Some of you out there may be wandering why I haven’t jumped on the tragedy in Japan. After all I was all over other such disasters.
The problem with the Japanese disasters is the scope of the thing. First that earth quake. A 9.0 is enough to topple just about anything. Something like the great pyramids in Egypt might survive, mostly. But then those things are solid stone with just a few hollows here and there. Frankly, the fact than anything is still standing along the east coast of Japan is a tribute to those folks engineering and foresight (the fact that the quake was centered several miles off the coast helped). I suspect that a number of the towns that were wiped away by the tsunami (unfortunately caused by the quake being underwater) would have survived nearly intact if not for that killer wave.
And there you have the crux of the problem. Natural disaster, heaped on natural disaster compounded by what may well be an even worse man made disaster if those nuclear energy plants melt down. Indeed, if those four reactors do melt down there will be an even greater number of refugees and destroyed towns, cities and farmland. The worst thing about the land lost to those reactors will be that, to the naked eye, it will just be abandoned. The people will just have to leave, to walk away and not go back. Everything will be intact and quite serviceable. It will just be radioactive, and thus deadly if it is used.
That coupled with the fact that so many of those who are missing loved ones lost during the quake and the tsunami will never be able to go back to their homes and look for those who are lost or even try to find the bodies for proper burial is just almost to much to comprehend. Especially in a land where reverence for ancestors and family is something taken so seriously.
So why did they build those reactors where they did? So close to where they could be affected by an earthquake and a tsunami? Well, there’s no other place they could build them in Japan. That whole island is as prone to quakes as the land over the San Andreas Fault in California. Both are a part of the great “Ring of Fire” that circles the Pacific Ocean. It is just that on the California side the North American Continent is over-riding the Pacific Plate, and on the Japanese side the Pacific plate is being sub-ducted (pulled down) below the Asian Plate(s). All that makes for a lot of rubbing and friction which results in earthquakes and volcanoes. The simple truth is there is really no place on this planet where you can be absolutely certain there will never be an earth quake. And the geologists can‘t, and will never, tell you that a quake will never be more than a certain rating. They will say things like “probably,” and “most likely,” or “between x and y on the Richter Scale.” Why? Because they don’t really know. They can say there’s bound to be one, eventually, but that’s about it.
As for engineers being able to build things that can stand up to those little twitches of the earths skin? HA! They, no more than the geologists, can guess what this old planet is going to do. We can engineer and calculate to meet up to the worst we think she can hand out alright, but then we decide we need nuclear reactors, dams or some such and before you know it we are far more worried about the bottom line than the worst possible earth quake, tsunami, hurricane, snow fall, flood or what have you. “Well, it’ll never get that bad!” we tell ourselves and build things a little less strong than we could or closer to faults, rivers, or sea shores than we should. Afterwards things go along just fine for a few years to decades and then . . . Then old Ma Nature comes along , whacks us on the behind and say’s “You knew better than that!” Only she dose it with quakes, tsunami, and other very deadly sticks.
After I wrote this I saw an excellent show on PBS. A NOVA report on this very incident. Try to see it if you can. It gives a much clearer picture of what happened (and is happening) than I can. All else failing I think you can buy it from the PBS folks. Probably at pbs.org or some such.
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