Japan News Online

Japanese utilities to disclose plutonium use plan in January

Japanese power companies are planning to disclose, possibly in early January, their plan to use plutonium for power generation to demonstrate they will not be holding a surplus inventory of the radioactive substance that may be used also to build nuclear weapons, officials of the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan said Thursday. The move comes after the Atomic Energy Commission of Japan has required electric power companies to disclose plans on when, where and how much plutonium they will use before a test operation of extracting plutonium from a nuclear fuel-reprocessing plant in the village of Rokkasho in Aomori Prefecture.

S. Korea panel says no custom-tailored stem cells in Hwang research

A South Korean panel said Thursday it has confirmed stem-cell scientist Hwang Woo Suk had created no patient-tailored stem cells as was claimed by Hwang and co-authors in a study published in the U.S. journal Science in May. The nine-member panel at Seoul National University said it reached the conclusion after finding that DNA from stem cell samples, which Hwang claimed were capable of developing into patient-specific stem-cells, did not match those of their donors.