This is silly. The fourth reactor is not badly damaged. The fuel rods will be removed from it soon. Even if another earthquake of the same magnitude occurs the building will not collapse. The reactor buildings were not seriously damaged by earthquake itself. Even if they had been at epicenter, if they had not been running, they would not have been seriously damaged. The major damage was caused by a chain of events:
The earthquake triggered a tsunami. The tsunami destroyed the auxiliary generators and generator fuel supplies. After the reactor SCRAM the reactor cores could not be kept cool. The hot reactor cores melted down, bringing the rods closer together, and intensifying the heat. The intense heat fractured the water into free hydrogen and oxygen. The recombination explosion destroyed the plant buildings. So, if the reactors had not been running there would be no disaster. Or, if the auxiliary generators and fuel supplies had been protected from the tsunami, which would not have been difficult. Or, if someone had noticed the generator early in the crisis ran out of fuel at night. (It is understandable that they did not notice, given the chaos and danger.) A long chain of unfortunate events caused this disaster. Any one of them might have been prevented. The same is true of many other major disasters, such as the Titanic and the crash of the DC-10 in June 1972. (See the book "Destination Disaster.") Furthermore, the notion that we would have to evacuate all of Japan or the U.S. West Coast is preposterous. The effects of the Fukushima disaster are bad enough already. We don't need this kind of hysteria making them seem even worse than they are. - Jed
