An earthquake and ensuing tsunami in Japan early in the year rocked the nuclear community after the Fukushima Daiichi plant, operated by Tepco, suffered substantial damage to various reactors and some partial meltdowns, with radiation leakage.

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Most of it is, of course, radiated back into space. (It is the partial blocking of this radiation by gases such as carbon dioxide that causes the much-talked-of greenhouse effect.) Some of it, however, goes in the opposite direction, into the ground.

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