Just in time for the weekend, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) proposed an $8,500 fine to Idaho State University for losing track of a single gram of weapons-grade plutonium missing since 2004.
A new and unexpected source of radioactive material left over from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster has been found up to 60 miles away along coastlines near the beleaguered plant. The discovery shows that damaged nuclear reactors are capable of spreading radiation far from the meltdown site, and in some surprising…
For six years, an underground garbage fire has been steadily burning outside of Saint Louis, Missouri, right next to a landfill filled with nuclear waste buried in the mid-70s. So why hasn’t anyone managed to extinguish it yet?
Last week, a leak in a storage tank at the country’s largest radioactive dumpsite expanded substantially, sparking concerns that other tanks are on the verge of failing, too. This fear may have already been realized. Rumors are flying that a second of Hanford’s 28 double-shelled radioactive waste tanks is exhibiting…
Earlier this week, we heard alarming reports of a “significant” nuclear waste leak at Hanford, the largest radioactive waste dumpsite in the country. Should we be worried? Absolutely. But mainly because this is a symptom of a much bigger problem that’s been festering for decades.
A drum full of radioactive waste exploded at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico last February, sparking serious safety concerns about the U.S.'s only longterm nuclear storage site. A yearlong government investigation has officially fingered the long-suspected culprit: kitty litter.
In February, a drum of radioactive waste exploded at U.S.'s only underground nuclear waste repository. The Santa Fe New Mexican has released a bombshell report on the comedy of errors, which seems to have all started with a typo specifying the wrong type of kitty litter. Yup.
America has currently no plan for its nuclear waste. It did, however, at one point, have a supremely ambitious plan to bury it in a mountain for 10,000 years. From color-changing radioactive cats to rotting kitty litter, this essay from Method Quarterly explores the mythical and the mundane problems of nuclear…
Symbols change meaning over time, so how do you set up a warning system to warn people off of living near nuclear waste repositories for 10,000 years or more?
Yesterday, we enjoyed The New Yorker's engrossing interactive look at the strange history of NYC's most radioactive place, an auto shop in Queens that occupies a former factory that produced radioactive thorium for the Atomic Energy Commission. Today, after months of study, the Environmental Protection Agency decided…
Like so many NYC businesses, Primo Flat Fix occupies a nearly 100-year-old building. But this Queens, garage sits on a very peculiar piece of dirt: The former site of Wolff-Alport Chemical Company, a rare-earth supplier that furnished the Atomic Energy Commission with radioactive thorium—when it wasn't dumping the…
A quadcopter outfitted with an on-board 3D printer could be used to seal off and transport nuclear waste, or even to build structures in the middle of nowhere, according to its inventor, Mirko Kovac of Imperial College London. "In effect, it's the world's first flying 3D printer," New Scientist writes. "One day such…
A dumping ground for nuclear waste located near the British coast is "virtually certain" to be washed away by rising sea levels, a new report warns. The UK Environment Agency has admitted that constructing the Drigg Low-Level Waste Repository so near the coast was a mistake, and that one million cubic meters of…
Nearly 2,000 capsules containing radioactive waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation need to be relocated. That's because the site was built in an area that's prone to earthquakes. How could this happen?
Organized crime is famously good at exploiting time-sensitive industries like construction, fishing, and—of course—garbage removal. But revelations about millions of tons of toxic waste buried haphazardly and illegally by the mob are causing an uproar in southern Italy, where cancer rates are nearly 50 percent higher…
First, dig a hole. Then, reinforce it with clay, concrete, steel, and plastic. Fill it with nuclear waste and cover it in forty more feet of concrete. Then profit. That's how one company in Texas has struck radioactive gold, charging companies $10,000 per cubic foot to store nuclear refuse.
Nuclear power is great, but the waste it creates is a problem. Best case scenario we can turn it into more power in the future, but for now we're stuck just stashing it away. But there's another way—a badass way—that's poised to make it easier and safer: nuclear glass.
The wonders of graphene never seem to cease. Desalinization, flexible semiconductors, and now nuclear waste clean-up. It turns out graphene-oxide is fantastic for clumping up around radioactive waste making it easier to get rid of the stuff.
You've probably heard of necrotizing fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating bacteria. But bacteria do not actually eat human flesh. They're actually trying to gobble up something a lot weirder. Here are ten of the stranger things bacteria naturally (and unnaturally) eat. You'll never look at dirty underwear the same…
Last march when the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant was disastrously damaged by a tsunami, plant technicians used seawater to cool the meltdown situation. At the time, that was probably the best way to avoid an even worse situation.
