The seaside nuclear reactors at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Clemente were permanently shut down in 2013 following steam generator malfunction. What to do with the 3.6 million pounds of highly radioactive waste remains an epic problem.
These days, wildlife is thriving around the site of the nuclear reactor meltdown at Chernobyl in the Ukraine three decades ago. Biologists say the lack of people in the “Exclusion Zone” thirty kilometers around reactor has made it easier for the animals that did survive — and their progeny — to now flourish.
Nuclear fusion may be the most promising energy source that most of us have never heard of. Scientists first discovered fusion as a potential energy source in the 1930’s and have been quietly working on it ever since. Only recently, given societal pressure to find alternatives to fossil fuels, has fusion started to capture the attention of the media and policymakers—and now researchers are hoping the process can become a key source of safe, clean, reliable energy in the near future.