Uncharitable and politically incorrect as it may sound, if there ever were the best place for an earthquake to happen, Japan would be it. This is not what the Germans call Schadenfreude – taking pleasure in someone else’s troubles. Nor is it wishing ill upon the dislocated, severely suffering people of that remarkable country. Instead, this is an understanding that if this disaster had struck any other country, the toll of death and destruction would be several orders of magnitude worse.

Japan, as students of geography know, is in perhaps the most geologically active spot on the face of the earth. Generations of experience with earthquakes and volcanoes have taught the Japanese to respect the power of the earth and to take steps to cope with that power. The last major quake was a magnitude 6.8 tremor which shook the area around the city of Kobe 16 years ago. It took the lives of more than 6400 people and was Japan’s second-worst earthquake of the 20th century. The worst was the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, which claimed a staggering 140,000 lives.

The Kobe quake left much of the port city in ruins. Kobe was at the time the sixth-largest container port in the world, and the port facilities provided about 40 per cent of the city’s earnings. Yet, despite the fact that only about three per cent of the property in the area was insured against earthquake damage, the residents, business and governments set about almost immediately to rebuild their city. Within a year, with only about half the port facilities rebuilt, it was handling almost the same amount of cargo as before.

The disaster had a salutary effect on the authorities. Governments at all levels brought in stringent new standards and completely reorganised the way they react to earthquakes and other natural disasters. They took measures like installing huge blocks of rubber under bridges to absorb the shock of ground tremors. Buildings were now spaced further apart to avoid the domino effect – one building falling on the other and causing it to topple as well. They designated special disaster evacuation routes and beefed them up to withstand violent shaking. They set up systems of emergency shelters, caches of food and other supplies, and communities set up their own volunteer preparedness networks.

Scientists have learnt much in the three weeks since the historic magnitude 9 monster shook the north-eastern section of the main island, Honshu, and then inundated it with a series of killer waves the Japanese call tsunami. They have found that the devastating effect of that wave was magnified considerably because the movement of those giant tectonic plates caused the coastline to sink – by as much as two metres in some places. So the enormous rampaging wall of ocean water that followed the tremor by 20 to 30 minutes inflicted even greater damage than it otherwise would have.

In the first week after the quake, there were more than 500 aftershocks, many measuring in the fives, sixes and even sevens of magnitude. Remarkably, the earthquake itself did relatively little damage; the widespread devastation was the work of the tsunami. The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station, which easily rode out the tremors, succumbed to the enormous power of moving water. Triggered by ubiquitous quake sensors, the nuclear reactors were taken off line. This meant there was now no power to keep the vital cooling systems functioning. But the designers had a solution for that – the same as many businesses and better-off households in Jamaica have: emergency diesel generators. These swung into action as they were meant to, but the designers hadn’t factored in a tsunami of this size. The swirling waters quickly overcame the diesels, leaving the reactor cores and the pools of spent fuel rods to – literally – stew in their own juices.

The damage has caused radioactive steam and gases to spew from the reactors and the sea around the damaged plant is growing increasingly contaminated as is the ground nearby. It was clear from early on that the reactor minders understood that their only option was what one foreign scientist calls “plant suicide” – doing whatever is needed to cool the reactors, contain the radiation and not try to preserve them for future use.

But even as many of us outside get into a stew about nuclear power and how terrible it is, I’ve been struck by a couple of incidents. In one case, about 240 people from the town of Onakawa, about 120 kilometres from the crippled plant, headed for the nearby nuclear power station as they heard the earthquake warning. About 1100 of the 10,000 residents are dead, another 5500 are in schools and civic shelters, their mobile phones don’t work, there’s no running water and only a few homes have electricity. The town’s attitude towards the nuclear plant reflects what has been the prevailing one in Japan – until now anyway: a secure energy supply in a world of uncertain fossil fuel supplies.

Equally remarkable is the offer by the Japanese government to help Jamaica get into the nuclear club. As the ambassador, Hiroshi Yamaguchi, explained to a group of reporters and editors of this newspaper, if Jamaica decides that nuclear is an appropriate way to escape the problems with fossil fuels, then his country would be happy to help. “Maybe here you have also exactly the same situation that we had – to import 100 per cent of oil. What Japan did is we have to try to diversify the source of fuel. We have been successful in trying to diversify into three or four or five.”

Going into nuclear power is something many have thought about over the years, and it should not be rejected out of hand. But there are obstacles, the most serious to overcome being the cost. Even the modest-sized installation that would satisfy this island’s power needs for decades down the road is an enormous expense. The main reason for that is, of course, the safety concerns. The plant would have to be proof to all kinds of forces, not all of them from nature. It has to be able to withstand powerful earthquakes and hurricanes but it also has to contain radiation in case of an accident or malfunction or natural disaster, and the spent fuel has to be kept somewhere – safely. The station also has to be proof to terrorists who wouldn’t care a guinep seed about poisoning the entire island and those around it.

Jamaica has abundant sunshine which can be tapped by individual households and businesses. There are places with lots of wind which can be harnessed. As for hydro, the only place I can think of with real potential is the Bog Walk Gorge, but that too would be enormously costly – not only in money, but in the disruption of whole communities right up the valley past Linstead and Ewarton to create the necessary lake behind a dam in the gorge.

A couple of decades ago, while on a visit to Papua New Guinea (nowhere near as developed as Jamaica), I saw house after house in rural and urban areas alike with solar water heaters on their roofs. With solar panels on rooftops generating electricity to be stored in banks of relatively inexpensive batteries, the installation of efficient lighting and appliances, this country could meet much of its electricity requirements without having to touch nuclear for a long, long time.

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca