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A war among the five commissioners of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission broke into the open Friday night when Republican Rep. Darrell Issa released a letter in which four of the commissioners said they have “grave concerns” about NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko. In the letter — which was sent to the White House in October but not made public until Friday night — the four NRC members say Jaczko, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is a bully who is “causing serious damage” to the commission with “increasingly problematic and erratic" behavior. The letter from Democratic Commissioners William...

As Belgium becomes the latest European nation to agree to switch off nuclear power, operator Electrabel warned Monday of high costs, environmental fallout and increased dependency on foreign suppliers. ... A front-page cartoon in the Flemish daily De Standaard on Monday showed four pairs of eyes in the dark with one of the blacked out faces saying, "I think Electrabel is trying to make a message heard." ... Italy and Switzerland meanwhile have put nuclear power plans on ice, while Germany switched off several reactors in the wake of the Japanese disaster and has since passed legislation to phase out...

Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday. The nuclear group's new evaluation, released Monday, goes further than previous statements in describing the extent of the damage caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11. The announcement will not change plans for how to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the agency said. Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said.

Press Release (Mar 29,2011)Status of TEPCO's Facilities and its services after the Tohoku-Taiheiyou-Oki Earthquake (as of 4:00PM) Due to the Tohoku-Taiheiyou-Oki Earthquake which occurred on March 11th 2011, TEPCO's facilities including our nuclear power stations have been severely damaged. We deeply apologize for the anxiety and inconvenience caused. Below is the status of TEPCO's major facilities. *new items are underlined[Nuclear Power Station] Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station: Units 1 to 3: shutdown due to the earthquake (Units 4 to 6: outage due to regular inspections) *The national government has instructed the public to evacuate for those local residents within...

Sunday, March 20, 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Plant To Be Decommissioned: Govt TOKYO (Kyodo)--The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is in no condition to restart and is most likely to be decommissioned as it has caused many critical problems since a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11, the top government spokesman suggested Sunday. ''Looking at the situation objectively, (the answer to the question of) whether it can be operated again is clear,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said at a news conference, when asked whether the government plans to close the plant once its overheating reactors are...

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You can't beat for drama the struggle of Japanese operators to manage the emergency cool-down of nuclear reactors in the tsunami zone. For the things that matter most, though—life and safety—the nuclear battle has been a sideshow. Hundreds were feared dead when entire trains went missing. Whole villages were wiped out with the loss of thousands of inhabitants. So far one worker at one nuclear plant is known to have died in a hydrogen explosion and several others have exhibited symptoms of radiation poisoning. As for environmental degradation, video testifies to the brown murk that the tsunami waters became when...

Japan has asked the United States for additional equipment to help provide water and other resources to keep quake-damaged nuclear reactors cool, the head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Monday.

Fukushima: Reactors and the Public All weekend long, as the dreadful news and heart-wrenching images from Japan kept coming in, I wondered how press coverage of the nuclear reactor situation would be handled. The temptation seemed irresistible to play the story for drama and maximum fear, citing catastrophic meltdowns, invoking Chernobyl and even Hiroshima, along with dire predictions about the future of nuclear power. My first thought was that the Japanese reactors were going to have the opposite effect than many in the media suppose. By showing that nuclear plants can survive so massive an event, theyÂ’ll demonstrate that...

BOSTON - Thanks to global warming, nuclear energy is hot again. Its promise of abundant, carbon emissions-free power is being pushed by the president and newly considered by environmentalists. But any expansion won't come cheap or easy. The enormous obstacles facing nuclear power are the same as they were in 1996, when the nation's last new nuclear plant opened near the Watts Bar reservoir in Tennessee after 22 years of construction and $7 billion in costs. Waste disposal, safe operation and security remain major concerns, but economics may be the biggest deterrent. Huge capital costs combine into an enormous price...

U.S. Aid Helps N. Korea Build Nukes, Congress Told By Lawrence Morahan CNS Staff Writer 17 April, 2000 (CNSNews.com) - North Korea's nuclear production capacity will increase from a dozen nuclear bombs a year to 65 a year by 2010, thanks in large part to American taxpayer money, two renowned U.S. nuclear scientists told congressional leaders last week. North Korea observers have long suspected the communist dictatorship is using Western humanitarian aid to starving North Koreans to feed Kim Jong Il's million-man army. But an aid policy initiated by the Clinton administration in the mid-1990s to finance two light...

