National News

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

The storm that has already dusted parts of New Mexico and Oklahoma is expected to move through the Midwest, dumping as much as a foot and a half of snow.

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Consumer prices were flat in January. But since then, gas prices have risen sharply. So upcoming inflation reports may not be as positive.

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As news continues to come in about evidence of hack attacks from China, more companies and agencies are stepping forward to say they were targets of such snooping. Chinese authorities continue to say the state is not behind the attacks.

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11 scientists are each $3 million richer than they were earlier this week thanks to the "Breakthrough Prize" that was launched Wednesday by a group of tech-lebrities including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and tech investor Yuri Milner. It’s the latest in a trend of business leaders offering big science prizes. But how do prizes like these actually impact research?

The theory behind the prize goes something like this: As Zuckerberg and friends know all too well, in the world of computer science and information technology, if you make a breakthrough, you can make a lot of money. But not so in other branches of science -- things like cancer research, neurology, or the genetics of disease.

“We think that's a market failure,” Zuckerberg told the BBC. And that’s where the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences comes in. Zuckerberg hopes the prize will be an incentive to pursue a career in what have long been "less lucrative" branches of science.

“If you're a young kid growing up, you're going to look to what the market says about where you can make money” Zuckerberg says, “to inform what you dream about being when you grow up.”

But prizes like this one and the Nobel, known as “recognition prizes” because they reward people after a long career of success, have limited impact, says Stian Westlake, head of research at Nesta, a non-profit Innovation Lab based in Britain.

“The reward is such a long way off that it makes it harder to mobilize other resources, and it makes it less motivational,” Westlake says.

David Shaywitz, Director of Strategic and Commercial Planning at pharmaceutical company Theravance, agrees.

“They're rewarding the folks who are already the superheros and rock stars of science. Within science, they're the ones everyone already, desperately wants to be,” he wrote in an email. “There's already a perception that science is pretty great at the top. The real challenge is funding limitations along the way, and how many highly talented young scientists scramble for traction.”

Shaywitz and Westlake say what’s more effective for stimulating innovation are prizes with precise goals that people can accomplish in order to win.

The Olympic and Paralympic sprinter is accused of murdering his girlfriend. In a court Thursday, it was revealed that the lead investigator himself had been accused of attempted murder in an unrelated case. That added to questions about the prosecution's case against Pistorius.

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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.

Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human services granted Florida a waiver to allow the state to expand its pilot Medicaid privatization program. Florida will seek a third-party vendor to manage the program. Governor Scott has argued privatization will help control Medicaid costs, which make up about a quarter of the state's budget.

To hear more about Florida's new health reforms, click on the audio player above.