Disasters

"Some U.S. nuclear plants are not in full compliance with rules set up after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to respond to explosions and fires, a self-regulatory body for the nuclear industry has found."

"Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Tuesday that Japan would abandon plans to build more nuclear reactors, saying his country needed to 'start from scratch' in creating a new energy policy."

"The flooding Mississippi River is done watching and waiting. And anyone who doubts that the river has become T.S. Eliot's personification of 'a strong brown god' need only walk up the slope of the levee and peer over the top."

"As the Mississippi River continued carrying near-record amounts of water past Memphis, draining storm-drenched lands stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, officials combined messages of reassurance and caution."

"The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident exposed flaws in the Japanese government's measures to guard the country's reactors against earthquakes and tsunamis. U.S. officials in recent years also have worried that Japanese officials haven't taken enough precautions to protect the facilities from terrorist attacks, according to diplomatic documents released over the weekend on the WikiLeaks website."

As he delivered a eulogy last year for 29 men killed in the worst coal mine disaster in four decades, President Obama bowed his head and repeated a plea he had heard from mining families: 'Don't let this happen again.'

"Corroded cooling water pipes at the Byron nuclear power plant in Illinois could have caused a nuclear catastrophe. The plant, owned by Exelon Corp., is just one example of regulators from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission failing to penalize safety failures."