Given the recent current events it's seems necessary to cover the situation that is occurring after the quake regarding Fukushima's nuclear reactor and the meltdown that happened as a result of the earthquake.
This is definitely an eye opening situation, but not necessarily in the way that it might initially be perceived. I think that this situation, as the article discusses, should be a wake-up call to any and every country that has a nuclear reactor powering city's and homes for great safety measures and an updated security protocol in case of a situation like this. Fukushima is now being compared to Three Mile Island and the threat level was just recently raised from level 4 to a level 5.
There is definitely a greater fear with nuclear energy that this sort of thing could occur, most, particularly the US seem to be worried about terrorist threats to reactors, but what do you do when the forces of mother nature come tearing apart the sky and earth? Pretty unavoidable situation unless our government has developed massive teleporters and we're just being kept in the dark about it. So what do we do about the 23 reactors in the US that have very similar or the same issues as safely operating plants? Seems like the first thing to do would be to invest money in better and greater methods of meltdown prevention, and for goodness sake, can we please update some of the power plants in this nation? The primary reason that Fukushima had it's meltdown seems to be the fact that it was over 50 years old! The US has numerous nuclear power plants that are around that age and it's incredibly shortsided and completely irresponsible to not have made some serious upgrades to these power plants. In fact, ALL different types of power plants in the US and it seems in Japan as well could really use a make over. Whether it's coal or fission reactors, a vast majority of power plants are out of date.
I think it's a very important concern to be focused on new and budding technology and energy sources, but lets not neglect the technology we have in place already. We have the means to improve power plants, so why don't we at the very least start improving their safety and efficiency so that the limited resources we have can be stretched a little further.
Clearly nuclear power represents a potentially much greater disaster if an earthquake or some other act of god or terrorism occurs but that does not mean we should through it out as an energy source, which may be what comes to peoples minds at first. What we need to do, is build smarter (i.e. not building plants exceptionally close to large populations of people) and build/improve efficiency in the future and current reactors.
So, while I do think that this article has some very valid points about safety, regulation, and the potential dangers of nuclear energy, I believe that not all of it would be applicable if we just invested in prevention of problems instead of waiting till they happen in order to fix them. You can't play that game with nuclear. You mess that up and it's too late, as Japan is having to experience now. It really is the only energy source that given these circumstances could have detrimental effects on the local population (particularly the poor that can't afford to move far away enough from the fall out zone) for generations. I pray for the people of Japan and hope that Fukushima does not cause further deaths or worse, years of radiation poisoning to citizens that trusted a government to take greater precautions in a powerful and potentially deadly alternative energy source.
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