Climate Climate & Energy

Coast Busters

Oil and gas drillers set their sights on U.S. coastal areas A federal moratorium on oil and gas drilling off U.S. coasts has been in place for 24 years, but there are signs — the debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge being just one — that it may be in danger. The […]

Umbra on nuclear energy

Dear Umbra, What are your thoughts on the reconsidering of nuclear power as a viable solution for helping with energy shortages and improving environmental conditions? I was shocked to hear a “scientist” say (in a “no duh,” matter-of-fact type of way) that nuclear power is far cheaper and cleaner than our current coal- and oil-based […]

Announcing: Business as Usual

Plan for Colorado River to aid wildlife, preserve intensive water use Federal water managers this week joined the states of California, Arizona, and Nevada in trumpeting a new 50-year plan to aid native wildlife along parts of a 400-mile stretch of the Colorado River from Lake Mead to the Mexican border. Prompted by a 1997 […]

The Shipping Spews

Shipping line agrees to pay $25 million for illegal oil dumping Evergreen International, one of the world’s largest shipping lines, agreed Monday to pay a $25 million fine after pleading guilty to 24 felony charges and one misdemeanor involving secretly dumping oil off the coasts of five U.S. states and purposefully lying to U.S. Coast […]

Diamonds Are Forever

Swiss glacier to be wrapped up, saved for later A Swiss ski resort worried about global warming’s ill effects on its future is taking matters into its own mittened hands. At the ski season’s end in May, the Andermatt resort will cover some 32,200 square feet of the Gurschen glacier with an insulating PVC foam […]

Busy Bee

Environmental series on Hetch Hetchy Valley wins Pulitzer Prize The best opinion writing takes the unthinkable and makes it a live possibility. That’s what Sacramento Bee Associate Editor Tom Philp did with “Hetch Hetchy Reclaimed,” his editorial series on breaching the dam that has held Yosemite National Park’s famed valley under water since 1923. The […]

Route Scootin’ Boogie

Shell alters pipeline route to spare whale feeding grounds It’s one small step for environmentalists, one giant leap for endangered gray whales: Energy giant Royal Dutch/Shell has agreed to alter the planned route of a massive oil and gas pipeline off of Russia’s Sakhalin island by 12 miles to preserve the charismatic mammal’s feeding grounds. […]

An interview with risk-taking park ranger Jordan Fisher Smith, author of Nature Noir

If you had to guess which federal agents in the U.S. face the greater danger, who would you put your money on: the officers who wage the endless War on Drugs, or the rangers who patrol the green acres of the national parks? Well, it's the rangers. According to a 2001 study by the Bureau of Justice, nature's security guards are twice as likely to be assaulted on the job as agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Waste

On Energy Priorities, a short but interesting piece on France's struggles with nuclear waste. The good bit:

Every day, about ten shipping containers arrive on trucks at the Soulaines-Dhuys storage facility outside Troyes, in the province of Ardennes, 180 kilometers east of Paris. On board are barrels of waste that isn't radioactive enough to be stored at Marcoule. Every year, 15,000 cubic meters of waste contaminated with uranium, plutonium and tritium arrive here.

The 350-acre site is like an above-ground Yucca Mountain. Construction cranes hover above a hundred bunker-like cement blocks already filled with barrels encased in concrete. In 60 years, the cranes' job will be done, the 400-bunker facility will be full, and the entire facility will be covered with a concrete lid. What then?

The Soulaines-Dhuys site will enter a 300-year surveillance phase. After that, the plan is to observe the site until the stored waste loses its radioactivity.

The initial 300 years is just the beginning. Even moderately radioactive plutonium retains hazardous for 24,000 years. Skeptics wonder if future generations will follow the plan -- or even remember where the site is located.

Is it smart to rely on a form of energy the byproduct of which requires 24,000 years of constant, careful monitoring? Honestly.

Scrubs

Debate over mercury-reduction technology rages on The Bush administration’s release of its Clean Air Mercury Rule this week has reignited debate over how well existing technology can remove mercury from emissions at coal-fired power plants. The rule mandates a 70 percent reduction in emissions by 2018, a number many enviros contend current mercury-removal technology can […]