fukushima: a year later posted by dr. y, page-8

I've always been a supporter of nuclear power, but what happened in Japan has changed my thinking.

Chernobyl....I could rationalise it by saying it was an old Soviet syyle reactor, without all the western safeguards. Three Mile Island....well, that proved the safeguards avoided a complete catastrophe, didn't it?

But Fukushima....now even I couldn't rationalise that. The tsunami was a complete king hit....no one really anticipated the problems a tsunami would cause. Simultaneous problems in multiple reactors. Supporting infrastructure wrecked, and those cooling pools.....everyone who was anyone put all their focus reactor safety, yet it's these simple cooling pools that are causing as much grief as the reactors themselves. Who would imagine that spent fuel rods could almost come back from the grave and bite you big time?

Fukushima made me realise that with nuclear, we are really trying to tame a beast, and sometimes the beast just doesn't want to be tamed.