• Greenpeace 'bombs' French nuclear reactor -- could it happen in US?

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    A paragliding Greenpeace activist who dropped a smoke bomb over a French nuclear reactor on Wednesday added a new element to the presidential race there -- and raised the question of whether the same, or worse, could happen at a U.S. nuclear reactor.


    "At no moment was the safety of the installations at risk," said the plant's operator, French utility giant EDF, adding that the pilot was arrested by security staff at the Bugey nuclear plant in southeast France.

    EDF acknowledged that a second activist was arrested at another nuclear site in southwest France after entering via a truck gate and hiding for an hour in brush within the "surveillance zone," Reuters reported.

    Greenpeace said it was raising awareness of nuclear power issues ahead of France's presidential elections on Sunday.

    It "illustrates the vulnerability of French nuclear to the threat of air attack," Greenpeace France spokeswoman Sophia Majnoni d'Intignano said in a statement. "While Germany took into account the aircraft crash in its safety testing, France still refuses to analyze this risk for our plants."

    France, which gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, pledged special safety tests at its 58 reactors after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011.

    Those tests include standing up to floods, earthquakes, power outages and cooling system failures -- but not terrorist attacks or even a plane crash.

    So could a paraglider attack happen in the U.S. -- or would it be shot down before even getting to a nuclear site?

    "Completely speculative," Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, told msnbc.com. "Our facilities are extremely well-defended. Let's leave it at that."

    Over at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that says it's neither for nor against nuclear power, two nuclear experts said that while a reactor's containment dome would be hard to penetrate other targets are available.

    The intake structure, where water is brought in to cool the reactor fuel, "is an easier target," Dave Lochbaum told msnbc.com. Without coolant, that fuel could cause a meltdown.

    The aerial threat exists, added Edwin Lyman, because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission "decided in 2007 to exclude any kind of aerial attack from the 'design basis threat' -- that is, the set of attacks that reactor operators must provide protection to defend against.

    "So the NRC doesn't require that nuclear plants have means to detect or defend against intrusions from the air," he added. "And the federal government also does not require 'no fly zones' around nuclear plants that could be enforced by the military."

    Kerekes countered by noting that an independent study in 2002 found that U.S. nuclear containment structures can withstand even a crash from a commercial airliner.

    As for paragliders, Lochbaum said a more likely scenario is where one or more are used at night in an attempt to get into a nuclear plant.

    "While nuclear plant security perimeter fences are well lit, the lighting is to allow security officers to catch anyone trying to climb over, cut through, or tunnel under the fences," he said. "The lights and the camera angles might not readily show someone flying in. That someone could be carrying sufficient weapons to cause problems."

    At that point, Lochbaum said, "it becomes a race -- can the intruder access area(s) needed to sabotage the plant before the security officers intervene?"

    Japan wants Fukushima residents to bury radiated soil in their own backyards, but how dangerous is the dirt and where should it go? NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel reports.

    Nuclear plants already test such scenarios, and Lochbaum said "the good guys sometimes lose the race" in testing -- even with the six weeks notice given by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

    "Typically, the force-on-force tests are conducted once every three years at each U.S. nuclear plant," he said. "A test may consist of four exercises -- different entry points and different targets. It would be useful to periodically throw in a glider or parachute entry to make sure the security officers practice handling such threats, too."

    Nuclear power debate in France includes Libya project

    Back in France, the stunt certainly got attention -- but not all of it flattering for Greenpeace.

    "The main consequence of this stupid action will be to prevent any air recreation within more areas of France," posted one person on Greenpeace's main blog on the stunt.

    An anonymous post on another Greenpeace blog criticized the stunt, saying a paraglider couldn't carry enough explosives to damage nuclear containment areas. 

    "You've also missed the point," the writer added, "that someone could cause far graver damage by carrying out a similar attack on the Olympic Stadium in London later in the year."

    Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • Denied access to official data, Chinese citizens take their own pollution readings

    Andy Wong / AP

    Tan Liang, a resident of Beijing, prepares to take readings on a PM2.5 detector outside his residential compound in Beijing, China, on Dec. 3, 2011.

