Do you mean the gov't officials? Lol. Look at the lies told daily to US citizens by bernanke, geithner and other such vermin. It is common knowledge that the military withholds information for obvious purposes. Maybe you need a reality check.
as a trader I would expect you figure out the downside and the probability of the down side occurring right? And also the magnitude of the risk. should we not expect the same of nuclear energy producers? if you can't figure out how to store the byproducts of your financial endeavor in a safe way, you have not properly incorporated the costs of your endeavor into the operation. Therefore you have not allowed society to properly allocate its resources via price. instead you sold energy too cheaply and allowed society to absorb your downside. It was very similar to what the banksters did with mortgages only with radiation instead of mortgages.
Tatsuya Ito, a politician who represented Fukushima in the national Diet from 1991 to 2003 also claimed TEPCO had been repeatedly warned about the danger posed by a tsunami. He said a 2002 report by the Japan Society of Civil Engineers described the dangers posed by a tsunami wave of around 20 feet. The report used data from a tsunami that struck the Miyagi prefecture of Japan, which neighbours Fukushima, in 1960 following a 9.5 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Chile. He said he met with TEPCO employees to discuss his concerns at least 20 times since 2003 and sent a letter to the president of the company, but accused the company of ignoring the warnings. TEPCO has faced mounting criticism over its level of preparedness for such a crisis and the Japanese government has condemned the company over the amount of information it was releasing about the incident. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...study-showed-Fukushima-plant-was-at-risk.html
Well, pls feel free to offer an alternative. Keep in mind that Japan, a resource- and land area-poor, densely-populated island nation that just happens to be located in a geologically-active region, wants to have a degree of energy independence. It's very easy to criticise, but I don't see the alternative. Obviously, if it was due to a preventable issue with the backups, it needs to be dealt with. As to your comparison with finance, I agree, but society seems perfectly willing to sell this option. We have nobody but ourselves to blame.
The only thing you have got right is that people have a right to the truth. The rest of it is scare mongering garbage. Mindless panic is seldom productive. The facts are that radiation levels outside the evacuation zone (and even inside the evacuation zone and away from the plant) are in general far too low to have adverse consequences for public health. This chart puts it in perspective: http://xkcd.com/radiation/ Notice on the left the tiny average excess exposure in Fukushima prefecture itself - less than one dental X-ray per day and about 2.5 times the extra exposure incurred by a day in the mountains. Those levels will rapidly decline when the plant is back under control. It must be remembered that radiation monitoring equipment is incredibly sensitive and sensationalized MSM reporting does not necessarily have any relationship to health risk.
Society is not getting a chance to price that option because our politicians are getting bought. You can blame society for electing crooked leaders. And you can blame the U.S. people for not forcing our leaders to govern per the constitution. I prefer to shine a light on crooked politicians and their cronies - puppet masters.
There are other alternatives which need more attention (and they've gotten the attention more recently). Geothermal energy - Japan has immense resources, recently it hasn't been used due to some ridiculous reasons. I see this getting a push now.
I disagree. My view is that you get precisely the politicians you deserve and you bear responsibility for their decisions.
Is everyone still alive today? Got to hand it to the media, they can turn 80% of you lot into breakdown drama queens. So we'll put this story in the same category as SARS and Swine Flu shall we, ie half the world was almost certainly going to die a slow and painful death but in the end just a handful of people will probably die (from the radiation)..........