Japan Nuclear Crisis | featured news

What a bone-headed move. There’s nothing wrong with the 7 nuclear plants that German Chancellor Angela Merkel decreed would be shut down. Just last fall Germany decided to extend the lives of these plants, which provide roughly 10% of Germany’s electricity. With solar and wind entirely unscalable, how’s Germany going to make up the electric deficit? Either by ramping up the use of fossil-fuel burning plants (and importing more natural gas from Russia) or importing power from its neighbors–like nuke-friendly France.

Aviation authorities across the globe are closely monitoring the radiation levels at  a Japanese nuclear power plant damaged in last week's earthquake and tsunami.

The last thing Japan needed was more bad news on its threatened nuclear reactors. But Monday and early today, that's just what this nation got.