"Total Safety" Unreasonable Expectation

As the Japanese nuclear reactors continue to potentially burn away their casings, people around the world are calling for reactors to be shut down.  They are asking why reactors aren't made to withstand 9.0 magnitude earthquakes.

The answer is: because the world is not wrapped in bubble wrap.

I have long had a lot of concerns about nuclear power, but I'm totally on the pro-nuclear side of this argument.  While we should, of course, strive for safety, we will never create a completely harmless, well, anything.  If a 9.0 earthquake hits a reactor, bad things are likely to happen.  Of course, if that same earthquake hits an oil refinery, or toxic chemical plant, or any number of other things, bad things are also likely to happen.  And if we give up on all of these developments, we'll slide back into a dark ages, which of course will come with it's own consequences.

The world is not perfectly safe.  It's moved by incredible forces.  We can - and should - take reasonable precautions, but we shouldn't expect those precautions to be perfect, and to consider every death as a failure.  In 2004, the tsunami in Indonesia killed 200,000+ people.    In Japan, we're looking at 10,000 right now.  Building codes kept swaying skycrapers in Tokyo from collapsing.  Sirens allowed some people to escape the incoming wall of water.  Japanese preparation was a success, regardless how many bodies get pulled from the rubble.  This was a massive quake, yet nearly everyone survived it - it was the tsunami that killed most of the victims.