Earthquake and nuclear power plants

It is hard to know where to put comments on the impact of today's earthquake in Japan on their nuclear power plants.  KGO's Mr. Wattenburg (he calls himself "Dr." but he has no respect from me, so Mr. is all he gets) keeps ranting and raving about how safe and wonderful nuclear power plants are.  He takes the position that it is practically impossible for any problems to ever exist - of course always noting that the past very long history of nuclear power plant "accidents" were unknowable and have now been fixed.  The "crazy right" seem to believe in that opinion - no matter what evidence exists to show otherwise.

So now Japan has six power plants shut down because of an earthquake.  I presume most are shut down for precautionary measures, not necessarily because they are damaged or dangerous.  However, the last that I heard there is one in much more serious condition.  It shut down as designed, but didn't have any power available, so there was no way to cool the core.  Hum, that is odd - who would ever have thought that an emergency that required scrambling the core would also result in a power failure??  This must be an extreme event - one that wouldn't require a cooling system that doesn't depend upon power to operate - gravity might have been a nice solution rather than pumps.  So now, the thing is sitting there getting hotter and hotter, and the pressures are still building up.  They keep saying they are releasing "very small" amounts of radio active gas to relieve the pressure.  Don't believe it, they wouldn't release small amounts of gas/steam - that wouldn't have any impact, they are releasing HUGE amounts of gas and steam - all of which is radioactive. 

Other countries (including the USA) are racing to their assistance in trying to get power to the unit so they can get the pumps working so they can cool it down before the reactor core is uncovered, and the thing melts!  We have evidence of what happens after that, Chernobyl is a very good example of what happens when a core loses its cooling.  This is being played down by the press, but I bet almost anything it is not being played down at the site.

The problems with this kind of complex technology (nuclear power, very deep oil drilling, etc) is that it is not possible to predict all of the possible events that will come along, so it is not possible to provide safety measures that will actually prevent disasters.  The only sane approach is to assume that the worst will happen - maybe not often, but it will happen.  Then the question becomes one of determining if it will be "acceptable" when it does happen.  If it is not acceptable, then the technology is not acceptable and the project should be abandoned.  It no longer becomes a risk trade-off because the consequence is too high, and it is not possible to make the probability go to zero.


We need to get much smarter about the meaning of "risk assessment", unacceptable risk, and who gets wealthy by accepting the "risks" that others (the earth and public) accept.  Since the people who get the great returns are not the same ones that are exposed to the risks we get very skewed and terrible decisions.

I sure hope they don't have to end up abandoning Tokyo or anything like that.  It is possible, but probably not very likely.  It will end up just being another "minor spill" and yet another "close call."  I am really getting sick and tired of these kinds of close calls caused by engineers such as Mr. Wattenburg who keep claiming they know how to control the hazards - its BS, they know no such thing.