Mercury News: False fire alarm at Diablo Canyon nuclear plant
’SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif.-Operators of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant declared an emergency after a fire alarm was activated in the Unit 1 containment area at the Central Coast plant. Firefighters at the Pacific Gas & Electric plant quickly determined Tuesday's 1:22 a.m. activation was a false alarm. The "unusual event" declaration was concluded at 3:06 a.m. PG&E says plant managers are investigating the event.’

Centre Daily Times: DEP sues over nuclear cleanup
’Beginning nearly 50 years ago at a site near Karthaus, where Clearfield, Clinton and Centre counties come together, two companies leaked nuclear radiation into the largest wild area in the eastern United States, the Quehanna Wild Area. It took 40 years for the government to figure out how badly the place was contaminated, and another 10 years to clean up the sources of radiation. Now, more than $20 million in cleanup costs later, the state Department of Environmental Protection is suing the companies to get the money back.’

ISN: US-UAE Nuke Deal Questionable
’President Barack Obama has sent a cooperation agreement establishing the basis for US involvement in the nascent UAE energy reactor program to Congress, in a move likely to have significant repercussions. Obama could have rejected the "123 Agreement," which was signed by the outgoing Bush administration in January. However, to do so would have put the White House at loggerheads with an important ally at a time when US hegemony in the Gulf is under increasing pressure. The Emirates' ability to pay for turnkey reactors is particularly significant for US reactor fabricator General Electric in its intense competition with a French-backed consortium and Korea Electric Power Corp for the first reactor contracts. The French are pushing particularly hard for a role in the UAE program, with Areva, Total and Suez joined by EDF late last month in a revised two-reactor offer first submitted to the UAE in January 2008.’

Bloomberg: Uranium Price Slump May Hurt Supplies, Producers Say
’June 3 (Bloomberg) -- Uranium prices are probably too low to spur the development of new mines, leaving a potential shortfall in supply in the years ahead, Rio Tinto Group and Cameco Corp. officials said. Uranium prices peaked at $136 a pound in 2007 and have fallen as low as $40 this year, according to Roswell, Georgia- based Ux Consulting Co. Demand for uranium is expected to outstrip supply from next year through 2012, pushing prices up to $75 in 2011, Macquarie Group Ltd. estimates. "The market is relatively balanced and utilities are well covered, but if you go out several years there has got to be some concern about where supply is going to come from," George Assie, Cameco's senior vice-president of marketing and business development, said in an interview in Edinburgh on June 1.’

ISRIA: North Korea: U.S. Double Standards Policy on Nuclear Issue under Fire
’U.S. President Obama declared in the Czech Republic in last April that the United States would take the lead in making a "nuclear arms reduction" and "bringing about a world without nuclear weapons." During his trip to France made later he uttered he would pursue the goal of "working toward a world without nuclear weapons." But when he was meeting former Japanese Prime Minister Abe, Obama claimed that the U.S. "nuclear disarmament should not be a hurdle in providing a nuclear umbrella to its allies." The U.S. unreasonably brands the DPRK, Iran and other countries incurring its displeasure as "nuclear criminals" by taking issue even with their legitimate nuclear activities for peaceful purposes. But it shuts its eyes to the nuclear issues of the countries and forces that meekly obey and follow it and keep mum about them.’

Scripps News: Radioactive materials surface in Tennessee scrap yards
’When a metal recycler north of Memphis, Tenn., inadvertently mixed radioactive material into a new batch of metal in 1997, employees at the facility didn't know about it for three days, state documents show. Contained in a piece of metal scrap, the radioactive isotope Americium-241 slipped into White Salvage's scrap-metal supply at its Ripley, Tenn., plant, blending into a new batch of aluminum. The contamination was not discovered until a shipment of the newly made material reached Memphis metal broker Southern Tin three days later. The cases are compiled in the national Nuclear Material Events Database, a little-known library of 18,740 radioactive-material incidents nationwide, the vast majority since 1990.’