"Cellulosic ethanol technology is a lot closer to reality than a lot of articles would have you think," said Jacques Beaudry-Losique, manager of the Department of Energy's Biomass Program this morning at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting. After some well-publicized studies stated that corn-based biofuels might exacerbate CO2 damage to the environment, focus has shifted to these so-called "second generation" biofuels that use non-food crops such as switchgrass, wood chips or crop residues (e.g. all the parts of the corn plant that are currently wasted after harvest--the stalk, leaves and "cob").

It's a slow-motion horror movie: Nuclear waste leaks from underground storage shafts and seeps toward a river, where it contaminates drinking water used by millions of people. That's exactly the scenario unfolding at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in rural Washington State.The solution, too, sounds like a page ripped from a Hollywood screenplay: Insert two industrial-strength electrodes deep into the ground, and melt the soil-along with everything around it-into solid glass, trapping the toxic waste for thousands of years. The U.S.