Cleanup

If Americans don't want the dubious comforts of a full-fledged nanny state, then they can't come running for comprehensive succor when some milk, or oil, spills.

• By Emily Badger

Oil spill cleanup remains a most primitive science, but it hasn’t been for a want of experimentation. Here are seven methods that have met with varying success.

• By Joan Melcher

Scientists studying 'natural' oil spills fear for a sea floor about to be overwhelmed by detritus from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

• By Marcia Meier

Despite the agony of watching oil-sodden waters lap at pristine shores, our ham-fisted cleanups can do more harm than good, experts say.

• By Melinda Burns

Terry Hazen finds, studies and then uses microbes to clean up pollution deep underground, to refine oil before it is pumped and to produce the next generation of green fuels. He catches alligators sometimes, too. ...

• By Bijal Trivedi

Human error helped worsen a nuclear meltdown just outside Los Angeles, and now human inertia has stymied the radioactive cleanup for half a century.

• By Joan Trossman Bien and Michael Collins

In the Salado salt formation a half-mile below the New Mexico desert, WIPP has room to store all the radioactive waste an expanded nuclear power program could produce. Emphasis on the word could.

• By Matt Palmquist

Analysis: Openness, accountability and trust can lead to effective actions to reduce present and future risks.

• By Max S. Power

Analysis: Waste disposal after decades of nuclear weapon production will require taking risks.

• By Max S. Power