US to increase funding to secure Russian military materials

The US government has almost doubled the amount of money it is investing in programmes to improve security at Russia nuclear weapons complexes. The US have been working at sites of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency to help secure nuclear materials from the cold war.

Collaboration in the past between Russia and the US has resulted in Russian uranium from military programmes being downblended and sent to be used in US nuclear power stations. Recently, around 10% of the electricity in the US was generated from uranium sent from Russia.

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Russian-built reactor operates at full power in China

The Tianwan 2 nuclear reactor, built by Russia in China, operated at full power for five days in mid-July. The plant is due to enter full commercial service in a few months. The Russians have already built one reactor at the Tianwan site and they have contracts to build two more soon.

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The Japanese earthquake story continues to be updated.

TEPCO ups report of impact of earthquake on its reactor

The Japanese company TEPCO has revised upwards its estimates of the impact of the recent earthquake in Japan on one of its reactors. It is now saying that 400, not 100, drums of low level waste overturned and that the amount of very weakly radioactive water that leaked into the sea was 50% higher than recent estimates.

However, before worrying about the leak it should be noted that the water that leaked was only two and a half times more radioactive than regular Bordeaux wine!

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Firefighter uses water from old uranium mine

A pilot collecting water to fight a fire in Washington State, USA scooped water out of a pond used at a now-closed uranium mine. The pilot collected the water in a large bucket suspended below his helicopter and deposited it over a large area of burning woodland. Thankfully neither the water nor the bucket was found to have any radioactive contamination.

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Nuclear facility in Iran to be inspected

The International Atomic Energy Authority says that it is going to visit the Arak heavy water reactor in Iran. The reactor, due to be completed in 2009, is called a research reactor by the Iranians, although heavy water reactors can be used to breed plutonium from uranium. The IAEA inspectors should visit the site of the reactor by the end of July 2007

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Massive Earthquake causes minor damage to nuclear plant

A very strong earthquake in Japan has killed at least seven people, as well as causing the leak of a small amount of radioactive water at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant. The water leaked from Unit 6 at the site - where there are seven nuclear reactors. The plant that suffered the leak was already shut down for maintenance. The three reactors that were operating shut down into 'safe mode' automatically when the quake started.

Details are still emerging on the precise quantity of water that leaked, though the plant officials are saying that the amount is well within environmental limits and no detectable environmental damage will have been done.

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UKAEA fined for workers breathing in plutonium

The UKAEA at Dounreay have been fined £15,000 because workers breathed in a very small amount of plutonium when opening contaminated lead bricks in plastic bags.

The workers weren't using the correct protective suits and there were no notices on the plastic bags to let them know what the content was.

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