RE: China to Cut Nuclear GoalLewis Pageputs the Fukushimaincident in its proper perspective:
"TheFukushimareactors actually came through the quake with flying colours despite the factthat it was five times stronger than they had been built to withstand. Onlywith the following tsunami – again, bigger than the design allowed for – didproblems develop, and these problems seem likely to end in insignificantconsequences. The Nos 1, 2 and 3 reactors at Daiichi may never produce poweragain – though this is not certain – but the likelihood is that Nos 4, 5 and 6 willreturn to service behind a bigger tsunami barrier.
Thelesson to learn here is that if your country is hit by a monster earthquake andtsunami, one of the safest places to be is at the local nuclear powerplant.Other Japanese nuclear powerplants in the quake-stricken area, in fact, aresheltering homeless refugees in their buildings – which are some of the few inthe region left standing at all, let alone with heating, water and otheramenities.
Nothingelse in the quake-stricken area has come through anything like as well as thenuclear power stations, or with so little harm to the population. All otherforms of infrastructure – transport, housing, industries – have failed thepeople in and around them comprehensively, leading to deaths most probably inthe tens of thousands. Fires, explosions and tank/pipeline ruptures all acrossthe region will have done incalculably more environmental damage, distributedhugely greater amounts of carcinogens than Fukushima Daiichi – which has so faremitted almost nothing but radioactive steam (which becomes non-radioactivewithin minutes of being generated).
Andyet nobody will say after this: “don’t build roads; don’t build towns; don’tbuild ships or chemical plants or oil refineries or railways”. That would beridiculous, of course, even though having all those things has actually led toterrible loss of life, destruction and pollution in the quake’s wake.
Butfar and away more ridiculously, a lot of people are already saying that Fukushima with itsprobable zero consequences means that no new nuclear powerplants should ever bebuilt again."
Further...
Nuclearfatalities in the last ten years: 7
Wind farm fatalities inthe last ten years: 44.
Inthose ten years nuclear provided thirty times the energy of wind. This means inthe last decade, nuclear has been around 200 times safer than wind on an energyproduced/accidents basis.
Read the full Fukushima article.