Odd, last evening's post disappeared into limbo.

TEPCO is "locked in a vicious cycle in which water being pumped to cool the reactors is being turned into radioactive runoff that must either be stored or dumped into the sea, while it bleeds off radioactive steam into the atmosphere to cool off the cores."

This situation was certainly predictable but there were few good options for the Japanese once they were forced to improvise. I'm not sure our nuclear engineers would have done better if they were operating "beyond the script," what could reasonably have been anticipated given the constraints of what the nuclear industry was willing to build. I do wonder also if the corporate culture in Japan may also have played a role in how poorly their engineers dealt with the initial impact of the earthquake and tsunami.

If there is a similar earthquake and tsunami in Southern California, we may be able to test this interesting question. How exciting!!!

Charley Noble, adrift in Brookyn for much of the week