    The Associated Press reports from BEIJING:

    Armed with a device that looks like an old transistor radio, some Beijing residents are recording pollution levels and posting them online. It's an act that borders on subversion.

    The government keeps secret all data on the fine particles that shroud China's capital in a health-threatening smog most days. But as they grow more prosperous, Chinese are demanding the right to know what the government does not tell them: just how polluted their city is.

    "If people know what their air is like, they are more likely to take action," said Wang Qiuxia, a researcher at local environment group Green Beagle, who shows interested residents how to test pollution on a locally made monitoring machine. Continue reading.

    Andy Wong / AP

    Tan Liang carries a PM2.5 detector towards a garbage-burning facility located near his residential compound in Beijing on Dec. 3, 2011.

    Andy Wong / AP

    Wang Qiuxia, right, a volunteer from an environmental group, teaches Cheng Jing, left, how to operate the PM2.5 detector in Beijing on Dec. 7, 2011.

    Related content:

    Chinese are growing more outspoken about the "fog," now accurately calling it "smog," covering cities like Beijing.

  • China begins to admit 'fog' is really smog

    Chinese are growing more outspoken about the "fog," now accurately calling it "smog," covering cities like Beijing.

    By Adrienne Mong

    BEIJING—While China’s chief climate negotiator is getting rock star treatment at the Durban climate summit this week, his peers back in the capital are suffering a third straight day of foul air.

    As a leading Canadian newspaper put it, China provided “the few glimmers of hope at the stalled negotiations” in Durban, where "photographers and television journalists swarmed around the chief Chinese negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, as he entered a news conference on Monday to announce his list of conditions for considering a legally binding treaty on carbon emissions after 2020."

    It seems that despite being the world's biggest carbon emitter, China could be the key to a deal on a legally binding agreement to reduce emissions.

    However, not many glimmers of hope could be spotted back home.

    From the China Daily website

    A grid image posted on the China Daily newspaper showing the dramatic changes in air quality in Beijing in the past four days.

    A persistent 'fog'
    The Chinese state-run print media all ran headline stories Tuesday morning on the persistent "fog" that has blanketed Beijing and parts of the country’s northeast since the weekend. (See video above of the "hazardous" level of smog on Monday).

    Much of the coverage focused on the hundreds of flights cancelled at the Beijing Capital International airport—the world’s second busiest hub—or the rising and very vocal concerns about air pollution.  Some local reports referred to sales of air filter masks and air filter machines spiking in the past week.

    Still more reports tried to cast the air pollution issue as one of sovereignty.  "The heavy fog or smog that has shrouded Beijing in the past couple of days has triggered a renewed round of debate over the different air pollution standards applied by China and the United States," said an opinion piece in the Global Times, a state-run newspaper with a strong nationalist overtone.

    But at least these same newspapers are now calling it "smog" rather than "fog," as they were just a day ago.  The China Daily, another state-run newspaper, ran a headline on page 3 crying, "Exposure to smog is severe hazard."  Later in the day, the paper’s web site posted four stark images of the same location showing changes in air visibility. (See photo above). The images are pretty staggering.

    Only 13 days of 'good' air this year so far

    And as we write this, the ever-trusty and ever-reliable @BeijingAir Twitter feed has been down five hours, prompting followers to wonder whether the pollution has finally gotten to the air quality index monitor that lives on top of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

    Post by @TomVandeWeghe

    An image of an iPhone app circulating on Twitter this afternoon, showing the @BeijingAir monitor out of commission.

    A sobering analysis of the @BeijingAir feed can be found in this post by China Dialogue, which notes that the improvements in air quality claimed by officials at the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau "are due to irregularities in the monitoring and reporting of air quality – and not to less polluted air."

    Moreover, based on the analysis using the @BeijingAir data, this year there have only been 13 days of "good" air quality. 

    Buried further amidst the quantitative data was one more alarming point: "…if Beijing’s fine particulate concentration even reached the polluted levels of Los Angeles, life expectancy may increase by over five years."

