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You think solar electrical generation is going to save you or the Planet? Think again. While it is true that photovoltaic solar panels do not pollute while they are producing electricity -- what about the manufacturing process? What happens when these panels reach the end of their projected lifecycle in twenty-five years? (This is, by the way, an optimistic view of their useful life.) Those questions are addressed in a study by the watchdog group Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. "Green Power" is being hyped as the "Safe Solution." It is anything but safe -- when all factors are considered. Here...

City bans garbage disposal units Residents of Raleigh, N.C., face stiff penalties if they install garbage disposal units in their kitchen sinks or repair existing ones if they break. The City Council approved the ban on Wednesday, the Raleigh Chronicle reports. The ordinance includes a fine of up to $25,000 a day. Officials said that anyone caught with an illegal disposal unit could also face a lifetime ban on getting city water. The ban covers several municipalities around Raleigh. The garbage disposal units, which grind up leftover food and flush it into the sewer system, lead to pipes clogged with...

2/11/2008 - KAPISA PROVINCE, Afghanistan (AFPN) -- Airmen from the explosive ordnance disposal, 755th Air Expeditionary Group, assisted Kohistan II district Afghanistan National Police with unexploded ordnance disposal Feb. 2. "The police chief requested our assistance with removing the UXOs during our last visit," said Tech. Sgt. Francis Warren, Bagram Provincial Reconstruction Team Police Technical Advisory Team noncommissioned officer in charge. Sergeant Warren took action and contacted EOD for assistance. Tech. Sgt. Steven Nidzgorski, an EOD team leader, said UXO's and landmines pose a serious threat for locals and military personnel throughout Afghanistan. In the last six months, Sergeant Nidzgorski's...

CAMP HABBINIYAH, Iraq (May 10, 2006) -- While most service members do their best to avoid road-side bombs or walk in the opposite direction of a known landmine field, a small community of American troops seek such threats head on and are now training their Iraqi counterparts to do the same. American explosives ordnance disposal technicians are overseeing the development of an EOD company in the Iraqi Army's 1st Division, which is based out of nearby Camp Habbiniyah. The area surrounding Habbiniyah, where many military commanders believe insurgents transit or stage for attacks in Ramadi and Fallujah, has been a...

What is the proper way of disposing of a used US flag? Please help. Thanks.

FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. (NNS) -- The Naval School of Explosive Ordnance Disposal has intensified the training for experienced explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) technicians with the addition of the Advanced Improvised Explosive Device Disposal (AIEDD) Training Facility. The new $7 million facility concluded its pilot course Nov. 23, and the first full class will begin Jan. 6. The facility is a joint course run by the Navy on Eglin Air Force Base in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. It is designed to train and evaluate the ability of Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team leaders, personnel of other key federal agencies and...

Tony Blair is believed to be convinced over the need for nuclear power to tackle the UK energy crisis.The government is to announce a review of energy policy, including nuclear power, after being urged by business leaders to tackle the UK energy crisis. Concerns have been growing over future power supplies and rising gas costs. The BBC's Nick Robinson said despite the prime minister's support, no decision has yet been made on Britain's nuclear future. Tony Blair's spokesman said: "The prime minister's view is that we need to look at all the options and everybody knows that is what we...

FAIRCHILD AFB, Wa., Nov. 16, 2005 — Explosive ordnance disposal personnel worked hand-in-hand with multiple federal agencies at the Grand Coulee Dam, Oct. 4 - 6, for an exercise titled "Watchful Sentinel." "The focus of the exercise was to evaluate Special Response Forces standard operation procedures, along with coordination between the Special Response Forces and supporting agencies, via a series of realistic events," said U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jack Burleigh, explosive ordnance disposal craftsman, 92nd Civil Engineering Squadron. "Some of the calls we respond to involve ordnance left behind in a deceased veteran's war chest. Other times, we may...

MOSCOW, November 3 (RIA Novosti) - The second phase of the federal program to decommission chemical weapons will require $7 billion, the Federal Agency for Industry said Thursday. According to Deputy Chairman of the agency Viktor Kholstov, a new version program was agreed on October 24. "The new program envisages using three facilities... in the second phase of the chemical weapons decommissioning," he said. He said a center for chemical weapons disposal had been operating in Gorny, a town in central Russia, since 2002. Kholstov said all of the 1,143 metric tons of chemical weapons stored at the facility...

Louisiana investigates improper cremations Disposal of Katrina victims at issue By Maurice Possley and John McCormick, Tribune staff reporters. Maurice Possley reported from Baton Rouge and John McCormick from Chicago Published October 30, 2005 BATON ROUGE, La. -- As hundreds of Louisiana families wait to claim the bodies of loved ones still lying anonymously in crowded morgues, the state medical examiner is investigating at least one parish coroner for allegedly disposing of Hurricane Katrina victims improperly. "We have been informed that there have been cremations of evacuees, either identified or unidentified, without the consent of the next of kin and...

