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French nuclear firm Areva has found a uranium leak at a factory in southeastern France, but there is no danger to the environment, the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) said on Friday. The news came a day after the government ordered safety tests at all the country's 19 nuclear power plants following another leak at an Areva facility earlier this month. However, Energy and Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo moved to reassure the public over the latest incident. "We mustn't over-exaggerate," he told reporters, saying there were 115 such "little anomalies" in France's nuclear industry each year. "This is something which...

What it all means According to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA), specific absorption rate, or SAR, is "a way of measuring the quantity of radiofrequency (RF) energy that is absorbed by the body." For a phone to pass FCC certification, that phone's maximum SAR level must be less than 1.6W/kg (watts per kilogram). In Europe, the level is capped at 2W/kg while Canada allows a maximum of 1.6W/kg. The SAR level listed in our charts represents the highest SAR level with the phone next to the ear as tested by the FCC. Keep in mind that it is possible...

Several Texas Tech researchers and graduate students will leave for Ukraine on Sunday to begin their collaboration and training programs with the Iraqi government. Earlier this year, scientists at the Center of Environmental Radiation Studies received $948,000 in grants from the U.S. Department of State and $363,500 from the United Kingdom to train Iraqis on how to dismantle nuclear facilities in a manner consistent with international standards. Ron Chesser, director for the Center of Environmental Radiation Studies, said the goal of this program is to assist the Iraqi government in several different ways. "They want to get back into international...

On May 22, researchers at Osaka University presented the first demonstration of cold fusion since an unsuccessful attempt in 1989 that has clouded the field to this day. To many people, cold fusion sounds too good to be true. The idea is that, by creating nuclear fusion at room temperature, researchers can generate a nearly unlimited source of power that uses water as fuel and produces almost zero waste. Essentially, cold fusion would make oil obsolete. However, many experts debate whether money should be spent on cold fusion research or applied to more realistic alternative energy solutions. For decades,...

Chinese environment authorities say they have found fifty hazardous sources of radiation since this month’s earthquake. Senior environment official, Wu Xiaoqing has said the situation is returning to normal after the discovery of thirty five of the radiation sources. The other fifteen had been also been pinpointed but not yet dealt with. He said none of the radiation was accidentally released from nuclear facilities. He said the fifteen unrecovered sources were mostly buried in rubble or in dangerously unstable buildings. The disaster area is home to China's chief nuclear weapons research lab in Mianyang, as well as several secretive atomic...

2008 Radiation Shield Technologies has been granted a new patent for Demron, the protective garment that shields users from alpha and beta radiation, gamma rays, x-rays, and other nuclear emissions. The flexible, cool, and lightweight suit provides all the protection of a lead apron with a new level of comfort, and without any dermal or inhalation risks. ..

By Judi McLeod Tuesday, March 25, 2008 In an effort to provide them a fair trial, the Canadian government is seeking a limited publication ban on the identities of the adults charged with belonging to the so-called “Toronto 18” group. The identity of the youth charged with belonging to a homegrown terror cell is already protected under the Young Criminal Justice Act. The trial for the youth gets underway in a Brampton court today. Almost unheard of since they were nabbed in a foiled undercover operation to kidnap and behead members of Parliament, among other things on June 2, 2006,...

Defense establishment officials reported on Sunday that Israel has recently purchased a new supply of "Logol" pills against nuclear radiation. The pills were first experimentally distributed in 2004 to residents of Arad and Yavneh in southern Israel, and were met with strong opposition from the mayors of these Negev towns. The initiative to repurchase the pills was reported by officials on Sunday as part of a visiting delegation of Knesset Members to the Soreq Nuclear Research Center, located southeast of Dimona. Advertisement However, the defense establishment is still mulling whether to redistribute the pills to residents of communities located near...

Radiation From Mobile Phones Changes Protein Expression In Living People, Study SuggestsA new study on effects of mobile phone radiation on human skin strengthens the results of the human cell line analyses: living tissue responds to mobile phone radiation. (Credit: iStockphoto/Luis Pedrosa) ScienceDaily (Feb. 25, 2008) — A new study completed by the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) on effects of mobile phone radiation on human skin strengthens the results of the human cell line analyses: living tissue responds to mobile phone radiation. Earlier studies have shown that mobile phone radiation (radiofrequency modulated electromagnetic fields; RF-EMF) alters protein...

