[TheRealVille]

I find myself agreeing and disagreeing with parts of every post in this thread. I once agreed with you, Grady, and thought that nuclear power should be developed only as a last resort but I changed my mind a few years ago.

It may seem foolish that the Japanese have built so many nuclear power plants in an area so prone to earthquakes and tsunamis but given their severe shortage of natural resources and the fact that all of Japan, they really did not have much of a choice.

Modern nuclear reactors are much safer than they were 40 years ago but nothing is going to be safe if it is hit by both one of the five strongest earthquakes ever measured on the planet and a tsunami. Large parts of the US are not prone to earthquakes (Florida and the Dakotas, for example). Nuclear reactors could be built in many areas with no fear of an earthquake even 1/100th as powerful as the one that hit Japan.

RV, I cannot say with certainty that the Japanese nuclear power plants are as heavily regulated as those in the US (I don't read Kanji) - but I would be shocked if that were the case. There are nuclear plants operating in this country that were built by GE 40 years ago based on the same design as the ones having problems in Japan.

Also, am I correct in saying that US plants tend to have much more spent fuel stored than most foreign plants because we have no nuclear waste disposal site? (Obama killed Yuca Mountain.) If so, then I think that they pose a bigger risk than the ones in Japan under more normal circumstances.

However, I do agree that so far, the safeguards seem to have worked pretty well in Japan. The media is focusing far too much attention on the nuclear plants when thousands of earthquake and tsunami victims are still missing. Assuming that the containment vessels do not fail, the casualties from the nuclear plant explosions will be relatively small compared to the other disasters.

I agree, 100%. The main problem I see in Japan's nuclear problem is, if the American Nuclear Commissioner is correct, that the spent fuel rods got away from the spent fuel pool and are out in the open. If he isn't correct and they are still where they need to be, and they keep that reactor cool, they can contain this mess. Like you say, no matter how safe they have nuclear plants, they can't control mother nature. Like you, I can't see why they would build one in an earthquake prone area, especially close to a tsunami prone area.