fukushima
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Discovery of Fukushima contamination in areas identified by Greenpeace
TEPCO, the owners of the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, just announced that they found contamination levels 100 to 1,000 times higher than normal in sediment from the Fukushima coast. TEPCO did the sediment testing late last week — in areas Greenpeace identified for testing in our research plan — after we were […]
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What would a Chernobyl or Fukushima disaster at Indian Point mean?
Twenty-five years ago, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, sending plumes of radiation around the planet and devastating the area surrounding the plant to this day. The world learned firsthand then about the dangers of nuclear power. Today, the ongoing nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant is a tragic reminder of the threat that […]
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What if the $152 billion to clean up Fukushima were spent on geothermal instead?
Here's a crazy idea: why not use the enormous geothermal resource under Japan — which is after all sitting on a "ring" made of "fire" — as a source of nearly always-on baseload power? I asked Alex Richter, an Icelandic financier of geothermal energy projects, how much geothermal energy $152 billion would buy. (That's the […]
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What if the $152 billion to clean up Fukushima were spent on solar instead?
The projected cost for the management of the Fukushima crisis is $152 billion. And that doesn't even include the cost of building and operating the plant in the first place. What if all that scratch had been spent on solar panels instead? It would be amazing, that's what. Read this infographic and weep. (Click here […]
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Wind turbine suffers catastrophic failure; no one is irradiated
Last month, a wind turbine on a North Dakota wind farm suffered a "catastrophic failure" when "oversight" and "human error" — features of energy infrastructure which scientists suggest are unavoidable — led to the enormous turbine falling off its mount. The most recent reports indicate that so far the only casualties are a wide swath […]
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Japan could rebuild faster with renewables, says report
In the wake of severe natural disasters, how is Japan going to get its electrical infrastructure back online? The Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability has an answer, and it's anything but business as usual. By deploying a mix of renewables and energy efficiency technology, they argue, Japan's need for electricity could be met three […]
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Fukushima raised to Level 7 nuclear disaster — how much should you panic?
The nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has leveled up to a 7, or “major accident,” topping out the International Nuclear and Radiation Event scale. That puts it in the same category as Chernobyl, the only other level 7 event in history. Does this mean it's time for us all to put on our […]
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Japan cannot catch a break
Did Japan do something to anger the universe? (Don’t answer that, Jerry Falwell.) After a massive offshore quake, a devastating tsunami, and a nuclear crisis, the beleaguered country is now being treated to aftershocks that would make most quakes feel silly. As for the nuclear status … who knows? It probably isn’t good. Aftershocks ruin […]
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Fukushima in a decade: Bucolic beach resort or Road Warrior-esque hellscape?
Technology Review's Kevin Bullis points us to a package at Nature, on the long-term impacts of the Fukushima disaster. It's kind of a nice antidote to all the hysterical day-to-day coverage (the leak's stopped, by the way) as viewed through the cold, dispassionate eye of science. That doesn't mean it's rosy: Fully decommissioning the plant […]