The fallout over Japan's nuclear incident

By Martin Urban

MUNICH (DPA): Perhaps, in a country which was twice bombed with atomic weapons, people thought that nothing worse could ever happen.

And it is true that last Friday some 300,000 Japanese could again open their doors and windows. The spokesman for the company which brought Japan to the brink of catastrophe made the customary bow, and then went on to say how sorry everyone felt.

"We have no words to express our apologies," he said.

Simultaneously, Japan was making it clear that it had no intention of abandoning nuclear energy. It was a reflex typical of government attitudes everywhere in the world.

So was the incident at the Tokaimura plant northeast of Tokyo not really such a big deal? Claiming that would be false.

Although it appears that relatively few people were exposed to heavy doses of radiation, many hundreds of thousands, even millions, narrowly escaped something terrible. Anyone who works with technical system -- from the ordinary personal computer on up -- knows that anything can go wrong, anytime.

When a technical defect has the potential to create a catastrophe, to make large stretches of land uninhabitable, it is irresponsible to operate the system or equipment responsible -- in this case a nuclear facility. This is the essential argument for shutting down the nuclear power industry altogether, an issue which has been endlessly divisive in Germany.

In the highly industrialized countries, "error-tolerant" systems are routinely built into equipment and machines so that widespread disasters can be averted.

And the principle works well with relatively simple systems: a short-circuit will blow a fuse but not the inside of a television; when the hose on a modern washing machine bursts the water supply is quickly shut off in order not to flood the house.

Engineers can in fact design a nuclear reactor so that even a core meltdown will not lead to catastrophe; indeed, they can be built so that a core accident cannot happen in the first place. But the cost is astronomical.

Engineers can also, as they have done in Germany, develop technology and permanent control systems for reactors which are checked from numerous directions. And in Germany it has gone well -- although we have only been lucky.

Japan has used nuclear energy in an irresponsible and negligent manner, and as the accident as well as the confused response showed, it is surprisingly lacking in nuclear competence, given its prowess in other fields.

This time, it appears that everyone has gotten off leniently. But if Japan is to learn intelligently from experience, it will no longer completely trust the country's nuclear industry for advice on the way forward.

As a rich country highly competent in technology, Germany can show that gradually, an advanced nation can do without nuclear energy. Not because our nuclear technicians cannot manage our reactors, but because the world's nuclear energy system is prone to accidents and must inevitably yield to a catastrophe.

The more nuclear plants there are, the greater the possibility of disaster. As Japan has just shown, a fairly simple mistake in a relatively small nuclear fabrication plant can lead to enormous consequences. Radiation cannot be detected by human beings using their own senses, which is another thing which in the end makes us helpless against it.