The tragedy in Japan brings some very real risks of nuclear power into focus. The ”GE Mark I Boiling Water Reactors” in Japan are the same type as the ones used at Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim in Plymouth, MA.
Our colleagues, nuclear experts David Lochbaum and Edwin Lyman at the Union of Concerned Scientists, are providing helpful and detailed analysis and insights about the unfolding nuclear events in Japan at http://allthingsnuclear.org/
It is worth a look.
Seth Kaplan
Professional “risk communicator” David Ropeik offers an interesting perspective on nuclear safety and relative risk at http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=beware-the-fear-of-nuclearfear-2011-03-12 – it is hard to argue, as a matter of straight fact, with his observation that far more people die every year from emissions from coal burning than did from Chernobyl and other nuclear disasters.
But the larger question is whether the risks posed by current nuclear technology, either our current plants or the very similar plants proposed to be built, are worth incurring. We need to stop the insanity of burning coal to generate electricity – but that doesn’t mean that all alternatives to it are good. And events in Japan should cause those who promote nuclear as an alternative to pause and at least think again.