WHO, UNDP, UNEP and UNICEF have partnered to create a new compendium of 500 actions aimed at reducing death and diseases driven by environmental risk factors, the first such resource to unite this expertise from across the UN system. Environmental pollution and other environmental risks cause 24 per cent of …
Nuclear catastrophe is always an unmitigated disaster. The only beneficiaries, albeit in a perverse fashion, are animals, which tend to flourish in areas humans evacuate. This has certainly been the case for wild boars around Fukushima, which have multiplied so rapidly, they’ve become a problem for neighboring towns. On Friday, …
Nuclear regulators gave their approval Wednesday to start freezing soil around damaged reactor buildings at the disaster-hit Fukushima No. 1 power plant to prevent groundwater from entering the highly contaminated facilities. The Nuclear Regulation Authority told Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, that it could activate the east side coolant-filled …
Ionizing radiation has been shown to produce negative effects on organisms, although little is known about its ecological and evolutionary effects. As a study model, we isolated bacteria associated with feathers from barn swallows Hirundo rustica from three study areas around Chernobyl differing in background ionizing radiation levels and one …
In the chaotic two years after its name became forever associated with nuclear disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi power plant “resembled a field hospital”, according to the man who is now in charge of the most daunting task the nuclear industry has ever faced: removing hundreds of tons of melted fuel …
MOSCOW – Economic crises in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus have brought reduced testing in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Greenpeace says, and people continue to eat and drink foods with dangerously high radiation levels. According to scientific tests conducted on behalf of the environmental campaigning group, overall contamination …
It is 30 years since the beginning of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It is also five years since the Fukushima disaster began. To mark these anniversaries, Greenpeace has commissioned substantial reviews of scientific studies examining the continued radioactive contamination in the affected areas, and the health and social effects on …
The report is based on a large body of independent scientific research in impacted areas in the Fukushima region, as well as investigations by Greenpeace radiation specialists over the past five years. It exposes deeply flawed assumptions by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Abe government in terms of …
In a survey that began in April 2014 to check the impact of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis, 16 children have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and 35 are suspected of having the disease, a prefectural government panel said Monday. Most of them were thought to be problem free when …
The external radiation exposure levels of high school students in Fukushima Prefecture are within the same range of those living in France, Poland and Belarus, a scientist and a high school student said Monday in Tokyo. Both were among members of a research group that conducted a study on individual …
The Parties to the Montreal Protocol are informed by three Panels of experts. One of these is the Environmental Effects Assessment Panel (EEAP), which deals with two focal issues. The first focus is the effects of increased UV radiation on human health, animals, plants, biogeochemistry, air quality, and materials. The …
THE stench of rot and rat excrement fills the living room of Yoshiei Igari, one of thousands of residents who fled the town of Naraha on March 12th 2011 after an earthquake and tsunami had sent the nearby Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant into meltdown. After Naraha lifted its evacuation …
The Environment Ministry has sought a record ¥522.3 billion in its budget proposal for fiscal 2016, with most of the spend related to decontamination work in areas affected by the March 2011 nuclear disaster. The proposed figure for the year from April, presented at a meeting led by the ruling …
This report provides a comprehensive review of the potential role of nuclear power in mitigating global climate change and its contribution to other economic, energy and environmental challenges. The report also examines broader issues relevant to the climate change–nuclear energy nexus, such as costs, investments, financing, safety, waste management and …
Following the 1986 Chernobyl accident, 116,000 people were permanently evacuated from the 4,200 km Chernobyl exclusion zone. There is continuing scientific and public debate surrounding the fate of wildlife that remained in the abandoned area. Several previous studies of the Chernobyl exclusion zone indicated major radiation effects and pronounced reductions …
Order of the National Green Tribunal (Eastern Zone Bench, Kolkata) in the matter of Sk. Kamre Alam Vs Government of West Bengal & Ors. dated 01/10/2015 regarding the installation of a mobile tower by VIOM Network Limited in a thickly populated residential locality of Kashipur Mouza, Purba Medinipore, West Bengal.
More than 70 percent of the nuclear fuel in one of the reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is highly likely to have melted in the wake of the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami, according to a university research team. Using special film that …
Reducing our carbon footprint, be it in our personal lives or industrial activity remains key to saving the Earth from environmental degradation, say experts in the city as the world observes the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer on Wednesday. More commonly known as the ‘World Ozone …
HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT – Federal regulators are pulling the plug on a five-year study of the risk of cancer in communities around six U.S. nuclear plants and a nuclear fuel site. Remaining work on a pilot study would take too long, at more than three years, and cost too much, at …
An increase in thyroid cancer among children is unlikely after the meltdown at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant four years ago, but it remains unclear exactly how much radiation children in the vicinity of the plant were exposed to, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said in a report released on Monday. …
The number of Japanese nuclear reactors likely to restart in the next few years has halved, hit by legal challenges and worries about meeting tougher safety standards imposed in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, a Reuters analysis shows. The country has been inching back to nuclear energy, turning on …
