Slashdot Mirror
Report Condemns Japan's Response To Nuclear Accident
mdsolar sends this quote from an article at the NY Times:
"From inspectors who abandoned the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as it succumbed to disaster to a delay in disclosing radiation leaks, Japan's response to the nuclear accident caused by the March tsunami fell tragically short, a government-appointed investigative panel said on Monday. ... In particular, an erroneous assumption that an emergency cooling system was working led to an hours-long delay in finding alternative ways to draw cooling water to the plant, the report said. All the while, the system was not working, and the uranium fuel rods at the cores were starting to melt."
How many cars have you driven 24/6 for 60 years? Hell, few airplanes are in the air after 30 years.
On top of that, 0.4% of all cars get in accidents every year. Every year more people die in the US from traffic accidents then in every nuclear power incident ever.
Sources:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States#Total_number_of_vehicles
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
Fukushima was. The tsunami took out the diesel generators which were used for backup cooling. Having redundant systems (note: redundant does not mean more of the same system) and placing them further inland would have made this controllable.
As for "was I there when the accident happened," I believe that amounts to an argument for believing the world didn't exist until I was born.
Foresight. Article from 2004: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20040523x2.html
It's not as if this particular reactor was on anybody's list of "this is safe."