Japan Dodges A Bullet

A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck Japan early this morning. Besides opening cracks up to 3 feet in width in the streets, this earthquake also caused a fire and radioactive water leak at the worlds largest nuclear power plant. It took 2 hours to extinguish the fire in the Kashiwazaki plant and 315 gallons of slightly radioactive water leaked out into the Sea of Japan.

Things could have been much worse. This plant was cutting edge as far as safety and design, but what if this had happened to a power plant without the great design and construction that this plant had? What if this plant had been in North Korea or Iran ... not exactly countries at the top of nuclear engineering? We could have had another Chernobyl or worse. With so many countries seeing nuclear power as the answer to their growing energy needs, we need to make sure our nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is not only guarding against substandard design, this watchdog needs to have teeth. They need to be able to shut down substandard plants and have the world behind them in confrontations with Nations that refuse their orders to shut down or upgrade these plants.

With international politics at play, and not knowing what the UN Security Council will vote on any given issue, maybe it would be better to allow the IAEA to put in place and enforce sanctions on any nation that does not play ball, without first having to go to the Security Council. Nuclear energy can be clean and safe (and is for most of the power plants out there), but for the substandard plants ... nuclear power can be a very scary thing.

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