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Minami Soma City assemblyman Koichi Ooyama discloses the result of the test of the mysterious black dust found in locations in Minami Soma City, Fukushima Prefecture. A blogger whom I featured before, "Night that never ends", has been measuring radiation on the strange, black dust he finds in many locations in Minami Soma City, mostly on the road surface. His geiger counter (Inspector) measures all alpha, beta, gamma radiations and x-ray, and his measurement on the surface of this black dust was 295 microsieverts/hour. Assemblyman Ooyama apparently sent the sample to Professor Tomoya Yamauchi of Kobe University. Professor Yamauchi did...

Reducing the U.S. nuclear force by 80 percent, a move under consideration by the White House, amounts to unilateral disarmament at a time when “the Iranians are nuking up,” Rush Limbaugh said today on his radio show. “There are some things happening today that are downright scary,” Limbaugh said. “The regime, led by Barack Hussein Obama, is weighing options for reducing our U.S. nuclear force. Folks, this is staggering. Meanwhile, the Iranians are nuking up.” The conservative talk-show host said the nuclear weapons reductions will not make the world safer and instead will shift the balance of power away from...

WASHINGTON — President Obama promised Thursday to spend $80 billion over 10 years to maintain and modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal, a commitment that could help win Republican support for his new arms control treaty with Russia. The plan expands a previous proposal by Mr. Obama to upgrade nuclear infrastructure and was sent to the Senate along with the treaty and accompanying protocol and annexes. Mr. Obama called President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia as he kicked off his campaign to win Senate consent for the treaty. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will begin hearings next week, starting Tuesday with...

WASHINGTON, D. C. -- Iranians are more likely to approve of Iran developing its nuclear power capabilities for non-military use (57%) than for military use (40%). They are more mixed about military use, which Iran insists it is not pursuing, with 40% approving and 35% disapproving. Nearly one in four did not express an opinion either way.International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors are preparing to return to Iran next week for more talks about the "'possible military dimensions' to Iran's disputed nuclear program." The IAEA's visit may ease tensions following waves of economic sanctions by the United Nations, the U.S.,...

RUSH: There are some things happening today that are downright scary. The regime, led by Barack Hussein Obama, is weighing options for reducing our US nuclear force, including a reduction of up to 80% in the number of deployed warheads -- 80%. Folks, this is staggering. Meanwhile, the Iranians are nuking up. Iran announced today that they're gonna cut off oil to six countries that have opposed its nuclear program, and more importantly, Iran also announced that they have installed domestically made nuclear fuel rods in their Tehran reactor. Now, if that's true, this is significant because the sanctions that...

(AP) WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is weighing options for sharp new cuts to the U.S. nuclear force, including a reduction of up to 80 percent in the number of deployed weapons, The Associated Press has learned. Even the most modest option now under consideration would be an historic and politically bold disarmament step in a presidential election year, although the plan is in line with President Barack Obama's 2009 pledge to pursue the elimination of nuclear weapons. No final decision has been made, but the administration is considering at least three options for lower total numbers of deployed strategic...

TEHRAN — In a new show of defiance against tightened sanctions, Iran on Wednesday threatened to cut oil exports to several European Union countries and unveiled controversial advances in its nuclear fuel programs. In a day of fiery speeches, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also lashed out at the West, condemning recent assassinations of Iranian scientists. Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned ambassadors of six E.U. states and warned at least four of them — Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece — that they must extend their long term oil-purchasing contracts with Iran or face cutoff, the semiofficial...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will load domestically made nuclear fuel rods into its Tehran Research Reactor on Wednesday for the first time to keep it running, a senior official told a national news agency. Tehran had announced in January that it had successfully manufactured and tested fuel rods for use in nuclear power plants, a move to show that international sanctions are failing to stop it making advances in nuclear know-how and to strengthen its hand in any renewed negotiations with six world powers. "The first home-made nuclear fuel roads will be loaded in the Tehran Nuclear Research Reactor in...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia came close to nuclear disaster in late December when a blaze engulfed a nuclear-powered submarine carrying atomic weapons, a leading Russian magazine reported, contradicting official assurances that it was not armed. Russian officials said at the time that all nuclear weapons aboard the Yekaterinburg nuclear submarine had been unloaded well before a fire engulfed the 167-metre (550 feet) vessel and there had been no risk of a radiation leak. But the respected Vlast weekly magazine quoted several sources in the Russian navy as saying that throughout the fire on December 29 the submarine was carrying 16...

