Uh-oh, Japan, this is bad

A recent development. No reason to panic so far.

Quote:

"Diplomatic sources" have told Reuters that very low concentrations of radioactive particles - believed to have come from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant have been detected on the US west coast.

The level of radiation was far too low to cause any harm to humans, they said.

One diplomat, citing information from a network of international monitoring stations, described the material as
"ever so slight" and consisting of only a few particles.

"It is very low level," another source in Vienna said.

Source: Al Jazeera

I stumbled upon the blogs of Al Jazeera while searching for some information. They are quite good at updating the recent events, esp. the Libyan conflict.

Well, my personal opinion is that nuclear power plants are far from harmless. Of course, it is practically impossible to shut down all the nuclear power plants but this does not mean you should not work towards a more sustainable solution and try to reduce to use of NPP as much as possible. In a long term, nuclear energy is anything but not sustainable. I don't only mean the cases when things go wrong (and it is normal for things to get broken), I also mean the process of storing the radioactive materials. Taking care of a monster in your soil for thousands for years is not really a very good idea. Economically speaking, the long term profits of the nuclear energy are quite questionable.