Archive for the 'Environment' Category
Massive Floods Extend Across Midwest, South
May 4th, 2011Via: CNN: An engorged Mississippi River spilled out onto huge swaths of farmland in the South and Midwest on Wednesday, prompting massive flooding from Minnesota to Louisiana. Heavy rains spawned flooding that meteorologists say is not expected to fully relent until early June. Areas along the Ohio River Basin also experienced heavy flooding, forcing residents […]
Japanese Government Raises ‘Safe’ Radiation Limits So Children Can Legally Attend Schools That Have Been Covered in Fallout from Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
May 4th, 2011Via: Guardian: Furious parents in Fukushima have delivered a bag of radioactive playground earth to education officials in protest at moves to weaken nuclear safety standards in schools. Children can now be exposed to 20 times more radiation than was previously permissible. The new regulations have prompted outcry. A senior adviser resigned and the prime […]
Japan: Kan, “Will Study the Possibility of Setting Up an Alternative Capital to Take Over Tokyo’s Role in an Emergency”
May 2nd, 2011Via: NHK: Kan said measures were not taken despite previous accidents and warnings, and that he must admit that the utility and the government failed to fully deal with the situation. He also suggested that he will study the possibility of setting up an alternative capital to take over Tokyo’s role in an emergency, saying […]
Japan: Radiation Leaks from Fuel Rods Suspected at Tsuruga Plant
May 2nd, 2011Via: Kyodo: Leaks of radioactive substances from fuel rods are suspected to have occurred at a nuclear power plant in Tsuruga, the Fukui prefectural government said Monday, citing a rise in the level of radioactive substances in coolant water. The operator, Japan Atomic Power Co., will manually shut down the No. 2 reactor of the […]
The Plan to Contain the Chernobyl Disaster for the Next One Hundred Years
April 29th, 2011Via: Scientific American: French construction company Novarka is working on a replacement, the New Safe Confinement (NSC), which Schmieman helped to design. Because the reactor is still radioactive, architects designed the NSC with worker safety in mind. The arch will not be built over the sarcophagus but will be assembled nearby from prefabricated segments. Workers […]
Radiation Readings in Fukushima Reactor Rise to Highest Since Crisis Began
April 28th, 2011Update: Look At The URL On This One Reader TO mentioned this: www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-27/tokyo-water-radiation-falls-to-zero-for-first-time-since-crisis.html ??? —End Update— Via: Bloomberg: Radiation readings at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi station rose to the highest since an earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems, impeding efforts to contain the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. Two robots sent into the reactor No. […]
Honeybees ‘Entomb’ Pesticide Tainted Pollen
April 28th, 2011Via: Spectre Footnotes: Honeybees are taking emergency measures to protect their hives from pesticides, in an extraordinary example of the natural world adapting swiftly to our depredations, according to a prominent bee expert. Scientists have found numerous examples of a new phenomenon – bees “entombing” or sealing up hive cells full of pollen to put […]
4 Years of Factor e Farm in 4 Minutes
April 25th, 20114 Years of Factor e Farm in 4 Minutes from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo. More: TED: Marcin Jakubowski: Open-Sourced Blueprints for Civilization opensourceecology.org Research Credit: applecidervinegar
Pesticide Exposure in Pregnancy Linked to Lower IQ in Kids
April 21st, 2011Via: U.S. News and World Report: Three new studies draw a link between prebirth exposure to a class of pesticides widely used on food crops and lower intelligence scores in children. The effect is especially noticeable in kids from a California farming region where they and their mothers were also potentially exposed to pesticides through […]
Fukushima: Fuel Rod Fragments at Bottom of Reactor Vessels
April 16th, 2011Flashback: Arnie Gundersen: How Fukushima’s Fuel Rods Melted and Shattered And now… Via: Japan Times: Melted fuel rod fragments have sunk to the bottoms of three reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant and could theoretically burn through the pressure vessels if emergency water-pumping operations are seriously disrupted, the Atomic Energy Society of Japan […]