Nuclear power plants in Russia have been targets of terrorist threats, and Norway has invested in security measures for their neighbors. "There have been threats against nuclear plants in Russia. There are examples but I don't want to go into details," Ole Harbitz, director of the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA), told TV 2. The NRPA is alarmed by the threats and Norwegian authorities have used nearly NOK 200 million (USD 31.5 million) in recent years to help secure various nuclear facilities in Eastern Europe. Security measures against meltdowns and other potential accidents remain far inferior here than at facilities...

Oct. 12, 2005 — A four-month ABC News investigation found gaping security holes at many of the little-known nuclear research reactors operating on 25 college campuses across the country. Among the findings: unmanned guard booths, a guard who appeared to be asleep, unlocked building doors and, in a number of cases, guided tours that provided easy access to control rooms and reactor pools that hold radioactive fuel. ABC News found none of the college reactors had metal detectors, and only two appear to have armed guards. Many of the schools permit vehicles in close proximity to the reactor buildings without...

FORT MONROE, Va. (8/23/2005) — Most local headlines in Charleston, S.C., probably won’t grab national attention: a road is closed for construction, local officials debate a proposed law, a man is shot in a small town outside Charleston. But how about this for a headline: “Run for Your Lives: Charleston will blow up this week.” A military training exercise, Sudden Response 2005, is using Charleston as the setting of a nuclear disaster to improve the United States’ readiness if such an event should occur. At Fort Monroe, Joint Task Force Civil Support, a unit composed of servicemembers from all branches...

" India has a developed and growing high tech sector. It also has a major service sector thanks to the growth of outsourced US call-center jobs being relocated there. It's economic growth has been high and steady for the past decade, due in large part to its highly educated, english speaking, middle-class, which now numbers about 300 million,( the entire population of the United States). While there is still great poverty in India, it is being reduced steadily and gradually, its overall GDP growth is widely expected to be about 7.2% for 2005, that is very near China's expected growth...

North Korea has resumed the construction of two nuclear reactors suspended under a 1994 agreement with the United States, a Japanese newspaper reported Thursday. North Korea restarted building a 50,000-kilowatt reactor in Yongbyon and a 200,000-kilowatt reactor in Thaechon _ both are plutonium-producing graphite-based _ Japanese economic daily Nihon Keizai said, quoting unidentified U.S. government and other sources. Japan's Foreign Ministry said it couldn't confirm the report. North Korea had suspended the construction of the two reactors under the 1994 deal in exchange for energy aid and two light-water reactors that are less likely to be used in nuclear...

WASHINGTON - Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi said Tuesday the kingdom has plenty of oil in the ground to meet global demand for now and would raise production if prices rose too high. "I stand here to tell you that Saudi Arabian reserves are plentiful, and we stand ready to raise output as the market dictates," al-Naimi said in a speech. He acknowledged that the perception of a tight market has contributed to higher prices. "Very high or unstable prices are not in the interest of producers," he said, adding that oil producers also suffer when the world economy slows....

The western world is only now waking to the nightmarish specter of China providing nuclear technology know-how to Pakistan and North Korea. China’s nuke know-how can be stamped: "Made in Canada". CANDU manufacturer, the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), is among other things, the Mother of all Proliferators. Reid Morden, former president and CEO of AECL, could star in his own made-for-television spy novel. Morden’s credentials in the spy industry come from Canada’s main intelligence agency, CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service, an agency Morden headed up. "On October 13, 1995 the second phase of a Canadian deal with China...

WASHINGTON, March 14 - Like the taxis in Havana, American nuclear power reactors are in heavy use, important to the economy and really, really old. The most modern was ordered in 1973. Now after decades, four huge electric companies are expressing strong interest in new reactors, and they would like a new plant to reflect some of what has been learned of the operation. Entergy, Exelon and Dominion have each applied for advance approval on sites where they might build reactors, although they have not committed to actually ordering one. The fourth, Duke Power, met with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission...