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North Korea Could Help Myanmar Obtain Nuke Tech, Expert Says
Myanmar could create systems for nuclear weapons with North Korean support, but the Southeast Asian state has yet to build such equipment, former International Atomic Energy Agency official Robert Kelley said on Monday (see GSN, April 11).
The nation possesses multiple facilities it might tap for uranium enrichment, the Yonhap News Agency quoted Kelley as saying. The enrichment process can produce civilian as well as weapons material.
The facilities incorporate German equipment, said Kelley, now a fellow with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
“When the Germans are inspecting, the factories appear to be civilian,” he said. “But Read more…
IAEA finds high radiation levels outside Japan evacuation zone
Tokyo (CNN) — Radiation levels in a Japanese town outside a government-ordered evacuation zone have exceeded one of the criteria for evacuation, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday.
The agency said it advised Japan “to carefully assess the situation.”
The elevated levels were found in Iitate, a town of 7,000 residents about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of the earthquake- and tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the agency said. The evacuation zone covers a 20-kilometer (13-mile) radius around the plant.
The agency did not say what levels it found in Iitate, but the environmental group Greenpeace said Sunday it had found radiation levels in the town that were more than 50 times above normal.
Though that is far below the level that would cause radiation sickness, it does pose a risk of cancer to residents in the long term, Greenpeace said.
United Nations Nuclear Bank
Cassandra Anderson, MorphCity
Contributor to Activist Post
The media hailed Warren Buffett last December for donating $50 million dollars toward a United Nations nuclear bank with control over uranium enrichment. The intent is control over nuclear weapons and nuclear power by the elites who are the true forces behind the UN.
The UN nuclear bank is will be under the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is NOT independent; it was created through a UN treaty and answers to the UN and the UN Security Council. The fully funded UN nuclear bank does not require nations to stop uranium enrichment, which was the original plan; however, the final terms have Read more…
Japan battles crippled nuclear plant, radiation fears grow
Radiation found in sea water, milk, vegetables; IAEA: Overall situation at Fukushima plant remains serious; 21,000 dead or missing.
TOKYO – Rising temperatures around the core of one of the reactors at Japan’s quake-crippled nuclear plant sparked new concern on Tuesday and more water was needed to cool it down, the plant’s operator said.
Despite hopes of progress in the world’s worst nuclear crisis in a quarter of a century, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that left at least 21,000 people dead or missing, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it needed more time before it could say the reactors were stabilized.
Technicians working inside an evacuation zone around the stricken plant on Japan’s northeast Pacific coast, 250 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, have attached power cables to all six reactors and started a pump at one to cool overheating nuclear Read more…
Japan nuclear crisis on edge as toll of dead or missing surpasses 21,000 Radiation traces found in food and water
TOKYO — Japan hoped power lines restored to its stricken nuclear plant may help solve the world’s worst atomic crisis in 25 years, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that also left more than 21,000 people dead or missing.The Asian nation’s people are in shock at both the ongoing battle to avert deadly radiation at the six-reactor Fukushima plant and a still-rising death toll from the March 11 disaster.
The world’s third largest economy has suffered an estimated $250 billion of damage with entire towns in the northeast obliterated in Japan’s darkest moment since World War Two.
Tokyo’s markets are closed for a holiday on Monday.
Elsewhere, investors will be weighing risks to the global economy from Japan’s multiple crisis, along with conflict in Libya and other unrest in the Arab world.
Easing Japan’s gloom briefly, local TV showed one moving Read more…
Japan raises nuclear alert level
Japan holds minute silence one week on from quake
Japan has raised the alert level at a stricken nuclear plant from four to five on a seven-point international scale for atomic incidents.
The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi site is now two levels below Ukraine’s 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog warned in Tokyo the battle to stabilise the plant was a race against time.
The crisis was prompted by last week’s huge quake and tsunami, which has left at least 16,000 people dead or missing.
The Japanese nuclear agency’s decision to raise the alert level to five grades Fukushima’s as an “accident with wider consequences”.
It also places the situation there on a par with 1979’s Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Read more…
U.S. Called Former Japan Nuclear Safety Official a ‘Disappointment’: WikiLeaks
Two years before a powerful earthquake rocked Japan and threatened catastrophe for its nuclear facilities, U.S. officials slammed the senior Japanese safety director of the International Atomic Energy Agency as “a disappointment” in part due to Japan’s nuclear safety practices, according to a leaked U.S. State Department document.
“[Tomihiro] Taniguchi has been a weak manager and advocate, particularly with respect to confronting Japan’s own safety practices, and he is a particular disappointment to the United States for his unloved-step-child treatment of the Office of Nuclear Security,” said the document, posted on the website for British newspaper The Guardian. “This position requires a good manager and leader who is technically qualified in both safety and security.”
Taniguchi was the executive director of Japan’s Nuclear Power Engineering Corporation, a company that specifically dealt with nuclear Read more…
International Atomic Energy Agency says radioactivity released into atmosphere from Japan
Nuke plant blasts raise radiation threat
(AFP)
The Japanese government says radiation levels near a quake-stricken nuclear power plant are now harmful to human health, after a further two explosions and a fires at the facility.
“There is no doubt that unlike in the past, the figures are the level at which human health can be affected,” said chief government spokesman Yukio Edano.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says it has been informed by Japanese authorities the spent-fuel storage pond at the No. 4 reactor is on fire and radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere.
It is unclear whether this is a new fire, or a report of the fire which started earlier today but was Read more…
Iran Broadens Search for Raw Uranium: Intel
An intelligence assessment by an International Atomic Energy Agency member nation says Iran has broadened its secretive worldwide effort to secure unrefined uranium for its atomic work, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Feb. 23).
The finding fits with estimates that indigenous sources of raw uranium were insufficient for the Persian Gulf nation’s nuclear activities, according to AP. The United States and its allies have expressed concern that Iran’s uranium enrichment program could generate nuclear-weapon material, but Tehran has maintained its atomic efforts are geared strictly toward civilian endeavors.
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi held an undisclosed meeting in January with high-level managers of mineral extraction in Zimbabwe “to resume negotiations … for the benefit of Iran’s uranium procurement plan,” the document states.
“This follows work carried out by Iranian engineers to map out uranium deposits in Africa and assess the amount of uranium they contain,” according to its two-page summary.
Salehi’s trip is an example of Iranian uranium acquisition activities that could encompass more than Read more…
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