We’ve got a lovely, shiny new home. You can now find us at...

www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction

...so change your bookmarks and RSS feeds to follow us.

Posted by Justin at 4:26 PM | Permalink

You might have noticed that Nuclear Reaction’s comments have been turned off over the last few days. We had to take this step after the site suffered a large spam attack. We apologise for not announcing this at the time but we’ve been a little busy clearing out the junk comments and waiting for the attack to fade away.

Comments are now back on so feel free to have your say.

In the meantime, Nuclear Reaction will be getting a redesign in the next week or so and we’ll be using a new commenting system. Watch this space.

Posted by Justin at 10:27 AM | Permalink

If you run your own energy or nuclear campaign blog and would like to link to Nuclear Reaction using one of our blog buttons, simply copy and paste the code for button you like best below.

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Let us know in the comments if you’ve linked to us. We’re building a list of like-minded blogs and websites which we’ll be unveiling soon.

Posted by Justin at 1:57 PM | Permalink

‘Italians have not been able to protect Renaissance art treasures for even as long as one thousand years. Egyptians have not been able to protect the tombs of the Pharaohs for even as long as four thousand years, and some of the graves were looted within centuries. Yet, we in this generation have an obligation to protect our nuclear wastes for more than ten thousand years—a period longer than recorded history.

’It is ironic that we have been civilized for only about 10,000 years, yet we face the task of protecting high-level radwastes, a dangerous and "massive source of potentially valuable energy," in perpetuity. We face the task of storing radionuclides such as plutonium, which has a half-life of 24,000 years, but remains dangerous for more than 250,000 years. We have been separated from the apes for only about 5 million years, yet we face the task of safeguarding iodine-129, which has a half-life of 16 million years but remains dangerous for more than 160 million years. We in the United States have been a nation for only about 200 years, yet we face the task of storing technetium-99 having a half-life of 200,000 years. Given the short span of our experience in handling these materials, how can we deal adequately with long-lived radioactive waste?’

From ‘Burying Uncertainty: Risk and the Case Against Geological Disposal of Nuclear Waste’ by K. S. Shrader-Frechette.

Posted by Justin at 9:26 AM | Permalink

We made a few little changes and additions here on the Nuclear reaction blog.

On the right sidebar there is now a link to the blog’s RSS feed for those who use blog aggregators like Bloglines or Google Reader.

Underneath that is a box where you can subscribe to receive Nuclear Reaction blog posts via email. Each time we post a new item, you’ll receive an email.

Down on the left you can also see the most recent tweets from our Twitter feed. You can follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/nukereaction.

Posted by Justin at 6:35 PM | Permalink

You can now follow Nuclear Reaction on Twitter here: www.twitter.com/nukereaction.

Posted by Justin at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hello there, and welcome to Nuclear Reaction. We started writing this blog three weeks ago but today's the day we're inviting the world in to see what we've been up to.

Why the delay? Well our mission is to record the meltdown of that most over-rated, over-subsidised and over-confident of industries, the nuclear industry. Perhaps we were being overcautious, but we were wondering if there'd be enough material to sustain a daily weblog.

Well, in those three weeks we've racked up

Governments promising to pay the damages in the event of nuclear disaster
A slow burning demi Chernobyl in Japan
A nuclear leak in France
And the consequences
And another one
And another one
And another one
Some farcical nuclear spin
A 32 billion cost overrun at Yucca Mountain
Nuclear induced Miracles in the Indian Parliament

We've also found time to write about what importing uranium might do to your human rights record, the inability of the nuclear industry to deliver on time and on budget and the nuclear industry's influence on both candidates at the US election.

And those are just the juicy bits, in each days Fallout section you'll see the rest of the days' nuclear news.

Whatever were we worried about?

Welcome to Nuclear Reaction, where as we like to say you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wish we were making it up.

Posted by Martin at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Welcome to Nuclear Reaction, Greenpeace’s latest blog, where we’ll be recording for history the meltdown of that most over-rated, over-subsidised and over-confident of industries, the nuclear industry.

The nuclear industry is always running late, is extremely high maintenance, constantly stealing from your wallet, and very likely to be ruining your life for years to come. If it was your boyfriend or girlfriend you’d have changed your name and fled to another country years ago.

So, want to hear about the nuclear reactor built in an earthquake zone? Or the one built with watery concrete? Or how taxpayers across the world will be financially (not to mention physically) liable in the event of a nuclear accident? What about how, if we want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by just five percent with nuclear power, we need to be building a new reactor every week until 2030?

Want to meet the politicians, denialists and apologists with the 10,000-year radioactive legacies? See through their false promises and false hopes? Maybe find out how easy it is to build a ‘quick and dirty’ reprocessing plant capable of turning black market nuclear waste into a bomb’s worth of plutonium every day?

Then join us. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll wish we were making it up.

Posted by Justin at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)