IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Bomb detonation has been delayed at Nevada Test Site

The National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) announced on May 26 that the 700-ton conventional bomb detonation (known as the “bunker buster”) originally set to explode on June 2 in Nevada, has been delayed, though for how long is unclear. The bunker buster is feared by citizen groups to be an ominous precursor to an actual attack planned for Iran and North Korea by the Bush Administration.

One of the major reasons for the delay is that the NNSA needs more time to assess whether the explosion would stir up radioactive dust at the Nuclear Test Site area, left from the ’50s and ’60s.

The planned explosion would be the biggest open-air chemical blast ever at the test site, which is located about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The tribe at the Western Shoshone Native American reservation has been in conflict with the government over the explosion, which would detonate 700 tons of heavy ammonium nitrate-fuel oil emulsion—creating a blast equivalent to 593 tons of TNT—in a 36-foot-deep hole near a tunnel in the center of the site.
www.worldwidewamm.org

France can
phase out nukes,
says new report

A new report, “Low-Carbon Diet without Nukes” in France, examines the feasibility of phasing out nuclear power in France while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 40 percent in the next few decades.

Pro-nuclear advocates often point to France while touting nuclear power, because nukes provide almost 80 percent of French electricity generation, and that energy source use has been linked to relatively low greenhouse gas emissions. According to a report by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), France could eliminate the use of nuclear energy without increasing carbon dioxide emissions and without making lifestyle or economic sacrifices.

“The nuclear industry has presented itself as part of the solution to global warming,” said Annie Makhijani, a co-author of the IEER report. “But nuclear power creates serious long-term security issues in the form of risks of proliferation, severe nuclear accidents and vulnerability to terrorism.” Official studies of the use of plutonium as a fuel in 20 French nuclear reactors indicate that nuclear power gets about $1 billion per year in subsidies—a sum not invested in wind energy until recently.

The report sets out two scenarios which the group says would allow France to phase out nuclear power over a period of 30 to 40 years.
www.ieer.org