After a once-in-300-years earthquake, the Japanese have been keeping cool amid the chaos, organizing an enormous relief and rescue operation, and generally earning the world's admiration. We wish we could say the same for the reaction in the U.S., where the troubles at Japan's nuclear reactors have produced an overreaction about the risks of modern life and technology. 
 
 Part of the problem is the lack of media proportion about the disaster itself. The quake and tsunami have killed hundreds, and probably thousands, with tens of billions of dollars in damage. The energy released by the quake off Sendei is equivalent to about 336 megatons of TNT, or 100 more megatons than last year's quake in Chile and thousands of times the yield of the nuclear explosion at Hiroshima. The scale of the tragedy is epic. 
 
 Yet the bulk of U.S. media coverage has focused on a nuclear accident whose damage has so far been limited and contained to the plant sites. In simple human terms, the natural destruction of Earth and sea have far surpassed any errors committed by man. 
 
 Editorial Board Member Mary Kissel explains the Japanese response to the quake. 
 
 Given the incomplete news reports, it is impossible to say how much worse the nuclear damage will be. Unlike the Soviets at Chernobyl, the Japanese have been taking sensible precautions like evacuating people near the plants and handing out iodine pills even if they may never be needed. These precautions increase public worry, but better to take them even if they prove to be unnecessary. 
 
 We will have plenty of time to dissect events at the reactors and the safety lessons going forward. William Tucker provides some useful context nearby, and one crucial point is that the containment walls seem to have held. These walls are designed to withstand quakes and explosions, and it is good news if they have done so. The crisis seems to have been triggered by the failure of diesel generators that provided electricity to cool the reactors once they were shut down. Mr. Tucker explains that this weakness has been corrected in new nuclear plant designs. 
 
 We have no special brief for nuclear power over any other energy source. Our view is that it should compete with other sources on a market basis, without subsidies or government loan guarantees. Every energy source has risks and economic externalities, whether they are noise and bird kills (wind), huge land requirements (solar), rig explosions and tanker spills (oil), or mining accidents (coal). 
 
 But more than other energy sources, nuclear plants have had their costs increased by artificial political obstacles and delay. The U.S. hasn't built a new nuclear plant since 1979, after the Three Mile Island meltdown, even as older nuclear plants continue to provide 20% of the nation's electricity. 
 
 Enlarge Image Close JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty Images An aerial photo shows the quake-damaged Fukushima Dai-Ni nuclear power plant. 
 
 The Tennessee Valley Authority is a couple of years away from completing a reactor at Watts Bar after years of effort. Proposals for 20 new reactors to be built over the next 15 to 20 years are in various stages of review in the multiyear approval process at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with two each in Georgia and South Carolina at the front of the line. But the much-ballyhooed "nuclear renaissance" is a long way off, and it will be longer after events in Japan. 
 
 Our larger point is less about nuclear power than how we react as a society to inevitable disasters, both natural and man-made. Because a plane crashes, we don't stop flying. Because an oil rig explodes in the Gulf, we don't (or at least we shouldn't) stop drilling for oil. And because the Challenger space shuttle blew up, we didn't stop shuttle flights—though we do seem to have lost much of our national will for further manned space exploration. We should learn from the Japanese nuclear crisis, not let it feed a political panic over nuclear power in general. 
 
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 The paradox of material and technological progress is that we seem to become more risk-averse the safer it makes us. The more comfortable we become, the less eager we are to take the risks that are the only route to future progress. The irony is that one reason Japan has survived this catastrophic event as well as it has is its great material development and wealth. 
 
 Modern civilization is in the daily business of measuring and mitigating risk, but its advance requires that we continue to take risk. It would compound Japan's tragedy if the lesson America learns is that we should pursue the illusory and counterproductive goal of eliminating all risk. ||||| TOKYO Japan has asked nuclear superpower Russia to send a special radiation treatment ship used to decommission nuclear submarines as it fights to contain the world's worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl, Japanese media said late on Monday. 
 
 Japanese engineers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have been forced to release radioactive waste water into the sea. At the same time they are resorting to desperate measures to contain the damage, such as using bath salts to try to locate the source of leaks at the crippled complex 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo. 
 
