Society's Child
Air samples were taken around the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) after a monitoring system detected traces of radiation on the underground levels of the facility around 11:30 pm Friday night, the US Department of Energy said in a news release.
The 139 workers above ground at the time of the incident were ordered Saturday to remain where they were as a precaution. None of the employees tested positive for radioactive contamination, and all non-essential personnel were released, Department of Energy spokesman Roger Nelson said.
Nelson said the cause of the leak remains a mystery, since inspection crews have not yet gone underground. He added that he was not sure when that would happen.
Surface samples show no sign of radiation, thus suggesting the leak was "not significant," he said.

Jamie Coots had said that he believed a poisonous snakebite would not harm believers as long as they are anointed by God.
Jamie Coots died Saturday evening after refusing to be treated, Middleborough police said.
On "Snake Salvation," the ardent Pentecostal believer said that he believed that a passage in the Bible suggests poisonous snakebites will not harm believers as long as they are anointed by God. The practice is illegal in most states, but still goes on, primarily in the rural South.
Coots was a third-generation "serpent handler" and aspired to one day pass the practice and his church, Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name, on to his adult son, Little Cody.
The National Geographic show featured Coots and cast handling all kinds of poisonous snakes -- copperheads, rattlers, cottonmouths. The channel's website shows a picture of Coots, goateed, wearing a fedora. "Even after losing half of his finger to a snake bite and seeing others die from bites during services," Coots "still believes he must take up serpents and follow the Holiness faith," the website says.
On Sunday, National Geographic Channels spokeswoman Stephanie Montgomery sent CNN this statement: "In following Pastor Coots for our series Snake Salvation, we were constantly struck by his devout religious convictions despite the health and legal peril he often faced.
WIPP is housed at an old salt mine, and toxic waste like plutonium is housed half a mile underground.
All of the 139 workers were sequestered on site.
WIPP is the nation's first transuranic nuclear waste repository, used to permanently dispose of low-level nuclear waste from government sites around the nation.
"These are radionuclides that are of a hazard if inhaled, but it is not the kind of radiation that penetrates, and so the primary concern for the release of this nature is (through) the ventilation passageway and that's why our employees are sequestered in place," said Roger Nelson, a Department of Energy spokesman. (source)
What makes a 'protest song' anyway? We also talked about some lesser known songs that didn't quite 'make it', but nevertheless struck a powerful chord with some because they record a truer version of history the victors would prefer we forget.
We were joined by Tim Trepanier, singer-songwriter and travelling troubadour from the prairie lands of Canada. Lead singer and guitarist for folk band Relic, we even convinced Tim to play a couple of his tunes for us live on air!
Running Time: 02:19:00
Download: MP3

'Tower-power': Heat emanating from the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the world's largest solar farm of its kind, has allegedly killed and injured dozens of birds and other wildlife in the Mojave desert
After years of regulatory tangles around the impact on desert wildlife, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System opened on Thursday but environmental groups say the nearly 350,000 gigantic mirrors are generating 1000 degree Fahrenheit temperatures which are killing and singing birds.
According to compliance documents released by developer BrightSource Energy last year, dozens of birds were found injured at the site during the building stage.
"You'll know when it pops off," says Robert Bowen, the school's campus police officer. "If you get engaged with one of the shooters, you'll know it."
"When you get shot, you need to close your fingers and keep 'em in," adds Tammy Kozinski, the drama teacher. "When the bad guy and the police come through, they'll step all over you, and who will be saying they're sorry?"
"Nobody!" the students cry in unison.

A Gurkha regiment helps place sandbags outside homes along the river Thames in Staines.
Two people were killed late on Friday in the stormy weather and the high winds left more than 16,000 homes in north Wales without power.
A cruise ship passenger died and another was airlifted to shore after their 22,000-tonne vessel was hit by a freak wave in the English Channel. Water crashed through a window, injuring a number of the 735 passengers. An 85-year-old male passenger and a woman passenger in her 70s were airlifted off the ship. The male passenger later died.
In Holborn, central London, a woman died and a man was taken to hospital after a building collapsed on to a car. The accident happened at 11.05pm last night opposite Holborn tube station, a Metropolitan police spokesman said. "There were two occupants in the car and a woman was pronounced dead at the scene. A man was pulled from the car and was taken to hospital, where he is in a stable situation at the moment."
A man also died in hospital on Friday night after being hit by a falling tree in his garden in Gwynedd during Wednesday's storm.
As 230 U.S. Olympic athletes gear up to compete in the 2014 Winter Games, the only thing colder than the slopes at Sochi is the fact that any prizes awarded by the U.S. Olympic Commission (USOC) will be taxed by the IRS. Many Americans don't realize that the U.S. taxes income earned abroad, and as such even the winnings of Olympic athletes are subject to the reach of the IRS. The USOC awards prizes to U.S. Olympic medal winners: $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver, and $10,000 for bronze. Relative to each athlete's income tax bracket, some top earners such as Shaun White could end up paying over a third (39.6 percent) of their winnings to the IRS.
Additionally, because the U.S. is one of only a handful of developed countries that tax income earned abroad, it is likely America's competitors will not be subject to such a tax. Taken together - the tax on Olympic athletes and the tax on income earned abroad - it can be said the U.S. has officially "earned the Gold" for having one of the most backwards and illogical tax codes in the world.












Comment: A wonderful example of just how far modern human society is from being "civilized".