Sellafield
Workers at Sellafield, the nuclear plant at the centre of the missing body parts scandal, were subjected to secret Cold War experiments in which they were exposed to radiation, The Observer can reveal. One experiment, described in a confidential memo, involved volunteers drinking doses of caesium 134, a radioactive isotope that was released in fatal quantities following the Chernobyl disaster. Other experiments involved exposing volunteers to uranium, strontium 85, iodine 132 and plutonium.
Observer 22nd April 2007
Sunday Herald 22nd April 2007
RobEdwards.com 22nd April 2007
Iran
The people of Iran are probably the most pro-Western in the world, though that will not stop them fighting like hell if we are foolish enough to attack them. Not that they will do so with nuclear weapons any time soon. Iran is rather bad at grand projects. Its sole nuclear power station has never produced a watt of electricity in more than three decades, the capital’s TV tower is unfinished after 20 years of work and Tehran’s airport took 30 years to build.
Daily Mail 21st April 2007
Ahmadinejad – who once claimed to have been surrounded by an aura while speaking to the UN and who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map – is becoming, in the words of one western official, “increasingly divorced from reality”. Diplomats find it hard to judge who really speaks for Iran today. Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, has the ultimate power but says little in public, while his president’s rhetoric is often at variance with more businesslike statements from other senior officials in parallel power structures.
Sunday Times 22nd April 2007
Chernobyl
Russian military pilots have described how they created rain clouds to protect Moscow from radioactive fallout after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. Major Aleksei Grushin repeatedly took to the skies above Chernobyl and Belarus and used artillery shells filled with silver iodide to make rain clouds that would “wash out” radioactive particles drifting towards densely populated cities.
Sunday Telegraph 22nd April 2007
RADIATION or relocation? A study of birds around Chernobyl suggests that nuclear fallout, rather than stress and deteriorating living conditions, may be responsible for human birth defects in the region.
New Scientist 21st April 2007
British Energy
The fate of Hinkley Point and Hunterston could be sealed at the end of the month when the NII publishes the results of its periodic safety review.
Independent on Sunday 22nd April 2007
