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There is a time to be brave and time to panic. Of course the more rational the decision you make during that panic is going to increase the chance of survival. But simply ignoring all threats is a good way to end up dead.

You can drive 100 MPH on a windy road if you have no fear. Of course you are likely to end up dead from that.

You Guzzle a gallon of wiskey if you have no fear, but you will most likely die from that.

You can stay in a house that is burning if you have no fear, But that will kill you.

You can jump in deep water even though you can’t swim- you will be dead soon.

You can play with a ball of uranium if you have no fear, but we know how that ends.

And you can run to high ground in fear when a wall of water is rolling in and then you may well survive, as was witnessed in some of the videos from Japan.

Now I agree that if you are in a position to possibly change the outcome of a catastrophic event, and save lives, then you can choose to be brave, And risk yourself for the benefit of others. We call those people Hero’s.

I do not think that all fear is good. fear that interferes with the ability to love, for instance. But survival fear is- well- a part of how we have survived.

The very worst that could happen is a lot lot less than did happen during the era of testing the A-bombs and then the H-bombs. And that very worst is extremely unlikely.

The Japanese are highly capable engineers and scientists. They have a culture of being very clean and careful.

Of all places for such a rare event to happen, Japan is perhaps the among the best in the world to handle it. The US, I think, would be the best.

I even think that the Japanese will be motivated to develop
detection, remediation and decontamination equipment at levels beyond what is currently available. That would be a great boon, in the age where we can anticipate a possibility of some dirty nuke being used.

And also that we and they will be motivated to combine our nuclear engineering expertise to deal with the spent fuel problem. We made a mess of it and since then have ignored it — see the history of the West Valley Reprocessing Plant near Ashford, New York. That plant reprocessed used fuel rods from 1966 until 1977. Given current clean-plant technology and robotics we should be able to effectively reprocess the spent fuel in ways that would greater lessen the long-term storage risks.