By Will Stewart in Moscow
Last Updated: 2:24am GMT 04/01/2008
Russia has admitted that customs officials thwarted more than 120 attempts to smuggle "highly radioactive" material out of the country last year.
The disclosure is likely to fuel concern about how many illegal exports were not halted. It will also lead to new fears that Moscow has failed to stop material becoming available on the black market that could be used by terrorists to make radioactive "dirty" bombs.
The Associated Press
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
LUSAKA, Zambia: Resurgent global interest in nuclear power has made Zambia, a southern African nation better known for its vast copper reserves, into a hotbed of uranium exploration.
The activity is part of a larger wave of uranium exploration and mining across the mineral-rich region, raising hopes of new jobs and tax revenue, while sparking debates over safety and security.
WASHINGTON (AP) The United States tentatively has agreed to allow limited imports of uranium from Russia, suspending an antidumping investigation that has been in place for decades, according to a filing by the Commerce Department.
The imports, beginning in 2011, would be limited by yearly quotas.
The capture of nuclear materials in Slovakia last week raises security questions about borderless travel.
By Michael J. Jordan | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, Bratislava, Slovakia
The {{post id="uranium-could-have-made-dirty-bomb" text="capture of over a pound of powderized uranium" target="_self"}} in Slovakia last week has served as a sharp reminder to Europe, though nuclear experts have cast doubt on the assertion by local law-enforcement officials that terrorists could have used it for a "dirty bomb."
By Russell Hotten
Daily Telegraph 04 December 2007
Russia has created a vast state-run company that brings together organisations and agencies involved in the country's civil and military nuclear sector, with the aim of overseeing billions of pounds of investment in new power stations and pitching for contracts abroad.
Sun, Dec 02, 2007 - Prospectors have been banned from mining the hills of Donegal (Ireland) for the nuclear fuel uranium, it emerged today.
The Minister for Natural Resources Eamon Ryan refused to grant exploration licences to two companies with their eyes set on some of the county's most wild and scenic areas.
The Green Party TD said he declined the recent applications as part of a wider stance against nuclear power in Ireland and in the UK.
The French-owned company Areva Resources Finland Ltd has applied for a claim to mine uranium in the municipality of Ylitornio (and Rovaniemi) in south-western Lapland Province.
By Isabel Gorst in Almaty
Kazakhstan has agreed to share its uranium resources with China in exchange for equity in Chinese nuclear power facilities in a strategic deal that brings together the world's fastest growing uranium and nuclear electricity producers.
Moukhtar Dzhakishev, the president of Kazatomprom, Kazakhstan's state-owned nuclear power company, said: "We will swap shares in uranium production for shares in Chinese atomic facilities... This is the first time China has allowed any foreign company to become a shareholder in its atomic power industry enterprises."
DAKAR, 10 October 2007 (IRIN) - As the global demand for nuclear energy rises, analysts say the large amount of uranium in Niger is not a benefit to the country’s people but adds to the serious problems facing the region.
Niger, an impoverished country on the southern fringe of the Sahara desert, has one of the world’s largest reserves of uranium, the main source of nuclear fuel - but virtually nothing to show for it.
While Hungarian citizens are getting more conscious about environmental issues and more interested in companies’ environmental record, an environmentally responsible image often remains an empty PR exercise, said Greenpeace spokesperson Szabina Mózes. “It looks interesting when we see an advertisement in which the Paks Nuclear Plant Zrt is photographed in a beautiful green environment, saying that this is ‘The energy of the future,’ but it’s hardly believable that nuclear energy is a clean solution.” Paks Nuclear Power Plant Zrt has also sponsored radio programs dedicated to environmental issues; positive action to be sure, Mózes opined, but such activities do not make nuclear energy environmentally friendly, nor do people believe they do. Mózes went on to say that such PR efforts may even result in a growing skepticism of consumers who have already learned not to believe in advertising.
