An angry protest is gathering momentum in Mithi Virdi, a picturesque village in Gujarat’s Bhavnagar district. Four villages have united forces to oppose a nuclear plant coming up in their vicinity. Mithi Virdi is likely to become as famous as Jaitapur and Kudankulam. In 2008, Mithi Virdi was placed on India’s nuclear map when the Indo-US deal was signed. The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) endorsed a Memoradum of Understanding (MoU) with Westinghouse, a nuclear major in Pennsylvania, to build a power plant on land acquired from four villages here. External Affairs S.M.

The debate surrounding the safety of shale gas development in the Appalachian Basin has generated increased awareness of drinking water quality in rural communities. Concerns include the potential for migration of stray gas, metal-rich formation brines, and hydraulic fracturing and/or flowback fluids to drinking water aquifers. A critical question common to these environmental risks is the hydraulic connectivity between the shale gas formations and the overlying shallow drinking water aquifers.

Shale gas can be a powerful tool in combating climate change. However, its exploitation may also lead to undesired environmental effects that can conversely worsen climate change.

The continuing low-level seismicity in the vicinity of the Idukki Reservoir, Kerala, is interesting from the perspective of hydrologically triggered earthquakes. While the frequency of triggered earthquakes in the vicinity of a reservoir usually reduces with time and the largest earthquake usually occurs within a few years on the initial filling, the triggered seismicity in the proximity of the Idukki Reservoir seems to be showing a second, delayed peak, as the 1977 (M 3.5)

After two decades of hardwork, on 5 February 2012, a team of Russian scientists began drilling at Lake Vostok, the largest of more than 140 sub-glacial lakes and the most deeply buried of the lakes hidden under the Antarctic ice cap.

All around the world, oil and gas companies are being forced by resource declines to drill in less accessible areas, and the Arctic is their newest frontier. The geology above the Arctic Circle—that is, everything above latitude 66.56°N—holds an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, or 22% of the world’s undiscovered conventional resources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Updated risk assessment warns Japan to prepare for much larger earthquakes and waves.