U.S. Nuclear Regulations Cannot Cope with Incident Like Fukushima
IN THIS ISSUE: US nuclear regulations cannot cope with incident like Fukushima, TEPCO starts water treatment system, Gates concerned by House cuts in nuclear funds, increasing NATO nuclear capability, Iran launches satellite, Myanmar defector's tale stokes suspicion.
U.S. Nuclear Regulations Inadequate to Cope with Incident Like Fukushima Peter Behr and ClimateWire | Scientific American
The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Fukushima inquiry task force said yesterday his panel is concerned that the severe threats that Japan's massive earthquake and tsunami posed to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex reveal gaps in the voluntary guidelines that protect U.S. plants against incidents deemed unlikely.
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The Mainichi Daily News
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) began a trial run of a radioactive water treatment system at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant on June 15 in a desperate effort to break away from the vicious cycle of injecting water into reactors to cool them and ending up with more contaminated water. But even if the system, developed by France's Areva SA, were to operate smoothly, it would produce a massive amount of high-level radioactive waste that could affect TEPCO's roadmap to bring the troubled nuclear reactors under control by early next year. Full Article
Reuters
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday he was very concerned about plans in the House of Representatives to cut $1 billion from funding to upgrade nuclear weapons infrastructure. Gates told a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee that funding for nuclear modernization had been carefully worked out between the Pentagon and the Department of Energy, which oversees the program. "This modernization project is, in my view, both from a security and a political standpoint, really important," he told the committee. Full Article
Hans M. Kristensen | FAS
A modified U.S. nuclear bomb currently under design will have improved military capabilities compared with older weapons and increase the targeting capability of NATO's nuclear arsenal.The B61-12, the product of a planned 30-year life extension and consolidation of four existing versions of the B61 into one, will be equipped with a new guidance system to increase its accuracy. As a result, if funded by Congress, the U.S. non-strategic nuclear bombs currently deployed in five European countries will return to Europe as a life-extended version in 2018 with a significantly enhanced capability to knock out military targets. Full Article
William J. Broad | New York Times
Iran said it launched a satellite into orbit on Wednesday that Western aerospace experts said could be used for limited military reconnaissance and also to monitor crops and track damage from earthquakes, flooding and other natural disasters. It was the second time that an Iranian rocket had carried a satellite into orbit and took place more than two years after Iran joined the international space club by launching its first satellite. Iran released few details about the satellite, which it calls Rasad-1, or Observation-1. Full Article
Matthew Pennington | Associated Press
Among the hundreds of thousands who have fled Myanmar and its tyrannical rulers over the years is a military insider who claims he carried a big secret with him: evidence of a hidden nuclear weapons program. Defector Sai Thein Win's account of his three years working in two clandestine factories, even with the trove of photos he brought with him, is no smoking gun. It has deepened suspicions, however, that Myanmar's xenophobic military leaders hanker for an atomic deterrent. Full Article
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