Can you imagine anyone deciding to build nuclear power plants above a crack in the earth’s crust? In a country so prone to earthquakes that, as a child, I was taught the inhabitants built their homes out of paper so they wouldn’t be crushed to death? Now, the homes in Japan are not built of paper, if they ever were. But they might as well be.
In the path of Nature’s fury, the supposedly earthquake-proof buildings crumbled like a pack of cards. And at least two nuclear reactors might be at risk of meltdown (click here for a report).
Meltdown. Think Chernobyl. Think Three Mile Island. Think Nagasaki. Think Hiroshima.
I am no scientist but my understanding is that once unleashed there’s no way of stopping the chain reaction that results from splitting the atom – at least until the reaction has run its horrible course.
That’s what we’re playing with?
And we call it safe?
I don’t want to get into the pros and cons of lead-lined walls and concrete towers several feet thick. I don’t want to argue with people who claim there is a safe way of disposing of nuclear waste. I don’t care how many nuclear power plants the French have built. Or how few accidents the industry has had so far.
That might all make perfect sense.
Until a tsunami comes along that makes it all nonsense.
