The point that Western media are covering the nuclear component too heavily, at the expense of the real, serious humanitarian tragedy, is well-taken, However, I think this column treats the newsworthiness of the nuclear emergency a little too lightly.

This is opinion and by trying dismiss fears of nuclear power lightly, renders itself useless. Here is a quote from the article: "Passive safety means failures are not emergencies — if the cooling pumps fail, as happened at Fukushima, the atomic reaction simply stops". The first thing that happened at Fukushima is that the control rods turned off the chain reaction. Everything that is happening after that is because of inability to continue to cool the rods and take away the decay heat. If it were a matter of atomic reaction simply stopping, why do we make a big deal of cooling spent fuel in pools which is not even in a reactor? So, the author should get his facts clear first -- or explain why "passive safety" systems are ... More »

It's OK, but it's of a piece with prevailing pro "green" nuke thinking. Wm Saletan was first out the gate with this on Sunday with this Slate bit: http://www.slate.com/id/2288212/ The argument goes like this: anti-nukes are panicky luddites; oil and gas production and burning kill more people; therefore, nukes are good and everyone needs to calm down. It's not entirely wrong, as far as it goes, but if we're going to be rethinking our energy choices we might want to consider why we're content with all these deaths--from all these industries--and why we are unable to fathom serious energy conservation.