Nuclear accidents and radioactive fallout

About two weeks after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986 I was at the European offices of WHO in Copenhagen. My mission had nothing to do with nuclear power or fallout, but the entire professional staff, indeed the whole population of the Nordic nations, like the rest of Europe downwind from Chernobyl, was abuzz with the information in the media about radioactive fallout and the risks it posed. The experts on environmental health and radiation risks in WHO/EURO had a few more facts than the media, but not very much hard information. The Soviet authorities remained silent but nobody else was. A week or two later when I went on to Sweden an advisory notice had been issued to hunters: do not eat elk or reindeer meat, because these animals grazed on lichen, which selectively absorbed and metabolized radioactive caesium which was found in high concentration in the fallout from Chernobyl. Nearly 3 decades later the countryside around Chernobyl remains a no-go zone, cordoned off, no humans allowed. Now it's happened again. There is a no-go zone of 20 Km around the damaged reactors at Fukashima, and increases in radiation levels have been reported over Tokyo and elsewhere in Honshu. Increases have been detected in levels of radiation in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of North America. It seems more and more likely with every news report that the Fukashima nuclear power plant disaster will have an environmental impact at least as great as Chernobyl. Possibly it will be many orders of magnitude greater. The news seems to me to be getting worse every day; the authorities are tight-lipped but experts everywhere sound very concerned when they are interviewed. My friends the Tsunoda family, especially Humio Tsunoda's daughter Sawako Takikawa and her husband and children live in Morioka, about 75 Km away. I haven't heard from her or others in the family since an email 2-3 days after the earthquake, saying they were all well but both water and gasoline were in short supply. Like Chernobyl, this nuclear reactor disaster is due to human failings, in this case the foolish design decision to locate emergency generators that could have provided power to maintain circulating water around the fuel rods in places where they were vulnerable to the tsunami that followed the earthquake. Japan relies heavily on nuclear power and will be forced to continue doing so because there are no credible alternatives. Rocks and hard places, irresistible forces and immovable objects come to mind: if Japan's cutting-edge postindustrial economy is to be sustained nuclear power is the only realistic option. Perhaps the Japanese people will decide it simply isn't worth the risk, and may collectively decide to opt for a simpler way of life, less dependent on huge amounts of energy.