Articles by Grist staff

Rising Tempura-tures

A Japanese nuclear reactor on the coast of the Sea of Japan was shut down yesterday because the facility leaked an estimated 20 tons of radioactive cooling water, one of the worst such leaks in the nation’s history. The reactor was manually shut down, and cooling facilities are being refilled to normal capacity. A spokesperson […]

Allen Wrench in Pollution Monitoring

The administration of former Virginia Gov. George Allen (R) concealed information about river pollution and refused to release data on water contaminants to the U.S. EPA, according to a report released yesterday by state auditors. In 1994, the year Allen became governor, the state’s database on river pollution was erased from personal computers and backup […]

Getting Turtles Out of the Soup

Philippine officials are pressing the nation’s congress to declare six islands on the Philippine-Malaysian sea border a wildlife sanctuary. The Turtle Islands contain some of the few remaining nesting grounds of endangered sea turtles in the world, but the creatures are increasingly threatened by coastal development, poaching, and illegal fishing methods like the use of […]

Watt's Up?

NASA is exploring the possibility of building space-based solar power stations that would produce electricity for use on Earth. A “Sun Tower” design being considered might stretch 22 miles in length with solar collectors 100 to 200 meters in diameter. Each station might beam up to 1.2 billion watts of electricity to ground stations via […]