• Unassuming fungi lock depleted uranium out of harm's way

    Common fungi, found in most back gardens, could help clean up battlefields contaminated with depleted uranium

  • Next-generation nuclear fuel may be too hot to handle: report

    It sounded like a good idea: Enrich the uranium used to power nuclear reactors further so that operators will be able to extract more electricity from a given amount of fuel; trouble is, burn-up rates above a certain point would violate U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s safety standards unless new methods were devised for packaging the fuel

  • Iran accelerates march toward the bomb

    The Bush administration December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate asserted that Iran had “halted” its nuclear weapons plans; that assertion did not impress the Iranians, as their effort to acquire nuclear bombs, far from having been “halted,” is now accelerating

  • Cannister containing iridium 192 stolen in Japan

    Worries about a dirty bomb increase as a container containing 48.4 pounds of iridium 192 is stolen from an inspection company in Japan

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  • Regional nuclear war would create near-global ozone hole

    A limited nuclear weapons exchange between Pakistan and India using their current arsenals could create a near-global ozone hole, triggering human health problems and wreaking environmental havoc for at least a decade, according to a study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder

  • U.S. officials warn of Al-Qaeda's nuclear ambitions

    DHS, DOE, and intelligence officials tell Congress al-Qaeda is continuing its pursuit of a nuclear weapon; monitoring the progress of the organization in reaching this goal is difficult: “We must find something that is tactical in size but strategic in impact,” says one official

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  • Company profile: Radiation Watch

    Company’s products are versatile, offering performance over a wide dynamic range of measurement, from very low to very high values, in one instrument

  • Nuclear detectors in Washington state detect radioactive cat

    DHS has radiation monitors along Interstate 5 to make sure no radioactive material is being smuggled into the country; the monitors are so sensitive that they detected a sick cat in a car driving at 70 miles per hour (the cat was taken home after cancer radiation treatment at the vet)

  • Fear of dirty bomb threat as U.K. ships plutonium to France

    Sellafield had an ambitious, £473 million plan: Make new nuclear fuel out of mixture of plutonium and uranium oxides recovered from used fuel; the plan flopped, and the company had to turn to its chief competitor, French firm Cogema, to fulfill its orders for the fuel material; trouble is, shipping the material to France on an unarmed ferry is dangerous, as the material could easily be used to make a dirty bomb

  • Study of U.K. nuclear power plants employees reveals radiation risks

    More than 65,000 individuals were employed between 1946 and 2002 at nuclear power plants operated by British Nuclear Fuels plc and its predecessors; a team of researchers studied the health histories of these individuals, and found evidence for an association between mortality from noncancer causes of death, particularly circulatory system disease, and external exposure to ionizing radiation

  • TSA tests ferry radiation sniffer at Galveston

    Tests began last Thursday; equipment was able to find small amounts placed in TSA vehicles; each sniffer costs $150,000, and are sensitive enough to detect the radiation in someone who has been injected with radioactive dye for a medical procedure two weeks after the injection

  • Colombia: Seized FARC documents show group's interest in dirty bomb

    Colombian forces launched an incursion into Ecuador, killing a leading FARC figure and sixteen of his associates; Colombian government says seized documents show FARC’s interest in obtaining radioactive materials

  • New material can find a needle in a nuclear waste haystack

    Nuclear power has advantages, but it also comes with a big problem: Nuclear waste; making nuclear power viable long term requires discovering new solutions to radioactive waste disposal and other problems

  • Canberra shows Falcon 5000 portable radiation detector

    The company has more than four decades of experience in radiation measurements of all kinds; the Falcon 5000, a portable radionuclide identifier for first responders, determines whether there is a radiation source present, the location of that source, and which isotopes are emitting the radiation

  • Study: U.S. needs better ways to evaluate radiation detection systems

    Current radiation detectors placed at U.S. ports cost about $82,000 each and have a high false-alarm rate; DHS wants to buy 800 new detectors, at a cost of $360,000 each, but lawmakers and experts say that before this money is spent, there should be a better way to evaluate the effectiveness of the new systems