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Should greens avoid eating at McDonald’s? I used to be one of those earnest environmentalists—raised on Fast Food Nation—who forswore McDonald’s entirely. But when I moved to the UK I noticed some changes at the Golden Arches. The restaurant chain introduced free range eggs. It started serving sustainably sourced coffee. So I made a decision. [...]
One recurring theme that has emerged after Fukushima is the tendency of nuclear experts to underestimate (publicly at least) the severity of the disaster. Today we received further proof of this when the Japanese government more than doubled the estimate for the amount of radiation released from the plant in the immediate aftermath of the [...]
In the wake of Fukushima, there have been widespread calls for the safety of nuclear power plants to be enhanced. But how precisely? And, more specifically, what role can the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) play in improving nuclear safety and security?
As I’ve traveled around Europe, I’ve learned that nuclear energy is seen very much through cultural lenses. The French jealously guard their force de frappe nuclear weapons and slurp up nuclear power with no heartburn or concern. Next door in Germany, where fear of the atomkraft helped form the country’s powerful Green party in the [...]
Of all the crucial decisions that Tepco engineers faced at the Fukushima Power Plant in the frenzied hours after the March 11 earthquake, none was more agonizing or difficult than this: should the company intentionally vent gas from the overheating reactors even though doing so would release radioactivity into the atmosphere? The decision took time—and [...]
Britain today became the first country in the world to declare a legally binding target for greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2020—and it’s a fairly ambitious one at that.
The China Syndrome refers to a scenario in which a molten nuclear reactor core could could fission its way through its containment vessel, melt through the basement of the power plant and down into the earth. While a molten reactor core wouldn’t burn “all the way through to China” it could enter the soil and [...]
As my colleague Bryan Walsh wrote recently in a cover story, shale gas is fast on its way to becoming a total game changer in the U.S. energy market. But what about Europe?
A major new report looking at over three decades of data in the UK has found no evidence that young children living near nuclear power plants face an increased risk of developing leukemia. However, the report looked only at nuclear power plants during normal operation and so the findings cannot be used to predict the [...]
The Italian Army arrived in Naples today to help the city deal with some 2,000 tons of uncollected garbage. About 170 troops have been deployed, with around 70 trucks, in a long-running trash crisis that began in 1994 when Italy declared a state of emergency after illegal dumping by the local mafia overflowed the region’s [...]
