"Trace amounts of radioactive substances were found in urine samples of all of 10 surveyed children from Fukushima Prefecture in May, where a crippled nuclear power plant is located, a local citizens group and a French nongovernmental organization said Thursday." The Manichi Daily News
Such contamination suggests the children have been contaminated with radioactive substances internally, something Beyond Nuclear and other groups have been concerned about since releases from the accident were first reported.
An astronaut on the International Space Station, 235 miles up, has photographed the smoke blowing downwind from raging wildfires bearing down on the Los Alamos National Lab (at left). Although federal authorities assure that radioactive wastes, including plutonium, are safe and secure, scores of air monitors have been set up to check for radiation contamination in air, as ABC News reports in a report subtitled "Radioactive Plume Feared." The wildfires are burning within a couple miles of a radioactive waste storage depot containing tens of thousands of 55 gallon drums filled with plutonium-contaminated byproducts of nuclear weapons research and production. A former top security official at Los Alamos National Lab, Glen Walp, said."It's not contained within a concrete, brick-and-mortar-type building, but rather in a sort of fabric-type building that a fire could easily consume... Potential is high for a major calamity if the fire would reach these areas." Walp is the author of the 2010 book Implosion at Los Alamos: How Crime, Corruption, and Cover-ups Jeopardize America's Nuclear Weapons Secrets.
Harvesting Clean Energy on Ontario Farms, a new report commissioned by the Heinrich Boell Foundation,
highlights the untapped business opportunities for farmers that can be found in renewable energy. The report will be presented during a tour through the Canadian province of Ontario in partnership with the Climate Action Network Canada, Pembina Institute, and The United Church of Canada. It focuses on numerous benefits of renewable energy, such as rural economic development and improved environmental conditions. It also describes the government policies needed to allow farmers to embrace these benefits.Some farmers in northern Germany make $2.5 million in a good year growing wheat. They make $15 million harvesting the wind, as the Ottawa Citizen reports.
Epic flooding on the Missouri River continues to capture news headlines as two nuclear power plants, Fort Calhoun nuclear station, north of Omaha and Cooper Station, south of the city, are slowly being inundated by the rising water. An eight foot high rubber berm around the Fort Calhoun reactor site collapsed early Monday morning sending flood water up around the walls of the reactor building, turbine hall and other auxillary buildings onsite.
Beyond Nuclear's Paul Gunter appeared today on ABC News Good Morning America with concern about the flood water potentially penetrating into the reactor building causing electrical short circuits, shutting down accident management systems and potentially igniting fires.
There are now early reports that the flood water is seeping into the Fort Calhoun turbine hall. The reactor remains shut down since early April 2011 and will not reopen until after flood waters recede. The unprecedented flooding could continue into August 2011.
Watch Paul Gunter on today's Good Morning America.
"Trace amounts of radioactive substances were found in urine samples of all of 10 surveyed children from Fukushima Prefecture in May, where a crippled nuclear power plant is located, a local citizens group and a French nongovernmental organization said Thursday." The Manichi Daily News
June 30, 2011
