Give to the Max day is coming and Beyond Nuclear is a part of it!

Wednesday, November 9 is a 24-hour fundraising day for non-profits in the greater Washington, DC area and Beyond Nuclear is participating.  Give to the Max Day is your chance not only to give to Beyond Nuclear, but to ask your friends and colleagues to give, too. There will be prizes for the most donors - even for small non-profits. Help us to win! We've set a $3,000 target for the day. Please help us beat it!

Here's the website - http://give2max.razoo.com/story/Beyondnuclear-Give but you can ONLY give on November 9th. We'll be posting reminders!

Plutonium in space? A deadly possibility

THE WRONG STUFF: PLUTONIUM IN FLORIDA’S SKIES: Join award-winning investigative reporter Karl Grossman for “The Wrong Stuff: Plutonium in Florida’s Skies,” an exposé of NASA’s dangerous plans to launch the Curiosity space probe from Cape Canaveral with 10.56 pounds of deadly radioactive plutonium-238 dioxide aboard.  The launch could take place as early as November 25. 

Grossman will speak on Saturday, November 5th at 1:00 PM at 525 Kumquat Court in Sarasota.  At 2:00 PM on Sunday, November 6  he will speak at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 2470 Nursery Road in Clearwater, Florida.  Drawing on NASA’s own documents and decades of his own reporting on the nuclear industry, he will examine dangers of the planned launch, NASA’s history of plutonium accidents, and how citizens can act to keep our skies nuclear-free. 

Contact NASA today at http://www.nasa.gov/centers/hq/about/contact_us.html or call (202) 358-0001 and let them know that until they can launch spacecraft without nuclear materials aboard, they should not launch at all.  And call the White House at (202) 456-1111 and tell President Obama that Curiosity should stay safely on the ground until it can be launched without threatening us and future generations.

In Sarasota, Karl Grossman is sponsored by WSLR 96.5 LPFM Community Radio and Pax Christi Tampa Bay.  His Clearwater talk is sponsored by WMNF 88.5 FM Community Radio, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Clearwater, and Pax Christi Tampa Bay.  For more information, call (727) 796-6539.

Update on November 10, 2011 by admin

As but the latest example of spacecraft containing radioactive and toxic substances on board putting our planet and its inhabitants at risk, the New York Times reports that "Russians Fight to Save Mars Probe After Mishap." The Russian Mars probe "Phobos-Grunt" carries "highly corrosive and toxic" hydrazine as a fuel, as well as a "small amount of radioactive cobalt used in one of its instruments." Hydrazine, by the way, is also used at nuclear power plants, and is sometimes discharged from cooling tower systems into the environment.

Fukushima-Daiichi Unit 2 may still be critical

"Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) pumped water mixed with boric acid into the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant early on Nov. 2 after finding traces of xenon, a radioactive gas that might indicate nuclear fission has taken place.

Officials of the company said that some parts of the reactor may have reached criticality, a state of self-sustaining nuclear fission. Fuel believed to have melted in the accident triggered by the March 11 earthquake may have caused the fission. The boric acid was pumped into the reactor to suppress the reactions.

Radiation levels near the Fukushima plant have not shown any unusual surge, but the latest development may hinder plans by the central government to bring the Fukushima nuclear accident under control by the end of the year." Asahi Shimbun

Update on November 2, 2011 by admin

The New York Times has also reported on this story.

Mr. Burns tries to sabotage Beyond Nuclear "I Have A Scream" rally

Update on November 1, 2011 by admin

Beyond Nuclear also prepared 2 page and 4 page fact sheets on radioactive waste risks that were handed out -- along with "Atomic Fire Balls" representing radioactive waste -- at the "I Have a Scream!" rally at DOE HQ on Halloween. The new fact sheets update and summarize a 15 page article entitled "Radioactive Wreck: The Unfolding Disasters of U.S. Irradiated Nuclear Fuel Policies" written by Kevin Kamps for the NIRS/WISE Nuclear Monitor more than five years ago. 

Update on November 1, 2011 by admin

And, from The Grist: "Fishermen trawling a nuclear-plant-fed reservoir in Córdoba, Argentina have caught a three-eyed wolf fish. Like everyone else who's writing about this story, I'm illustrating this post with a picture of Blinky, the nuclear fish from The Simpsons, because the real fish is super ugly. 

They don't know for sure yet whether the fish's mutation is related to radiation from the power plant. (You'd sorta think it would be, huh? But we believe in the scientific process here.) After all, animals sometimes have truly weird mutations that have nothing to do with humans at all, let alone humans playing around with potentially dangerous energy sources. But the fact that Blinky has long been a tongue-in-cheek shorthand for radiation-based mutation makes it hard to read this as a story about a random physical oddity, and not one about Mr. Burns-style environmental indifference."

Boehner hypocrisy on loan guarantees

Update on November 3, 2011 by admin

Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear appeared on the Thom Hartmann Show, blasting U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (Republican-Ohio) for advocating for a nuclear loan guarantee in Ohio, while supposedly being against the energy loan guarantee program in the first place, based on fiscal conservative and free market principles. Boehner supports federal taxpayer backed nuclear loan guarantees for a uranium enrichment facility proposed by U.S. Enrichment Corporation at Portsmouth, Ohio. Kevin also gave updates on the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, and shield building cracks and the history of near-disasters at Davis-Besse atomic reactor near Toledo.