The serious and delicate business of decommissioning Fukushima’s crippled nuclear plant is being undertaken by a series of unskilled, poorly trained workers, the New York Times reports, in a ‘crisis of manpower” that can have dangerous implications both for environmental safety and for the workers themselves.

A series of mishaps, coupled with the dangerous nature of the work to begin with, has made the cleanup a less than desirable gig – Reuters, which has been following the worksite closely, has already reported on how homeless men are being rounded up and paid below minimum wage to clean up radioactive fallout.

The Times has more on the scary state of affairs at Fukushima, summed up by this online ad: ‘Out of work? Nowhere to live? Nowhere to go? Nothing to eat? Come to Fukushima.” Also telling was this incident from last fall:
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That crisis was especially evident one dark morning last October, when a crew of contract workers was sent to remove hoses and valves as part of a long-overdue upgrade to the plant’s water purification system.

According to regulatory filings by Tepco, the team received only a 20-minute briefing from their supervisor and were given […]

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The use of the Arabic word for wind created a tornado amongst bigots on Facebook, but for every Negative Nancy there were 10 Tolerant Toms, which is something to be proud of as America continues the fight against racisim.

If I say the word ‘haboob,” are you outraged? Does that word make you want to post angry comments on Facebook? If not, then apparently you aren’t from Texas.

The term ‘Haboob” is the Arabic word for wind-try saying it a few times, it’s fun!-and American meteorologists have been using it since the 1950’s to describe a huge sandstorm. Most recently, however, the word inspired a mini-firestorm.

Shortly after KCBD News Channel 11 in Lubbock, Texas posted a photo on its Facebook page with the caption ‘Haboob headed toward Lubbock” Texans begun to freak out, taking to Facebook to make it clear they aren’t fond of Arabs or Muslims therefore don’t want to hear no, ‘meddle [sic] eastern term.”

The hullabaloo over ‘haboob” ranged from run of the mill xenophobic comments such as, ‘Its a freakin’ dust storm people!! Its not a Haboob!! This is America….be proud!!!” to the more angry, racist remarks like:

‘Since when do we need to apply a Muslim vocabulary […]

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Scientists say they have extraordinary new evidence to support a Big Bang Theory for the origin of the Universe.

Researchers believe they have found the signal left in the sky by the super-rapid expansion of space that must have occurred just fractions of a second after everything came into being.

It takes the form of a distinctive twist in the oldest light detectable with telescopes.

The work will be scrutinised carefully, but already there is talk of a Nobel.

“This is spectacular,” commented Prof Marc Kamionkowski, from Johns Hopkins University.

Nature did not have to be so kind and the theory didn’t have to be right” said Prof Alan Guth Inflation pioneer. “I’ve seen the research; the arguments are persuasive, and the scientists involved are among the most careful and conservative people I know,” he told BBC News.

The breakthrough was announced by an American team working on a project known as BICEP2.

This has been using a telescope at the South Pole to make detailed observations of a small patch of sky.

The aim has been to try to find a residual marker for “inflation” – the idea that the cosmos experienced an exponential growth spurt in its first trillionth, of a trillionth […]

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For decades, the Pentagon has been the world’s largest oil consumer, and as global petroleum prices continue to rise, the military has been searching for feasible energy alternatives. Now they’re looking in space.

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is building technology that will allow the military to capture solar power in orbit and project it back down to Earth. Not only would space solar potentially save the Pentagon buckets of cash, but it could simplify military deployments. Fuel tankers would no longer have to reach remote or volatile areas, and missions could run longer without having to return to base to refuel.

So far, NRL has built and tested two different prototypes of what they call a ‘sandwich” module, named for a design innovation that packs all the electrical components between two square panels. The top side is a photovoltaic panel that absorbs the Sun’s rays. An electronics system in the middle converts the energy to a radio frequency, and the bottom is an antenna that transfers the power toward a target on the ground.

Ultimately, the idea is to assemble many of these modules in space by robots – something the NRL’s Space Robotics Groups is already working on – to […]

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Sea levels will probably rise more now that the last remaining stable portion of Greenland’s ice sheet – the world’s second-largest – is no longer stable, a study says.

Scientists have known Greenland’s ice sheet has been thinning for decades, but for the first time, they’ve found that’s even occurring in its northeast region that had been stable for 25 years. Since 2003, the northeast’s ice loss has nearly tripled.

“We’re seeing an acceleration of ice loss,” says study co-author Michael Bevis, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. “Now, there’s more ice leaving than snow arriving.” He says the rapid change in the northeast region “surprised everyone.”

The decline of Greenland’s ice sheet, which is second in size only to Antarctica’s and covers 80% of Greenland’s surface, has been a major contributor to global sea level rise over the past 20 years. The study, published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change, says it’s accounted for nearly one-sixth of annual sea level rise.

Largely because of rising air temperatures, an outlet glacier in the northeast has retreated at a pace of 12.4 miles over the past decade. That’s much faster than the Jakobshavnglacier’s retreat in southwest Greenland – 21.7 miles over the […]

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