First World Problems

There's not much to say about the events happening in Japan beyond the frenetic up-to-the-minute updates from the news outlets and the blogosphere and wishing them well..  It does go to show that even first world nations are not immune to catastrophic problems.  Nothing can really prepare a country like Japan, let alone a third world country like Haiti, for an event like this.  One wonders what will happen when, not if, a huge earthquake hits the West Coast.  If the response to Katrina can be used as a predictor, we'll be in for some tough times.

There are updates being provided constantly, but one of the more powerful applications of Internet reporting I've seen are before and after pictures of the areas affected.

One of the things that I am worried about is how this might set back nuclear as an energy strategy.  Although the crisis at the nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi is still evolving, the airwaves are filled with alarmist fears about nuclear energy.  Even if there is a core meltdown, ala Three Mile Island, the amount of radiation released may still be contained due to the heroic efforts of the plant workers.  The problem is that nuclear and radioactivity are loaded words and most people don't fully understand them.  Instead of reporting radiation numbers using mysterious units without context, I wish people would report them with respect to number of airline flights, X-ray examinations, or even number of bananas.  For example, a coal plant releases 100x more radioactivity than an equivalent nuclear power plant, but no one blinks an eye.  Even at Berkeley, there were official city signs put up declaring that it was a "nuclear free zone" (the chemist in me rolled my eyes every time I saw them, as well as at the whole "organic" food movement, but that's for another time).  It's too bad, since nuclear needs to be a part of our future as our energy consumption keeps increasing...