Home > News Though most of today's nuclear reactors are cooled by water, we've long known that there are alternatives; in fact, the world's first nuclear-powered electricity in 1951 came from a reactor cooled by sodium. Reactors cooled by liquid metals such as sodium or lead have a unique set of abilities that may again make them significant players in the nuclear industry. At the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, a team led by senior nuclear engineer James Sienicki has designed a new small reactor cooled by lead—the Sustainable Proliferation-resistance Enhanced Refined Secure Transportable Autonomous Reactor, or...

What if you were promoting an industry that had the potential to kill and injure enormous numbers of people as well as contaminate large areas of land for tens of thousands of years? What if this industry created vast stockpiles of deadly waste but nevertheless required massive amounts of public funding to keep it going? My guess is that you might want to hide that information. From the heyday of the environmental movement in the late 1960s through the late 1970s, many people were openly skeptical about the destructive potential of the nuclear power industry. After the partial meltdown at...

In roughly six months, owners and operators of nuclear generating facilities will have a new regulation to address. After a hiatus of more than four years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will issue a new version of the 316(b) Phase II rule, which regulates impingement and entrainment at cooling water intakes. The proposed rule published in the Federal Register on April 20, 2011, applies to existing power plants and industrial and manufacturing facilities that withdraw at least 2 million gallons per day (MGD) of cooling water and use at least 25 percent of that water exclusively for cooling pur-poses....

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to approve licenses to build two new nuclear reactors Thursday, the first approvals in over 30 years. The reactors are being built in Georgia by a consortium of utilities led by Southern Co. They will be sited at the Vogtle nuclear power plant complex, about 170 miles east of Atlanta. The plant already houses two older reactors. Spokespeople for Southern Co. and the NRC were quiet on the matter Wednesday ahead of the vote set for Thursday at 12 PM ET. If approved, NRC staff would likely issue a construction and operating license...

More than two-thirds of Iran's lawmakers have endorsed a statement calling for cutting off oil sales to the European Union before EU sanctions on their country go into effect. The statement, which was read Wednesday in an open session of parliament broadcast on state radio, said "in the case of the continuation of illogical policies" by the EU, Iran will look for alternative customers for its oil before the European embargo goes into effect in the summer. The statement was signed by 200 of the parliament's 290 lawmakers.

Trace amounts of a radioactive element found in fish near the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant have now been found in bass in an opposite corner of the state, apparently clearing the plant of any tie to the contamination, a state health official said. Initial testing took place after Entergy Corp.'s Vermont Yankee, located in the southeastern town of Vernon, reported in 2010 that radioactive material had leaked into nearby groundwater. Low levels of Strontium-90, an isotope produced by nuclear reactions, were found in fish caught in August where groundwater from the plant runs into the Connecticut River, state authorities...

How far should the US go to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon? A new poll from The Hill shows that 49% of Americans would support military action by the US to stop Iran from developing or acquiring a nuclear weapon, with only 31% opposed: Nearly half of likely voters think the United States should be willing to use military force to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, according to this weekÂ’s The Hill Poll.Forty-nine percent said military force should be used, while 31 percent said it should not and 20 percent were not sure.Sixty-two percent of likely...

Is the world counting down to "D-Day"? After US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta estimated that Israel would attack Iran by June, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned government officials against "Iran chatter," A European diplomat based in Pakistan said that if Israel attacks, Islamabad will have no choice but to support any Iranian retaliation. The diplomat's statement raised the specter of putting a nuclear-armed Pakistan at odds with Israel, which is widely believed to have its own significant nuclear arsenal.

JERUSALEM, Israel (AP) -- For the first time in nearly two decades of escalating tensions over Iran's nuclear program, world leaders are genuinely concerned that an Israeli military attack on the Islamic Republic could be imminent — an action that many fear might trigger a wider war, terrorism and global economic havoc. High-level foreign dignitaries, including the U.N. chief and the head of the American military, have stopped in Israel in recent weeks, urging leaders to give the diplomatic process more time to work. But U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has reportedly concluded that an Israeli attack on Iran is...

