Update 3/16/11 3:03 PM: The news doesn’t get better. At an afternoon Congressional hearing, Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Gregory Jaczko said that the all the water in the spent fuel pod in the number 4 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi has almost certainly boiled away:
We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which
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On Monday, my colleague Jeffrey Kluger wrote an insightful post, “Butterfly Wings and Nuclear Disasters,” about how—with all respect to the Greek dramatists— there really is no such thing as a single “tragic flaw”; rather, tragedy results most often in the real world from the accumulation of small but significant mishaps. While that …
As workers at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant scrambled to prevent a meltdown of cores of several reactors on Tuesday, a new problem emerged: the failure of cooling systems for several pools containing spent fuel rods. Late Tuesday, Japan’s nuclear watchdog said that the water meant to cool spent fuel in three reactors was becoming …
Shan Nair is a British nuclear safety expert who was part of a panel that advised the European Commission on its response to the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. For almost twenty years, he worked within the UK nuclear industry for Britain’s national energy supply company analyzing both waste arising from spent nuclear fuel and also the …
Today I was scheduled to attend a press briefing in London with Sir David King, the former Chief Scientific Adviser to the British government. Sir David was due to address the future of nuclear power in the U.K.. This morning, I received a hurried voicemail from Sir David’s press spokesman: thanks to the events in Japan, the meeting had …
Government officials have confirmed that radiation has leaked from the Fukushima power plant site in Northern Japan, where workers are scrambling to prevent a meltdown at two damaged reactors. The surrounding area has been evacuated. It’s difficult to ascertain how much radiation has already leaked from the plant–or what the …
It’s way too early to say that Japan has found its Tony Hayward — the feckless former CEO of BP, who became the face of the company’s obtuseness and denial during last year’s disastrous Gulf oil spill. But it does appear they’re auditioning for the part.
The leading candidate at the moment appears to be Chief Cabinet …
On Feb. 25, I posted a blog arguing that nuclear weapons are the most important and urgent environmental threat today—even more important than climate change caused by greenhouse gasses. I received quite a bit of feedback from environmentalists—many of whom took umbrage with my thesis.
It’s no secret that wildlife around the world is under severe stress. The most recent Red List from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimated that 33% of the species evaluated by the group are at least threatened. The causes are many—hunting, disease, habitat loss, invasive species, even climate change—but …
I was traveling yesterday, speaking on a panel about electric cars at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, so I didn’t get a chance to cover yesterday’s news closely. But I wanted to note an alarming report published by the World Resources Institute (WRI) on the risks facing coral reefs.
The short version: coral reefs are in big …
