U.S. nuclear industry mulls response plans
WASHINGTON, June 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. nuclear energy industry says it has created a leadership structure to coordinate responses to potential crises like Japan's Fukushima Daiichi accident.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations and the Electric Power Research Institute have announced a steering committee to coordinate and oversee response activities, an NEI release said Thursday.
"The nuclear energy industry's top priority is safety," said Tony Pietrangelo, NEI's senior vice president and chief nuclear officer. "We recognize that to maintain the highest standard of safety and security to ensure top performance at every U.S. nuclear energy facility, we must continually evolve and improve standards of practice, and adapt to events and new information that affect or have the potential to affect our industry.
"Our industry is committed to ensuring safety at American reactors, which is why it's imperative that we continue to support the recovery efforts at Fukushima Daiichi and monitor events in Japan given the long-term impacts moving forward," Pietrangelo said.
U.S. nuclear power plants operating in 31 states supply electricity to one of every five U.S. homes and businesses, the NEI said.
Snowpack decline threatens water supplies
WASHINGTON, June 9 (UPI) -- A U.S. study suggests snowpack declines in the Rocky Mountains measured over the last 30 years are unusual compared with data going back the past few centuries.
A study by the U.S. Geological Survey says the decline can be linked to unusual springtime warming and changes in rainfall patterns.
The warming and snowpack decline are projected to worsen through the 21st century, threatening to put a strain on water supplies.
Runoff from winter snowpack accounts for 60 percent to 80 percent of the annual water supply for more than 70 million people living in the western United States, a USGS release said Thursday.
"This scientific work is critical to understanding how climate change is affecting western water supplies," Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said. "It helps land managers adapt to changing conditions on the ground, assists water managers with planning for the future, and gives all of us a better understanding of the real impacts that carbon pollution is having on our resources and our way of life."
Since the 1980s there have been declines in snowpack along the entire length of the Rocky Mountains with unusually severe declines in the north, the study found.
"Over most of the 20th century, and especially since the 1980s, the northern Rockies have borne the brunt of the snowpack losses," said USGS scientist Gregory Pederson, the lead author of the study.
"Most of the land and snow in the northern Rockies sits at lower and warmer elevations than the southern Rockies, making the snowpack more sensitive to seemingly small increases in temperature," he said.
Piece of historic meteorite up for auction
DALLAS, June 9 (UPI) -- A piece cut from the famous 15-ton Willamette Meteorite at New York's American Museum of Natural History will go to the highest bidder, an auction house says.
The nearly 30-pound crown section cut from the historic meteorite in a controversial decision by the museum's curator a decade ago will be offered in a public auction on Sunday in Dallas and online, a release by Heritage Auctions in Dallas said Thursday.
The seller is Darryl Pitt, curator of the New York-based Macovich Collection of Meteorites, who traded a martian meteorite to the museum for the piece of the Willamette Meteorite in 1997.
Scientists believe the Willamette Meteorite originated from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, fell to Earth in Canada and was transported slowly to what is now Clackamas County, Ore., in a moving glacier during the last ice age, Pitt said.
"In 1997, Museum Curator Dr. Martin Prinz decided to cut off an end piece of the meteorite so the public could view its dazzling interior crystalline structure," Pitt said.
"The museum has publicly vowed that the meteorite will never again be cut," he said.
The minimum bid for the "missing" section of the Willamette Meteorite is $750,000, the auction house said.
Stem cell finding could repair hearts
LONDON, June 9 (UPI) -- British researchers say new stem cell discoveries could lead within 10 years to a pill that could enable hearts damaged by heart attacks to repair themselves.
University College London scientists have discovered a natural embryo molecule can awaken dormant repair cells in adult hearts and could form the basis of a drug that helps destroyed heart muscle to be rebuilt after a heart attack, The Scotsman reported Thursday.
Tests on mice showed it was possible to improve the pumping efficiency of damaged hearts by 25 percent, and even just half that level of improvement could transform the lives of millions of people suffering heart attacks, the newspaper said.
Until recently, experts believed the heart was inherently irreparable and once damaged stayed damaged.
Research on the changes that occur in embryos developing in the womb led researchers to rethink that, as they discovered stem cells that build the heart in the growing embryo are also present in adults, but dormant.
The breakthrough discovery was that a protein building block called thymosin beta 4, which is normally active in the embryo, could "re-awaken" the adult stem cells.
"Even five years ago, people would have said this is science fiction, science fantasy," said Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation, which funded the research.
At a "conservative" estimate, researchers said, they believe a practical treatment could be available in 10 years.
