japan deployed over 50 nuclear power plants to feed the energy needs of its densely packed population. Very limited in domestic...

China will accelerate the use of new-energy sources such as nuclear energy and put an end to blind expansion in industries such as solar energy and wind power in 2012, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says in a government report published on March 5.China will instead develop nuclear power in 2012, actively develop hydroelectric power, tackle key problems more quickly in the exploration and development of shale gas, and increase the share of new energy and renewable energy in total energy consumption.The guidance indicates a new trend for new-energy and renewable energy development in China from 2012. Analysts believe that the...

The troubled San Onofre nuclear plant in Southern California will remain shut down while investigators try to solve a mystery inside its massive generators _ the rapid decay of tubing that carries radioactive water, federal regulators said Tuesday. The announcement that formalized an agreement with operator Southern California Edison came on the same day that a report commissioned by an environmental group claimed the utility misled the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about design changes that are the likely culprit in excessive tube wear. A four-page letter to Edison from NRC Regional Administrator Elmo E. Collins laid out a series of steps...

The U.S. nuclear industry seemed to be staging a comeback several years ago, with 15 power companies proposing as many as 29 new reactors. Today, only two projects are moving off the drawing board. What killed the revival wasn't last year's nuclear accident in Japan, nor was it a soft economy that dented demand for electricity. Rather, a shale-gas boom flooded the U.S. market with cheap natural gas, offering utilities a cheaper, less risky alternative to nuclear technology. "It's killed off new coal and now it's killing off new nuclear," says David Crane, chief executive of NRG Energy Inc., NRG...

In the early 1980s, a Taiwan steel company accidentally mixed some highly radioactive cobalt-60 into a batch of steel rebar. The radioactive rods were then used in the construction of 1,700 apartments. As a result, people living in these buildings were subject to radiation up to 30 times the normal amount received from the natural background. When dismayed officials discovered this enormous error 15 years later, they surveyed past and present apartment dwellers expecting to find an epidemic of cancer. Normal incidence would have predicted 160 cancers among the 10,000 residents. To their astonishment, the researchers discovered only five cases...

Ever since the end of World War Two, the U.S. has come to regard Saudi Arabia as almost its exclusive oil producing enclave. In February 1945, after the Yalta Conference with Soviet General Secretary Iosif Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on his way home U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and King Ibn Saud met aboard the New Orleans-class heavy cruiser U.S.S. Quincy in the Suez Canal’s Great Bitter Lake. During the meeting, instigated by Roosevelt, he and Ibn Saud concluded a secret agreement in which the U.S. would provide Saudi Arabia military security, including military assistance, training and...

The implosion of the USSR in December 1991 produced massive economic “collateral damage” in its East European allies, as they simultaneously sought both to assert their new-found independence and draw closer to their potential European allies on the western side of 1946’s “Iron Curtain.” Following the euphoria amity quickly devolved down to practical issues, one of which was that the European Union was leery of welcoming new members after the collapse of Communism that relied on power from Soviet-era nuclear power facilities, especially in the wake of the April 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine. Accordingly, the last two...

Most of the time when we hear John Bolton, we hear him in small sound bites on Fox News. But in this interview John Bolton talks about Iran at length, discussing what we know about Iran’s nuclear facilities, why sanctions won’t work, and what he expects Israel to do in the next couple of years. Very interesting discussion:

The Australian Government, the Labor Party, has recently decided to change Australian legislation to approve the sale of Australian mined Uranium to India for use in Nuclear power plants. That decision was based on the fact that India needs to lower its emissions of CO2. However, the more important decision, whether or not to use that same Uranium for Nuclear power plants here in Australia was not even discussed. The same reason, lowering emissions of CO2 should also apply here in Australia, if we have to lower our emissions by moving away from coal fired power generation. This analysis compares...

TOKYO — After 34 years, the United States is expected to resume construction of nuclear reactors by the end of the year, and Toshiba will export turbine equipment for the reactors to the U.S. early next month, it was learned Saturday. According to sources, construction will begin by year-end on the Nos. 3 and 4 reactors of the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia and the Nos. 2 and 3 reactors of the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in South Carolina. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to shortly approve the construction and operation of the...

Kazakhstan’s international energy image is now that of one of the world’s rising oil exporters, an extraordinary feat given that, two decades ago its hydrocarbon output was beyond insignificant when the USSR collapsed. The vast Central Asian nation, larger than Western Europe, has now quietly passed another energy milestone. Kazakhstan produces 33 percent of world’s mined uranium, followed by Canada at 18 percent and Australia, with 11 percent of global output. Kazakhstan contains the world's second-largest uranium reserves, estimated at 1.5 million tons. Until two years ago Kazakhstan was the world's No. 3 uranium miner, following Australia and Canada. Together...

The good news is that on 8 November the International Energy Agency released its 2011 “World Energy Outlook.” While it will cheer nuclear advocates, overall the report makes for grim reading. Pulling no punches, the report states at the outset, “There are few signs that the urgently needed change in direction in global energy trends is underway.” Stripped of its cautious language, the IEA report essentially noted that should present trends continue, the world’s governments through a lack of progressive initiative embracing alternative energy sources would continue to rely on ‘tried and true” fossil fuels, resulting in increased pollution, more...

Berlin, Germany—For years, environmentalists in America have looked longingly to Germany. There, across the Atlantic, lay a small, cold, gray country whose solar energy production dwarfed big, sunny America’s, a nation that last year pledged to get 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by mid-century while Americans proved unable to agree on energy legislation even a fraction as ambitious. Yet in bowing to the country’s strong anti-nuclear movement, Germany appears to have suddenly gone off track: Within the last year the country has gone from a net exporter of energy to a net importer, and the carbon intensity...

After listening to all the responses last night to the Gentleman from Nevada asking the Candidates what they would do with Yucca Mountain, they all got it wrong IMHO.If my memory is correct, Pres. Carter signed an agreement with the Soviets in regards to Nuclear Proliferation and one of the concessions he made was not to reprocess our spent fuel from Nuclear Power Plants. This would allow to recapture unspent fuel and make pellets of it again for refueling. France does, and it maybe folklore, but I have seen it claimed all their spent fuel would fit in a closet.If...

Forty-one years ago on Sesame Street, Kermit the frog sang a plaintive song, “It’s not easy being green.” In a gesture of solidarity, perhaps he should fax the lyrics to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose government is suddenly discovering the costs of weaning itself off nuclear energy. In the wake of Fukushima, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on 30 May that Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy and Europe's biggest, would become the first industrialized nation to shut down all of its 17 nuclear power plants (NPPs) between 2015 and 2022, an extraordinary commitment, given that Germany’s 17 NPPS Germany produce...

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's nuclear chief on Monday proposed to allow the U.N. nuclear watchdog "full supervision" of its nuclear activities for five years provided that sanctions against Tehran are lifted, but the official did not give details of his offer. The United Nations has imposed four rounds of Security Council sanctions over Tehran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used to produce nuclear fuel or materials for an atomic bomb. Iran's nuclear program is already subject to routine IAEA inspections. IAEA cameras monitor Iran's nuclear activities. including its contentious uranium enrichment sites. Vice President Fereidoun...

Solyndra, the first recipient of a loan from the Department of Energy, told us that it thinks it will produce solar panels at a price that's competitive with standard sources of energy in the next 2-3 years. "We see a clear path," says Kelly Truman, the VP of marketing, sales and business development, "and in 2-3 years we'll hit grid parity." We spoke with Truman yesterday who said the $535 million loan from the DOE will finance 73% of a new factory, though he declined to say how the company would pay for the remainder of the project. The current...