Communist America
The Fukushima Effect in American Politics
From the essay
The Fukushima nuclear disaster offers a warning far beyond nuclear power. The plant was designed with protections against a major earthquake. It also had protections against a tsunami. But when the earthquake triggered the tsunami, the two dangers became one cascading event. The earthquake disrupted outside power, and the tsunami disabled critical backup systems needed to cool the reactors. Defenses created to withstand separate threats were overwhelmed by their combination.
Adapted from PDF pages 1.