"The Supreme Court declined today to take up the question of whether an environmental inspection of a private property can be viewed as an unconstitutional search and seizure."
"TEPCO says it's not hiding anything, but critics have complained for years that it and other Japanese nuclear power plant operators have withheld information about safety violations and accidents."
"Just a month before a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant at the center of Japan's nuclear crisis, government regulators approved a 10-year extension for the oldest of the six reactors at the power station despite warnings about its safety."
As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission begins a presidentially ordered review of U.S. nuclear power-plant safety, the NRC's chief operations officer says no major safety changes are needed.
"With more trash coming into Keystone Sanitary Landfill in Dunmore, dangerous air emissions are on the rise, a Sunday Times analysis of state records found. The review also found the state Department of Environmental Protection relies upon the landfills to monitor air quality and report problems."
The U.S. has called for evacuating a 50-mile radius around the stricken Japanese nuclear plant. If a similar disaster were to require evacuation around the Indian Point plant, the comparble circle would include almost all of New York City and a big chunk of New Jersey. Despite an evacuation "plan," such an evacuation on short notice would be unrealistic.
"The nuclear industry likes to claim that each new reactor model is safer than the last. The unfolding nuclear emergency in Japan suggests otherwise."
"The birth of the 'nuclear renaissance' and proposed construction of up to 100 new nuclear reactors in the United States will be crippled by the crisis in Japan as regulators struggle to incorporate 'lessons learned' into the country's existing nuclear fleet, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said [Friday]."
