Thin Steel Line: Japan’s Nuclear Crisis–Now a “Major Accident”– Could Have Been Worse

The new, raised assessment of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident puts it on par with Chernobyl in terms of potential consequences, but it is obvious to anyone that there is a difference between Japan’s ongoing crisis and the 1986 explosion in the Ukraine. Summed up in a single word, that difference is “containment.”

Steel and cement vessels surround each of the reactor cores at Fukushima Daiichi, as is the case in all but a few of the 443 atomic power units operating around the world today.

But there are a few remaining nuclear plants still operating, all early Soviet design, that do not have primary containment vessels. And one of them happens to be located in a major seismic hazard zone.

Our

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