National News

Actually, it's all kinds of fruits and vegetables. A circuit board called the MaKey MaKey is allowing musicians to play music on produce, to awesome effect. Watch the video.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, rattled off the death toll during a talk Tuesday. But the CIA and Pentagon have not released official figures.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

About half want a new pope to drive the church in a new direction; the other half want a traditionalist. Most American Catholics, however, would approve of a pope who wants to allow priests to marry.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Last school year, 29 current and recent students at Harper High School in Chicago were shot. Eight of them died. The public radio show This American Life sent reporters to the school for a full semester, to find out more about living in what's being called a war zone. Tell Me More host Michel Martin finds out what they learned.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Millions of Americans rely on social security for their livelihood. But the program is at the center of the government's debate over spending cuts — and it's facing its own financial troubles. Host Michel Martin speaks with Michael Astrue, former Social Security Commissioner, about his views on the program's biggest issues.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

You can learn a lot about a culture by listening to its music. NPR producer Jasmine Garsd took a reporting trip to Puerto Rico recently. She found that the island's uncertain economic future not only affects day-to-day life, but also its music. Garsd shares some songs with host Michel Martin.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

It's now the largest park in the world to be given the International Dark-Sky Association's top honor. Skies there "offer views close to what could be seen before the rise of cities." We've got the list of 19 other places the association cites.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

When the giant winter storm Nemo hit New England two weeks ago, the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Generating Station in Plymouth, Mass., lost outside power for several days. Diesel backups took over operating the reactors' cooling system. Pilgrim has the same kind of reactors that failed less than two years ago at Fukushima, Japan, after an earthquake and tsunami crippled offsite power and emergency back-ups. The Pilgrim incident comes as the U.S. nuclear industry is fighting proposed new safety measures meant for a crisis that might begin exactly this way.

Of the 104 reactors in the U.S., 31 are very like those in Fukushima, that lost power, melted down and exploded. I'm entering one of them, the Dresden Nuclear Station, about an hour southwest of Chicago.

View GE Mk I & Mk II Reactors in the U.S. in a larger map

After Fukushima, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission studied what happened. Should it require new safety measures here, even though a crisis is very unlikely?

It's not zero," says Charles Casto, director of NRC Region III, the Midwest. "Hah. The probability's not zero; it's something."

Region III has about two dozen reactors. We spoke at Casto's office. Nuclear regulation, he said, is about possibility more than probability.

"You take your best -- based on history...you know, what has history shown you that the probability would be?" Casto said. "But that doesn't mean zero."

The Fukushima reactors, and their 31 U.S. cousins, including Dresden and the Pilgrim Station, are old Mk I and II boiling water reactors, built by General Electric. The safety enclosures for the reactors are too small. If their cores start to melt down, the containments could fail in several ways, including radioactive hydrogen gas building up and exploding ...as at Fukushima. There's an increasingly politicized dispute between the industry and the NRC over how to make preventing meltdowns safer.

Dresden, the first commercial nuclear plant in the country, is operated by the largest nuclear energy company in the U.S. -- Exelon Generation. It looks dated but extremely well maintained. It hums.

Gregory Roach, the senior NRC inspector here, showed me back-ups on backups on backups, flood protection, fire protection. An hour into the tour, we came to the part I most wanted to see -- the venting system.

"We showed you where the hardened vents were for the dry well, so now this is downstream," Roach said.

He was pointing to a pipe overhead that exits the container wall. The vent system...if power fails, and the back-ups fail, and radioactive hydrogen builds up, you can probably save the reactors by venting the hydrogen.

"And this pipe goes up to the main stack, 300 feet, and then releases into the environment," Roach said.

The Japanese vents mostly didn't work; that's what caused the explosions.

"So you learn a lesson of Fukushima Daiichi," Casto said. "And then you put in standards and say your vent must be able to operate under those conditions."

A year ago, the NRC issued a new order: vents must be reliable.

"Does that mean during an accident you have to be able to get access to it?" Casto asked. "Does that mean you have to do it remotely?

The industry and the NRC are working on it; the industry has until the end of 2016.

Now, here's what the fight is about: do the vents at these 31 plants also need filters? Because, in the best of conditions, some radioactive gas and particles may escape in venting -- and in the very, very unlikely worst of conditions, a lot could escape.

"You have to establish the 'what if'," Casto said. "What if it does happen? What if the improable happens?"

Reactor cores hold dozens of tons of radioactive material. At Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island in 1979, about half the core melted, but the containment held, and the venting was relatively minor. We don't yet know how much escaped from Fukushima; it's too dangerous to go look. But there are scenarios in which it's possible to lose a good part of those dozens of tons through the vents. With filters, virtually all of it is captured.

To a layperson, nuclear regulation can be almost as daunting as nuclear physics. The Dresden plant is a wonder of machine technology -- in it I got reacquainted with the idea of awe.

The NRC process for new rules...that's messier.

The chances of a reactor ever needing a filter are so small that you can't justify the cost. But the NRC staff concluded that the consequences of no-filter could be so bad, they should be required anyway. By NRC procedures, if the staff wants to override normal cost-benefit standards, the five commissioners have to vote to approve, and the fight is on.

A week after the NRC staff testified for filters in January, 21 House Re-publicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee sent the NRC a letter admonishing the staff. There is plenty of money at stake.

"External filter vents would be an additional approximately $15-20 million per unit," said David Czufin, an engineer who runs the Dresden plant for Exelon.

Exelon has 10 more of these reactors, so filters could cost the company more than $200 million -- on top of many other precautions, he said.

