Nuclear power is better than fossil fuels, even before you factor global warming into it. Nuclear kills fewer people a year than coal (let alone the rest of the fossil fuel industry), for all that most folks scream bloody murder about the least little thing that happens with a nuclear site, while it takes something like a mine collapse or oil spill to catch the public's attention with fossil fuels. The damage done by Chernobyl in the end isn't much different from the damage done in Centralia. Both areas are completely uninhabitable by any reasonable standard and will be for centuries.
Japan might not have been the wisest about placing these plants on the coast, but 15 years past the designed lifespan of these plants they have survived a 9.0 earthquake and 10m+ tsunami! All right, these plants aren't in the best of condition right now- what on the northeast coast in Japan right now is? But they aren't scattered about the countryside in shreds making any attempt to rescue survivors of the tsunami impossible to even begin. I hope we take a good long look at what the Japanese did right with these plants and learn from that as well as where things went wrong.
(Okay, I'll back away from the soapbox now... I'm just pissed that most of the American news has been “Panic! Panic!” and very little credit has been given where it is due.)
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Japan might not have been the wisest about placing these plants on the coast, but 15 years past the designed lifespan of these plants they have survived a 9.0 earthquake and 10m+ tsunami! All right, these plants aren't in the best of condition right now- what on the northeast coast in Japan right now is? But they aren't scattered about the countryside in shreds making any attempt to rescue survivors of the tsunami impossible to even begin. I hope we take a good long look at what the Japanese did right with these plants and learn from that as well as where things went wrong.
(Okay, I'll back away from the soapbox now... I'm just pissed that most of the American news has been “Panic! Panic!” and very little credit has been given where it is due.)