Nathaniel Borenstein (the creator of MIME) sent the email below to the Interesting People list last week. I've been meaning to post a link to it, because I have found that it mirrors what I've been thinking about the Fukushima crisis. As the crisis continues to unfold I continue to come back to this email.

I like nuclear power. It think its a sustainable approach to energy production that does not require foreign dependence.

On the other hand, it does produce some nasty waste and has some significant health hazards associated with it. Disposal of nuclear waste is not a solved problem in the United States. Furthermore, other forms of energy production and other industrial processes also have risks, but I don't think any such process approaches the potential of a nuclear plant to contaminate a wide area in the event of a worst case scenario.

So nuclear energy is not a no-brainer. A lot of thought has to be put into doing it safely. People have gotten it wrong in the past and there are problems that remain unsolved. The wrong answers can have significant consequences. As an engineer, I know people sometimes get the wrong answers and that things sometimes fail. The whole purpose of a regulatory regime and public pressure is to make sure that people are dotting i's and crossing t's.

I am tired of pundits telling us that everything is A-OK with Fukushima and by the way, if you are concerned about the situation you are an idiot who obviously doesn't know anything about science.

The situation at Fukushima is not under control. Unexpected bad news is announced by the power company and the Japanese government every day. There is radiation all over Japan. Its in the food and its in the water. No, there isn't a lot of it, but there is enough that it can pose a risk to people's health - that is a problem. It is not yet clear that the situation will not get worse. It is possible that it will get worse. Containment breaches and more signification radiation releases remain a risk.

It is also not clear that the designers of the plant considered the scenario that occurred here. Given the level of respect that I personally have for Japan's technical and political sophistication I am surprised by that lack of clarity. If they didn't consider what to me seems like a rather obvious possibility given the region's geological history it is not clear that the designers of other plants around the world have also considered the real worst case scenarios their plants may face, even if they say that they have.

So there is a problem here. It is a real problem, and there is real cause for reasonable people to be alarmed. I really hope nothing catastrophic happens and we can all relax and go forward and build new nuclear plants with even safer processes, but "Its all good dude" is not a reasonable position to take at this time. Until the situation is, in fact, under control, and has been completely studied, it is not reasonable to conclude that "everything is fine, everyone did exactly what they are supposed to do and there was never any real risk to anybody."

From: Nathaniel Borenstein
Date: March 17, 2011 9:15:42 AM GMT-04:00
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] Worth reading about radiation impacts Fantastic take on the Japanese Earthquake

Dave -- I'm no expert in this area, but don't you find it a bit odd that after four reactor explosions, all we're hearing is how well everything worked? I don't recall previously hearing about any document that said that, in the event of a major earthquake, the plan was to have four reactors explode. And yet, we're supposed to believe that the experts are almost instantly certain that all is well, and that this merely confirms the safety of nuclear power.

To me, this beggars belief. No objective analysis of the situation could be presenting its results this quickly. What we're seeing appears to be propaganda from people not on the scene, generalizing from facts and assumptions that pre-date the accident to support an explicit pro-nuclear agenda. I'm not an anti-nuclear fanatic by any means, but I am skeptical enough that it is the reaction of the experts, rather than the explosions themselves, that are pushing me in that direction. As one who wants to believe in the possible safety of nuclear power, I would be much more reassured to hear -- in a few weeks or months -- about the lessons learned from these catastrophes, rather than to be told immediately that all is fine when it obviously isn't. -- Nathaniel