WTF??

Halliburton’s missing nuclear waste found alongside Texas highway

Besides setting off every geiger counter in the country...

This explains why the fish were glowing!

Mafia 'sank nuclear waste ship'

So does that mean we don't eat anything pulled from the Mediterranean for a while?

Since the missile defense system has worked out so well

Except for actually intercepting incoming missiles and really pissing off Russia, Bush obviously will listen to scientists and diplomats about his wonderful GNEP plan:

WASHINGTON - A panel of the National Academy of Sciences urged President Bush on Monday to abandon an ambitious plan to resume nuclear waste reprocessing that is the heart of the administration's push to expand the civilian use of nuclear power. A 17-member panel of the Academy's National Research Council said the proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, has not been adequately peer reviewed and is banking on reprocessing technology that hasn't been proven, or isn't expected to be ready in the time the administration envisions.

The report, released Monday, said GNEP research is taking money and focus away from other nuclear research programs and efforts to speed the construction of new nuclear power plants.

"All committee members agree that the GNEP program should not go forward and that it should be replaced by a less aggressive research program," said the panel. It said if the administration proceeds as planned there will be "significant technical and financial risks."

Bush announced the global nuclear initiative in early 2006 and has repeatedly touted it as key to U.S. efforts to deal with a growing amount of highly radioactive reactor waste and still allow a large expansion of commercial nuclear power. Internationally, the plan envisions a small number of countries including the United States and Russia supplying other nations with reactor fuel and reprocessing their used fuel.

Only last week, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman cited the importance of the GNEP program. He said in a speech it "represents the future of global nuclear power cooperation" and will "allow for a greater global reliance on civilian nuclear power to produce the electricity needed" while safeguarding against proliferation.

The Academy panel said it did not address the pros and cons of the international aspects of the GNEP program, but expressed deep reservations about its ability to address the U.S. waste disposal issue.

All energy sources pose a problem for us

And we certainly won't want the Bush administration, Halliburtons and the Exxons to be in charge.
Germany is facing the problem with nuclear waste:

...the report is sure to add fuel to an ongoing smoldering debate in Germany and across Europe about what to do with highly radioactive nuclear waste. On the one hand, activists hold up waste storage as one of the primary dangers represented by atomic power. After all, used up fuel rods and other waste remain "hot" for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. How can one be sure today, many wonder, that facilities built today won't fall apart in 300,000 years?

On the other hand, scientists claim that most of the tricky scientific questions pertaining to long-term nuclear waste storage have been answered and that safe storage is possible. Now, they say, it is up to the politicians.

"Because there isn't a final storage facility, one could come to the conclusion that the problem hasn't been solved," Dr. Thomas Fanghaenel, director of the Institute for Transuranium Elements in Karlsruhe, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "That would be the wrong conclusion.... I think the political problems are the most difficult -- the 'not in my backyard' phenomenon and other socio-political problems."

Update: Chernobyl's radiation causes birth defects. How could it even be a question?

Radiation or relocation? A study of birds around Chernobyl suggests that nuclear fallout, rather than stress and deteriorating living conditions, may be responsible for human birth defects in the region.

People living around the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster in Ukraine have unusually high levels of physical abnormalities and birth defects. The International Atomic Energy Agency has suggested that the abnormalities are caused by the impact of relocation and stress on the population, and Timothy Mousseau, at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, wanted to put this to the test.

Mousseau and his colleagues examined 7700 barn swallows from Chernobyl and compared them with birds from elsewhere. They found that Chernobyl's swallows were more likely to have tumours, misshapen toes and feather deformities than swallows from uncontaminated parts of Europe (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2007.0136).

"We don't fully understand the consequences of low doses of radiation," says Mousseau. "We should be more concerned about the human population."

Ethanol is bad for you:

Mark Jacobson at Stanford University in California, US, modelled emissions for cars expected to be on the road in 2020. An E85-fuelled fleet would cause 185 more pollution-related deaths per year than a petrol one across the US the model predicted - most of them in smoggy Los Angeles, California.

The findings run counter to the idea that ethanol is a cleaner-burning fuel. Cars running on gasoline emit a number of pollutants – including nitrogen dioxide and organic molecules like acetaldehyde – that react with sunlight to form ozone.

City killers

However, ethanol is an even bigger culprit. Along with many of the same pollutants as gasoline, a large amount of unburned ethanol gas escapes into the atmosphere. That vapour readily breaks down in sunlight to form acetaldehyde, which can send ozone levels soaring.

While ethanol-burning cars will emit fewer carcinogens such as benzene and butadiene, they will spew out 20 times as much acetaldehyde as those using conventional fuel, Jacobsen found.

Ozone is one of the main constituents of smog, which carries a number of health risks (see City deaths rise with ozone levels).

Out of a total fleet of over 240 million cars, trucks, and other vehicles in the US there are currently only about 6 million that can run on E85 fuel. But this is widely predicted to rise in coming years.

"There are so many people barking pretty loud about biofuels," Jacobsen says. "They've been pushing these things before the science is done. Now the question is: will people listen?"

However, the small potential increase in pollution-related deaths predicted in the study could be a risk worth taking for a renewable fuel, environmentalists may argue.

And, to the displeasure of the megacorporations, people are creating their own power sources:

Börnsen, a village in northern Germany, is spoiling energy giant E.on's business by creating its own electricity and natural gas supply. The idea could catch on elsewhere.