As if wasps couldn’t get any scarier, a chilling discovery near Aiken, South Carolina, suggests they’re comfortable making their nest in a former nuclear bomb facility. On July 3, employees conducting a regular checkup of radiation levels at the Savannah River Site (SRS)—a former nuclear weapons production facility dating back to the 1950s—found themselves staring down […]
Japan Puts Fukushima Soil in Prime Minister’s Flower Beds to Show It’s Safe
In March 2011, an earthquake triggered a massive tsunami along Japan’s coast. The surging waters caused the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to lose power. As a result, the cooling systems of three reactors failed, and their cores experienced a partial meltdown, releasing radiation into the environment in the second worst nuclear accident in history. While […]
New Battery Harvests Energy From Radioactive Nuclear Waste
Unlike burning fossil fuels, nuclear power plants release very few greenhouse gases. They’re safer than they’ve ever been, and currently generate around a fifth of the U.S.’s electricity. However, nuclear power plants produce hazardous waste, and scientists are still searching for effective ways to manage this dangerous byproduct. What if we could do more than […]