    We at NBC News Beijing are trying to claw back a few months to our life span.  We have just taken delivery of two air filter machines for the bureau.

  • Beijing residents call foul over the air

    Adrienne Mong

    The outline of Beijing's central business district can just about be seen from a plane landing in the capital Wednesday morning--a time when the air was considered clean.

    By Adrienne Mong

    BEIJING—For the past month, while I was pinballing from North Africa to Europe, something from afar became abundantly clear—unlike the sky that has blanketed the Chinese capital this autumn.

    Disgruntlement amongst Beijing residents with the quality of air appears to be nearing an all-time high despite claims by municipal environment officials that the city has enjoyed 239 days of “good air quality” from January to October—seven days more than the same period during the year of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

    Criticism has been so vocal that this week the Municipal Bureau of Environmental Protection conceded that maybe there had been something amiss with the air in October. 

    On Tuesday, seven residents were invited to visit the bureau’s air monitoring centre.  “We chose this time to open the center to individual visitors because more people now care about air quality and its monitoring since the October fog scare,” a spokesman was quoted as saying.

    Jousting over air quality readings

    2011 was a pretty bad summer, with most days a grim milky gray color.  But since the end of August, Twitter users have regularly posted complaints about the smog shrouding the city—an alarming development as Beijing residents normally enjoy the freshest air and the highest number of blue-sky days in the cooler months of September and October.

    The complaints have been backed up by the U.S. embassy’s @BeijingAir index readings, which go up every hour on Twitter. 

    Richard Buangan/U.S. Embassy

    The infamous @BeijingAir monitor at the centre of the air pollution index ruckus. It lives on top of the U.S. embassy in downtown Beijing.

    Most foreign residents don’t need to look at the readings every day; a glance out the window is enough to keep them indoors.  But the figures—the only such independent data in Beijing--are a reliable guideline for how much time anyone with asthma or other respiratory ailments should spend outdoors on any given day.

    More significantly, @BeijingAir also counts many Chinese among its followers.

    And why not?  It didn’t take long before some folks noticed a major discrepancy in readings supplied by the U.S. embassy and official Chinese outlets.

    On a number of days in which the air was indisputably filthy and filled with an acrid smell, U.S. embassy readings indicated “unhealthy” or “hazardous” conditions while the Beijing municipal index signaled “good.”  The smog was visible even from space, as one China-based photographer highlighted with a satellite visual from NASA.

    Most explanations have noted that the U.S. embassy measurements include the tiniest particulate matter, which is considered to be the most dangerous to one’s health as they can penetrate deeper into the lungs or the bloodstream.  These are known as PM2.5--or particulate matter in the air that measures 2.5 micrometres or smaller in diameter. 

    The Beijing meteorological authorities base their readings on measurements of much coarser particles known as PM10. 

    But, as one former Beijing resident discovered, Chinese officials in fact DO measure PM2.5.  They’ve just decided that “the time is not ripe” to release the data to the public, fuelling ongoing suspicions that China’s government is deliberately obscuring the dangers to its people's health.

    NASA image courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC

    An image of skies over eastern China taken on October 18, 2011, by NASA's Aqua satellite.

    Clouding the issue

    Nonetheless, environment authorities in Beijing have gone on the offensive, saying the U.S. embassy air quality index readings are not accurate and just constitute “hype.”

    Moreover, they continue to describe the smog as “dense fog” that signals Beijing’s usual transition from autumn to winter. 

    It hasn’t helped matters in the “trust your government” category when one of the many U.S. diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks this past summer revealed that Chinese officials in 2009 had asked the U.S. embassy not to post its air quality index on Twitter because it might confuse the Chinese public.  On learning of the revelation, many netizens joked that it was the air pollution readings that led ultimately to the Chinese decision to block Twitter.

    The fracas was made noisier by the revelation that senior Chinese officials enjoy, literally, rarefied air.

    Netizens made hay of reports that the central government leadership living in the walled compound of Zhongnanhai, near the Forbidden City, draws on fleets of expensive air filters made by Yuanda, also known as the Broad Group.  The Chinese company has been touting the liberal use of its air purifiers by Chinese state leaders on its website.

