Printable Version Background On April 26, 1986, a sudden surge of power during a reactor systems test destroyed Unit 4 of the nuclear power station at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union. The accident and the fire that followed released massive amounts of radioactive material into the environment.

Printable Version Background On April 26, 1986, a sudden surge of power during a reactor systems test destroyed Unit 4 of the nuclear power station at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union. The accident and the fire that followed released massive amounts of radioactive material into the environment.

Editor's note: Daniel P. Aldrich is associate professor of political science at Purdue University, an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow at USAID during 2011-2012, and a Fulbright research fellow at the University of Tokyo (2012-2013). He is the author of the books "Site Fights" and "Building Resilience" (University of Chicago Press, coming out in August).

Lessons from Fukushima, a report on February 28th, 2012 shows that the Fukushima nuclear disaster was caused by the failures of the Japanese government to protect its citizens from nuclear risks and not by the natural disasters of an earthquake and tsunami as thenuclear industry would like us to believe.

Superstorm Sandy's unexpected wrath makes a powerful case for revisiting Fukushima and the dangers to nuclear energy from natural disasters. As Sandy made landfall on Atlantic City, Oyster Creek nuclear power plant nearby was fortunately on a scheduled outage. But Indian Point 3 in Buchanan, N.Y.

A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases that can be attributed to the activities of an individual person. Greenhouse gases have heat-trapping capacities, and many scientists believe that human activity intensifies global warming by releasing these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.