The Morning Briefing: Nuclear power, development

By Charlie Osborne | January 24, 2013, 12:10 AM PST

“The Morning Briefing” is SmartPlanet’s daily roundup of must-reads from the web. This morning we’re reading about nuclear power, research and development.

1.) Back on the front burner. China wants more nuclear plants than anyone else. Will it build them safely?

2.) North Korea threatens nuclear test and further rocket launches. North Korea says it will carry out further rocket launches and a nuclear test that would target the United States, dramatically stepping up its threats against a country it called its “enemy”.

3.) Russia explores old nuclear waste dumps in Arctic. The toxic legacy of the Cold War lives on in Russia’s Arctic, where the Soviet military dumped many tonnes of radioactive hardware at sea.

4.) Japan faces nuclear shutdown for second time since Fukushima. Japan may face a total nuclear shutdown in the summer for the second time since the March 2011 Fukushima disaster as the country’s two operating reactors close for maintenance and tough new safety checks keep the rest of the fleet offline.

5.) Iran tries to calm fears over nuclear power plant. Iran says it is preparing to join a key global atomic safety convention, a move that could ease long-standing concerns among its Arabian Gulf neighbours about the Islamic republic’s only nuclear power plant.