Mark Levin spent part of his first hour playing Milton Friedman clips and explaining why Romney’s position on minimum wage is wrong, to educate the man and us. But as you’ll see in his monologue below, it frustrates him very much that he feels he has to do so. He starts by playing a clip of Romney today that he was very much unimpressed with, which then turned into this amazing monologue where he explained why he is frustrated with Romney’s lack of conservatism. This is a MUST LISTEN. Here is a partial quote from his monologue but you should...

Reports emerged yesterday warning that, "Iran had been working on developing a missile capable of striking the United States." In addition, one source claims that, "Iran's nuclear arms program is complete, its missiles can reach US." The general consensus already assumes that the Islamist regime has missiles, "capable of reaching Israel and Europe." This obvious existential threat to Israel and the West has been confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s, "growing concerns of possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program," bolstered by the fact that the the European Union (EU), U.S., and to some part Japan and South...

As workers began inspecting a leaky tube in one of the San Onofre nuclear plant's reactors Thursday, federal regulators said more than 800 tubes in a second, offline reactor showed wear and thinning, although they are only two years old. And plant officials confirmed that sensors showed a tiny amount of radioactive gas may have leaked out of a building next to the first reactor before the reactor was shut down late Tuesday. Article Tab: image1-San Onofre: 100s of troubled tubes, gas leak ADVERTISEMENT All four of the plant's steam generators and their tubes are about two years old, installed...

Speaking at Herzliya Conference, Moshe Ya’alon calls the possibility of a nuclear Iran a 'nightmare to the free world,' says explosion at Iranian missile base targeted missile system that would have threatened the U.S. All of Iran's nuclear faculties are vulnerable to a military strike, Vice Prime Minister and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon said on Thursday, calling the potential of a nuclear Iran a "nightmare to the free world."

As days go by, food in Japan doesn't look very appetizing, to say the least. 1. Radioactive mandarin orange from Kanagawa Prefecture Radioactive cesium was found from the edible part of mandarin oranges (which in the US are called "satsuma" for some reason) and the skin. Security Tokyo is a private testing laboratory that uses the high-precision germanium semiconductor detector, not one of those fly-by-night testing "laboratories" cropping up in Japan (like the one who claimed to have "measured" high radioactive "iodine" in the snow in Hachioji. Totally false. Did I write about it? I don't remember...) But here's the...

<p>ROCKFORD — A loss of power coming into the Byron nuclear plant caused one of two reactors to automatically shut down about 10:15 a.m. today.</p> <p>Backup diesel generators were activated after the power outage and were being used for safety equipment that vents heat from the reactor, according to a spokeswoman from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Lisle.</p>

From UC Davis News and Information (1/26/2012; emphasis is mine): Japan used seawater to cool nuclear fuel at the stricken Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant after the tsunami in March 2011 -- and that was probably the best action to take at the time, says Professor Alexandra Navrotsky of the University of California, Davis. But Navrotsky and others have since discovered a new way in which seawater can corrode nuclear fuel, forming uranium compounds that could potentially travel long distances, either in solution or as very small particles. The research team published its work Jan. 23 in the journal Proceedings of the...

SNIPPET: "But the solicitor helped to nab a major international dealer to the Iranian missile programme since he came to the job two years ago. He said: "One of our first cases started with a suspected heroin trafficker, so the National Drugs Enforcement Agency got this information that this guy Dugash was heading out to Kenya to buy heroin and they met him at the airport and seized his cash, which was something in the order of $10,000 which was a huge sum for this jurisdiction. "As part of the explanation he said it was cash belonging to himself and...

Senior Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said on Friday that Iran is already a nuclear state and that Americans have not realized that. “The United States says it will not allow Iran to be nuclear, but it is so blind that it hasn’t noticed that Iran has already become a nuclear state,” Khatami was quoted by Channel 10 News as having said. He added that the U.S. has become isolated in the region, after its four “slaves” were removed from power. He was referring to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, former Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi, former Tunisian President Zine...

Pentagon Seeks Mightier Bomb vs. Iran By ADAM ENTOUS And JULIAN E. BARNES WASHINGTON—Pentagon war planners have concluded that their largest conventional bomb isn't yet capable of destroying Iran's most heavily fortified underground facilities, and are stepping up efforts to make it more powerful, according to U.S. officials briefed on the plan. The 30,000-pound "bunker-buster" bomb, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, was specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea to cloak their nuclear programs. But initial tests indicated that the bomb, as currently configured, wouldn't be capable of destroying some of Iran's...

