Disaster planning

by digby

I know this is soooo April 2011 and feels like a stale and dull story, but it’s still somewhat interesting from a historical perspective. From Greg Mitchell’s Wikileaks blog:

1:20 More on big WikiLeaks release today on Japan shortcomings in nuclear plant safety, this time from WSJ. “The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident exposed flaws in the Japanese government’s measures to guard the country’s reactors against earthquakes and tsunamis. U.S. officials have in recent years also worried that Japanese officials haven’t taken enough precautions to protect the facilities from terrorist attacks, according to diplomatic documents released over the weekend on the Wikileaks website.” 10:30 WikiLeaks releases cables on Japan’s history with nuclear power. The dam has finally broken on the 7000 cables from Tokyo.

Now I realize that the US is very, very exceptional and such a thing would never happen here because we’re so good and they’re so evil, but still. Japan is a high tech, wealthy, first world country. And yet they cut corners and allowed corrupt bureaucrats and greedy, short sighted human beings who run capitalistic enterprises to ensure the safety of nuclear plants. There’s a lesson in there somewhere. Let me think about it and maybe I’ll figure it out.
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