I've said before that if you listened to the sales and marketing spin coming out right now, you might believe, erroneously, that concerns about nuclear power plants are a thing of the past. Not so.

What about uranium mining?

Goliad County passed a resolution to oppose the start of uranium mining operations in October 2006 after Uranium Energy Corp. began drilling exploratory test wells. The community fears that uranium mining operations will contaminate their water with dangerous levels of radioactive waste. The company has every intention to continue their drilling and plans on commencing mining in 2009, despite the pleas of local residents and officials.

In nearby Kleberg County, county officials have recently acquired council to aid them in seeking an injunction against Uranium Resources Inc. A 2004 agreement with Kleberg County and URI stipulated that the company could continue mining as long as they repaired the damage done by their original operations. The Environmental Protection Agency warned Kleberg residents in 2005 that their groundwater contained unsafe levels of uranium and strongly advised against drinking it - an indicator that URI has not made good on its word.

Texas already has a long history of uranium mining operations endangering public health through their release of radioactive waste. The town of Panna Maria, the oldest Polish settlement in the United States, became a ghost town after Chevron opened a nuclear waste dump and began mining there in 1977. Shortly after, the town's soil and groundwater supply experienced high elevations of radioactivity. Citizens led massive opposition against Chevron in the 1980s, citing severe health impacts related to radioactive contamination.

According to the EPA, uranium mining releases harmful radioactive waste, such as radionuclides, which include radon, radium and uranium, into surrounding bodies of water, putting people and ecosystems at risk. Exposure to radon has been shown to cause kidney failure, chronic lung disease, and tumors in the brain, bones, lungs and nasal passages.

Florida's Crystal River, run by Progress Energy, has circuit card failure-sometimes it's the little things.

The plant had reduced power Feb. 18 to complete some scheduled maintenance to circulating water pumps, according to utility spokeswoman Carla Groleau. On Wednesday, a circuit card failed and caused the unit to go off line.

India plans to sell Southeast Asian countries atomic reactors once the restrictions are off.

Nuclear Power Corp. of India Ltd. said it's in talks to sell small nuclear reactors to Malaysia and other Asian nations once an international embargo on India's atomic technology ends.

Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam are also potential customers for the 220-megawatt pressurized heavy water reactors, state-run Nuclear Power Corp.'s Chairman S.K. Jain said in a phone interview yesterday from Goa in western India. The model is one-quarter of the typical 1,000-megawatt units deployed in industrialized nations.

The United Nations is negotiating to end sanctions that bar nuclear trade with India because of its atomic bomb tests in 1974 and 1998. That would free Nuclear Power Corp. to target developing countries which may deploy the smaller reactors developed by India to gain nuclear power at a lower cost.

But not Iran. Double standards in the world abound. Look, ANY of these nations that are getting sold nuclear reactors have the ability to make a nuclear weaspon IF THEY WANT. as the article points out, above, INDIA has set off BOMBS for testing but they can have them .. and SELL them to other countries. That tells me that all the sabre-rattling at India is because of India's OIL with Bush looking for an excuse to attack. WHO is the madman?

This article about Iran makes a great point.

 Iran's mantralike insistence that its pursuit of nuclear technology is an internationally guaranteed right that it will never curtail has countries as diverse as the United States and China worried it is seeking a nuclear weapon.

Oh, Please. Do you know how MANY places around the world are right now ponying up either to HAVE nuclear power or SELL nuclear power? Would we say that all of these are planning to make nuclear weapons. And if that is true, then ALL nations have the SAME problem.

But the huge increases in energy demand anticipated across the developing world over the next two decades, coupled with a growing urgency about global warming, have nuclear nonproliferation experts focused on Iran's case for broader and even more unsettling reasons. If a sense of entitlement to nuclear power and the fuel that makes it possible is allowed to take root, they say, the world soon could find itself with dozens of nuclear countries with the means to switch from peaceful energy production to building a nuclear arsenal virtually overnight.

Many of those countries would be in such hot spots as the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where a mounting temptation to keep up with worrisome neighbors could be too much to resist.

"It's not too difficult to foresee a world of dozens of virtual nuclear-weapons states, capable of building a bomb because of the nuclear material and technology they have, and Iran represents the danger of this future scenario," says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington. "A country that claims it is within its rights defies the international community, and gets right up to the edge of producing bomb-grade uranium."

Why is it that ONLY Iran represents this scenario? As I just put above this, India has TESTED nuclear weapons before and had to be stopped. Don't Rich Arab nations fall into this category?

The head of Britain's atomic energy agency said Monday the wealthy Gulf Arab countries could lead a renaissance of nuclear power because they can afford to build plants without the opposition that often stymies their construction.

Oh. So it's just Better When No One Says Anything About Uranium Mining or Nuclear Waste or Nuclear Proliferation Or Dozens of Nuclear-Weapons States, eh.

She said the Gulf region is a perfect place to develop nuclear energy because it lacks the environmental groups that often oppose it.

"In the Gulf, we have the discretion to build what we want," Judge said.

Belarus Nuclear Plant Gets the Spin Treatment- Environment Friendly-AS COMPARED TO

"If work is organized properly, nuclear power plants are assessed to pose a much lower environmental danger than other sources of energy," Leonty Khoruzhik assured a news conference in Minsk.

A sharp stick in the eye is much less of a risk than a flame torch in your eye.