In the thick of the Cold War, the Soviet Union built an immense vessel to carry their troops across the seas and into Western Europe. Equipped with nuclear warheads and able to blast across the sea at 340 mph, the Lun-class Ekranoplane; part plane, part boat, and part hovercraft — is a Ground Effect Vehicle (GEV). A GEV takes advantage of an aeronautical effect that allows it to lift off with an immense amount of weight, but limits its flight to 16 feet above the waves. Its altitude can never be greater than the length of the wings. Think of...

The threat by the Islamic regime in Iran to close down the Strait of Hormuz and of Revolutionary Guards Navy boats harassing U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf has caused President Obama to send secret messages to the regime stating his concerns over the closure of the strait and the possibility of an accidental war. Since then, Iranian officials have been revealing the contents of President Obama’s letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which indicates a deep desire by the U.S. president for a dialogue with the radical leaders of Iran. However, on Saturday, Iranian officials also...

A remote-controlled endoscope with a thermometer showed the temperature inside the No. 2 reactor of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on Jan. 19 was about 45 degrees, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. But the endoscope lens became covered in water droplets and the reception was sometimes fuzzy, so the operator of the plant could not determine the condition of the melted fuel or if the pipes were damaged. In addition, the endoscope, 8.5 millimeters in diameter, did not reach the surface of the water. TEPCO had predicted the water level would be 4.5 meters based on the...

WASHINGTON — On Dec. 31, just hours before a New Year's Eve celebration, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. Section 1245 of the law contains language providing authority to impose economic sanctions on Iran in order to deter the ayatollahs from acquiring nuclear weapons. White House efforts to have the sanctions provision stripped from the bill failed, and the measure became law with a quiet flourish of the presidential pen. Ever since, Washington and Tehran have been waging a war of words. None of this works to the advantage of the American...

After having exhausted the indignant possibilities of protesting the extinction of whales, pelicans and polar bears, the left has found a new endangered species to be outraged about. Iranian nuclear scientists. It's one thing to hug a polar bear or a tree, but it's another to embrace an Iranian nuclear scientist, who may well be a jolly and colorful fellow with a family and a paint by numbers coloring kit of an atom, but also happens to be a participant in a plot to kill millions of people. The left which has all the moral sense of a squashed peanut...

The Mossad worked for months to stage the assassination of its latest Iranian nuclear scientist target last Wednesday, The London Times reported Sunday. Quoting unnamed Israeli sources, the newspaper said that well-trained team of agents working in Iran set up the bomb attack on Mustafa Ahmadi Roshan, a scientist at the Natanz nuclear facility. He also was involved in missile development. Israel has publicly said it knows nothing about the killing, the latest in what has been termed as “Israel‘s secret war” that has pinpointed dozens of scientists and officials who have died in mysterious airplane crashes and in street...

(JPost) — Israel’s Mossad is responsible for training and paying the assassins of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists over the past two years, TIME magazine reported Saturday citing unnamed Western intelligence sources. In addition to the assassinations of the scientists, all of which were carried out using nearly identical magnetic bombs attached to the side of their cars, the intelligence sources claimed Israel was responsible for an explosion at an Iranian missile base outside Tehran late last year. Majid Jamali Fashi, one of several suspects arrested, tried and sentenced to death by the Islamic Republic in the past two...

Iran said on Sunday it had received a letter from the U.S. government about the Strait of Hormuz, Foreign Ministry spokesman ...was quoted ... as saying Tehran had not yet decided if it would reply to the letter, the contents of which he did not detail. "America's message over the Strait of Hormuz reached us through three channels. It was given to our U.N. representative, the Swiss ambassador conveyed it to the Foreign Ministry and also Iraqi President Jalal Talabani gave the message to Iran,"

