When I visited Fukushima Dai-ichi, I felt an emotional reaction similar to the one I felt seven years ago in the control room of Diablo Canyon – fear, disbelief, empathy, and sorrow. It’s hard to fathom something powerful enough to cause such damage to concrete and steel, and in this setting it’s even harder to separate emotions from facts and reason. Sometimes the hardest things to think about are also among the most important - a technology that produces large amounts of emission-free energy on a relatively tiny land footprint addresses our biggest environmental and humanitarian challenges, and it’s something that deserves open minds and honest evaluation.

As we drove through the evacuation zone, I saw empty towns - abandoned after the earthquake and tsunami and now frozen in time due to hurried evacuations. Although the levels of radioactivity in the area are low, these towns now face a difficult question - to rebuild or not to rebuild?(8) Towns require infrastructure - water, electricity, schools, grocery stores. Radioactivity is no longer the issue here; the deferred rebuilding effort and the current lack of infrastructure prevents residents from returning home.

When we reached the Fukushima Dai-ichi site, I saw contrast after contrast. New office buildings next to damaged structures. Intact reactor buildings next to the twisted metal and crushed concrete of Units 1, 3 and 4. Beautiful forests and cherry trees next to wide expanses of asphalt and concrete. Abandoned and rusting bolted steel tanks next to new welded tanks, waiting to hold water that has been cleaned of all contaminants except tritium. A calm ocean next to tsunami-damaged tanks and roads. Thinking of the forces that caused this damage is scary, and it’s not something anyone ever wants to be repeated.

While it is tempting to change my position based on emotion alone, but the truth of this situation, when I purposefully put aside my emotions, is that everything must be considered in context. Lots of industrial sites are huge. Lots of them have concrete and tanks. Accidents happen at other places, and with much greater frequency and much more impact to human health (e.g. natural gas plants and oil refineries such as those shown above). Lots of disasters kill lots of people. Also, lots of people die in ridiculous, careless ways, and for unjustified activities (e.g. the Darwin awards).

Here is just one example from my hometown of San Luis Obispo, California. There is a road called Tank Farm that travels across a wide expanse of rushes and marshland, with tall chain-link fences lining both sides of the road. Built in 1910, the Unocal tank farm was a major storage center for oil from the San Joaquin Valley. It contained six large underground storage reservoirs as well as 21 above-ground steel storage tanks. In 1926 there was a lightning strike in between the tanks that caused an explosion. Four of the tanks erupted in a blaze that spread to other tanks and across the land on rivers of oil. During the blaze and explosion, burning timbers were ejected from the site and found up to two miles away. Ash rained down throughout the whole county, and the fire was seen from as far away as Fresno, CA.(7)

Eight million barrels of oil were lost, and the whole area is contaminated and has been restricted since almost a century ago! By happenstance perhaps, the site is nearly identical in size to Fukushima Dai-ichi.(6)

These maps show the two sites in comparison, on the same scale.