Toppled Wind Turbines Would Be So Much Easier to Watch

As if an earthquake and tsunami were not enough. What is happening at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant is terrifying and should be a wakeup call to all who promote the use and safety of nuclear power. To those of us in tourism, it should be motivation to advocate even stronger for the use of renewable energy--especially in areas of the world most dependent on nuclear energy. Mother Nature can be a tourism killer, as we all know. Do we really need mankind adding to its destruction? Yes, it is easy to sit here and Monday morning quarterback. I freely admit that. But what is happening in Japan can happen anywhere where there are nuclear power plants.

I live in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. There are nuclear power plants to the west and east of us. Nine years ago, the Davis-Besse nuclear plant to the west was shut down for two years because of a corrosion hole in the top of the reactor that could have led to a loss-of-coolant accident. The damage cost FirstEnergy more than $600 million in repairs and energy costs. The company also paid a $28 million fine--the industry's largest--and admitted that employees had misled government inspectors about the damage. The company was criticized for failing to immediately report the incident in 2002.

If there had been an accident at Davis-Besse, it would have devastated the most active tourism area in Ohio--Sandusky and the Lake Erie Islands. Thank goodness the corrosion hole was discovered in time.

Mankind is fallible, sometimes corrupt, and it is impossible to design for every possibility. Is nuclear energy really worth it? Watching the damage from a toppled field of wind turbines or solar array would be so much easier, wouldn't it?

My thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Japan.