Merchants of Danger

By Richard Eskow

Created 03/22/2011 - 12:23am

Fukushima is "a very huge disaster that has caused very large damage at a nuclear power generation plant on a scale that we had not expected," according to the deputy director general of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency [1].

But the risk of disaster was easily calculated, and an effective regulator would have demanded that the Tokyo Electric Power Company take the appropriate precautions. That didn't happen. The ugly truth, here and in Japan, is this: Unless government regains the will and the ability to regulate private industry, more catastrophes are all but inevitable.