With the Starship Enterprise seemingly doomed after losing warp power, Mr. Spock exposes himself to lethal radiation in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. After repairing the engines and saving the day, Spock dies. Evidently, the movie's writers didn't think scientists would find a drug to cure radiation poisoning by the late 23rd century. Yet local scientists may be on the verge of doing just that more than two centuries before the setting of the Star Trek film. Rice University's Jim Tour and his colleagues at two Houston health institutions have found a drug that, when given to mice...

The superhero power to see through walls will soon be within the grasp of ordinary mortals, thanks to a new hand-held X-ray scanner. Inventors hope the gadget could revolutionise police work and Customs searches by allowing officers to seek out contraband, weapons, bombs or hidden people. The LEXID device sends out low-level X-rays which are collected in a lens based on the design of a lobster's eye. Rick Shie, senior vice-president of its American inventors, Physical Optics Corporation, said that lobsters' eyes, which are able to see in deep, murky water, use thousands of tiny squares to focus by reflection...

Rockwall man boasts of nuclear reactor, but no arrest made Thursday, January 10, 2008 By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News A 22-year-old Rockwall man's Internet boasts that he had made a mini-nuclear reactor in his garage resulted in a visit recently by federal authorities. Representatives with the FBI and the Texas Department of State Health Services' Radiation Control Program took away the man's science equipment on Friday – but not because he was doing anything dangerous or illegal. Rather, the man's parents, with whom he is living, asked that the equipment be removed, officials said. The man, who...

A mounting number of studies are coming to some surprising conclusions about the dangers of nuclear radiation. It might not be as deadly as is widely believed.

A number of studies conducted at the sites of some of the worst radiation incidents in history have concluded that the danger from radiation isn't as great as was previously believed. Deaths from radiation incidents including the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in WW2 and Russian nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl were in the hundreds, not tens of thousands. The risk of genetic deformity was also lower than expected.

Researchers at Eureka Aerospace are turning a fictional concept from the movie 2 Fast 2 Furious into reality: they're creating an electromagnetic system that can quickly bring a vehicle to a stop. The system, which can be attached to an automobile or aircraft carrier, sends out pulses of microwave radiation to disable the microprocessors that control the central engine functions in a car. Such a device could be used by law enforcement to stop fleeing and noncooperative vehicles at security checkpoints, or as perimeter protection for military bases, communication centers, and oil platforms in the open seas. The system has...

The Trojan Twinkie caper BY DAVE BARRY I'll tell you when I start to worry. I start to worry when ''officials'' tell me not to worry. This is why I am very concerned about the following Associated Press report, which was sent to me by a number of alert readers: 'RICHLAND, WASH. -- Radioactive ants, flies and gnats have been found at the Hanford nuclear complex, bringing to mind those Cold-War-era `B' horror movies in which giant mutant insects are the awful price paid for mankind's entry into the Atomic Age. Officials at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site insist...

A new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office charges that the Department of Homeland Security used biased methods to enhance performance results in tests on a new generation of radiation detectors meant to protect U.S. ports. At stake are $1.2 billion in contracts to produce advanced spectroscopic portal (ASP) monitors and thousands of lives should they fail to work. Experts from four national laboratories were consulted prior to publication of the report (PDF) by the GAO, the nonpartisan audit and investigative arm of Congress, which was released yesterday. The agency found that the DHS' Domestic Nuclear Detection Office "used...

SANTA ANA, Calif. — The ACLU and Muslim advocacy groups sued the FBI and the Justice Department on Tuesday, alleging that authorities failed to turn over records detailing suspected surveillance of the Muslim-American community. The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, alleges that the FBI has turned over only four pages of documents to community leaders, despite a Freedom of Information Act request filed more than a year ago. The request sought records that described FBI guidelines and policies for surveillance and investigation of Muslim religious organizations, as well as specific information about FBI inquiries targeting 11...

VIENNA — Pierre Lagoda pulled a small container from his pocket and spilled the contents onto his desk. Four tiny dice rolled to a stop. “That’s what nature does,� Dr. Lagoda said. The random results of the dice, he explained, illustrate how spontaneous mutations create the genetic diversity that drives evolution and selective breeding. He rolled the dice again. This time, he was mimicking what he and his colleagues have been doing quietly around the globe for more than a half-century — using radiation to scramble the genetic material in crops, a process that has produced valuable mutants like red...

