Japanese television shows an explosion at Fukushima Daiichi, a nuclear power plant north of Tokyo. (Flickr user: Masaru Kamikura)
The world is witnessing first-hand the potential dangers of nuclear energy, as Japan faces the threat of a nuclear meltdown at several power plants, including the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, just 140 miles north of Tokyo. An explosion rocked the plant in the following Friday's earthquake. President Obama has been pushing nuclear energy as part of his new and clean energy policy, but the current events in Japan could be a setback. How will the disaster affect the industry?
Jason Grumet is president of the Bipartisan Policy Center and has directed the National Commission on Energy Policy since 2001. He believes what's happening in Japan doesn't threaten expansion of the industry in the U.S. as seriously as some other industry factors.
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Comments [2]
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Tepco releases photo Of wrecked Fukushima 4 reactor -- rense.com
See the inside of Fukushima 4 before the blast
http://rense.com/general93/see.htm
As has been reported in the news, this earthquake was 8.9 which is the worst earthquake Japan has ever experienced. The previous record was around 7.0 set back in 1920s. Bottom line, Mother Nature raised the bar setting a new worst case scenario to which the existing station were not designed for. All considered, the nuclear plant operated as was designed, it's just that the conditions exceeded the design limits. All the anti nukes will just focus on the negative aspects to convince nuclear power is bad but never offer a viable alternate source. If nuclear is bad so is burning coal, then the cost of oil, not to mention the potential of another spill and gas is way too expensive. Wind and solar are geographically dependent, use way too much geography, and are not consistantly reliable. So what does that leave us?
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