Update 16:27 BST: SOCODEI says that the accident is now fully under control and that no radioactive material has been released (download statement).

An explosion has rocked a nuclear waste facility in Southern France, killing one and injuring four others. The blast occurred shortly before noon local time, and the ensuing fire was under control as of 13:06 CEST. No radioactivity has been released beyond the site, according to Sabine Mezard, a spokeswoman for EDF, which oversees the facility. The French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) is already investigating the accident.

The plant, known as CENTRACO, is administered by SOCODEI, a subsidiary of EDF that oversees waste treatment. According to the company’s website, CENTRACO melts down scrap metal and incinerates low-level waste for its parent company, which operates nuclear plants across France. The facility is located on the edge of a nuclear complex at Marcoule which also includes a Melox reprocessing facility for recycling spent fuel and several decommissioned reactors. There is no evidence that any of the other facilities have been threatened by the explosion and fire.

An undated academic review of the CENTRACO site says that the facility has been in operation since 1999. It melts down lightly-irradiated scrap metal and forges it into large canisters that can be used as radioactive waste containment vessels. It also incinerates low-level waste — filters, coveralls and other odds and ends — and then compresses the ash into metal drums for storage. The review indicates that the specific activity of the waste over a ten-year period is 200×10⁹Becquerels. For comparison, that’s less than a millionth the radioactivity estimated to have been released by Fukushima, which stands at 770,000×10¹²Bq. Assuming this report is correct, the risk to the public is probably very low.

France depends on nuclear power for over three-quarters of its electricity, and it seems unlikely that the latest accident will cause the country to alter its course. Nevertheless, this fire is bound to cause a stir, especially coming just six months after the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. The local paper Midi Libre is already reporting that several green groups are criticizing the response to the accident.

Two cancer patients and six families of deceased patients who had enrolled in clinical trials based on geneticist Anil Potti’s allegedly flawed data are suing the beleaguered researcher, one of his collaborators, Duke University (his former employer) and several Duke officials.=

Potti had claimed a link between gene expression profiles and responsiveness to particular drugs, which was used to set up trials in which patients were allocated to treatments depending on their expression profiles. Five of his papers have been retracted and an investigation into flaws in his data is ongoing.

Patient attorney Thomas Henson of HensonFuerst in Raleigh, North Carolina, told Nature in July that the firm was still working to understand how around 100 patients enrolled by Duke might have suffered harm as a result of Potti’s actions — and actions by Duke in continuing the trials after concerns were first raised about his research, before later halting them.

Now, the firm is making its case. A complaint filed on 7 September in Durham County Superior Court in North Carolina alleges that patients enrolled in the trials as a result of misrepresentations by Potti did not give proper informed consent, were subjected to unnecessary biopsies to assess their suitability for the trials, and were allocated treatments different from the standard as a result of their enrollment.

Duke has claimed that all the treatments received by patients were standard and that the flawed gene expression formula was used only to allocate them to one arm or another. The University has said it will not comment on the litigation.

Image: West Campus / Duke Photography

By Mike May

In an agency-wide e-mail message on 13 July, US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg unveiled a massive reorganization of the regulatory watchdog’s 41-year-old management structure. “The most obvious change you will see,” she wrote, “is that the Agency’s programs, in terms of a reporting chain to me, will be divided into ‘directorates’ that reflect the core functions and responsibilities of the Agency.” In addition to the existing offices, she said the FDA would also create a new Office of Operations as well as a deputy commissioner for Global Regulatory Operations and Policy “focused on grappling with the truly global nature of today’s world.”

For the pharmaceutical industry, the most important change could be the addition of the Office of Medical Products and Tobacco, which will be directed by Stephen Spielberg, who will assume the new post by the end of September. Speilberg is tasked with helping to coordinate work across the FDA’s centers for drug, biologics, medical devices and tobacco products. In the past, each of these centers reported directly to the commissioner.

(Click here to continue reading.)

The grand pipe organ in Harvard’s Memorial Church gave way to a clarinet, piano and strings as friends gathered Saturday to remember musician and Nobel Prize winner Bill Lipscomb.

William Nunn Lipscomb Jr., who died on April 14, was also known to some as “The Colonel,” a reference to his Kentucky roots. He won the chemistry prize in 1976 for his basic research mapping chemicals, in particular, the structure of boranes — compounds of boron and hydrogen.

After a wistful rendition of Scott Joplin “Solace: A Mexican Serenade,” friend and fellow Nobelist Dudley Herschbach introduced speakers. All remembered Lipscomb as some combination of colleague, teacher, musician and friend.

Fellow chemist E.J Corey remembered regular trips to professional meetings, where he and Lipscomb talked across the aisle for entire flights. One time, he said, a passenger commented on how nice it was to overhear such committed high school science teachers.

Not quite, but Lipscomb was a teacher, one who had “an enthusiasm that was transmitted naturally to his students,” Corey said.

One was Eric Gouaux, a grad student from 1984 to 1989. Speaking next, he said it was never “professor” or “doctor” or" William" or “Bill.” Students always referred to Lipscomb as the Colonel.

And, the Colonel’s advice to them was:“Make mistakes — quickly — and then move on.”

Gouaux said when it was time to leave Harvard, Lipscomb “trusted us more than we trusted ourselves and in doing so gave us the strength to succeed.”

Lipscomb was remembered as a clarinetist, by both the speakers and the musicians. They played Finzi, Brahms and Mozart. He was a “riffster” who went to University of Kentucky on a music scholarship and played with Dizzy Gillespie.

He was the first chemist after four generations of MD’s in his family. Although Corey said that Lipscomb “knew so much about so many things,” the Colonel himself said otherwise during his Nobel banquet speech.

“The award this year of the Nobel Prize in chemistry for research in pure inorganic chemistry is an important event. It is a reminder that we know even now considerably less about most of the chemical elements than we know of the chemistry of carbon or the chemistry of processes underlying life itself.”

And, he was a good sport, a regular representative of the Nobels at each year’s Ig Nobels. (He once dressed as a beer bottle.) Marc Abrahams, keeper of the annual, riotous Nobel spoof, quoted from his interview with Lipscomb. (Click here for a special Lipscomb issue of The Annals of Improbable Research.)

After the event, Abrahams shared a Lipscomb story:

“Years ago he and Jean (his wife) were at a dinner in Germany, and Bill found himself seated next to the widow of Werner Heisenberg, the man who had devised the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. She introduced herself to Bill, explaining that she was Mrs. Heisenberg. Bill paused just a beat, and replied ‘Are you SURE?’”