Comprehending Disaster

The Japanese earthquakes and tsunami disaster seemed to be beyond my comprehension until I visualized the whole of Batemans Bay, Batehaven and Sunshine Bay being wiped out while we were sat at the cafe.

All the anti-nuclear voices seem to be more concerned for, what they imagine to be, more worthy lives than the tens of thousands that have been killed by this and other natural phenomena which, daily, wreak havoc across our world. I, for one, am pro-nuclear power. If this design for a MOX reactor - note: NOT the ancillary, essential cooling systems - can withstand a category 9 quake and a monster tsunami, I say, build some Pebble Bed units - not near the beach though. Water has the pleasing property of being able to be pumped along pipes.

I got an email from Tokyo pals who are shaken and not stirred. The "system" sprang into action - as per plan. Lest we forget, Tokyo was flattened by Allied (US) bombing - far worse than London; more akin to Dresden - and the resilience of the people re-built what we see today. Remember Kobe 1995? Nothing keeps a well organised society down for long ...

So far, the silliest of the comments made by TV reporters went something like, "This is the worst nuclear disaster the Japan has had to face". I wonder if he had ever heard of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Maybe he thought that "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" were just manga characters. Back in 1945 the Allied "success" created something like a minimum of 250,000 dead and hundreds of thousands of radiation casualties - a tad worse than the Chernobyl episode even though some 350,000 people were re-settled.

We'll wait and see how things are in a couple of weeks and the make a final decision which way to fly to Europe.

Donations to the Red Cross Japan Appeal here.