The potential release of Strontium 90 into the air would kill countless people. There have been little buried reports coming from Tennessee indicating potential nuke disasters.

This one from "Truthout" just today: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070607L.shtml Just as steps have been taken to prevent Divine Strake, led by the Western Shoshone (you can google this blog for info), it time for people to start activising about the end of the 30 year moratorium on power plant construction. It could be we have very little time to lose This MUST be cover up here are too many tags to list them all .. hmmmm.

Secrecy Shrouds Accident at Nuclear Plant

By Matthew L. Wald
The New York Times

Thursday 05 July 2007

Washington - A factory that makes uranium fuel for nuclear reactors had a
spill so bad that it kept the plant closed for seven months last year and
became one of only three incidents in all of 2006 serious enough for the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission to include in an annual report to Congress.
After an investigation, the commission changed the terms of the factory's
license and said that the public had 20 days to request a hearing on the
changes.

But no member of the public ever did. In fact, no member of the public could
find out about the changes. The document describing them, including the
notice of hearing rights for anyone who felt adversely affected, was stamped
"official use only," meaning that it was not publicly accessible. "Official
use only" is a category below "Secret" and, while documents in that category
are not technically classified, they are kept from the public.

The agency would not even have told Congress which factory was involved were
it not for the efforts of one of the five commissioners, Gregory B. Jaczko,
who named the company, Nuclear Fuel Services, of Erwin, Tenn., in a memo
said that the designation as "official use only" was now under review. [What does this mean . that profitability and investment was at RISK here ..? and those considerations mean more than human lives ...?]
As laid out by the commission's report to Congress and other sources, the
event at the Nuclear Fuel Service factory was discovered when a supervisor
saw a yellow liquid dribbling under a door and into a hallway. Workers had
previously described a yellow liquid in a "glove box," a sealed container
with gloves built into the sides to allow a technician to manipulate objects
inside, but managers had decided that it was ordinary uranium.

In fact, it was highly enriched uranium that had been declared surplus from
the weapons inventory of the Energy Department and sent to the plant to be
diluted to a strength appropriate for a civilian reactor. The factory is
under contract to prepare such uranium for the Tennessee Valley Authority.

In a puddle, the uranium is not particularly hazardous, but if it formed a
more spherical shape, according to the commission, it could become a
"critical mass," a quantity of nuclear fuel sufficient to sustain a chain
reaction, in this case outside a reactor. According to the letter sent by
the lawmakers, the puddle, containing about nine gallons, reached to within
four feet of an elevator pit. The letter from the congressmen says the agency's report suggests "that it was merely a matter of luck that a criticality accident did not occur."

If the material had gone critical, "it is likely that at least one worker
would have received an exposure high enough to cause acute health effects or
death," the commission said. A spokesman for the company, Tony Treadway,
said the elevator was better described as a dumbwaiter, meaning it was far
smaller than a passenger elevator.

Almost anywhere else, the commission would have disclosed the details. But
in 2004, according to the committee's letter, the Office of Naval Reactors, part of the Energy Department, reached an agreement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that any correspondence with Nuclear Fuel Serviceswould be marked "official use only." The plant processes high-enricheduranium for Navy submarine propulsion reactors Regulatory Commission that any correspondence with Nuclear Fuel Services would be marked "official use only." The plant processes high-enriched uranium for Navy submarine propulsion reactors.

The memorandum that declared such correspondence to be "official use only"
was itself designated "official use only."



nuclear accidents, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Tennessee, Energy Deepartment, action calls