Every time the tube shows that wall of water just rolling down those homes and farm buildings it give me shivers down my back. It's almost like those space invader films we liked to watch as kids, and ironically, many were Japanese movies - except there are real people dying there not special effects. The news is now saying there may be as many as 10K dead - and frankly, I think that might be understated, knowing the population of Japan's land. Those reactors are BWR's and are very old and actually were close to their closing. They have had some minor radiation leaks in the past - GE and Hitachi built them and there has been a lot of retrofitting, though in the end, TEPCO, the power plant operator/owner, had the final design responsibility for systems. It will be interesting - a few minutes ago the news said it was 210,000 evacuees, with possibly more coming. Wow!!!

Now, to change the subject - the US was moving toward building some more nuclear plants. Of course, the nay sayers immediately are saying "look at Japan". Of course, with the current oil situation - all those windmills and solar panels will take up the slack. They just forget how much energy it takes to build them. OK - the soap box is put away