Yep It's a Nightmare.

Following March 11th's earthquake and tsunami Japan has begun the grim task of assessing the damage. The official death toll is now at 1300 but is expected to rise dramatically with thousands still missing. In coastal towns near Sendai rescue teams are reporting finding 300-400 hundred bodies amid the wreckage of towns that have been almost completely washed away. The Japanese military are now in charge of the relief effort and due to the scale of the disaster the Japanese government has now formally requested international, government to government, assistance. Obviously those requests will be honoured without question because normally Japan is who everybody else turns to for help after an earthquake.

Sadly though this all pales into insignificance compared to the events at the Fukushima nuclear power station where a large explosion has taken place. Obviously this is now a major emergency in itself and there has been some release of radioactive material into the surrounding area. However this does not mean that the situation will automatically turn into Chernobyl style nuclear disaster. Firstly nuclear reactors are designed to withstand powerful explosions without the core casing that contains the highly radioactive fuel roads being damaged let alone breached. Secondly not all nuclear material is equally dangerous. While even tiny amounts of the highly radioactive fuel rods are immediately lethal to humans nuclear fission also creates radioactive by-products many of which are only as dangerous as the radioactive material in my wrist watch. They're easily contained behind normal glass and are too weak to penetrate human skin. Thirdly the positioning of the Fukushima plant means that any release of radioactive material is most likely to be carried out to sea. Environmentally this is far from ideal but it is certainly much better then having it settle on land.

While the Japanese authorities are being tested by the situation at Fukushima they seem to in control of the situation. However as always with nuclear matters the Japanese government are not being very open about the details. While I'm in no rush to have all these details made public the Japanese should work with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) because the absolute worse case scenario, and I stress the absolute worst, is that the Fukushima plant releases a cloud of highly radioactive material over neighbouring countries including North Korea.