A company wants to mine Virginia's major uranium deposit so the state formed a multi-agency panel to study ending the three-decade ban on uranium mining. That panel hired a consulting firm that critics say was stacked with experts affiliated with the nuclear industry.
"Study finds use of CT scans has nearly tripled in the last 15 years. Such radiation exposure increases the risk of cancer."
"WASHINGTON, DC -- A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must formally re-evaluate the environmental risks of storing spent nuclear fuel onsite at the nation's more than 100 nuclear reactors."
"TOLEDO, Ohio -- A FirstEnergy Corp. subsidiary said Thursday that they discovered and contained a pinhole-size leak spraying radioactive coolant at their Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio."
"A federal appeals court [Friday] asked the Department of Energy to explain why it should be able to continue to collect fees for its nuclear waste fund despite the fact that there is no operating national repository."
A 23-year-old battle over construction of a nuclear power plant in India's southern state Tamil Nadu seems to be coming to a climax -- as politicians shift sides, protesters go on hunger strikes, and the political fallout from Fukishima settles.
The federal Data.gov, while not perfect, has grown over three years especially strong in datasets from federal agencies that deal with the environment, energy, natural resources, health, and science. Many of them are downloadable, so that you can crunch them on your own computer. Several are map layers or geo-tagged in some way. See a few randomly chosen examples here.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should consider requiring nuclear power plants to analyze their vulnerability to natural hazards like earthquakes by using the same advanced tools that the industry uses to understand the risks from mechanical accidents, a new report from the Government Accountability Office argues."
"Low levels of nuclear radiation from the tsunami-damaged Fukushima power plant have turned up in bluefin tuna off the California coast, suggesting that these fish carried radioactive compounds across the Pacific Ocean faster than wind or water can."
"TOKYO — What passes for normal at the Fukushima Daiichi plant today would have caused shudders among even the most sanguine of experts before an earthquake and tsunami set off the world's second most serious nuclear crisis after Chernobyl."
