"FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, Japan -- The most striking feature at this crippled plant on Saturday was not the blasted-out reactor buildings, or the makeshift tsunami walls, but the chaotic mess."

The U.S. nuclear industry more than a decade ago pinned its hopes for a "renaissance" on getting the friendly Bush Nuclear Regulatory Commission to approve a single reactor design. But engineers say the Fukushima disaster revealed this "safe" reactor could fail in seven different ways. Now public interest groups are asking the NRC to delay licensing it until safety issues are resolved.

"As the country awaits results from a nationwide safety study on the natural gas drilling process of fracking, a separate government investigation into contamination in a place where residents have long complained that drilling fouled their water has turned up alarming levels of underground pollution."

"The biofuels industry has poured millions of dollars into lobbying as Congress debates whether to end a key ethanol tax credit, according to a report released yesterday by a right-leaning Washington think tank."

"Canada's Stephen Harper government is spending more than 60 billion dollars on new military jets and warships while slashing more than 200 million dollars in funding for research and monitoring of the environment.

Amongst the programmes now crippled is Canada's internationally renowned ozone monitoring network, which was instrumental in the discovery of the first-ever ozone hole over Canada last spring. Loss of ozone has been previously linked to increases in skin cancer.

"The worst was over on Thursday for an 'epic' winter storm that pounded Alaska's west coast with wind and snow and sent a 10-foot surge of seawater into Nome, officials said, leaving residents to assess the damage."

"The U.S. has worked to get lead out of gas and out of paint, but the biggest source of lead in a consumer product is still on roadways. It’s in the form of wheel weights, used to balance the tires on our cars. The Environmental Protection Agency says about 1.6 million pounds of lead fall off of vehicles each year, and it winds up in the environment. A handful of states is leading the effort to ban lead wheel weights."

Julie Grant reports for the Environment Report November 10, 2011. [23]

"Senate Democrats defeated a bill on Thursday that would have blocked federal environmental regulators from slashing power plant air pollution that blows downwind to other states and causes lung and heart problems."

"The leading American effort to capture carbon dioxide from coal plants has hit a stumbling block that could imperil the project and set back a promising technology for addressing global warming, people involved in the venture said. "

"Concerned that overfishing is destroying the ability of menhaden to reproduce, the commission that manages the Atlantic coast fishery voted Wednesday to sharply reduce the catch of the fish."