Disasters

"An explosion sparked a fire at a French nuclear power station on Saturday, just two days after the authorities found 32 safety concerns at the plant."

"More than three months after a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear meltdown at a nearby power plant, Fukushima residents are scrambling to cope with contamination on their own in the absence of a long-term plan from the government."

"Honking horns and waving to firefighters, residents of a New Mexico city threatened by a massive wildfire rolled back into Los Alamos nearly a week after flames forced an evacuation and the closure of a nearby major nuclear weapons laboratory."

"An oil spill last weekend could sour Montana residents on a proposal to build a new crude pipeline through the state, a critic of TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL project said Monday."

'Internal emails seen by Guardian show PR campaign was launched to protect UK nuclear plans after tsunami in Japan.'

"The operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant met with angry shareholders on Tuesday, offering profuse apologies as hecklers shouted abuse from a rowdy floor. But a motion that would have forced the company to abandon its nuclear program was defeated."

When some Baltimore residents worried about lead in remodeling dust tried to get help from state, local, and federal agencies, all they got was the run-around. Their experience shows the system for protecting people from lead-based paint is badly broken.

"The fire that surrounds the nuclear lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico has grown to at least 61,000 acres -- large enough that its smoke can be seen from space – and concerns are now growing over what's in that smoke."

"When commercial nuclear power was getting its start in the 1960s and 1970s, industry and regulators stated unequivocally that reactors were designed only to operate for 40 years. Now they tell another story -- insisting that the units were built with no inherent life span, and can run for up to a century, an Associated Press investigation shows."