AN INVESTIGATION into radioactive contamination at Manchester University must be carried out with urgency and has to come up with answers, a top lawyer said today.
Liz Graham, who represents the widow of Dr Hugh Wagner, one of two lecturers whose deaths is now being linked to groundbreaking nuclear physics experiments there a century ago, says the emphasis has to be on a comprehensive fact-finding inquiry.
A study has been launched in Switzerland to investigate whether children living near nuclear reactors have a higher risk of cancer.
The study - Childhood Cancer and Nuclear Power Plants in Switzerland - follows an analysis by German scientists last year that found a possible link between higher rates of leukaemia in children who live near nuclear power plants.
The wild mushrooms tested in various parts of Finland still exhibit elevated levels of the radioactive caesium-137 that originates from the Chernobyl accident in 1986, while the caesium content of berries and animals has already become almost zero.
In addition to mushrooms, some hares and the predatory fish in small lakes still contain radioactive caesium.
VIENNA, Aug 4 (Reuters) - A small amount of plutonium leaked in an ageing International Atomic Energy Agency laboratory outside Vienna but radioactive contamination was contained to a storage area and no one was injured, the U.N. watchdog said. Last year the IAEA director warned that its main analytical lab built in 1970 was outmoded and no longer met U.N. safety standards, and he called for 27.2 million euros ($42.4 milion) in extra funding from member states to modernise it.
Irish people are exposed to higher levels of radiation than previously thought, with the latest figures from the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII) showing nine per cent greater exposure than had been recorded.
The most comprehensive study ever undertaken by the RPII has found that Irish exposure to radiation is more than one third higher than the international average and that the cancer causing gas radon is the primary source of radiation exposure in Ireland.
PARIS (AFP) — French environmentalists sounded the alarm Thursday after the third incident this month at a nuclear plant left 100 employees contaminated.
"This new incident shows that nuclear energy, which is presented as clean and safe, remains a dangerous, polluting and poorly controlled energy," a spokesman for environmental group Greenpeace told AFP.
July 25 (Bloomberg) -- Hale Oguz blames the cancer deaths of six relatives on the Chernobyl disaster across the Black Sea more than 20 years ago. Now she's fighting plans for a nuclear plant near her home in Sinop on Turkey's northern coast.
''Chernobyl isn't history for us; it's very fresh,'' said Oguz, 54, as she walked her two dogs on a ridge overlooking the forested peninsula where the government plans a reactor. ''We are about to turn this paradise into a hell.''
PARIS (Reuters) - Around 100 staff at a nuclear power plant in southern France were contaminated with a low dose of radiation on Wednesday, power firm EDF said, the latest incident there after a case of uranium spillage two weeks ago.
EDF said in a statement that sensors detected a rise in the level of radiation while maintenance work was being carried out at the Tricastin site's reactor number four, which had been shut since July 12.
PARIS (AP) — Electricite de France says 15 workers were exposed to radioactive contamination while carrying out maintenance at a nuclear plant in the French Alps.
France's nuclear industry is under increased scrutiny following uranium leaks earlier this month. France depends on nuclear power for the majority of its electricity.
Robot submarines are to be used to sweep particles of plutonium and other radioactive materials from the seabed near one of Britain's biggest nuclear plants in one of the most delicate clean-up operations ever in this country.
Each submersible will be fitted with a Geiger counter and will crisscross the sea floor to pinpoint every deadly speck close to Dounreay on Scotland's north coast before lifting each particle and returning it to land for safe storage.
