With the tragedy of the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan, focus, among many, moves from the devastating casualties (up to 30,000) and mass destruction of the Japanese infrastructure to the impact of the accidents at the Fukushima nuclear power plants. While the earthquake itself proved to weak to do effective damage to the power plants themselves, the tsunami was able to overcome the TEPCO built and highly anemic sea-wall which was supposed to "protect" the plant. Clearly this failed and TEPCO has a lot to answer for as do the Japanese regulators who OK'd this poor excuse for tsunami defense. But this diary is not about the ins and outs and effects immediately on Japan itself with regards to the nuclear situation, but in going over, generally, the future of nuclear energy in the immediate to near term sense.
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