Watch Kevin Kamps and Susan Corbett testify to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC) has posted the video showing testimony by Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear and Susan Corbett of South Carolina Sierra Club from the Nov. 16th meeting. Kamps and Corbett presented on behalf of 168 national and grassroots environmental and public interest groups. Both Kevin and Susan's oral presentations, as well as the full group statement and press release, are posted at Beyond Nuclear's website.

North Korea may have functioning uranium enrichment facility

Photo of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il.David Sanger and William Broad have reported in the New York Times that the Kim Jong Il regime in North Korea may have -- within just the past year -- built a uranium enrichment facility with thousands of cascades that is already operating. This is in addition to the recent revelation that North Korea is also building a new atomic reactor. The reactor could provide additional plutonium for North Korea's atomic weapons arsenal via reprocessing, while the uranium enrichment facility could concentrate Uranium-235 to weapons-grade, and even provide the material needed to fabricate hydrogen bombs -- orders of magnitude more destructive than the dozen or so atomic bombs suspected in North Korea's current nuclear arsenal. As the New York Times mentions, the Abdul Q. Khan nuclear weapons black market likely provided North Korea essential know how and materials needed to master uranium enrichment; however, Khan did not do this alone, but with the full backing of the military and even government of Pakistan, as well as the complicity of multiple U.S. administration's "looking the other way" in order to stay on good terms with Pakistan.

Inside EPA: "Agencies Struggle To Craft Offsite Cleanup Plan For Nuclear Power Accidents"

On Nov. 10th, Inside EPA's Douglas Guarino broke the story "Agencies Struggle to Craft Offsite Cleanup Plan for Nuclear Power Accidents." It revealed that NRC, EPA, and FEMA disagree about which agency would be responsible for long term cleanup after a major radiation release, and where the funding to do so would come from. Due to the heightened interest surrounding this story, Inside EPA has made the article, including embedded links to the corresponding FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) response documents, available to non-subscribers via the above link.

Davis-Besse: 20 MORE years of radioactive Russian roulette on the Great Lakes shore?!

Davis-Besse "red photo" showing boric acid crystal/rust "lava" flowing from dangerously corroded reactor lid.Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps has written a fully referenced overview of major near-misses that have occurred over the decades at FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse atomic reactor near Toledo in light of its recent application for a 20 year license extension. These near misses include a 1977 Three Mile Island precursor, a 1985 steam generator dryout that blocked cooling to the core, a 1998 tornado direct hit and dicey electricity supply for safety critical cooling systems, a 2002 "hole-in-the-head" (see photo to left), a 2010 beginning of a new "hole-in-the-head," and numerous additional incidents.

START treaty ratification in jeopardy in Senate

Minority Whip, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) is attempting to block ratification of the START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) after an agreement on the treaty was signed by the President Obama and Dimitry Medvedev in April.  Kyl claims there is not enough time during the current lame duck session of Congress, but skeptics point out that delaying the vote until the new Senate is seated gives the Republicans six more seats than currently which could boost Kyl's real agenda to garner billions more for nuclear weapons production as a "quid pro quo" for START ratification. Is Kyl playing politics? Or even jeopardizing national security as many experts in the field have stated, according to a document from the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation? The fact that START ratification is a top priority for the Obama administration - which is continuing to push for a vote despite Kyl's opposition - is considered another strong motivation for Republicans to block or dilute the effort.  According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Obama administration has already cow-towed to some of Kyl's demands, revising its 10-year budget for nuclear weapons with an increase in spending of "$4.1 billion over the next 5 years, over and above the more than $80 billion that the Obama administration already pledged for nuclear weapons (not including delivery vehicles) over the next ten years." START would shrink the U.S. and Russian arsenals of strategic warheads, and revive on-the-ground inspections that ceased when a previous treaty expired nearly a year ago.