CAIRO - The recent earthquake in Japan, with a magnitude of 8.9, was the strongest in its history, but far fewer people have died than in previous quakes of a much lesser magnitude in other regions of the world. Some quakes have proved far more lethal, like the one in Haiti in 2010 that killed 200,000, the one in China in 2008 that killed 70,000 and the Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day 2004, that left an estimated 230,000 dead. Analysts attribute the relatively low death toll in the latest quake to Japan having invested heavily in safety, thereby minimising its losses from this natural disaster. However, one still wonders, why Japan, with its high technology and its concerns for safety, should build nuclear power stations in areas vulnerable to seismic activity. The devastating quake and the subsequent tsunami damaged the power network in much of the country, especially on the east coast, causing the cooling systems in three reactors at a nuclear power plant to stop functioning. To try and release the pressure from the overheating reactors, authorities released steam that probably contained small amounts of radiation. However, officials say that radiation levels at Fukushima were very high before the blast. At one point, the plant was, each hour, releasing the radiation each Japanese citizen normally absorbs from the environment in a whole year. Such a disaster makes one wonder how, Japan, haunted by the appalling nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War Two, could consider depending on nuclear power plants for generating energy. Egypt should drop this option, at least for the time being, while it considers rebuilding its economy after the recent revolution. The wide gap between the technology, wealth and education of Egypt and Japan should surely rule out the idea of building a nuclear power plant in Egypt, which ought to depend mostly on safer and more environment-friendly sources of energy, such as solar energy.
