Nuclear Accident in Japan

Rage surfaces as I read reports of the world’s latest nuclear catastrophe (Oct. 1). A survivor of the Three Mile Island near-meltdown, I know well the terror and confusion that now run through the neighborhoods in Tokaimura.

I remember that as I turned the key in my apartment lock preparing to flee Harrisburg, Pa., in March 1979, not knowing if I would ever see that city again, I thought, “No government should make refugees of its own people.”

Twenty years later the governments still sanctioning nuclear power haven’t yet learned they are dancing with the devil.

SARAH S. FORTH

Los Angeles

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Yet another nuclear industry accident has fouled our planet (“Radiation Threat Gone, Japan Says, but Some Skeptical,” Oct. 2). Predictably, industry and government will declare this an “isolated incident,” make some cosmetic regulatory changes and proclaim the industry safe again.

But nuclear technology will never be safe. All stages of the atomic fuel’s lifetime--mining, processing, power generating, spent fuel reprocessing and waste disposal--are fraught with hazards; a mistake anywhere along the line will bring immediate death to some and slow death to many others for tens of thousands of years. And, as we have seen, mistakes will always happen with industrial processes carried out over long periods.

The oxymoronic charade of “nuclear safety” has been going for 50 years, and we have seen the results. The only real way to make ourselves safe from the for-profit nuclear industry is to turn our backs on this unacceptably dangerous technology once and for all.

RANDALL SMITH

Del Mar