    “The leaders need a soul filter,” said @ZhaoWenkui, a user of Chinese microblog Sina Weibo.  “If their souls are filtered, China’s problems are solved.”

    High-profile Chinese have also jumped into the fray.

    Among them is Pan Shiyi, a real estate tycoon behind the SOHO China premium brand of properties that over the years have sprouted across Beijing like molehills.  (And which doubtless have added to the dust and other pollution with all its construction sites.)

    Over the weekend, he initiated an online campaign through his Sina Weibo account—which has more than 7.4 million followers--to pressure the government into improving its air pollution monitoring.  Residents and netizens have been called onto vote on whether authorities should include measurements of the tiny PM2.5 particles.

    Other luminaries followed suit, including Lee Kaifu, who once headed Google China; Yao Chen, an actress; Ren Zhiqiang, another property mogul.

    In the meantime, someone has parodied one of the 2008 Summer Olympics anthems, “Beijing Welcomes You.”  The video has received more than half a million clicks:

    “Smoggy Capital welcomes you,

    With particles in the air.

    Friends, you have to wash your clothes every day.

    Smoggy Capital welcomes you….

    Beijing’s door is always open to you.

    All the exhaust is waiting for you.”

    But Beijing residents may want to breathe a sigh of relief they don’t live in Shanghai.

    In Wednesday’s Shanghai Daily, a local newspaper, Chinese scientists said that recent “fog” in downtown Shanghai contained cancer-causing chemicals.

    With additional research by Bo Gu.

  • German couple make greenbacks in anti-nuke battle

    By Andy Eckardt, NBC News Producer

    MAINZ, Germany – In a major victory for the anti-nuclear movement, Germany announced Monday that it will phase-out nuclear power over the next 11 years. The plan is for the country’s 17 atomic power plants to be shut down by 2022.

    Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision was made in response to public outcry over Japan’s Fukushima disaster, which reinvigorated the country’s somewhat dormant anti-nuclear movement and gave Germany’s environmentalist ‘Green’ party a boost.

    But Germany’s alternative energy movement is nothing new. Just ask the Sladeks.

    After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, when people in central Europe were increasingly worried about toxic fallout, Ursula Sladek and her husband Michael decided it was time to act.

    Taking charge
    “Radioactive residues from Chernobyl were found on the playgrounds and farmland of our community. We were not certain anymore, if the milk, the vegetables and other farm products were safe to eat for our children,” Michael Sladek told NBC News.

    The Sladeks have five children and live in Schönau, a small town in Germany’s picturesque Black Forrest region.

    They knew they had to look at the broader picture and started questioning the use of nuclear energy. Chernobyl became a wake-up call for them and, eventually, for their entire community.

    At first, the Sladeks took a very “domestic” approach and searched for ways to preserve energy at home, while gradually looking into access to green energy resources and “green models” in the region.

    “We were naïve to believe that after Chernobyl politicians would wake up and put an end to nuclear energy. But, when we saw that nothing was happening, we knew we had to roll up our sleeves and do something ourselves,” Ursula Sladek said in an interview with German broadcaster ZDF.

    Pete Souza / The White House

    President Barack Obama meets with Goldman Environmental Prize winners in the Oval Office, April 13, 2011. Ursula Sladek is in the center on crutches.

    “While we were campaigning for local support and running competitions to generate environmental awareness among the residents of Schönau, we soon realized that we had to take the fight off the streets and to take new projects into our own hands,” Michael Sladek added. 
     
    The result: In a 1996 town referendum – after 10 years of intensive research, protests and battles with local authorities – the residents of Schönau voted to take over the local power grid, supplied by renewable energy only.

    Environmental hero
    Today, Ursula Sladek, runs EWS, a local utility company which is collectively owned by 1,000 citizens and which provides more than 400 million kilowatt hours of power to more than 100,000 households and businesses across Germany.

    Needless to say that Ursula, a former primary school teacher, and Michael, a doctor, have become environmental heroes in their region, and beyond.

