Mar 12, 2011

The Japan Syndrome

     Today's explosion at the Japanese Nuclear Power Plant comes just over a year after President Obama agreed to have the U.S. government be co-signers of loans for two new nuclear plants in Georgia.

     The memory of Three Mile Island in 1979 has faded, and in any case, the backup systems there did work and prevented a meltdown of the core. It's unclear this Saturday Morning what has happened in Japan, but it is obviously worse than TMI, and maybe worse than Chernobyl.
    
     One thing is clear, 32 years after the TMI accident and the preceding China Syndrome movie, a huge roadblock has been placed in front of any company wanting to build new nuclear plants in America. It will be difficult for those firms to paint Japan as some jack leg third-world country that just didn't take the proper precautions to prevent accidents.
     Good or bad, nuclear power just took a big hit, and that probably means more coal-fired plants in our future.

[UPDATE: Experts say no repeat of Chernobyl in Japan.]

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