"Steps to boost atomic safety after Japan's Fukushima accident must be 'cost-effective,' an industry body said on Tuesday, a day after the UN nuclear chief suggested power firms could help pay for expanded safety checks."

"The Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday it has extended the comment timeline by 30 days on a draft rule on reducing mercury emissions and other toxic pollution from power plants but left the target for finalization of the rule unchanged."

"Former Vice President Al Gore is going where few environmentalists -- and fellow Democrats -- have gone before: criticizing President Barack Obama's record on global warming."

"Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping, an Associated Press investigation shows."

"The state of the oceans is declining far more rapidly than most pessimists had expected, an international team of experts has concluded, increasing the risk that many marine species -- including those that make coral reefs -- could be extinct within a generation."

"Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation’s aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found."

"Here's one advantage to armadillos' steady northward march across the Southeast United States: They're awfully handy to have as bait if, say, you're a wildlife biologist looking to trap an alligator that has inexplicably settled into your local pond in north Georgia." Part of the explanation for the armadillo's northward migration is probably climate change.

"Millions of barrels of salty, toxic wastewater from natural-gas wells in Pennsylvania are coming into Ohio despite efforts to keep it at bay."

"As record floodwaters along the Missouri River drench homes and businesses, concerns have grown about keeping a couple of notable structures dry: two riverside nuclear power plants in Nebraska."