    In April, Ursula Sladek was awarded the 2011 Goldman Environmental Prize for Excellence in Protecting the Environment. The prize, awarded by a San Francisco-based organization, recognizes six grassroots environmentalists across the globe annually and awards them $150,000 “to pursue their vision of a renewed and protected environment.”

    For Ursula, the highlight of her recognition in the United States was an invitation to the Oval Office to meet with President Barack Obama. She presented him with the first English copy of her book, “100 good reasons against nuclear power.”

    “Sladek has addressed climate change and energy security from the grassroots level, illustrating how social entrepreneurship and environmental stewardship can come together to tackle two of the world’s most urgent challenges,” the official Goldman Environmental Prize citation reads.

    “Several American businessmen approached me during our visit to the award ceremony in San Francisco, and while they all admired our plight, their first question always was: ‘Can you make profit with this?’” Michael Sladek said

    “And my answer always was: ‘Yes, we can,’” he said.

    More than just green
    Since its beginning, the company has been profitable, according to Michael Sladek, and grown annually, with total sales reaching approximately $95 million in 2009.

    From the overall profit, company shareholders receive dividends; also, some of the money is reinvested in new projects or is used to support other local communities who want to run green energy companies that are independent from the large leading utility firms.

    “We truly believe in the success and the future of decentralized renewable power facilities,” Michael Sladek said. 

    Experts, including the Sladeks, say that German politicians will now need to find the perfect mix of off- and on-shore windparks, solar farms, hydropower plants and other sustainable energy sources in order to meet its ambitious goal of closing all nuclear plants by 2022.

    “Next week, we will have a delegation of officials and regular citizens from Japan visiting. They want to pick up some ideas for the future,” said Michael Sladek.

  • Worming toward greener living in Beijing

    BEIJING – Sixty-nine-year-old Zhou Xianqiang’s favorite hobby is recycling. A retired school teacher, Zhou makes her own handcrafts out of things usually dumped in trash cans – roses out of used red banners or hats out of milk cartons. Now she has a new toy: a crate full of thousands of earthworms in her little floral balcony.

    Some people may not like having 2,000 smelly, slimy worms at home. But dozens of families in the Dongsi neighborhood, in the heart of Beijing, have taken them in as part of an environmental challenge from the non-governmental organization, “Global Village.”
    Partially inspired by Mary Appelhof’s book “Worms Eat My Garbage” and with help from China Agricultural University, Global Village bought earthworms from a company in suburban Beijing and experimented with them for a few months before they delivered the little creatures to local residents.

    Each family participating in the project was given one crate that contains about 2,000 earthworms. Once bedding (shredded newspaper, cardboard or leaf mold) was made inside the crate, another crate was put on top because the worms prefer it dark and quiet.

    The top crate is also where food is placed, which could be cabbage slices, crunched egg shells or apples peels. Through holes on the bottom of the top crate, the toothless earthworms crawl up and grind the food with their gizzards by muscle action. In a few weeks owners can see the results: black manure-like compost that can serve as the perfect organic nutrients for flowers and plants.

    “We hope by raising earthworms the community can have its own cycle chain. Our short-term goal is for the families to get rid of the kitchen wastes, and then use the droppings to grow plants or vegetables,” said Zhang Qiang, program coordinator from Global Village.

    Since most modern families in Beijing live in apartment buildings and are busy leading fast paced lives running between home and work, Dongsi, the old courtyard area where you can still see hundred-year-old alleyways, seemed to be an ideal residence to start with the project.

    The elderly who choose to stay in the old neighborhood have the time and patience to take part in something new and share their experiences.

    Zhang and his colleagues hope to see a long-term project if things run smoothly. “We sure will encounter many problems, but we want to succeed. In the future, even if we pull out, I hope these local residents can spread the idea to other communities.”

  • Save the rainforest? Grow a mushroom!

    By NBC News' Warangkana Chomchuen

    NAKHON RATCHASIMA, Thailand – Mushrooms are working their magic in one of Thailand’s largest national parks.

    Not the kind of magic sought after by some backpackers on their psychedelic beach trips; rather, one that lures poachers and illegal loggers to abandon the forests for mushroom barns, thus promoting nature conservation when law enforcement and penalties alone don’t work.

