Please visit the American Anti-Vivisection Society and consider donating your time and/or funds to enrich animal lives and stop the usage of our fellow animals as laboratory experiments.An airborne radiological contamination alarm sounded about 4 p.m. Saturday in the Unit 1 containment building, according to a statement from Exelon Nuclear, which operates the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania. The unit had been shut down since October 26 for refueling, maintenance and steam generator replacement, the company said.
"A monitor at the temporary opening cut into the containment building wall to allow the new steam generators to be moved inside showed a slight increase in a reading and then returned to normal," the company said. "Two other monitors displayed normal readings."
Three Mile Island was the scene of the worst U.S. nuclear accident, a partial meltdown in 1979 that resulted in the plant's second reactor being shut down permanently.
Tests showed the contamination in Saturday's incident was confined to the building itself, and none was found outside, Exelon said. There was no threat to public health and safety, but the workers were sent home because they could not continue until the area was cleaned, Bill Noll, Exelon vice president, said in the Saturday statement.
One worker was found to have received 16 millirem of exposure, and others received lower levels of contamination. The annual occupational dose limit for workers at Exelon plants is 2,000 millirem, the statement said.
Radiation exposure from a chest X-ray is about 6 millirem, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Although Noll said it was hoped work would resume at Unit 1 on Sunday, Exelon spokeswoman Beth Archer told CNN on Sunday it had not resumed, as the cause of the leak was still under investigation.
Two radiation specialists from the NRC were scheduled to investigate Sunday. "Numerous work activities were going on in the building at the time the alarm sounded, and Exelon engineers are working to determine the cause of the incident," the statement said." read the full article here...
I was enamored of Stone Brewing Company's IPA all Summer long. Now, I have found a beer of their making, just as exciting, to quaff all Winter long: "Smoked Porter". Oh, the taste buds rejoice! Peat-smoked malt!
"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and environmentalists have reached an agreement Friday that scraps a controversial rule the agency had used to kill or permanently remove any wolf that killed three heads of livestock in a year.Fish and Wildlife spokesman Tom Buckley says the rule "will no longer stand."
He says the agency has ways to deal with livestock kills "and remains committed to assisting the local livestock operators in any negative impacts they may have related to wolves."
Environmentalists complained the three-strikes rule favored the ranching industry and was a major roadblock to the effort to recover the species in the wild. Ranchers responded the policy targets wolves that grow accustomed to preying on cattle.
Several environmental groups sued in May 2008, asking the U.S. District Court in Arizona to stop the removal policy." The Associated Press, November 14, 2009
Magic Hat Brewery in Burlington, Vermont has created an amazing Winter Lager in its new offering called "Howl". The brew is dark and dusky and I love it.
