Nuclear Power & Radiation

"Post-tsunami reconstruction and radiation cleanup could take 10 years, but officials say something has been permanently lost."

"SENDAI, Japan -- Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men. He isn't a social worker. He's a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan's nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head."

"When highly radioactive material that can be used in a 'dirty bomb' is moved to or from a hospital in New York City, it is done in the dead of night on cordoned streets with high security."

"WASHINGTON — USEC, the sole American company in the uranium enrichment business, said Monday that it would file for bankruptcy early next year, although it hopes to keep operating."

"In tiny Kincardine, Ont., about a four-hour drive north of Toledo, a $1 billion plan to bury radioactive nuclear waste is riling up a number of elected officials in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan."

"RICHMOND, Va. — A company is suspending its campaign to mine one of the world’s largest known deposits of uranium ore in Virginia, concluding that Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe’s opposition presents a significant challenge over the next four years."

"WASHINGTON — The Energy Department will give a small company in Corvallis, Ore., up to $226 million to advance the design of tiny nuclear reactors that would be installed under water, making meltdown far less likely and opening the door to markets around the world where the reactors now on the market are too big for local power grids."

"Japan is planning to earmark 100 billion yen ($970 million) for a storage facility for tens of thousands of tonnes of soil contaminated with radiation from the Fukushima disaster, a report said Wednesday."

"Here's a remarkable fact: For the past two decades, 10 percent of all the electricity consumed in the United States has come from Russian nuclear warheads."

"A trouble-prone system used to decontaminate radioactive water at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant was switched off Sunday because of a chemical leak, the plant's operator said."