Grist List
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How much should Japan worry about nuclear food?
Japan has discovered potentially harmful levels of radiation in Tokyo tap water, and contamination levels in some foodstuffs have been high enough for the U.S. to halt imports. Even if you live in Japan, you're unlikely to encounter these potentially dangerous eats — contaminated food is being kept out of grocery stores. But just in […]
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More Fukushima workers hospitalized — what’s next?
Two more Fukushima workers were hospitalized today after being exposed to radioactive material — it seeped into their boots while they were working. Thirty-two are already in the hospital. And with 300 workers still at the site, there's potential for a lot more injuries. What's the worst-case scenario? Well, the situation at Fukushima is not […]
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Only bulldozers and bison can save Detroit now
Aren’t these preferable to a statue of robocop?Photo: Cathleen ShattuckThe latest U.S. census reveals that not even Detroit natives are that into the Motor City anymore. The once-flourishing city saw the biggest population drop in 10 years — 25 percent — of any city ever, except for the special case of post-Katrina New Orleans. Civic-minded […]
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Oil company ‘fesses up, feigns surprise about spill
Well, now we know the source of the renewed oil assault on Louisiana's shores. Oil company Anglo-Suisse Offshore Partners has admitted that it had a "minor leak" while plugging a disused oil well. In some kind of Chanukah miracle, the five gallons of crude they admit to spilling turned into a 30-mile-long wash of oil […]
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Obama administration can’t wait to sell China all the coal it can burn
Here’s a recipe for climate catastrophe: First, authorize enough new coal production in Wyoming to yield 3.9 billion tons of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Then authorize a new export terminal in northwest Washington to ship that black gold to Asia, where the other half of Chimerica will burn it to power the factories we shipped them […]
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How the U.S. narrowly avoided its own Fukushima-style disaster in 1992
Turkey Point nuclear power plant in Miami-Dade county, Florida.Photo: ShelahDThe U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is refusing to update its worst case scenario models for the flooding of coastal U.S. nuclear power plants. Potentially, this puts the backup safety systems at reactors like the Turkey Point plant in Miami-Dade county, Florida, at risk of damage or […]
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A well-fed world is a vegetarian world
Samuel Fromartz doesn't like genetically modified food, but not for the reasons you think. We don't need more food, he argues in the Atlantic, but better access to food — there's actually plenty of food in the world for everyone to have enough, but most people can't get at it. GMOs don't do anything to […]
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Friends help you move; real friends help you dispose of dead bodies in an eco-friendly manner
Think you get to stop being green just because you kicked the compost bucket? With land space for burial at a premium and crematoriums pumping potentially dubious people-smuts into the sky, you have got to be kidding. Stop slacking off, corpses: If you can't live green, it's time to start dying green. Short of a […]
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For sheer deadliness, nuclear can’t hold a candle to coal
Chart: Seth Godin Relative to watts produced, coal kills 4,000 times more people than nuclear power. Our pervasive sense that nuclear is more dangerous, when the opposite is so clearly true, comes at least in part from a cognitive bias called the "availability heuristic" — memorable events that are easier to think of, like nuclear […]
