> the standby diesel generators depend upon the grid They don't. The whole point about diesel backup power is that the grid might be unavailable. Fukujima happened because the diesels were damaged (strange idea, in hindsight, to place them so close and relatively unprotected to the waterline) and they shut down the nuclear reactors rather than leaving them running to provide power for continuous operation. But I see Jed's point about feasability in general. Human error will always happen and can never be ruled out - so sooner or later something like this is bound to happen again. It'll be slightly different, of course, and the lessons learned will be different, but eventually it'll happen.
The thing I don't like about the nuclear discussion is that its often totally out of perspective. People talk about Fukujima (which, afaik, didn't cause any deaths) and forget the earthquake itself. I got in a discussion about nuclear energy recently with somebody who's major argument was that "20.000 dead people in Japan are enough". She seriously thought they were caused by radiation rather than water or fallen ceilings. Our government ordered a "stress test" on all our plants (in Germany they're all along streams rather than the coast) in the aftermath of Fukujima. One of the scenarios was the simulation of a quake causing a broken dam upstream from a plant. They did fairly well in the simulation - but the point is that the worst case scenario would still have caused more than a million deaths. All from the tidal wave washing downstream through narrow, densly populated valleys - none from radiation. Yet the conclusion was to get rid of nukes as fast as possible and (counter intuitively) subsidize alternatives like building more nice green and politically correct dams and large pump hydro storage plants... oh well.