The subject of a book titled "The Radioactive Boy Scout" waived his preliminary larceny hearing Monday after he was charged with stealing 16 smoke detectors from Green Valley Apartments in Clinton Township. The larceny case against him will automatically go to circuit court and that hearing is set for September 27. Investigators said David Hahn, 31, was arrested in connection with stealing a smoke detector from his apartment complex. Others were found in his apartment. Hahn had tried to build a nuclear reactor in a shed as a teenager. A Harper's Magazine article reported he was trying to produce energy...

Breaking story

DETROIT — A man who became the subject of a book called "The Radioactive Boy Scout" after trying to build a nuclear reactor in a shed as a teenager has been charged with stealing 16 smoke detectors. Police say it was a possible effort to experiment with radioactive materials. David Hahn, 31, was being held Friday on a $5,000 bond in the Macomb County Jail after he was arraigned Thursday on felony larceny charges. Clinton Township police Capt. Richard Maierle said Hahn denied the charges. A district court clerk on Friday said Hahn did not have an attorney. The Associated...

Concerns circulating Hawaii County about possible depleted uranium at Pohakuloa Training Area on Mauna Kea are likely the reason Big Island residents have taken to purchasing radiation monitors, a Department of Health official says. But a lack of training in how to use the monitors, as well as the use of older models and uncalibrated machines, is leading to weekly calls to the department and a false alarm, like one Sunday in the Kona District, said Noise, Radiation and Indoor Air Quality Branch Program Manager Russell Takata. "It was an unnecessary alarm," Takata said of the incident, which he learned...

Reassurance about the public's safety is coming from the U-S Nuclear Regulatory Commission following word of the release of a small amount of radiation when the Oyster Creek Nuclear power plant in Ocean County was shut down this week. N-R-C spokesman Neil Sheehan says a Senior Health Physicist was on hand at the time the reactor was being vented releasing a weak radioisotopeTritium. He says "the Physicist looked at the plant's data on what was emitted and is very confident that this didn't represent any sort of threat to members of the public." Oyster Creek's parent company AmerGen, a subsidiary...

Almost 900 Canadian military personnel were exposed to radiation from nuclear weapons tests during the Cold War as well as two serious reactor accidents in Chalk River, Ont. during the 1950s, according to a report produced for Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor. The January 2007 report, obtained by the Ottawa Citizen, is the first time the full extent of the involvement of Canadian military personnel in U.S. and British nuclear weapons testing has been documented. In all, 689 Canadians were exposed to radiation from the detonation of U.S. and British atomic weapons, the 292-page report concludes. In addition, another 191 servicemen...

Scientists from a Norwegian environmental group say they have obtained a leaked report by the Russian government's highest nuclear authority warning of imminent risk of explosion in the enormous tanks holding discarded submarine fuel rods at its Andreeva Bay facility on the Arctic Ocean. According to the Rosatom report, obtained by researchers at Bellona, an environmental group that has monitored the Russian site near the year-around ice-free naval port of Murmansk for evidence of leakage from radioactive wastes, three large cement tanks, built to house used fuel rods that began leaking in 1982, have begun to deteriorate due to cold...

If nothing else, this should worry smokers: the radiation dose from radium and polonium found naturally in tobacco can be a thousand times more than that from the caesium-137 taken up by the leaves from the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Constantin Papastefanou from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece measured radioactivity in tobacco leaves from across the country and calculated the average radiation dose that would be received by people smoking 30 cigarettes a day. He found that the dose from natural radionuclides was 251 microsieverts a year, compared with 0.199 from Chernobyl fallout in the leaves (Radiation Protection Dosimetry,...

Scientists have long assumed that fungi exist mainly to decompose matter into chemicals that other organisms can then use. But researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found evidence that fungi possess a previously undiscovered talent with profound implications: the ability to use radioactivity as an energy source for making food and spurring their growth. "The fungal kingdom comprises more species than any other plant or animal kingdom, so finding that they're making food in addition to breaking it down means that Earth's energetics-in particular, the amount of radiation energy being converted to biological energy-may...

f you thought donning tin foil caps was excessive, Isabodywear is out to make those contraptions looks mighty mild. While the debate about just how dangerous (or not) cellphone radiation is still rages on, there's certainly a paranoid sect that will snap up anything that claims to "protect them," and this Swiss garb maker is latching onto said opportunity. The briefs are purportedly constructed with threads made of silver, which the company claims will fend off harmful cellphone radiation; moreover, in an effort to really prove just how effective these undergarments are, it suggests that phone calls originated within the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Only a fraction of patients with hard-to-treat lymphoma ever try two breakthrough "smart-bomb" drugs that bring radiation straight to cancerous cells - with just two shots a week apart, not the usual months of care. The marketing failure has a manufacturer trying to sell off one of the drugs, and increasingly frustrated specialists worry it will jeopardize attempts to expand this promising new field to fight other cancers, too. [SNIP] The issue: Despite research showing they work well, fewer than 10 percent of lymphoma patients who are candidates for Zevalin and Bexxar ever use them, says Dr....

