CategoryRadiation

Alarming leak at U.S. nuke plant

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We’re coming up in a few short weeks on the 4th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. It was certainly a series of unfortunate — if completely foreseeable — events that essentially caused a meltdown at the four-unit reactor…a massive earthquake, followed by a tsunami which knocked out an atomic plant that had been poorly sited along the Pacific coastline...

Four years later, Fukushima radiation still assaults the West Coast

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More than four-and-a-half years later, the devastated Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan continues to send out the warning signs of just how bad the 2011 meltdown at the site truly has been. After all this time — not to mention all this distance — scientists continue to find radiation from the Japanese plant, which was devastated first by a major earthquake and then the subsequent...

The NRC’s appalling flip-flop on nuke plants, kids, and radiation

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Like most federal regulatory agencies, especially in fields such as energy and the environment, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, tends to be a toothless tiger. It’s quick to side with the interests of large corporations and against those of the public that it is supposed to serve. But even by the NRC’s historically weak standards, the agency is moving down a very disturbing...

When a low-level radioactive waste dump explodes

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It was just the other day that I was upbraiding the mainstream media for taking its eye off one of the most important stories — to my mind, anyway — of this decade: The nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima power plant in Japan, and the lack of focus on the potential for similar accidents at atomic sites both here in the United States and around the globe. Simply put, we have too many...

The great Fukushima cover-up

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One story that I’ve tried to stay on top of for the last four years has been the horrific nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, and its aftermath. It has been, without a doubt, the worst radioactive incident since I started working on this issue as an environmental lawyer at the end of the 1980s. For one thing, it shows the folly of humans and our shortsighted energy policies —...

EPA’s disaster in Colorado is also a warning

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There has been a terrible — and completely unexpected — environmental catastrophe in Colorado. Work crews for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, undertaking a long-delayed project to deal with the hazard of wastewater from abandoned mines in and around the city of Durango, saw the accidental collapse of a barrier and a torrent of highly polluted water flowing into local rivers...

It’s long past time to close the Indian Point nuclear plant

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There are a few places that have really come to symbolize the folly that has been nuclear power in America in the decades since World War II. One of the more famous ones is the San Onofre plant in Southern California, built next to the Pacific Ocean and perilously close to a major fault line, in one of the nation’s more populated corners. What could go wrong? But then, poorly located plants...

Yet another health worry from fracking: Radon

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It seemed like we’d run out of new environmental and public health problems caused by the fracking boom. Since folks started paying attention to the surge in unconventional gas drilling across the United States, we’ve seen neighbors lighting their tap water on fire with a match, tainted well water, leaks and spills into once-pristine streams, foul-smelling air pollution, increasing...

Four years later, the world needs to own up to Fukushima

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Imagine if there were news bulletins one day last year that a global terrorist group such as ISIS had pulled off an attack in Asia that has claimed more than 1,200 lives, sickened thousands more, and displaced even more people from their homes. Can you imagine the breathless, non-stop coverage on cable news channels such as CNN or the Fox News Channel? All the interviews with devastated family...

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
Cooper Law Firm

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