Nearly 80 percent of Japanese municipalities with nuclear power plants have expressed caution about resuming operations of suspended reactors. NHK asked 29 such municipalities except those in Fukushima Prefecture whether they would allow such resumptions. 28 responded. 5 municipalities said they would not do so for the time being, while 17 others said they cannot decide now.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has replaced its spokesperson over a scandal that was reported in the press. Hidehiko Nishiyama had held daily media briefings since the troubles began at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March. Nishiyama was reprimanded by Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda last Thursday, the day the scandal surfaced in a weekly magazine. Kaieda told Nishiyama the report gives the impression that he hasn't been concentrating on his job.
Shareholders of the Tohoku Electric Power Company in northeastern Japan have voted down a proposal to abandon nuclear power generation. The vote was held at a meeting of about 1,300 of the utility's shareholders in Sendai City of Miyagi Prefecture on Wednesday. A group of shareholders proposed having the firm's rules stipulate its withdrawal from nuclear power generation. The proposal was voted down by a majority.
A wildfire has advanced on the Los Alamos laboratory and thousands of outdoor drums of plutonium-contaminated waste as authorities step up efforts to protect the site and monitor the air for radiation.Officials at the premier US nuclear-weapons lab - the desert birthplace of the atomic bomb - gave assurances that dangerous materials were safely stored and capable of withstanding flames from the 95 sq mile fire, which at one point was as close as 50 feet (15 metres) to the grounds.A small patch of land at the laboratory caught fire on Monday before firefighters quickly put it out. Teams were on alert to pounce on any new blazes and spent the day removing brush and low-hanging tree limbs from the lab's perimeter."We are throwing absolutely everything at this that we got," New Mexico Democratic senator Tom Udall said.
A wildfire has advanced on the Los Alamos laboratory and thousands of outdoor drums of plutonium-contaminated waste as authorities step up efforts to protect the site and monitor the air for radiation.
Officials at the premier US nuclear-weapons lab - the desert birthplace of the atomic bomb - gave assurances that dangerous materials were safely stored and capable of withstanding flames from the 95 sq mile fire, which at one point was as close as 50 feet (15 metres) to the grounds.
A small patch of land at the laboratory caught fire on Monday before firefighters quickly put it out. Teams were on alert to pounce on any new blazes and spent the day removing brush and low-hanging tree limbs from the lab's perimeter.
"We are throwing absolutely everything at this that we got," New Mexico Democratic senator Tom Udall said.
... thousands of outdoor drums of plutonium-contaminated waste ...
What could possibly go wrong? They should promote the guy who came up with this one ... upper management material if I ever saw it. In the end, might makes right. Nothing has changed since the caveman.
Hardliners on opposing sides in the battle over climate change are guilty of a weird "religiosity" which hinders a sensible debate, energy minister Greg Barker has said.In a Guardian interview, Barker said sceptics were failing to accept the "broad base" of scientific opinion, while climate change campaigners could be guilty of behaving in an arrogant manner.Amid frustration in Whitehall at the tone of the debate, Barker said: "If you look at the extremes of the climate debate, whether it is the extreme climate sceptics or the extreme climate zealots, there is a slight religiosity there which is weird."
Hardliners on opposing sides in the battle over climate change are guilty of a weird "religiosity" which hinders a sensible debate, energy minister Greg Barker has said.
In a Guardian interview, Barker said sceptics were failing to accept the "broad base" of scientific opinion, while climate change campaigners could be guilty of behaving in an arrogant manner.
Amid frustration in Whitehall at the tone of the debate, Barker said: "If you look at the extremes of the climate debate, whether it is the extreme climate sceptics or the extreme climate zealots, there is a slight religiosity there which is weird."
These people don't understand how narratives operate? Economics is politics by other means
One of the world's most prominent scientific figures to be sceptical about climate change has admitted to being paid more than $1m in the past decade by major US oil and coal companies.Dr Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, is known for his view that global warming and the melting of the arctic sea ice is caused by solar variation rather than human-caused CO2 emissions, and that polar bears are not primarily threatened by climate change.But according to a Greenpeace US investigation, he has been heavily funded by coal and oil industry interests since 2001, receiving money from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Insitute and Koch Industries along with Southern, one of the world's largest coal-burning utility companies. Since 2002, it is alleged, every new grant he has received has been from either oil or coal interests.
One of the world's most prominent scientific figures to be sceptical about climate change has admitted to being paid more than $1m in the past decade by major US oil and coal companies.
Dr Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, is known for his view that global warming and the melting of the arctic sea ice is caused by solar variation rather than human-caused CO2 emissions, and that polar bears are not primarily threatened by climate change.
But according to a Greenpeace US investigation, he has been heavily funded by coal and oil industry interests since 2001, receiving money from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Insitute and Koch Industries along with Southern, one of the world's largest coal-burning utility companies. Since 2002, it is alleged, every new grant he has received has been from either oil or coal interests.
