Three Yellowstone bison slaughtered, fourth shot

BILLINGS — Four bull bison that migrated out of Yellowstone National Park were killed by state livestock agents Wednesday — the first to be killed by the government this year under a contentious policy meant to prevent the spread of disease to livestock.

Many of Yellowstone’s bison carry brucellosis, which can cause pregnant cows to miscarry. There have been no recorded transmissions of the disease in the wild from bison to cattle.

Three of the bison killed Tuesday were captured north of West Yellowstone and sent to slaughter, said Department of Livestock Executive Officer Christian Mackay.

Medicine Men To Gather At Navajo Nation

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — As many as 250 medicine men from North and South America will gather in Window Rock, Ariz., starting Thursday, for the 60th annual conference of the Native American Church of North America.

The Native American Church uses peyote to allow communion with God and to give healing.

But medicine men find the practice is becoming more complex as laws governing the use of feathers, herbs and plants become stricter.

Land purchased for area’s Shoshone tribe

An international gold mining company has purchased more than 3,600 acres in Northern Nevada to be set aside for the Western Shoshone, who consider the land historic and sacred, the company said.
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Great Basin Gold Ltd. said it purchased the Rock Creek Canyon property in Lander County for $825,000 late last week from Colorado-based RLF Nevada Properties.

The company said it also is providing seed money for a planned conservancy fund and has retired the mineral rights.

Missouri man remembers nuclear blast -

COLUMBIA, Mo. — On the Fourth of July weekend of 1957, Darrell Robertson was on a train from Fort Lewis, Wash., to southern Nevada. He was one of hundreds of young men with orders in hand to take part in a training exercise that they were told was crucial to the fight against communism.

The native of Lamar was headed deep into the burnt landscape of the Mojave Desert, to a place called Camp Desert Rock. There, between 1945 and 1958, the U.S. military conducted 106 atmospheric nuclear tests.

At the time, Robertson said, military brass believed a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets was likely. They were intent on developing a group of troops hardened by repeated exposure to radiation. They thought exposure to radiation was like sunning on the beach: First you burn, then you tan.

Russia ready for deep nuclear arms cuts: Medvedev

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Russia is ready to dramatically cut its nuclear stockpiles in a new arms pact with the United States if Washington meets Russia’s concerns over missile defense, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday.

“We are ready to reduce by several times the number of nuclear delivery vehicles compared with the START-1 pact,” he told a news conference in Amsterdam.

“As far as warheads are concerned, their numbers should be lower than envisaged by the Moscow 2002 pact,” he added.

UK urged to ban uranium in weapons

THE United Nations Association Edinburgh has called on the UK government to follow Belgium’s lead on banning depleted uranium weapons.
Belgium’s decision has been praised by European military unions who are concerned about the impact the weapons may have on their members.

Opposition to uranium weapons in Belgium has been spearheaded by a group of more than 20 NGOs, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

Editorial: Meltdown must not cause meltdowns

Meltdown is not the word you want to hear in relation to a nuclear power plant. Even the global financial meltdown has potentially dire consequences for public safety over the long term.

Even as the industry and Washington quite rightly have moved toward a new generation of nuclear plant construction, an analysis by the Associated Press raises troubling questions about the current generation.

Nuclear plant operators are required to set aside enough money, over the course of a plant’s life, to pay for its decommissioning and demolition. That process, for most plants, costs hundreds of millions of dollars.

NRC seeks decommissioning fund information for 26 reactors

NRC wants information on decommissioning funding for 26 reactor units at
18 plants, the agency said in a June 19 statement. The NRC said it has
contacted the licensees “to clarify how the companies will address the recent
economic downturn’s effects on funds to decommission reactors in the future.”
Operators are required by law to set aside decommissioning funds during
reactors’ operating lives, and NRC said its “review of the latest reports on
the decommissioning funding assurance suggest several plants must adjust their
funding plans.” NRC said the reactors in question are Beaver Valley-1,
Braidwood-1 and -2, Browns Ferry-1, -2 and -3, Byron-1 and -2, Calvert
Cliffs-1, Clinton, Duane Arnold, Ginna, Indian Point-2, LaSalle-1 and -2, Nine
Mile Point-1 and -2, Palisades, Point Beach-1 and -2, River Bend, Sequoyah-1
and -2, Vermont Yankee, Waterford and Watts Bar-1. Tim McGinty, director of
policy and rulemaking in NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, said in
the statement that agency staff will “discuss this with the plants over the
next few weeks so they can explain to us how they’ll get the funds back on
track to account for their decommissioning cost estimates.

A complaint filed today in Anderson County Circuit Court alleges that B&W, the contractor at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, repeatedly violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by requiring firefighters to report to work 15 minutes ahead of schedule — without pay — in order to don protective equipment and make other work preparations.

“If they didn’t come in 15 minutes early, they would be disciplined,” said Garry Ferraris, the lawyer who filed the complaint on behalf of 21 firefighters and “all others similarly situated.”

Ferraris said a labor grievance apparently brought an end to the practice earlier this year, but he’s seeking compensation for the past three years to cover the unpaid time for the 21 firefighters identified in the legal complaint and any others who worked at Y-12 during that time period.

DOE transfers WIPP water line to city

CARLSBAD — The U.S. Department of Energy announced Thursday that the Carlsbad Field Office will transfer the DOE-owned Waste Isolation Pilot Plant water line to the city of Carlsbad.

The move will provide the city with an additional water supply while saving the Department of Energy thousands of dollars. DOE first installed the water line in 1984 to support the ongoing operations of the department’s disposal facility. It now transports water from the city-owned Double Eagle Water System wells to the plant.

Under the finalized bill of sale, the city will take over complete responsibility for maintaining and repairing the pipeline in exchange for the water line. The city of Carlsbad also agrees to maintain WIPP’s existing priority water use and will supply WIPP with up to 6.6 million gallons of water a year.