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    One successful convert is Wanchai Noinart.

    Having little education and few job skills, Wanchai used to roam the lush jungles of Thailand’s Khao Yai National Park, logging and poaching in response to the ever increasing demand for wildlife and wood.

    "It was my only choice then," said 34-year-old Wanchai. "The economy was very bad and I couldn’t find any other job." And it was a convenient and lucrative business, he said.

    His village borders Khao Yai National Park, a World Heritage site about 120 miles from Bangkok that spans almost 400 square miles and is a habitat to hundreds of animal species, including endangered tigers, Asian elephants, gibbons (small apes), deer, and wild boars.

    But while parks like Khao Yai offer natural lovers a rare treat, they also offer a rich supply of illegal wildlife products to meet the growing demand from within Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia.

    Animals, dead or alive, as well as animal parts, such as bear paws or wild boar meat, are deemed a culinary treat and can fetch high prices at local and international markets. Wild animals are also used in traditional Asian medicine and offered as aphrodisiacs.

    Illegal logging of scented rosewoods, used for furniture, is also highly profitable.

    Due to its illicit nature, it is hard to know their exact numbers, but conservationists and park officials estimate that about 100 poachers sneak into the park every day.

    From January to March this year alone, more than 5,600 live animals and 61,500 dead animals were recovered, worth about $4.5 million on the black market, according to ASEAN-Wildlife Enforcement Network.

    Wanchai said he could earn up to $300 a week from logging and poaching, the equivalent of one month’s salary for an entry-level government official here.

    Still, he knew he could not make a living like that forever.

    "I was always cautious, always in constant fear of getting caught by park rangers," said Wanchai. "I was worried about my wife and kids if I were to be arrested."

    Mushrooms offer safer living
    That was until last year when Wanchai heard of a fungi farming project, an initiative launched by Thailand’s Freeland Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to fighting illegal poaching and logging.

    "I think nobody wants to risk [their lives] poaching and logging in the forests," said Mukda Thongnaitham of Freeland. "They just don’t know what else to do. The mushroom farming project gives them an alternative livelihood – a solution to earn money without breaking the law."

    Mushrooms were chosen, after several discussions and surveys with villagers, because the crop yields almost perennially and is highly marketable thanks to the high demand for Thai cuisine and the boom in organic vegetables.

    In addition, growing mushrooms isn’t too complicated for villagers who don’t have a college diploma or a plot of land. Most of the farmers set up a small nursery barn at home or at the project center.

    However, when Freeland first started the mushroom program only two families signed up.

    "It was very challenging at first. The villagers thought we would conspire with park rangers and put them in jail," Mukda said.

    But just a little over a year since it started, the project is gaining steady success. Several families have joined and are finding that mushroom farming is a way to generate steady income – enough to make poachers leave the forests for good.

    From hunting to guiding
    Khao Yai National Park also initiated several other projects, including the "trek like real hunters" program that trains poachers and loggers to become jungle tour guides.

    "At first they weren’t interested. They didn’t see the benefits of it and some of them still bore grudges about getting arrested by park rangers," said Narongsak Namtapee, the park’s deputy chief.

    But the program has been giving the new guides steady incomes. The number of nature lovers who buy the tour packages has risen from zero to about 20,000 per year in the last few years.

    Despite their best efforts to lure poachers and loggers away from their illicit trade with a steady paycheck, Narongsak said park rangers still patrol every day and arrest loggers on a weekly basis.

    Sometimes park rangers are outnumbered, or outsmarted, by poachers playing hide and seek. That’s where the ex-poachers can contribute tremendous intelligence resources to park rangers.

    "Our rangers move and transfer all the time, while villagers and community stay put. The bottom line is if the community and the park can coexist, both will survive."

    As for Wanchai, he and his wife wake up before dawn to collect newly sprung mushrooms in his barn and even have time to labor in cornfields during the harvest season.

    "I feel so relieved that I don’t have to run away from park rangers anymore," he said with a grin. "I can make a living at home. It’s safe. Lives are saved."