...in the last six months, agents along the Southwest border caught 15 people from Iran, 35 from Pakistan, 12 from Jordan, two from Syria and five from Lebanon. These are numbers Homeland Security would not officially release. “We’re more aware, not only of terrorists, but terrorist weapons,” said Gustafson. Agents who patrol the coastline have radiation detection equipment and try to at least eyeball every incoming boat. “The busiest time is the fishing months, when there’s a lot of boat traffic. Everyone has got a boat out here; they try to blend in with the regular traffic,” said Gustafson. Potential...

With radiating waves, a skull and crossbones and a running person, a new ionizing radiation warning symbol is being introduced to supplement the traditional international symbol for radiation, the three cornered trefoil. The new symbol is being launched today by the IAEA and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to help reduce needless deaths and serious injuries from accidental exposure to large radioactive sources. It will serve as a supplementary warning to the trefoil, which has no intuitive meaning and little recognition beyond those educated in its significance. "I believe the international recognition of the specific expertise of both organizations...

ST. GEORGE, Utah -- When the baby boomers of St. George were children, radioactive ash from nuclear test explosions in Nevada regularly drifted toward the red bluffs of their town and fell like snow. They played in it and wrote their names in it on car windows. The federal government reassured the townspeople they were in no danger as it detonated 952 bombs in Nevada over four decades. But thousands of people who lived downwind of the test site got radiation-related cancer, and the town of 50,000 has its own cancer-treatment center today.

Close window Published online: 10 January 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070108-6 Canned nuclear waste cooks its containerEstimates of radiation damage to materials have been too low.Philip Ball The atomic order of a ceramic is muddled into a glassy mess by radiation. Storing high-level nuclear waste without any leakage over thousands of years may be harder than experts have thought, research published in Nature today shows. Ian Farnan of Cambridge University, UK, and his co-workers have found that the radiation emitted from such waste could transform one candidate storage material into less durable glass after just 1,400 years — much more quickly...

Caption: Fig. 1: Image of the mass distribution over a patch of sky about one quarter of the area of the Full Moon. These images were made by PhD student Stefan Hilbert using the Millennium Simulation, the largest computer simulation of cosmic structure formation ever carried out. The left panel represents the kind of image which could be made by a low-frequency radio telescope with a diameter of 100 kilometres, using the gravitational distortion of images of pregalactic structure in the neutral hydrogen distribution. The right panel represents the kind of image which could be made for the same region...

RUSSIAN prosecutors investigating the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, the former spy who defected to Britain, want to travel to London to question a billionaire Russian exile and a Chechen associate. The move is likely to further strain relations between Russia and Britain, which have been undermined by allegations that the FSB, the former KGB, might be involved in the killing. [...] The Russian investigators' targets are Boris Berezovsky, the London-based billionaire businessman who employed Litvinenko and is a long-time critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Akhmed Zakayev, a Chechen exile the Russians want to extradite on charges of terrorism,...

<p>MILWAUKEE — Someone hung a mannequin from the top of a 1,200-foot television tower and authorities said Saturday that the culprit may now have radiation poisoning.</p> <p>Police were called to a tower of WDJT-TV in Milwaukee at about 9:30 a.m. Saturday, department spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz said in a news release.</p>

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Dmitry Kovtun, a contact of dead Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, is in critical condition in hospital from radiation poisoning, Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying on Thursday. "Doctors have classified Kovtun's condition as critical," Interfax quoted its source as saying. Kovtun met Litvinenko in London on November 1, the day the former spy fell ill. Interfax also reported that Kovtun fell into a coma after British and Russian investigators working on the Litvinenko case had finished questioning him in a Moscow hospital. However, it gave no source for the information on a coma. A...

British investigators are now treating the poisoning death of former Federal Security Service agent Alexander Litvinenko as murder. "It is important to stress that we have reached no conclusions as to the means employed, the motive or the identity of those who might be responsible for Mr. Litvinenko's death," Scotland Yard said in a statement.

