Paul Brown – Nuclear energy revival remains elusive

LONDON, 25 December, 2016 – There have been three well-documented major nuclear accidents in the last 60 years, each one accompanied by official lies and cover-ups. There have been other less well-known serious accidents that have been so effectively hushed up that decades later there are only the sketchiest details available. The legacy of these disasters is a deep distrust of the …

Chernobyl disaster site enclosed by shelter to prevent radiation leaks

Reactor No 4 at Chernobyl, the scene of the worst nuclear accident in history, has been enclosed by a vast steel shelter designed to prevent radiation leaks from the site. The structure covers the reactor and the unstable “sarcophagus”, which was hastily built around it by Soviet authorities in the immediate aftermath of the disaster 30 years ago. The shelter …

Helen Caldicott – The Medical Implications of the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

The following text by renowned scientist and physician Dr. Helen Caldicott on the impacts of the 1986 Chernobyl will be followed in a subsequent article by an analysis of the medical implications of the Fukushima disaster The only on-site medical and epidemiological data gathered after Chernobyl was released in a report published by the New York Academy of Medicine in 2009 titled …

Ellen Cantarow and Alison Rose Levy – A Fukushima on the Hudson?

It was a beautiful spring day and, in the control room of the nuclear reactor, the workers decided to deactivate the security system for a systems test. As they started to do so, however, the floor of the reactor began to tremble. Suddenly, its 1,200-ton cover blasted flames into the air. Tons of radioactive radium and graphite shot 1,000 meters …

Harvey Wasserman – Nuclear Reactors Make Isis an Apocalyptic Threat

As you read this, a terror attack has put atomic reactors in Ukraine at the brink of another Chernobyl-scale apocalypse. Transmission lines have been blown up. Power to at least two major nuclear power stations has been “dangerously” cut. Without emergency backup, those nukes could lose coolant to their radioactive cores and spent fuel pools. They could then melt or …

Margaret Atwood – It’s Not Climate Change – It’s Everything Change

he future without oil! For optimists, a pleasant picture: let’s call it Picture One. Shall we imagine it? There we are, driving around in our cars fueled by hydrogen, or methane, or solar, or something else we have yet to dream up. Goods from afar come to us by solar-and-sail-driven ship — the sails computerized to catch every whiff of air — or else …

Fukushima’s “Caldrons of Hell”: More than 300 Tons of Highly Radioactive Water Generated Daily

Asahi Shimbun, May 1, 2015 (emphasis added): Yauemon Sato, the ninth-generation chief of a sake brewery operating here since 1790 [and president of electric power company Aizu Denryoku] likens the crippled reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to “caldrons of hell.” In a recent interview with The Asahi Shimbun, Sato said the nuclear disaster “continues to recur every day”… Excerpts …

US braces itself for even worse wildfire season – Kieran Cooke

The firefighters are primed, hoses at the ready. May and June are often the peak months for forest fires in the southwest of the US, and the outlook for this year is grim. “I wish I could have some hope,” says Dr Wally Covington, director of the Ecological Restoration Institute at North Arizona University. “It’s just a terrible situation in …

Forest fires heading for Chernobyl nuclear plant – Ukraine Interior Ministry

The Ukrainian National Guard has been put on high alert due to worsening forest fires around the crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant, according to Ukraine Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. “The forest fire situation around the Chernobyl power plant has worsened,” a statement on Avakov’s Facebook page says. “The forest fire is heading in the direction of Chernobyl’s installations. Treetop flames …