It’s hard to rebut that if one just tallies the cold real-life recorded numbers. In my book a disaster is a legion of people being wiped out and a catastrophe far beyond that. TMI and Fukushima just don’t peep up in that phrasing. A maximum extreme industrial malfunction maybe? Yes, that lacks the emotional human factor impact of the others, but isn’t it more correct? We know what an aircraft disaster is, and when it hits a community or building it’s a catastrophe, and the most survivable of an aircraft’s maximum extreme industrial malfunction better take place on a runway. I smile at the reactions of people asked which world’s worst commercial industrial accident you’d rather be caught in and walk out in one-piece and that answer would be Fukushima. The irony of is how applying such terms can warp logic and responses; to my knowledge there are extremely few if any oil, gas, hydro and chemical facilities that require evacuation plans and warning klaxons despite their grim histories of occasional — and sometimes widespread — lethal and property damaging accidents; the very inverse of what’s mandated all nuclear plants despite their near nil accident mortality and damage ranking after nearly 60 years of operation worldwide. To me, such logically biased regulations are a pretty blatant form of industrial discrimination and hypocrisy or worst, especially since if there was a chance for meltdown Doomsday to pop up it surely would’ve so by now.

James Greenidge
Queens NY