THE number of state agencies will be reduced by 48 by the end of next year but few of the services will be abolished. Instead, most will be merged with other bodies or absorbed into government departments.

THE race to prevent total meltdown of reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan could take weeks, the chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission warned yesterday.

THE Government has been urged to engage directly with British authorities after safety fears were raised about a wave of new nuclear power plants.

Radon is a serious public health issue in Ireland, according to the Radiological Protection Institute.

A house in Co Tipperary has been found to contain 45 times the acceptable level of the cancer-causing gas radon.

The Minister for the Environment John Gormley is meeting with a number of other European Environment Ministers in Austria today to discuss the future of nuclear energy.

Six Irish citizens are being sought to undergo tests for possible radiation poisoning amid the on-going investigation into the death of a former Russian spy in London.

The mystery illness that struck a former Russian Prime Minister ahead of a conference in Ireland last week has become the subject of a garda investigation.

FORMER Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar complained about feeling ill hours before he was rushed to hospital, it emerged yesterday.

Almost 15,000 requests were made to elicit materials from public bodies under the Freedom of Information Act last year, it was confirmed today.

Donal Hickey says research flights could help find minerals and protect our health.

One hundred and thirty more public bodies are coming under the remit of the Freedom of Information Act this week.

Ireland’s emergency services are primed and ready for a nuclear disaster, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern told the Dáil today.

Charges have been brought by the Radiological Protection Institute against five Kerry companies.

Ireland's nuclear watchdog claims that we are well prepared to deal with a nuclear accident happening abroad.

The Government tonight expressed concern about the safety of the Sellafield nuclear plant after a temporary evacuation had to be carried out.

The Irish cellular industry has questioned a Dáil Committee recommendation that all mobile phones carry radiation warnings in future.

NEW building regulations designed to reduce dangerous levels of a radioactive gas cannot guarantee that homes are adequately protected, the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII) has warned.

AN accident at Sellafield nuclear station would contaminate Ireland’s environment but the country would not suffer deaths and devastation on the scale of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, it was claimed last night.

BATT O’KEEFFE, Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, has great hair. Not just good hair. Great hair.

The Government has reappointed Dr Frank Mulligan as chairman of the Radiological Protection Institute for another year.

MICK and Nora O’Neill were shocked to discover their home had radon gas levels which were six-and-a-half times above the accepted Radiological Protection Institute’s (RPII) safety limit.

THE Environmental Protection Agency and the Radiological Protection Institute have given a clean bill of health to the Cork industrial site ravaged by fire last week.

THE company at the centre of a radioactive scare in the Millfield Industrial complex moved last year.

ONE of the country’s largest universities is sitting on a two-and-a-half tonne nuclear store of uranium rods, the remains of a nuclear reactor which has been stored in one of its basements for 17 years.

The Radiological Protection Institute has called for British Nuclear Fuels to prove that the walls of its storage tanks could withstand a major terrorist attack.

Fine Gael has sharply criticised the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, after he revealed that Irish nuclear experts will not inspect the Sellafield plant in Britain until January at the earliest.

Security chiefs at Sellafield say safety at the Cumbria plant has been reviewed in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.