News tidbits

[MIannaccone@dhhs.state.nh.us]

WASHINGTON (AP)

- Dangerous radioactivity has been found in waterways flowing from a Russian nuclear
complex in Siberia at levels higher than would come from 10,000 commercial nuclear reactors, U.S. and Russian
nuclear watchdog groups said Wednesday. The groups reported evidence that pollution from the Siberian Chemical
Complex constitutes the largest nuclear river contamination anywhere in the world. They demanded an immediate
end to dumping of nuclear waste from the complex, site of secret nuclear weapons development during the Soviet
years and where an explosion spread radioactivity in 1993. The exact source of the radioactivity was not determined
during testing in August by environmentalists from the U.S. group and the Siberian Scientists for Global Responsibility,
he said. The Government Accountability Project is a nongovernmental legal and environmental group that watches the
nuclear industry and defends nuclear whistle-blowers. The Siberian group is a nongovernmental organization that monitors
nuclear pollution.


WASHINGTON (AP) - The Energy Department has wasted much of the $3.4 billion it has spent over the last decade on
developing new technology for cleaning up nuclear weapons waste, says a report of the House Commerce Committee's
Republican majority. The report, released Wednesday, said the DOE's Office of Science and Technology has "squandered
hundreds of millions of dollars on technologies that have not proved useful" in the massive cleanup effort. Congress created
the technology development program in 1989 in hopes that it would help the government deal with the environmental legacy
left from a half-century of nuclear bomb making. The cleanup and restoration is expected to cost almost $200 billion and take
more than 70 years to complete. The DOE called the science and technology development program essential to the
long-term cleanup effort and disputed claims that the program has not produced results.

Mario Iannaccone,
Health Physicist
miannacc@dhhs.state.nh.us

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