Some other stories from the nuclear industry you may have missed:

The Age: Bomb survivors seek end to nuclear arms
Ikeda Michiaki closes his eyes and clenches his fist as he remembers the darkness that descended upon Nagasaki after an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city in 1945. Mr Michiaki was in Sydney with other Hibakusha - or atomic bomb survivors - on a stop-off as part of a three-month global sea voyage to share their experiences and oppose nuclear weapons. Western Australian Greens senator Scott Ludlam, who travelled with the survivors for five days, said the government needed to remove any mention of nuclear weapons from its security policy. "We still have nuclear weapons embedded in our security policy. We lie under the United States' nuclear umbrella," Mr Ludlam told reporters.

The Advertiser: Maralinga nuke tests - Brits 'dumped n-waste at sea'
NUCLEAR waste ordered to be removed from the South Australian desert after atomic tests in the 1950s may have been dumped at sea rather than shipped to the UK. It has been a mystery as to how much radioactive waste was at Maralinga following the tests and what the then reluctant British Government did with it. Declassified British government documents to be released publicly today under the 30-year rule reveal the final resting place of the plutonium that had littered the desert was probably the ocean floor. "The Ministry of Defence considers that, however carefully presented, a reference to disposal of plutonium at sea could provoke opposition, eg from the Greenpeace movement, to our sea dumping program," one confidential memo read by The Advertiser states.

Christian Science Monitor: Backyard reactors? Firms shrink the nukes.
Hundreds of miles from the nearest power plant, the roughly 700 residents of Galena, Alaska, depend on costly generator-supplied electricity for their homes. But now, they want to go nuclear. No, not a traditional hulking nuclear power plant. That would be far too big. Instead, town leaders have signed up for what some call a “pocket nuke” or “nuclear battery” that produces just 10 megawatts – about 1 percent of the energy an average nuclear plant generates. Japanese manufacturer Toshiba has told the town it will install its new “4S” (Super-safe, small, and simple) reactor free of charge by 2012.

World Nuclear News: Two more reactors under way in China
Work on two new nuclear power reactors was inaugurated on 26 December - just 11 days after a ceremony for the start of work on six other units. The latest units to officially enter the construction phase are at Fangjiashan, near the existing Qinshan nuclear power plant in Zhejiang province.

Bloomberg: North Korea Ties Nuclear Dismantling to Japan Oil, Kyodo Says
North Korea may stop dismantling its nuclear facilities unless Japan provides oil, Kyodo reported today, citing an unidentified official at the communist state’s embassy in Beijing.

WKBT: Feds: More Training Needed in Wisconsin for Nuclear Accidents
Wisconsin emergency officials want to spend nearly a million dollars to bolster training for nuclear accidents after responders made at least a half-dozen mistakes during training. The Federal Emergency Management Agency evaluated a training exercise at the Kewaunee nuclear power plant in December 2007. The agency's report documented a number of shortcomings, including volunteer field teams that didn't realize they had been exposed to too much radiation, inaccurate radiation readings and wrong information distributed to the public.

AP: Swiss nuclear smuggling suspect freed from prison
A Swiss man suspected of involvement in the world's biggest nuclear smuggling ring has been released from prison after more than four years of investigative detention, his family said Sunday. Urs Tinner, 43, was freed several days ago, his mother Hedwig Tinner told The Associated Press by telephone from eastern Switzerland. His brother Marco Tinner, 40, remains in detention while prosecutors appeal his release to the federal criminal court in Bellinzona, she said, refusing to comment further on the case. A public trial for the Tinners could prove uncomfortable to the Swiss government. According to court documents published in August, federal prosecutors believe the Tinner brothers were CIA informants and that U.S. pressure prompted the Swiss government to destroy some of the evidence in the case.

Japan Times: Japan - Three utilities to ship in MOX fuel in 2009
Three electric utilities are planning shipments of mixed oxide plutonium-uranium fuel from France sometime between January and March that would arrive by sea between April and June, according to sources.

Fair Home: Nuclear Powered Planes To Become A Reality?
Researchers at a Government funded project believe that nuclear powered planes may well be on their way to becoming a reality sooner rather than later. With the ever rising cost and decreasing availability of the petroleum needed to power conventional aircraft, as well concerns as the ecological damage they cause, governments and aerospace companies are searching for other sources of fuel for aircraft, and in nuclear fuel they seem to have ‘rediscovered’ one.