"Additional connections, additional equipment, stored equipment for readiness..."

Exelon does plan to spend $400 million in the next three years for post-Fukushima modifications, some of that for vents -- but not filters.

"The one thing I would tell you is that the Fukushima event, we have learned a lot from it," Czufin said. "We continue to look at how the plant in Japan was operated differently from my plant."

He's right; they are different. The independent Japanese commission on Fukushima says so: U.S. plants are much better regulated, run and prepared. And nuclear is already at a competitive disadvantage, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, natural gas plants can produce electricity for about 40 percent less. If the industry loses this one, it's going to hurt.

A last question for the director of NRC Region III, Charles Casto. Is he satisfied now that under circumstances like Fukushima Daiichi, he has the technology to operate vents at the stations that are under his authority?

"Yes, we believe that we have reliable vents and that the operators can do a controlled vent in a reliable way during an accident," Casto said.

But unusual things do happen, as at the Pilgrim Station. Without the filters, there is a very small chance that those vents might become a kind of radioactive fire hose. That's what the fight is about.

The NRC Commissioners are voting on this now -- a process that can take weeks, or longer.

Pressure on doctors and hospitals to reduce the rate of early elective deliveries appears to be working. A detailed look at hospitals across the country finds births before 39 weeks are on the decline.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Mississippi got lots of attention this week for finally having ratified the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. But many states have taken decades to join the rest of the country when it comes to amending the Constitution. And some have withheld approval to this day.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Sales were up more than 9 percent from a year ago. Realtors report that across much of the nation, would-be buyers are beginning to outpace the supply of homes.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Antioxidants in foods may have health benefits, but it's not one size fits all. Having a diet high in overall antioxidant levels didn't prevent stroke and dementia in one recent study, although eating more vitamin C and E specifically did seem to help.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

India's Kumbh Mela festival is considered the largest religious gathering in the world, and it can be completely disorienting for an outsider. An NPR reporter found an expert guide.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

India's Kumbh Mela festival is considered the largest religious gathering in the world, and it can be completely disorienting for an outsider. An NPR reporter found an expert guide.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The "night stalker" stayed at the Cecil Hotel in the '80s. So did an Austrian man who killed at least 11 prostitutes in three countries. This week, a woman's body was found in a rooftop water tank.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

How many movies do you see in the theater a year? Two per month, maybe? At that rate, that’s 75 hours you’re spending in the theater each year, if every movie lasts three hours.

But stats show that Americans on average spend a lot more time -- 142 hours a year -- playing video games. That’s why Sony’s PS4 announcement last night is a big deal, even though company didn’t necessarily unveil its new gaming console.

"The biggest surprise of last night was the fact that there wasn't even a console in the house," says CNET's Jeff Bakalar, who covered the event in New York.

Though they lacked hardware, Bakalar says Sony did promote new console features, such as social gaming and Internet connectivity.

To hear more about Sony's PlayStation plans, click on the audio player above.

Republican Governor Rick Scott of Florida has been one of the fiercest critics of President Obama's Affordable Care Act. But yesterday, Scott reversed course on a big part of the new law, dropping his opposition to expanding health care for the poor in his state. Scott said he'll expand medicaid for three years -- that's when federal startup funding expires. While the announcement is sure to make political ripples, it is also a big win for Florida hospitals – who currently absorb most of the costs that uninsured patients incur.

Payday lenders are often blamed for taking advantage of the little guy. But that's something that Justin Davis, a payday lender in Kansas City, Missouri, takes issue with. "For me and my business, I try to treat my customers right," says Davis. "As long as people do the math, then they are not doing something stupid."

Walmart beat expectations in its latest earnings report, but offered a wary outlook for the first part of this year. Safeway also reports earnings on Thursday. The two companies have more in common than one might think. Groceries now make up more than half Walmart’s American sales. Today’s numbers look back, but the worry is about what’s ahead. There’s been a lot of speculation about how this year’s increase in the payroll tax will impact consumer spending, but other factors will also come into play.

And finally, to Russia where a woman was looking for an address on the Russian alternative to Google Maps when she made a shocking discovery. In the streetview of the address, she saw a picture of her fiance, Sasha, with another woman. She knew when the picture was taken because Sasha had a cast on his arm. A confession soon followed.

A broad array of medical groups has agreed on an expanded list of things doctors shouldn't do. The idea is to curb unnecessary, wasteful and often harmful care, the sponsors say.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Global markets were down this morning over concerns about the U.S. Federal Reserve’s attitude toward monetary policy. On Wednesday, the central bank released meeting minutes which showed division over how long it should continue its stimulative policy of quantitative easing.

"We've had such a strong run that the market used that as a pivot-point," says Susan Schmidt, head of U.S. equities at Mesirow Financial, who says that investors are now moving funds out of stocks.

According to Schmidt, there is little chance the Fed will abandon quantitative easing anytime in the next year. “The market is using this as an excuse to have people move to the sidelines and take a breather," she says.

Global markets were down this morning over concerns about the U.S. Federal Reserve’s attitude toward monetary policy. On Wednesday, the central bank released meeting minutes which showed division over how long it should continue its stimulative policy of quantitative easing.

"We've had such a strong run that the market used that as a pivot-point," says Susan Schmidt, head of U.S. equities at Mesirow Financial, who says that investors are now moving funds out of stocks.

According to Schmidt, there is little chance the Fed will abandon quantitative easing anytime in the next year. “The market is using this as an excuse to have people move to the sidelines and take a breather," she says.