Nuclear power in Europe

The Russian military allegedly dumped nuclear waste into the Baltic Sea in the early 1990s, according to a report on Swedish television.
Radioactive material from a military base in Latvia is thought to have been thrown into Swedish waters. For many the biggest shock is that the Swedish government may have known at the time and done nothing about it.

The partly enclosed Baltic Sea is known as one of the most polluted seas in the world. But now it seems it was also used as a dumping ground for Russian nuclear waste and chemical weapons. (more…)

The world is about to enter a period of unprecedented investment in nuclear power. The combined threats of climate change, energy security and fears over the high prices and dwindling reserves of oil are forcing governments towards the nuclear option. The perception is that nuclear power is a carbon-free technology, that it breaks our reliance on oil and that it gives governments control over their own energy supply.

That looks dangerously overoptimistic, says Michael Dittmar, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who publishes the final chapter of an impressive four-part analysis of the global nuclear industry on the arXiv today. (more…)

This must take the record for the trippiest data-center build anywhere, ever: It’s an old nuclear bunker 30 meters below central Stockholm, and its new conversion for one of Sweden’s biggest ISPs has made it truly 007-worthy. Check it: it has simulated daylight, greenhouses and waterfalls, there’re German submarine engines rigged as emergency backup generators, plus there’s 1.5 megawatts of cooling for the servers. Oh, and it can survive a hydrogen bomb attack. (more…)

A GRANDMA for peace was arrested yet again after protesting against weapons of mass destruction.

Veteran campaigner Joan Meredith, 79, from Malpas, was taking part in the CND/Trident Ploughshares Big Blockade at the Aldermaston nuclear plant in Berkshire when she was arrested on Monday last week. (more…)

Thousands of anti-radiation pills have been handed out to schools in Portsmouth and Gosport for the visit of a French nuclear sub.

Potassium iodate tablets are being held at schools within a 2km area of Portsmouth Naval Base in the event of a nuclear reactor meltdown.

The 113,000 pills – given out every time a nuclear sub visits the city –are designed to stop radiation from being absorbed by the thyroid gland. (more…)

Experts from the Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom are preparing for the removal of spent nuclear fuel from a submarine reactor in the base of Gremikha on the Barents Sea coast. The operation is highly complicated and dangerous, they say.

The spent nuclear fuel will be removed from a reactor formerly belonging to a “Alfa”-class submarine. The operation is part of the Russian effort to decommission and scrap the many retired nuclear subs left after the Soviet period. (more…)

People living near a former RAF base yesterday spoke of their shock at being told their homes could be radioactive.

Radium and asbestos have been found at the site, where military waste was burned and buried. The council is now testing 90 nearby homes. (more…)

Alarm systems at a nuclear weapons site were down for ten days after heavy flooding, leaving residents vulnerable to a potential accident.

A report said electricity to “virtually the whole of” the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) site at Burghfield, Berkshire, was switched off when it was flooded during torrential rain on July 20 last year.
Campaign group Nuclear Information Service (NIS) said it was fortunate that staff had gone home for the weekend by the time the water peaked so no radioactive material was in use in the assembly area (more…)

ALMATY, Kazakstan, September 18, 2008 (ENS) – Kazakstan’s nuclear test zone has lain deserted for the last 20 years largely forgotten by the outside world, but experts say radiation will continue to be a health risk until the huge site is cleaned up thoroughly.

The testing ground was closed for use in 1991. This month, the international Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization is running a series of trials at the Semipalatinsk site to test equipment that can identify and give the location of nuclear explosions. (more…)

Scientists monitoring a beach in Fife for radioactive hotspots say they have discovered seven contaminated areas.

Local people are worried Dalgety Bay may now be placed on a new register for radioactively contaminated land. (more…)