BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing will ban or restrict smoking in most public venues in May as part of its pledge to hold a smoke-free Olympics, local media reported on Monday, citing the city’s legal office.
New legislation to take effect on May 1 will forbid smoking at government offices and on public transport, the Beijing Morning Post said, but falls short of setting outright bans at restaurants, bars and clubs.
Nuclear plants can fail when the heat from the reactor is not removed quickly enough from the core. This can happen in pressurised water nuclear reactors if the water in the cooling system boils, because steam is a much poorer conductor of heat than liquid water.
These reactors have a primary water cooling system that directly takes heat away from the reactor. It is sealed under huge pressure to prevent it boiling and conducts heat to a secondary water cooling system that is not sealed.
In an ambitious move, a Californian utility plans to create a massive, distributed “powerplant” by installing a total of 2 square miles of solar cells on the roofs of businesses. Southern California Edison plans to install 250 megawatts’ worth of solar power, generating enough electricity to power 162,000 homes.
MILLTOWN, Montana (Reuters) - Engineers breached a hydroelectric dam in Montana on Friday, the first time an American dam was removed to clean up toxic sediments captured behind it from years of mining upriver.
The intent was the restore some of the pristine beauty of the water as portrayed in “A River Runs Through It,” Norman McLean’s classic novel about fly fishing later made into a film directed by Robert Redford.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration, which has resisted regulating carbon dioxide emissions, this spring will propose rules that could affect everything from vehicles to power plants and oil refineries, the top U.S. environmental official told Congress on Thursday.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson said the agency will issue proposed rules “later this spring” on “the specific effects of climate change and potential regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from stationary and mobile sources.”