There was something for everyone in a blue ribbon commission's final report about managing waste from nuclear power plants.

The report, released January 26 and in such high demand that downloads crashed the commission's servers, drew praise from the Nuclear Energy Institute. And from utility organizations. And from Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and Senate majority leader who hates the Yucca Mountain waste repository. And from Fred Upton, the Michigan Republican and House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman who likes the Yucca Mountain waste repository.

Not bad for a bipartisan commission charged with the thankless task of recommending alternatives for disposing of some 70,000 metric tons of hot stuff nobody wants in their backyard.

Strike that comment. Maybe there's a community that wouldn't mind having spent nuclear fuel in its backyard. It all depends on how it's asked. The Swedes have figured out that honey works better than vinegar. We could learn from their example. More on that in a bit.

Two of the blue ribbon panel's recommendations were: 1) geologic disposal is the only practical way to dispose of spent fuel rods that can no longer support productive fission reactions, and 2) a "consent-based approach" should be instituted for finding the right location for the burial ground.

The boom in domestic gas production will drive down gas prices and cut carbon dioxide emissions. Until it drives both prices and CO2 emissions up. Confused? Don't be. Markets can do funny things like that.

Here's the scoop: It wasn't so long ago that forecasts of declining domestic production from "mature" gas fields resulted in a flurry of proposals to build terminals for importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) from overseas. LNG is floated across oceans in special ships fitted with bulbous, imposing tanks for keeping the gas chillled to at least 259 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

Now, with domestic shale gas production surging--up by a factor of nearly 13 between 2000 and 2010-- the market for importing LNG into the U.S. has dried up. The gas guys are talking about exporting LNG in order to chase higher prices available in Asian and European markets.

There have been rumbles from industrial gas users and publicly owned gas utilities that exports would drive up prices for domestic consumers. Last week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration released a study that in essence said, yup, exports would cause prices to rise -- for everyone: homeowners, businesses, and industries. During the 2015-2035 period, residential customers, for example, would see price increases averaging 3.2 to 7 percent per year over the study's business-as-usual scenario.

My first computer was a 386 PC.  Its hard drive topped out at 160 megs. Paid $400 for the machine. It was fabulously useful two decades ago. Today, it's taking up space in an upstairs closet, an obsolete, outdated museum piece that I couldn't give away, except perhaps to a PC museum.

The laptop on which this is being typed cost two and a half times as much as the 386 in nominal dollars. It has 1,000 times as much hard drive capacity as the 386 and runs a whole lot faster.

Technology marches on … except for those folks with an ax to grind who assert that the way things are today are the way they will always be.

Witness the saga of the Chevrolet Volt. GM's "extended range" high-mileage baby, which supplements an electric motor with a small internal combustion engine, has caught flak because in a handful of cases, battery fires broke out days or weeks after the Volt was crash-tested. See, the champions of the energy status quo argue, electric vehicles will never work. They catch fire. Well … so do gasoline-fueled conventional cars. Some 200,000 accidental car fires broke out in 2010, according to a recent report from the National Fire Protection Association. Gasoline is flammable. Always has been, always will be.

Forty years ago, the young Environmental Protection Agency hired freelance photographers to travel about the U.S. and shoot pictures of how the country was treating its natural resources. They did that and more. In a visual analogue of the Depression-era Federal Writers Project, the photographers compiled a trove of some 80,000 images documenting the people and places of that time, which was vastly different from today's world but remains a vivid memory for millions of Americans now in their 50s and older.

The collection, called Documerica, was unearthed recently by the National Archives. (Many photos are available on Flickr.)

A few observations are in order. One, it's hard to imagine today's EPA initiating a similar project without it being skewered by melodramatic vocal chords from the talk radio/blogosphere fever swamps. Two, it presents striking evidence of how far the United States has come in taking better care of the air and water on which our lives, communities, economy, and well being depend. We can be proud of what we have accomplished as a nation, but remember what they say about eternal vigilance.

In cruising through the photos, it's remarkable to look back on how much we used to abuse the environment. A photo by Charles Steinhacker shows a paper mill outflow pipe pouring ugly liquid refuse into Maine's Androscoggin River.