U.S. Army Sgt. Maj. David Diceglie, 42nd Infantry Division Artillery, holds some captured enemy ammunition at a cache site. Diceglie was one of a team of U.S. soldiers assigned to Task Force Liberty who supervised the destruction of caches like this one. Photo courtesy of 42nd Infantry Division Artillery Ordnance Disposal Reclaims Farmland, Saves Lives Unexploded ordnance in Iraq includes a wide assortment of artillery, rocket and mortar rounds and in some cases, anti-ship cruise missiles. By U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Raymond Drumsta 42nd Infantry Division Public Affairs FORWARD OPERATING BASE SUMMERALL, BAYJI, Iraq, Oct. 27, 2005 — In...

Workers at a landfill in Orange County, Calif. - as if tamping down the contents of a wastebasket - regularly pile one million cubic yards of dirt atop a football field-size section of the giant dump. Six months later, the workers scrape the dirt aside and the dump's surface has fallen 30 to 40 feet, making space for yet more trash. "It's just amazing," said Mike Giancola, deputy director of the county's waste agency. Orange County's method is part of a remarkable productivity story playing out in the trash business, quietly saving consumers, businesses and municipalities billions of dollars a...

Sunday July 10, 3:23 PM 7,000 evacuated in Tokyo suburbs while wartime dud shell removed(Kyodo) _ About 7,000 residents in western Tokyo suburbs were evacuated Sunday as a Ground Self-Defense Force unit disposed of an unexploded bomb, believed to have been dropped by the U.S. military during World War II, from a crop field in the city of Nishitokyo. It took about half an hour for the GSDF unit to remove the detonator from the so-called "1-ton bomb," which was found 10 meters underground in the field. The bomb was 180 centimeters in length and 60 cm in diameter. The...

Japan hopes to remove a big source of friction with China by speeding up the disposal of tens of thousands of chemical weapons abandoned by Japanese forces at the end of the second world war. Tokyo will build a dozen disposal plants in China and begin processing leftover weapons in three years, said the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. The decision to quickly complete the work, started in 1997, comes after a sharp deterioration in relations amid Chinese claims that Japan has refused to acknowledge the brutal nature of its occupation. The approval by Japanese education authorities of a history textbook that...

The Georgia lawyer who won $80 million for victims of the Tri-State Crematory down South - where rotting bodies were found strewn in woods and potting soil was passed off as ashes - is now going after a Quincy funeral home for human atrocities. In a suit to be filed Wednesday in Norfolk Superior Court, Braintree attorney Mark Gladstone and Robert Smalley of Atlanta, who has agreed to be co-counsel, will charge Hamel, Wickens & Troupe Funeral Home of intentional mishandling of a corpse, negligence and breach of contract on behalf of a widow who believed her beloved husband of...

A federal appeals court decision has thrown a gigantic roadblock in the way of efforts to create an underground burial site for nuclear wastes at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. A three-judge panel in the District of Columbia ruled last month that regulators could not simply require the repository to contain the wastes for 10,000 years, the standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency, but must instead ensure that Yucca could function acceptably for hundreds of thousands of years. That standard is so outlandishly stringent it may not be achievable. Unless Congress steps in to change the ground rules, the court...

RUSSIA has reportedly destroyed about 50 tonnes of chemical weapons in the first month of operations at a new facility built to help eliminate the country's huge arsenal. The facility in Gorny, about 700km south-east of Moscow, expected to dispose of 400 tonnes by April, former Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko told the ITAR-Tass news agency. Kiriyenko, who now serves as chairman of the State Commission on Chemical Disarmament, said that the facility has been working non-stop since opening. Russia has budgeted $US174 million ($297 million) for destroying chemical weapons in 2003, about the same as 2002 and far less than...

<p>RUMFORD, Maine (AP) A committee that organized an event marking the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has apologized for the improper disposal of thousands of American flags in a New Hampshire landfill.</p> <p>The flags were supposed to have been burned following a ceremony Sept. 7 organized by the Sept. 11 Remembrance Day Committee. Instead, they were taken to a local transfer station and later sent to North Country Environmental Services Inc.'s landfill in Bethlehem, N.H.</p>

<p>RUMFORD, Maine (AP) People in western Maine are upset that hundreds of American flags were dumped in a landfill instead of being burned and buried in a ceremony honoring the victims of the terrorist attacks.</p> <p>Organizers with civic groups in Rumford collected thousands of flags for a public ceremony Sept. 7 to honor the victims of the attacks. One flag was burned at the ceremony, and the rest were supposed to be burned at a pit adjacent to the transfer station in Mexico.</p>