“know it’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback”
Yes, it is. Great 20/20 hindsight, but we have a situation where 10s of thousands of people have died from being too close to the sea. .... and ZERO have died from having a nuke plant too close to the sea.
This plant was rated to withstand a 8.2 quake, and instead got hit with the 5th largest quake in history, 8.9/9.0. OK, so up the rating on that.
nuke plant deaths = 0
tidal wave deaths = 50,000
which is bigger?
Using your analysis, to be prudent we shouldnt just move nuke plants, we should evacuate EVERYONE near the coast line .... are uyou up for moving Florida?
That’s all reasonable, but there is a difference between Tsunami victims and people who end up being victims of radioactive contamination. The people who lost their homes or even their lives in the Tsunami, they willingly took the risk of living on the coast in the path of a potential Tsunami wave. Just like people who live in earthquake zones in CA, they knew they could get hit with a catastrophic Tsunami wave and they took that risk for their own reasons. But people who live inland in Japan didn’t think they were taking a risk from Tsunami waves and very few of them knew that the nuclear power plant was so vulnerable to a Tsunami wave. So a lot of people right now within 50 miles of that plant (and maybe farther that that as this accident continues) are getting their houses and cars contaminated with radioactive material and never chose to take that risk.
We still don’t know how this accident will end. If a couple of these reactors melt down completely and the wind sends a lot of radioactive material into Japan, this could cause great economic chaos in a large part of Japan. I would agree that the Tsunami itself is going to end up killing many more people than the power plant ever does, because they’re going to evacuate people out of the area if it turns into another Chernoybl type of meltdown.
I think the other issue is just the practicality of prevention. It’s very difficult and probably unreasonable for a government to stop people from living within 10 miles of the coast because they could be wiped out in a Tsunami. But the nuclear power plant could easily have been built 20 miles inland. So if you look at the cost/benefit ratio for building that plant inland, it’s a very favorable ratio because it’s highly beneficial and not very costly, and it’s highly practical. Anyway, you’re right about the death toll being much higher from the Tsunami itself, but I still think it’s a slam dunk decision that this nuclear plant should have been built 20 miles inland. We don’t have the Tsunami threat in America because of different geophysics off of our coast, but they should have considered this risk in Japan and built the power plant inland.