 Three weeks after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and massive tsunami hit northeast Japan, sending some of Daiichi's reactors into partial meltdown, engineers are no closer to regaining control of the power plant or stopping radioactive leaks. 
 
 The quake and tsunami left nearly 28,000 people dead or missing and Japan's northeast coast a wreck. 
 
 The world's costliest natural disaster has caused power blackouts and cuts to supply chains and business hours. It is threatening economic growth and the yen, while a recent opinion poll suggested voters want embattled Prime Minister Naoto Kan to form a coalition in order to steer Japan through its worst crisis since World War Two. 
 
 Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) was forced on Monday to release low-level radioactive seawater that had been used to cool overheated fuel rods after it ran out of storage capacity for more highly contaminated water. 
 
 A TEPCO official was in tears as he told a news conference: "We are very sorry for this region and those involved." 
 
 The water, which is being released to free storage capacity for more highly contaminated water, is about 100 times more radioactive than legal limits. Koichi Nakamura, a deputy director-general of Japan's Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), told a news conference in Vienna about 11,500 metric tons of water would have to be discharged. 
 
 He also said Japan had not ruled out expanding the 20-km evacuation zone around the site. 
 
 Engineers planned to build two giant "silt curtains" made of polyester fabric in the sea to hinder the spread of more contamination from the plant. 
 
 Japan has also asked Russia for the "Suzuran", a ship which treats radioactive liquids, Kyodo and Jiji news agencies said. 
 
 The ship, a joint venture between Japan and Russia, was designed to help decommission nuclear submarines in Russia's Pacific fleet in Vladivostock, ensuring radioactive waste was not dumped into the Sea of Japan, Kyodo said. 
 
 It could take months to stem the leaks and longer to regain control of the power station, damaged by the March quake and tsunami, though a U.S. official in Vienna said there was no evidence the spent fuel in the reactors was restarting a nuclear reaction after being shut down. 
 
 DISASTER MAY SEE YEN WEAKEN 
 
 Japan, the world's third largest economy but also one of its most indebted nations, has estimated the damages bill may top $300 billion. 
 
 "The damage from the nuclear crisis and the subsequent power shortage will last for several years," said Eiji Hirano, former assistant governor of the Bank of Japan (BOJ). 
 
 "There's a strong chance Japan's economy will contract in the current fiscal year," he told Reuters in an interview. 
 
 A former senior finance ministry official, Eisuke Sakakibara, said the yen would weaken in the coming months, possibly beyond 90 to the dollar, underlining expectations a near four-year rally in the currency may be over. 
 
 The yen traded at 84.05 per dollar early on Tuesday. 
 
 The disaster initially saw the yen soar on speculation Japanese would repatriate funds for reconstruction, prompting the G7 intervention to knock it back. 
 
 "This atomic power issue is an incident which would result in depreciation of the exchange rate," Sakakibara told reporters in Tokyo. 
 
 Unpopular and under pressure to quit or call a snap poll before the disaster, Prime Minister Kan has been criticised for his management of the disaster. 
 
 One newspaper poll said nearly two-thirds of voters wanted the government to form a coalition with the major opposition party and work together to recover from the disaster. 
 
 BATH SALTS, SEA CURTAIN 
 
 In their desperation to stop radioactive leaks, TEPCO engineers have used anything at hand. They have mixed sawdust and newspapers with polymers and cement in an unsuccessful attempt to seal a crack in a concrete pit at reactor No.2. 
 
 On Monday, they resorted to powdered bath salts to produce a milky color in water to help trace the source of the leak. 
 
 TEPCO said it was also planning to drape a curtain into the sea off the nuclear plant to try to prevent radioactive silt drifting out into the ocean. 
 
 The exact source of the radiation leaks remains unknown. NISA is investigating a damaged embankment near a sluice gate at the No.2 reactor and the possibility it may be seeping through a layer of small stones below a concrete pipe. 
 
 TEPCO said it would build tanks to hold contaminated seawater, was towing a floating tank which will arrive next week, and was negotiating the purchase of three more. 
 
