Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Japan Update

I guess we shouldn't be too worried about an explosion at a nuclear reactor?  If we're ever going to get away from increased greenhouse gas emissions, we're going to have to use more nuclear power.  Hopefully, what happens in Japan will show that nuclear power plants are a lot safer than they were in the Three Mile Island days.

Of course, given the power of coal state Senators and confused anti-nuke forces, we are unlikely to ever see a return to large scale nuclear power.  It's a weird coalition that is insuring that we won't see new nukes in the US anytime soon.  It sounds like the idea behind thorium reactors is really interesting.

On the ground, this is looking like "The Big One" that Americans - especially Californians - have been fearing for decades.  While tsunamis are unlikely events in California, they could devastate the Pacific Northwest. In fact, you could probably graft this disaster onto the Seattle area and you'd have a comparable loss of life.

Thousands of dead seem likely.  And that's in one of the most advanced and wealthiest societies in the world.

There is no hiding from fate, I guess.

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