There have already been three serious nuclear accidents worldwide. Some people do not know them, so I will list them. Chernobyl in Russia, Three Mile Island in the USA, and Fukishima in Japan. 


These three countries have some of the best resources in the world to prevent such disasters. If this is how three of the world's most affluent and technologically advanced countries, Russia, the USA, and Japan, take care of safety in their nuclear power plants, we are all in trouble.


Germany decided to phase out nuclear power in their country after the horrible examples of Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl. Perhaps it is time for the rest of the nuclear-power-using countries to do the same.


"An analysis carried out by Nature and Columbia University, New York, shows that two-thirds of the world's 211 power plants have more people living within a 30-kilometre radius than the 172,000 people living within 30 kilometres of the Fukushima Daiichi plant."


That was a quote from the "Nature" site about nuclear power plants and the number of humans near them. Here is a link to that site:  http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110421/full/472400a.html

Nature went on to say, "Some 21 plants have populations larger than 1 million within that radius, and six have populations larger than 3 million." 


It is not as though the radiation from a nuclear power plant disaster all stays in the area where it occurs. Debris from the Japanese nuclear disaster traveled long distances, including the coast of the state of Alaska, where I live, and to California and the rest of the West Coast of the USA and to Canada.


There is not a single nuclear power plant in the state of Alaska, yet we got the dubious benefit of radiation from those in Japan anyway. 


Nuclear power plants affect us all whether we have one near us or not. Nuclear power plants are the business of the entire world.


The operation of a nuclear power plant is nothing compared to the remains of spent fuel and the dismantling of a no-longer useful nuclear power plant. Nuclear waste repository sites offer much more excitement to life for many more people. Just about everyone is involved when you consider the routes traveled to ship the nuclear wastes to those sites. 


I have not found an actual map of these routes yet. Oddly enough, the sites I have tried to access so far are no longer there. An article about them did mention that one out of seven people in the USA would live along proposed shipping routes for nuclear wastes. 


If you live in the USA you can find out about some of this by using a site called, "local". Just type in your town and nuclear wastes or nuclear waste shipping routes. Here is a link to the local site:
http://www.local.com