The major lesson to be learned is that for any water-cooled reactor there must be an absolutely secure supply of power sufficient to operate cooling pumps. Many other lessons are likely to be learned. At this early point, it appears that design criteria for fuel storage pools may need to be revised, and hydrogen control assessed.

Given the severity of the challenge faced by the operators at Fukushima, and their ability to manage the situation in such a way as to preclude any significant radiation related health consequences for workers or the public, this event should be a reassurance that properly designed and regulated nuclear power does not pose a catastrophic risk to the public—that, overall, nuclear power remains a safe and clean energy sources

Think about it, 40 storey towers out in the North Sea, one of the most hostile marine environments in the world. Turbines blades that are the size of aircraft.

Deaths per TWh for all energy sources: Rooftop solar power is actually more dangerous than Chernobyl

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html

Coal – China__________278
Coal – USA ___________15
Oil__________________36 (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas __________4 (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass_______12
Peat________________12
Solar (rooftop)_________0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind________________0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro_______________0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro – world including Banqiao)___1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear_____________0.04 (5.9% of world energy)

Talk about a meltdown

http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110320/GJOPINION_0102/703209947/-1/FOSOPINION

On earthquake opportunism:

“…….when thousands die, or when some sudden calamity befalls us, the tendency of politicians, journalists, policymakers and experts is to seize on the moment to advocate some radical changes. “A crisis,” Rahm Emanuel famously declared in the early days of the Obama administration, “is a terrible thing to waste.”

That this axiom didn’t generate more controversy always struck me as bizarre. I mean, shouldn’t it be “a crisis is a terrible thing to exploit”?

So here we go again in Japan, where the tragedy is literally too terrible to comprehend. The death toll, the scale — the whole nation moved 8 to 12 feet — the suddenness: It all overwhelms.

And yet the search for scapegoats and the thirst to confirm one’s preferred policies kicked in almost immediately.

The most egregious examples were attempts to link, no matter how tenuously, the earthquake with climate change. Though in fairness, such naked balderdash has been far less common than it was in the wake of the Asian tsunami of 2004, never mind the riot of idiocy after Hurricane Katrina the following year (when, for example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blamed Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour: “Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged”).”

On the nuclear backlash:-

“NBC science correspondent Robert Bazell explained Tuesday morning that this is certainly “not Chernobyl,” but it is “worse than Three Mile Island.”

True enough. But let’s remember that no one was hurt, never mind killed, by the Three Mile Island accident. And over the last decade, the wind farm industry has seen more fatalities than the nuclear industry.

In Europe, where nuclear power is vastly more common than it is here, the Japanese earthquake is being exploited to the hilt. “If the Japanese,” editorializes the British Independent newspaper, “with all their understandable inhibitions about anything nuclear and all their world-leading technology, cannot build reactors that are invulnerable to disaster, who can?”

Well, that’s just it. Who said anything, anywhere, is invulnerable to disaster? At 9.0, this was Japan’s biggest earthquake and could be the fourth largest ever recorded (it was even detected in Pennsylvania). Perhaps the standard shouldn’t be whether Japan’s reactor was “invulnerable” but whether it succeeded by taking such a beating without threatening much human life?

The damaged reactors are ruined, but so what? Cars are designed to be ruined after a major accident too. We routinely, and wisely, trade salvageability for survivability. Few skyscrapers in the United States can withstand a 9.0 earthquake; should we stop making tall buildings?

Yes, the IAEA has now formally listed the overall accident at an INES level 5 (see here for a description of the scales), up from the original estimate of 4. This is right and proper — but it doesn’t mean the situation has escalated further, as some have inferred. Here is a summary of the main site activities for today, followed by the latest JAIF and FEPC reports. You also might be interested in the following site map
… read the rest at the link – all seems good news

But it does indicate that the gear is pretty ancient.