Lessons from Japanese Nuclear Disaster

Our thoughts and prayers go to the folks in Japan reeling from the multiple punches of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns. They deserve all the help the world community can provide and in particular, the nuclear experts from the utility companies. The 50 workers from Tokyo Electric Power Company which operates the failed reactors are working round the clock in a Herculean effort to get the situation under control. They are one of the heroes of this natural disaster and we wish them all the success in preventing a monumental environmental disaster.

This is also the time for all to take a pause to take stock of the situation and to hold the opinions and condemnations of nuclear power till the experts can fully unravel what went wrong, what worked right and fully understand what should be done to prevent such disasters in the future. Irrespective of the damange caused by this event, nuclear energy will be an important part of any country's energy portfolio mix. The wrong thing to do would be to have a knee-jerk reaction and cancel any plans for future nuclear power plants for the next several years. Equally worse would be to put blinders on and continue with business as usual as soon as the media spotlight moves on to the next disaster.