Radiation test at Moscow embassy By Ben Fenton, Duncan Gardham and John Steele Last Updated: 2:53am GMT 05/12/2006 The British Embassy in Moscow is to be checked for radiation, it emerged last night, as police flew out to Russia to question potential witnesses to the killing of Alexander Litvinenko. Russian visitors to Britain need a visa and would have to visit the embassy to receive one but the checks come amid growing tension between the two countries. In Britain, investigators searching for the killer of the former Russian spy turned their attention to two more hotels and an office block...

Test results on Mario Scaramella, the man feared to be the second victim of a Russian hit squad widely blamed for the death of spy Alexander Litvinenko, shows no sign of radiation poisoning. The Italian academic who met the ex-KGB man on the day he was allegedly poisoned, was admitted to hospital on Friday having tested positive for a "significant" quantity of the radioactive substance. Health chiefs confirmed on Friday night that Mr Scaramella had traces of deadly polonium 210, which is believed to have killed Mr Litvinenko, in his body. But doctors at London's University College Hospital have said...

British Airways is trying to contact all 33,000 passengers who may have been exposed to radioactive traces that were found on two of its planes. Thousands of BA passengers were caught in the radiation scare last night after traces of a substance, thought to be the same that killed the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, were found on the planes. A spokesman for the airline said that, so far, 2,500 of the 33,000 passengers who are believed to have flown on 221 flights across Europe since the traces were found have called in to BA's dedicated helpline. The Government grounded...

Breaking News Mario Scaramella Radiation Hits Second Man Updated: 14:53, Friday December 01, 2006 A contact of an ex-Russian spy who died after ingesting a radioactive toxin has the same substance in his body, Sky News has learnt. Italian academic Mario Scaramella tested positive for isotope Polonium-210. He had met Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko at a sushi restaurant in London, shortly before he fell ill. Sky's Martin Brunt said Mr Scaramella had not shown the same symptoms as Mr Litvinenko, who suffered vomiting and loss of hair before he died.

LONDON, Nov. 29 — The case of the poisoned former K.G.B. agent took a bizarre twist when British Airways said that traces of radiation had been detected Wednesday on jets that flew between London and Moscow, establishing a possible Russian link and indicating that more than 30,000 people might have been exposed to the radiation. The airline said tests had found “very low traces” of radioactivity so far on two of three Boeing 767s, which were singled out because the police suspected that passengers included people linked to the investigation. At least one of the planes flew between London and...

Aircraft tested in spy death caseTwo BA planes at Heathrow Airport are being tested in the wake of the death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, the Home Office said. Plans were also being made to examine a third plane in Moscow, they added. Traces of radioactive polonium-210 were discovered in Mr Litvinenko's body, when he died in London last week. Initial results of the forensic tests showed very low traces of a radioactive substance onboard two of the three aircraft, said British Airways.

More radiation found in spy case Mr Litvinenko was a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin Traces of polonium-210 radiation have been found at two more central London addresses, police probing ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko's death say. One address, in Down Street, reportedly houses the offices of his friend, exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky. The other location, in Grosvenor Street, is the headquarters of security and risk management company Erinys. Traces of the substance have already been found at a sushi restaurant, hotel and Mr Litvinenko's north London home. Three people who have either been to the venues or had...

As the deadliest poison known to man was revealed to have killed Russian exile Alexander Litvinenko, the question last night was: How many more lives could it claim? The 43-year-old former KGB officer was the victim of polonium 210, a radioactive element used as a trigger in nuclear weapons. It is so powerful that a lethal dose can be passed on through the body in sweat or saliva. So his widow Marina, 44, and ten-year-old son Anatole could have been contaminated just by kissing him as he fought for life in hospital. They are said to be at greatest risk....

Just a headline, as of 10AM.

LONDON (Reuters) - Police investigating the death of a former Russian spy from suspected radiation poisoning have found levels of radiation in a London sushi bar where he ate just before he became sick, health officials said on Friday. "The police reported that they had found some radiation there (in the Sushi bar). We are assessing the level of that and the potential risk to people that might cause," Pat Troop, head of the independent Health Protection Agency, told the BBC.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (CNN) -- About 500 people were evacuated from the New Mexico State Fairgrounds Expo as a precaution Saturday evening after low levels of radiation were detected, police said. A Geiger counter registered the presence of radiation after two objects were discovered at the 236-acre fairgrounds in the heart of Albuquerque, said Lt. Juan Martinez, a spokesman for New Mexico state police.