Iran's Gulf Arab neighbors should not raise their production to replace Iranian oil if the European Union goes ahead with a ban on Iranian crude imports, Iran's OPEC governor said on Sunday. The EU has agreed in principle to ban imports of Iranian oil, while the United States has pressured Asian buyers to reduce imports to starve Iran of revenue for its disputed nuclear program.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Thursday for talks with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, and other senior defense and intelligence officials. The visit comes as the United States attempts to coordinate with Israel on the issue of Iran's nuclear capabilities, and to determine Israel's intentions with regard to a possible attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iranian state television said on Saturday that Iran had evidence the United States was behind the latest assassination of one of its nuclear scientists. In the fifth attack of its kind in two years, a magnetic bomb was attached to the door of 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan's car during the Wednesday morning rush-hour in Tehran. His driver was also killed.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Thousands of mourners chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" on Friday during the funeral of a slain nuclear expert whom Iranian officials accuse the two nations of killing in a bomb blast this week as part of a secret operation to stop Iran's nuclear program.

An explosion on Wednesday killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a top official at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, Iranian officials said. He is the third man identified as a nuclear scientist to be killed in Iran in a mysterious explosion in the past two years. A fourth survived an assassination attempt. In each case, someone placed a bomb under the scientist's car. Iranian officials, on state-run media, blame Israel and the United States. "I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday. "We believe...

As tensions with Iran escalate on several fronts, most Americans favor military force to stop Tehran from building nuclear weapons if diplomacy fails, a new IBD/TIPP poll shows. That comes as the Obama ad ministration claims that Iran isn't yet building a bomb and urged the continuation of a "responsible" policy of economic pressure.

Former Israeli defense official tells NYT ambiguous policies are best when it comes to efforts to prevent all-out war with Iran. Tehran says retaliation will 'reach beyond region' The covert war waged against Iran is a practical strategy, a former top Israeli defense official told the New York Times Thursday. The comment followed the assassination of yet another Iranian nuclear scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan – who served as the deputy director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility – in Tehran on Wednesday.

TOKYO: A 5.7-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Japan on Thursday near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, but did not cause any further problems at the power station, officials said. The quake hit in the Pacific, 22 kilometres (14 miles) east of Iwaki in southern Fukushima, at 12:20 pm (0320 GMT) at a depth of nine kilometres, the US Geological Survey said. A tsunami was not expected, said the Japan Meteorological Agency, and there were no immediate reports of damage. Nuclear plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant remained stable.

A timeline of explosions that killed Iranian scientists and blasts that rocked Iranian nuclear facilities from January 12, 2010 to January 11, 2012.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A group of scientists that tracks the likelihood of a global cataclysm says the world is moving closer to doomsday. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced Tuesday that it has moved its "Doomsday Clock" to five minutes to midnight.

A university lecturer and nuclear scientist has been killed in a car explosion in north Tehran, reports say. Iranian media sources named the casualty as Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, an academic who also worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility. The blast happened when a motorcyclist stuck a magnetic bomb on the car, said Iran's semi-official Fars news agency. Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years, with Iran blaming Israel and the US. Both countries deny the accusations. Local sources said Wednesday's blast took place at a faculty of Iran's Allameh Tabatai university. Two others were reportedly also injured...

The International Atomic Energy Agency officially confirmed that Iran has started enriching uranium to the 20-percent level, which can easily be turned into fissile warhead material. "The IAEA can confirm that Iran has started the production of uranium enriched up to 20 percent using IR-1 centrifuges in the Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant," the agency said in a statement. However, IAEA Spokeswoman Gill Tudor said that all nuclear materials and operations in the Fordo facility are “under the Agency's containment and surveillance." Iranian officials earlier said the Fordo plant, deep inside the mountains near the central Iranian city of Qom, was...

Moscow regrets Tehran's decision to enrich uranium near the city of Qom, Itar-Tass state-run news agency quoted a foreign ministry official as saying on Tuesday. "Moscow has met reports on the start of uranium enrichment at an Iranian plant near Qom with regret and concern," the agency quoted a Foreign Ministry official as saying.

The geopolitical foreplay is getting ridiculous. At this point it is quite obvious that virtually everyone involved in the US-Israel-Iran hate triangle is just itching for someone else to pull the trigger. And the latest report out of the IAEA will only precipitate this. Who - remember the IAEA? The same IAEA which did not find nukes in Iraq in 2003 only to be overriden by Dick "WMD" Cheney to "justify" an invasion. As RIA reports:  "The International Atomic Energy Agency officially confirmed that Iran has started enriching uranium to the 20-percent level, which can easily be turned into...