 "If the current situation continues for a long time, accumulating more radioactive substances, it will have a huge impact on the ocean," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. 
 
 Small levels of radiation from the plant have been detected as far away as Europe and the United States and several countries have banned milk and produce from the vicinity. 
 
 Singapore extended a ban on Japanese food imports on Monday after detecting radiation in more fruit and vegetable imports. Kan asked the European Union on Monday for a calm response to Japanese imports. The EU has urged radiation testing of Japanese food and feed imports. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Yoko Nishikawa, Yoko Kubota, Linda Sieg, Leika Kihara, Tetsushi Kajimoto in Tokyo and Sylvia Westall in Vienna; Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Daniel Magnowski) ||||| DigitalGlobe / AP 
 
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 As hopes dim for controlling the explosive self-destruction of six decomposing nuclear plants on Japan's northeast coast, safety experts around the world want to know what was missing in the tens of thousands of pages of repeatedly tested emergency drills crafted to cover every eventuality.Japanese and U.S. safety officials say the emergency plans for almost every plant, everywhere, precisely detail every possible response after an earthquake , flood or tsunami and explosion. But as the past five days have shown, these disaster plans seemed fine until reality reared back and slapped them silly, and this is just what happened at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex.Some of the answers are in the numbers.The plants were meticulously designed to survive a 7.2 quake and were hit with a violent tremor of 9.0.Plant designers knew that they were tsunami bait, so they built a 25-foot-high protective wall between the ocean and the reactors. Japanese safety officials say that the 30-foot wave triggered by the quake didn't even pause as it thundered toward the six reactors in the complex.Even scary nuke-drama movies usually threaten just single meltdowns. But in Dai-ichi, we've seen five days of unfathomable destruction, like falling dominoes. Hydrogen-fed explosions and fires are moving among four of the 40-year-old reactors, meltdowns of varying degrees are believed under way in at least four of the units and problems are showing up in the two remaining units.When the quake and tsunami struck on Saturday, there were a few less than 800 men and woman staffing the plants. On Sunday, all but 200 workers were ordered off the site. Five have died, 24 are hospitalized with trauma and radiation injuries and two are missing.Fifty men continued to battled heroically to control the calamity disaster, manning hoses and pumping seawater on the steaming reactors and fuel pools. Many are believed to have already received lethal radiation exposures trying to fight an impossible battle. Earlier this morning, government officials ordered the remaining crew off the site because of soaring peaks of radiation.While nature's worst triggered this catastrophe, the actions of men made it even more dangerous.The uranium fuel source is hazardous enough, but at least one of the reactors was using a new volatile and toxic fuel concoction called mixed oxide, or MOX fuel, which blends reprocessed plutonium and uranium oxides. This is even more lethal if inhaled, because plutonium even in very small quantities is considered the most toxic substance known to man.The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the plutonium in MOX comes from thousands of dismantled nuclear weapons and is also used in many U.S. nukes.The other factor exacerbating the hazard is that within all the threatened reactors are poorly protected pools containing spent fuel.For decades, nuclear activists (and even some proponents of using the atom to power the world) have warned of the hazards of storing spent fuel rods in lightly protected pools in or near the reactors. In fact, it had been one of the most combative arguments against building new plants. The term "spent" may sound benign. And the shimmering blue glow emitted from the deep pools holding the dime-size tubes of radioactive uranium pellets looks far from threatening.Wrong.The fuel rods are highly radioactive and often unstable. Should there be a loss of the constantly circulating water (needed to dissipate the heat from the decaying uranium), they could melt, burn and explode and emit heavily radioactive steam.Here's a key point that helps explain the worry over the spent fuel: Unlike the reactors, which have 6-foot-thick walls of steel and concrete, these storage pools have no steel and concrete containment for protection.Meanwhile, on this side of the Pacific, government officials continued today to say they expect no dangerous level of radioactive material to reach U.S. shores, but they "are watching the situation closely." When the plants at Chernobyl caught fire, it took between a week and 10 days for traces of radiation to get here, and even then the levels were far too low to cause harm.Nevertheless, there is a run on the tiny, white