Wednesday, Oct 29th
Last update08:36:56 AM GMT
Environmental Glance
Engineers at the Davis-Besse nuclear reactor near Toledo found a pinhole coolant leak in a pipe weld Wednesday evening while inspecting the plant.
The company's report to the NRC noted that the coolant was spraying from a pinhole in the socket weld of a three-quarter inch pipe at a 90 degree elbow between a reactor coolant pump and a safety valve.
Spring in the contiguous U.S. was the warmest on record, capping the hottest 12-month period in data going back 117 years, the National Climatic Data Center said.
The national average temperature from March through May was 57.1 degrees Fahrenheit (14 Celsius), 5.2 degrees above the long-term average and 2 degrees warmer than the previous mark set in 1910, said the data center in Asheville, North Carolina.
Called "Stop the Frack Attack," this national day of action promises to "bring thousands to the nation's capitol to demand greater government responsibility and corporate accountability for harm that existing oil and gas development causes."
Five million Brazilian farmers are locked in a lawsuit with US-based biotech giant Monsanto, suing for as much as 6.2 billion euros. They say that the genetic-engineering company has been collecting royalties on crops it unfairly claims as its own.
The farmers claim that Monsanto unfairly collects exorbitant profits every year worldwide on royalties from “renewal” seed harvests. “Renewal” crops are those that have been planted using seed from the previous year’s harvest. While the practice of renewal farming is an ancient one, Monsanto disagrees, demanding royalties from any crop generation produced from its genetically-engineered seed. Because the engineered seed is patented, Monsanto not only charges an initial royalty on the sale of the crop produced, but a continuing 2 per cent royalty on every subsequent crop, even if the farmer is using a later generation of seed.
Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn’t quite a surprise, because it’s been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.
When fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster began appearing last Spring in U.S. air, rainwater, drinking water, and milk, many U.S. media outlets ignored the story.
It was a difficult story to cover. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was releasing raw data erratically, sometimes late on Friday afternoons, and reporters either had to possess radiation expertise or take a crash course in picocuries, millisieverts, MCLs and DILs.
"We first discovered the unintended presence of the Roundup Ready gene in our conventional alfalfa seed in 2005," says the letter. "It was identified in one of our foundation seed production lots grown in California. We tested the foundation seed lot prior to shipping it to a producer who intended to plant it for organic seed production.
The letter goes on to explain that several other foundation seed lot samples in both California and Washington State also tested positive for the GM alfalfa trait CP4EPSPS. And because at least one of those tested samples was from seeds produced in 2003, it is clear that Monsanto's GM alfalfa had been planted and spreading its toxic traits long before the USDA gave it the green light to do so.
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