My first reaction to the aerial photos of Fukushima was: why did they put the auxiliary transformers, that provide power to the plant, and the emergency diesel-generators, that provide power to the auxiliary transformers, on the OCEAN side? They should have been on the land side and out of reach of any tsunami.

The result of the tsunami was much loss of life, extensive property damage, social and economic stress and an economic recession.

To offset the loss of electrical energy production, Japan needed to import more fossil fuels, mostly high-cost LNG, that caused its balance of payments surplus to be reduced, as the products made with the expensive energy became less competitive.

It is useful to look at the loss of life and compare it to other causes of loss of life to place matters in perspective, and to reduce opportunities for some people to take advantage for self-serving purposes.

For example: The self-serving, scare-mongering by various global warming/climate change activists regarding the dangers of nuclear energy shows itself to be irrational after looking at some real-life numbers.

According to a recent study, the most likely number of Fukushima cancer deaths will be about 130 OVER THE YEARS; the estimated range is 15 to 1,300 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-17/fukushima-radiation-may-cause-1-300-cancer-deaths-study-finds.html

After the accident, about 600 deaths occurred due to non-radiological causes, such as mandatory evacuations.

Evacuations are estimated to have reduced deaths from radiation by 28 OVER THE YEARS; the estimated range is 3 to 245.

Even the “245 lives saved” high-end estimate is less than the deaths due to non-radiological causes.

These numbers are in addition to the about 20,000 NEAR-INSTANT deaths caused by the tsunami itself.

If Japan had never adopted nuclear power, accidents and pollution from increased use of coal or gas plants likely would have caused deaths many times greater than 20,000 over the years the nuclear plants were in service.

Compare all this with world traffic deaths of about 1.23 million per year, or world cancer deaths of about 8-9 million per year; 7.9 million in 2007.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

DEATHS BY ENERGY SOURCE

Excerpt from this article: http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/53939/radiation-exposure

Much is written about the dangers of nuclear energy. However, it is the safest source of energy for producing electric power, in accordance with studies by the World Health Organization and the European study EXTERNE based on data from past decades. Any deaths due to future global warming, partially the result of the CO2 from fossil fuels, was not considered by these studies.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html

The USA: 30,000 deaths/yr from coal pollution of 2,000 TWh/yr, or 15 deaths/yr/TWh, a ratio that will likely remain about the same over the years.

China: 500,000 deaths/yr from coal pollution of 1,800 TWh/yr, or 278 deaths/yr/TWh, a ratio that will likely decline, as China implements safer mining practices and more efficient, cleaner-burning coal power plants over the years.

Energy Source Mortality Rates; Deaths/yr/TWh

Coal - world average, 161

Coal - China, 278

Coal - USA, 15

Oil - 36

Natural Gas - 4

Biofuel/Biomass - 12

Peat - 12

Solar/rooftop - 0.44-0.83

Wind - 0.15

Hydro - world, 0.10

Hydro - world*, 1.4

Nuclear - 0.04 

*Includes the 170,000 deaths from the failure of the Banquao Reservoir Dam in China in 1975