LONDON/OSLO (Reuters) – People evacuated from a danger zone around Japan’s damaged Fukushima nuclear plant may need to stay away for many months, but experts say there are ways to make their return swifter and easier.

Radiation levels in the area now are higher than normal and could increase risks to long-term health, but so-called remediation methods, such as deep-plowing the soil, removing topsoil altogether and choosing crops and ways of farming that don’t pick up much radioactivity, can cut the risk of harm.

OSLO (Reuters) – Aircraft condensation trails criss-crossing the sky may be warming the planet on a normal day more than the carbon dioxide emitted by all planes since the Wright Brothers’ first flight in 1903, a study said on Tuesday.

It indicated that contrails — white lines of vapour left by jet engines — also have big knock-on effects by adding to the formation of high-altitude, heat-trapping cirrus clouds as the lines break up.

OSLO (Reuters) – Companies should do more to report their impact on nature to help curb damage that drains trillions of dollars a year from the world economy, a leading U.N. expert said on Monday.

Pavan Sukhdev, head of the U.N. Environment Programme’s Green Economy Initiative, said it could take five to 10 years to develop rules that would enable comparisons about which firms were best or worst in protecting the natural world.

VIENNA/OSLO (Reuters) – The release of two types of radioactive particles in the first 3-4 days of Japan’s nuclear crisis is estimated to have reached 20-50 percent of the amounts from Chernobyl in 10 days, an Austrian expert said Wednesday.

The calculations published by Austria’s Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics may add to growing concern in Japan and elsewhere over the contamination of food products such as milk and vegetables in areas near the Japanese reactor site.

VIENNA/OSLO, March 23 (Reuters) – The release of two types of
radioactive particles in the first 3-4 days of Japan’s nuclear
crisis is estimated to have reached 20-50 percent of the amounts
from Chernobyl in 10 days, an Austrian expert said on Wednesday.

The calculations published by Austria’s Central Institute
for Meteorology and Geodynamics may add to growing concern in
Japan and elsewhere over the contamination of food products such
as milk and vegetables in areas near the Japanese reactor site.

VIENNA/OSLO (Reuters) – Minuscule numbers of radioactive particles believed to have come from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected as far away as Iceland, officials said on Tuesday.

Traces of iodine-131, below levels of concern for human health, were discovered in an air filter used at a radiation monitoring centre in Reykjavik at the weekend, the Icelandic Radiation Safety Authority (IRSA) said.

VIENNA/OSLO (Reuters) – Miniscule numbers of radioactive particles believed to have come from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected as far away as Iceland, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.

They stressed the tiny traces, measured by a network of international monitoring stations as they spread eastwards from Japan across the Pacific, North America, the Atlantic and to Europe, were far too low to cause any harm to humans.

LONDON/OSLO (Reuters) – Japan’s reconnection of power to its earthquake-damaged reactors is a major step in managing its nuclear crisis, experts said on Monday, but smoke from two reactors and worries about food safety showed the crisis was far from over.

“There is more than a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel,” said Robin Grimes, head of the center for nuclear engineering at Imperial College, London.

OSLO (Reuters) – The United Nations should promote “hydro-diplomacy” to defuse any tensions over water in regions like the Middle East and North Africa where scarce supplies have the potential to spark future conflicts, experts said on Sunday.

They said the U.N. Security Council should work out ways to bolster cooperation over water in shared lakes or rivers, from the Mekong to the Nile, that are likely to come under pressure from a rising world population and climate change.

OSLO, March 18 (Reuters) – Harmless traces of Japan’s
nuclear accident may reach Europe in a week’s time, part of a
normally ignored background of radiation whose effects include a
premium for pre-1945 steel such as in old shipwrecks.
Fallout from the 1945 U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki and nuclear tests, along with accidents such as at
Chernobyl in 1986, have spread a pervasive background of
radiation around the globe.

“We expect that maybe in seven days from now we could detect
some atoms, with very, very exact instruments here in Sweden,”
Klas Idehaag, reactor inspector at the Swedish Radiation Safety
Authority, said on Friday.