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Mercy Relief to deploy disaster response team to flood-hit Sri Lanka

SINGAPORE: Mercy Relief will be deploying a disaster response team to flood-hit Sri Lanka on Tuesday (May 30) to conduct relief distribution operations with ground partners in the country, the Singapore-based disaster relief agency said in a press release on Sunday.

Deployed in response to an appeal for international assistance by the Sri Lankan government, the response team is expected to arrive on Tuesday morning.

Monsoon rain on Friday in Sri Lanka triggered the island's worst flooding in more than a decade, leaving at least 126 people dead, according to reports from the Disaster Management Centre in Sri Lanka.

"The team will be assessing and monitoring the varying needs of the communities affected," the agency said, adding that the team would distribute essentials such as food and hygiene items in the first phase of relief distribution efforts.

"Our thoughts are with the communities affected by the floods in Sri Lanka," said Mercy Relief’s executive director Zhang Tingjun. "We are currently assessing the most critical needs in order to ensure a timely and effective response.”

The official Disaster Management Centre said 93 remained missing as of Sunday morning while about 50 injured in landslides were hospitalised. More than 400,000 people remain displaced across 15 districts with seven districts on high alert for landslides, Mercy Relief added.

Mercy Relief said that it would not be launching a public fundraising appeal at this time, but members of the public interested in making donations and staying up to date on the relief efforts could visit its Facebook page.


Read more at http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/mercy-relief-to-deploy-disaster-response-team-to-flood-hit-sri-8890408

Scientists raise concerns over potential nuclear disaster in U.S.

Nuclear-waste fires in nuclear reactors in the U.S. are a 'real risk' according to Princeton University researchers. Under these conditions, nuclear spent fuel fire could force millions of people to relocate.

The Princeton University scientists, together with researchers from the Union of Concerned Scientists, argue that in many places in the U.S. the general public are at risk from fires in spent-nuclear-fuel cooling pools at reactor sites. The pools are essentially water-filled basins used store and cool used radioactive fuel rods. The researchers have discovered that these pools are densely packed with nuclear waste.
The risk to this comes from fire, and fire could be the result of a natural disaster, such as a large earthquake, or the consequence of a terrorist attack Such is the density that it remains possible for a fire to release sufficient radioactive material to contaminate an area twice the size of New Jersey. This could, if extrapolated around key locales in the U.S., lead to 8 million people needing to relocate.
The researchers have also calculated that the cost of such an incidents would be around $2 trillion. The lead researcher has set out to increase publicity about the risks to decommissioned parts of nuclear power stations, such as spent-fuel pools. Dr. Frank von Hippel, who led the study, states: "Unfortunately, if there is no public outcry about this dangerous situation."
Here the researcher notes that spent-fuel rods were the trigger (hydrogen explosions triggering the release of radioactive material) for the radioactive spread from the March 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima. The new risks are outlined in an article for the magazine Science. The article is titled "Nuclear safety regulation in the post-Fukushima era. ."

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