Another natural disaster. Lessons learnt?

While people are still trying to bring their lives together in Christchurch (New Zealand), an earthquake recording 8.9 on Richter scale hit Japan on friday, 11th March, 2011 followed by devastatingly terrible tsunami that not only hit Japan but reached all the way to San Francisco, California...Yes, Fiji too was on alert along with more than 20 countries. Friends in Japan described their experience and fear through various social networks, this was really heartbreaking! Nature seems to be testing our patience but it is very very sad. My thoughts and prayers are with the people who have been affected by this twin disaster in Japan and the ripple effect of tsunami in other countries.

And if that was not enough the cooling systems in the nuclear reactors in Fukushima goes kaput..Solution - Release steam slowly (which comprises radioactive vapours) in order to bring the pressure down and this would technically save the reactor from exploding...so they said! Few hours later, explosion in one nuclear reactor... so how and why did that happen? What does it matter! But what matters is that already a number of people have been confirmed to have absorbed radioactive radiation and I shudder to think 'how many more...' And with this , electricity is also going to be in short supply. 55 Nuclear Power plants in Japan must have generated a huge amount of electricity so far but then how do we deal with it when there is a problem!

On the other side of the world, Germans were protesting in Stuttgart against extending the life of its nuclear reactor; with the news of nuclear reactor chaos in Fukushima, many more people joined the protest in Germany! Well they expressed their views loud and clear. Some 60000 people formed the human chain clearly indicating they meant business.

Have we learnt any lesson? I wonder! I have never been a great fan of nuclear energy but events like this compel you to express your views.

Food for thought- At least something positive has to come out of all this tragedy, why can't all Governments concentrate on Renewable Energy - solar or wind or geothermal which is much more cleaner and safer than nuclear! I wish and hope they would.