"The Biden administration on Tuesday said it was seeking local communities willing to host nuclear waste storage sites, arguing they are needed to deal with the nation’s existing waste and encourage growth in virtually emissions-free nuclear power to fight climate change."
"For decades, chronic flooding and nuclear waste have encroached on the ancestral lands in southeastern Minnesota that the Prairie Island Indian Community calls home, whittling them to about a third of their original size."
"Rita Capitan has been worrying about her water since 1994. It was that autumn she read a local newspaper article about another uranium mine, the Crownpoint Uranium Project, getting under way near her home. Capitan has spent her entire life in Crownpoint, New Mexico, a small town on the eastern Navajo Nation, and is no stranger to the uranium mining that has persisted in the region for decades."
"Navajo Nation continues to hold strong on its stance against radioactive waste being dumped near its lands, while also pushing for the waste to be removed completely."
"A trio of moisture-rich storm systems are aimed at the West Coast and poised to dump exceptional precipitation totals in parts of California, Oregon and Washington state. Double-digit amounts are possible in some places by the end of the month, making a dent in the region’s prolonged drought-driven water deficit."
It sometimes feels like journalists lurch from one catastrophe (or hurricane, flood, wildfire, heat wave) to the next. But that can mean missing the bigger story: Disasters, increasingly linked to climate extremes, are often interlocking events, in which one system failure causes the next and the next. The latest Backgrounder explores three case studies, and how news media can focus attention on steps toward resilience.
"Ten years since the Fukushima disaster, expensive nuclear energy plants are being shut down across the world as renewable power prices plummet."
Twenty years after the attacks on 9/11, the war on terror has left many risks in the built environment under a cloak of secrecy. For WatchDog Opinion, keeping vital information about such preventable hazards under wraps from the public and journalists is not just wrong, but bad policy. Here’s why. Plus, a rundown for environment reporters of where exactly this secrecy reigns.
"Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed wide-ranging legislation overhauling Illinois’ energy sector on Wednesday, calling the bill a “giant leap forward” for the state as it works to address the effects of climate change and establish “aggressive” clean energy standards."
"Federal officials have cleared the way for construction of a dump in West Texas that could hold spent nuclear fuel for up to 40 years."
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