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"Nuclear regulators trusted that the reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 complex were safe from the worst waves an earthquake could muster based on a single-page memo from Tokyo Electric Power Co. nearly a decade ago. In the Dec. 19, 2001, document - one double-sized page obtained by The Associated Press under the public records law - Tepco rules out the possibility of a tsunami large enough to knock the plant offline and gives scant details to justify this conclusion, which proved to be wildly optimistic. Regulators at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency had asked plant operators for assessments of their earthquake and tsunami preparedness. They didn't mind the brevity of the utility's response, and apparently made no moves to verify its calculations or ask for supporting documents."

"*"The only safe nuclear reactor is 93-Million miles away, the Sun". Daniel Hirsch, President of Bridge the Gap, a Nuclear policy organization. (1) *"There is No 'Peaceful' atomic power. If (you are) promoting nuclear power you are promoting bombs". David Freeman. (2) *"There is no safe level of (radiation) exposure & there is no dose of radiation so low that the risk of a malignancy is zero". (3) Even exposure to background radiation causes some cancers. (4) "

"Eighty-seven percent of evacuees from Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures -- hit hard by the March 11 megaquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis -- have no prospect of returning home, and 54 percent are considering settling elsewhere in Japan, according to a Mainichi poll. Furthermore, more than half of respondent households say members of their family have been forced to live separately."

After Fukushima, what? Japan's disastrous earthquake and tsunami that crippled its coastal nuclear reactors have reopened old questions for California: How big could the next inevitable earthquake be, and how safe are the state's nuclear power plants that now produce more than 15 percent of our electricity? Federal and state experts are reviewing every aspect of what went wrong at Fukushima's reactors, where fuel rods overheated, cooling efforts proved inadequate, radiation escaped and evacuation signals were, at best, mixed.

"As Japan struggles to regain control of its Fukushima Daiichi power plant, there's lots of talk about which technical safeguards the plant lacked and which should be required in future nuclear facilities. But a new report points to another kind of safeguard that failed: public institutions. Nuclear power plants are designed for what the industry calls defense in depth: the inclusion of backup safeguards in case the primary safeguards fail. No single layer of protection should be trusted entirely. The same is true of people. No power plant operator should be trusted to maintain the safety of its reactors. We need multiple layers of scrutiny-inspectors, regulators, independent nuclear experts-to double- and triple-check the operator's work."

"A critical lesson from this quake is that our available record of seismic data is too short to assess the amount of seismic hazard in a given area, Kanamori said. "One should consider all available geophysical data to assess the possibility of a rare event with grave consequence and prepare for it," he added."