In the Japanese community of Kashiwa, scanning your food and soil for radiation is the new normal.

"Kashiwa, about 30 km northeast of Tokyo, is known for its humble beginnings as a 1970s bedroom community for Tokyo workers.

The tranquil residential city of 406,000 in Chiba Prefecture rarely enters the national spotlight, except when Kashiwa Reysol, the local soccer team, is playing at home.

"Worried about her 2-year-old son and distrustful of government and TV reports that seemed to play down radiation risks, she scoured the Web for information and started connecting with other mothers through Twitter and Facebook, many using social media for the first time."

"The 41-year-old mother joined a parents group — one of dozens that have sprung up since the crisis — that petitioned local officials in June to test lunches at schools and day care centers for radiation and avoid using products from around the troubled nuclear plant.

"TALLAHASSEE -- An advocacy group will ask the state Supreme Court to reject a regulatory decision that would allow Florida Power & Light and Progress Energy Florida to collect about $282 million from customers next year for nuclear-power projects."

"The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, whose four fellow commissioners complained about him to the White House, saying that he had been withholding information from them and wielding too much power, drew a spirited defense on Wednesday from a predecessor at the agency."

"MONTREAL -- Weapons-grade uranium is quietly being transported within Canada, and into the United States, in shipments the country's nuclear watchdog wants to keep cloaked in secrecy."

"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission unanimously approved a radical new reactor design on Thursday, clearing away a major obstacle for two utilities to begin construction on projects in South Carolina and Georgia.

"Decommissioning Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will take three or four decades, Japan's government said on Wednesday as it unveiled plans for the next phase of a huge and costly cleanup of the tsunami-wrecked complex."

"TOKYO -- Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan today declared that the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been brought to a state of cold shutdown, turning a corner in the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

'The nuclear reactors have reached a state of cold shutdown and therefore we can now confirm that we have come to the end of the accident phase of the actual reactors,' Prime Minister Noda told a news conference.

"RICHMOND, Va. -- A company lobbying lawmakers to unearth in Southside Virginia what is thought to be the nation's largest uranium deposit needs to overcome significant health and environmental obstacles before the site is mined, according to a long-awaited study released Monday."