Japan Earthquake is Reminder of Nuclear Power Dangers

The 8.9 scale earthquake in northeastern Japan is a reminder of the danger of nuclear power, a source of power that has recently grown in popularity around the world.

Japanese news reports say many Japanese nuclear power plants have been shut down and there has been a fire in at least one. Meanwhile a giant tsunami has swept northeastern Japan killing hundreds of people.

In 1993, as a correspondent to the Los Angeles Times, I wrote an article, Hot Property: How Japan Came to Love Nuclear Power, about how Japan’s utilities, faced with local opposition to the construction of new plants, bribed entire villages in northeastern Japan so they could build an elaborate complex of nuclear power plants, waste storage facilities and nuclear fuel reprocessing plants. At one point there were plans to build four or more nuclear power plants in the vicinity of one village in the region.

Many of those facilities were built in spite of widespread knowledge that the region was atop a major fault that has periodically created great earthquakes.

The region is just north of the area that produced yesterday’s earthquake in Japan. It’s unclear how the region and its nuclear facilities have been affected by the recent earthquake.