potassium iodide, or "KI," pills. Taken at the right time, they can block radiation from poisoning the thyroid gland, which can and did cause cancers in thousands of people, mostly children, after the explosions at Chernobyl in 1986.The thyroid, which produces hormones that regulate the growth and rate of function of many bodily systems, acts as a biological magnet for the iodine-131 radiation that is emitted in most nuclear events.State and federal agencies told AOL News that they had no plans to dispense the pills. But for some people, that's not good enough.When I checked with 11 drugstores and specialty natural food outlets in the Seattle,and Vancouver, British Columbia, area, one said "never heard of it," and the other 10 said they sold out on Monday and Tuesday.Sellers on eBay and Craigslist apparently have no shortage. Offers for the pills -- which cost pharmacies 4 cents each in 1-pound jars that contain about 3,300 adult doses -- were priced anywhere from $10 for four to $750 for a "family-size bottle." And, of course, there is no way to know what these black market pills actually contain.Maybe it's good that KI isn't easy to find. Physicians in the U.S. and elsewhere warn that the pills should not be taken unless radiation is at higher than normal levels and medical authorities tell you to take them. Of course, federal and state government health departments tell AOL News they have "adequate" stockpiles available for quick distribution, but they not could define was "adequate" and "quick" meant.Some people, like those allergic to shellfish or iodine, should never take the pills.While a lot of Americans seem only slightly skeptical about the government's assessment on the arrival of a radioactive plume, many of us are incredulous at statements assuring that U.S. nuke plants are safe. This isn't a new problem. Corporate honesty often seems to quickly dissipate when it comes to the nuclear industry.Japaneseare quick to remind readers and viewers that Tokyo Electric Power, the owner of the smoldering nuke plants on the country's northeast coast, has an abysmal record on honest responses to problems with the plants.Back here, people are still grumbling over remarks by Gregory Jaczko, the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who said Monday at abriefing that power plants in the U.S. are designed to handle all "significant phenomena," including tsunamis, flood and earthquakes.Although asked several times about the level of quakes U.S. plants are designed to withstand, he flipped the question back to the Japan crisis, avoiding answering what he had been asked.I called the NRC press office and was told that each U.S. site is built to a different seismic activity standard. That sounded logical, but when I requested a list of the earthquake design limits for each plant under NRC control, the official reply was that the information was not available. When asked what the range of protective limits was, the spokesman said he didn't think that information was available.The spokesmen and executives of America's nuclear lobby have been masterful at evading almost all specific questions on U.S. plant safety. A CNN correspondent who was questioning a spokesman at acoastal nuke plant Monday received assurances that the plant could withstand anything -- but was offered no specifics. A frustrated Wolf Blitzer told his reporter to call the PR guys back on camera and tell him to answer the questions and stop blowing smoke. (Which, of course, did not happen.)This feels like the 1960s and '70s revisited. Anti-nuke and pro-nuke factions are picking up the old arguments right where they left them.It all reminds me of the scene from "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" in which the governor is avoiding questions from the press and proudly croons:Ooh, I love to dance the little sidestepNow they see me, now they don'tI've come and goneAnd ooh, I love to sweep around a wide stepCut a little swathAnd lead the people on!Andrew Schneider, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, spent more than two years investigating problems at the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the U.S.
– America is positively freaking out over the state of Japan’s nuclear reactors, with some calling for a halt to the development of new nuclear plants. But that’s a wild overreaction, opines a Wall Street Journal editorial. The media’s done a poor job of putting the tragedy in Japan in proportion: The quake killed hundreds, and released a thousand times more energy than the nuclear explosion at Hiroshima. “In simple human terms, the natural destruction of Earth and sea have far surpassed any errors committed by man.” In a separate piece, William Tucker breaks down the technical workings of the reactors, and concludes that there’s little danger. “None of this amounts to ‘another Chernobyl,’” he says. Chernobyl had massive design flaws that these Generation II reactors don’t; their containment structures have held. “If a meltdown does occur,” he concludes, “it will be a disaster for the Tokyo Electric Power Company, but not for the general public.” For another (paywall-free) dose of realism, click here.