NPR News

The nuclear power industry had been experiencing something of a rebirth in the United States, following decades of doubt. That's been put at risk by the crisis unfolding at a nuclear power plant in Japan in the wake of a devastating quake and tsunami there.

With that situation still in flux, attention should remain focused on dealing with the immediate safety issues in Japan, says Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, an association of electric utility companies.

The U.S. military has been using drones — unmanned, remote-controlled aircraft — for years to conduct surveillance and launch attacks on isolated targets. And now homemade versions of these flying robots have become wildly popular, first with hobbyists and now with entrepreneurs.

But while the tiny civilian aircraft may have lots of potential, the government isn't quite sure how to deal with them.

Here's something different after a lot of news about war, tragedy and suffering.

Tell Me More today caught up with the story of "real life superheroes" such as the (Washington) DC's Guardian and Seattle's Phoenix Jones — two guys who disguise themselves in some pretty wild costumes (or uniforms, as DC Guardian calls them), guard their identities and go out on the streets of their cities to fight crime.

President Obama and other leaders have called for investment in cleaner energy sources as a way to create jobs and spur U.S. economic recovery.

But critics argue that alternative energy generally costs more than traditional fossil fuels and that demand for energy overall has fallen during the recession, making the energy sector an odd choice for stimulating a recovery.

Problems at three nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan, have led to news reports that range from reassuring to terrifying. But experts on nuclear accidents say there's plenty of cause for concern, but not for alarm.

The benchmarks for nuclear mishaps were set by incidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 and Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986, and most experts think what's happening in Fukushima will end up somewhere in between those two. But the trouble with comparisons like these is that leaves a lot of wiggle room.