Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Daily Kos: The best-kept nuclear secret
’Thirty years ago this week - on July 16 - the worst accidental release of radioactive waste happened at the Church Rock uranium mine and mill site. While the Three Mile Island accident (that same year) is well known, the enormous radioactive spill in New Mexico has been kept quiet. It is the U.S. nuclear accident that almost no one knows about. On July 16, 1979, just 14 weeks after the Three Mile Island reactor accident, and 34 years to the day after the Trinity atomic test, the small community of Church Rock, New Mexico became the scene of another nuclear tragedy. Ninety million gallons of liquid radioactive waste, and eleven hundred tons of solid mill wastes, burst through a broken dam wall at the Church Rock uranium mill facility, creating a flood of deadly effluents that permanently contaminated the Puerco River. However, the accident happened "far from civilization" in a remote area inhabited by possibly the most poverty-stricken and disenfranchised community of people in the country - Native Americans. The massacres and smallpox blankets were over, but another deliberate act of racially-based discrimination - the avoidable radioactive contamination of the Navajo community and likely well beyond it - went unpunished and largely unreported.’

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Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

CNN: POWER POINTS: Cost Concerns Loom Over US Nuclear Revival
’For U.S. utilities gearing up to build new nuclear-power plants, the rewards could be great, but the risks of cost overruns, delays and regulatory battles persist. Expanding the nation's use of nuclear power is seen by many as a key component of any strategy to fight climate change, and utilities are lining up to provide it. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received applications from 14 companies to build and operate new nuclear power plants. Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week told utility executives that nuclear power, along with renewable energy and conservation, will be an important way to meet growing U.S. energy demand while cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. The companies behind these projects, including Southern Co. (SO) and Duke Energy (DUK), are upbeat on their prospects, noting guaranteed long-term returns on investment and increasing acceptance of a need to replace coal-fired power plants and their emissions. History sounds a cautionary note, however. Nuclear-power plants under development in Europe have come under fire for exceeding previously estimated costs, a fate that led developers to abandon several nuclear-power projects during the last U.S. nuclear build-out that ended in the early 1990s.’

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Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Financial Times: French government forces Areva's 'iron lady' to bend
’Areva's board meets today to rubber stamp what was always inevitable - the sale of the nuclear group's transmission and distribution business and its stakes in a number of blue-chip companies. This is what Areva's main shareholder, the French government, has long wanted to fund the rising investment needs of its nuclear champion. This is what Jean-Cyril Spinetta, its new chairman - also the chairman of Air France-KLM - is going to recommend. He is also expected to confirm that the government, which, through different state or state-controlled institutions, owns more than 90 per cent of Areva, has agreed to open up the company's capital to new investors, although perhaps not the investors Anne Lauvergeon, Areva chief executive, would have wanted. Ms Lauvergeon, sometimes called France's "iron lady", has long campaigned for a market flotation to open up the group's capital, which is only traded through investment certificates. However, the government has always regarded Areva as a strategic national asset. It now wants to raise funds which are urgently needed not just for investments, but also to finance the â‚2bn ($2.8bn) Areva needs to buy out Siemens, its German engineering joint venture partner.’

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Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Bloomberg: Gulf’s Push for Nuclear Experts May Delay U.K. Plans
June 15 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. utilities risk falling behind with plans to build nuclear power plants because Middle East nations may use higher salaries to lure skilled workers, reactor builder Westinghouse Electric Co. said. “These nations have no legacy program to use as a source for nuclear expertise,” said Adrian Bull, U.K. stakeholder relations manager at Westinghouse, a unit of Japan’s Toshiba Corp. “If you have literally nothing to go on, you have to be the Chelsea or Real Madrid and buy in the people from elsewhere.” Oil-producing nations including the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait plan nuclear plants to meet growing energy demand at home while exporting fuel abroad. The U.A.E. plans to select companies to develop an atomic power program by the end of this year and has a 2017 target date for completing its first reactor, the same year Electricite de France SA plans to start a new British nuclear plant.

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Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

China View: IAEA discovers traces of uranium in Syria
’CAIRO, June 6 (Xinhua) -- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Friday that it has found traces of processed uranium in a second site in Syrian capital Damascus, Pan-Arab Al-Arabiya TV reported on Saturday. The IAEA is investigating a U.S. intelligence report which claimed that a secret DPRK-designed nuclear reactor that Syria has almost completed for the production of plutonium.’

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