Articles by Sue Sturgis
Sue Sturgis is the editorial director of Facing South, the online magazine of the nonprofit Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, N.C.
All Articles
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Nuclear companies face reactor design problems, ethics questions
Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactor design. Federal regulators have expressed serious safety concerns about the design for 14 of the nation’s 25 proposed new nuclear reactors, raising questions about the future of what the industry calls its “renaissance.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced last month that Westinghouse failed to demonstrate that the building designed to shield its […]
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Will South Carolina become the nation’s new Yucca Mountain?
The Savannah River. Photo courtesy Mountain Hermit via Flickr Earlier this year, President Obama canceled the federal government’s plans to store high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants and weapons facilities at the controversial Yucca Mountain site in Nevada — but now there are concerns that South Carolina could become the permanent dumping ground for […]
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Veteran wins groundbreaking claim for Agent Orange exposure at Georgia military base
A U.S. veteran living in Tennessee has won what’s thought to be the first Veterans Administration claim for exposure inside the continental United States to Agent Orange, an herbicide that was used by the military to clear jungles during the Vietnam War. Agent Orange — which got its name from the color of the barrels […]
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Lawsuit accuses Virginia power company of poisoning Dominican community with toxic coal ash
Here’s the damage from a coal ash spill in Tennessee.A civil lawsuit filed last week in state court in Delaware charges Arlington, Va.-based AES Corp. — one of the world’s largest power companies — with illegally dumping 160 million pounds of toxic coal ash waste onto beaches in the Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic, […]