[djmcmath]

Yeah, I'm not seeing the anti-nuclear power argument here. The plant lost about a gallon of water, contaminated (possibly) at 1/1000000000th the legal limit into the nearby body of water. The worst damage was suffered in the power distribution gear -- gear that's common across all plants, not just nuke plants.

Even better, the plant automatically shut itself down. My suspicion is that it relied on the laws of physics inherent in the reactor design to do that, rather than on some auto-shutdown electronic feature, but I only have US nuclear design to base that on. While the electronic features are neat (and almost certainly tripped), plants are also built in such a way that losing coolant will make the plant stop working. It may never work again, but it also won't continue to produce a nuclear reaction. Imagine a car engine, for example, that required some small amount of oil to run, not just for lubrication. If the oil loses pressure, the engine stops running -- and may never run again.

(shrug) I'd go ahead and chalk this up as a win for nuclear power. Massive earthquake kills bunches of people, destroys a small city, and the nuke plant only loses a gallon of not-really-contaminated water.