ilders had underestimated the strength of possible earthquakes in the region."

There are 55 reactors in Japan. Virtually all of them are on or near major earthquake faults. Kashiwazaki alone hosts seven, four of which were forced into the dangerous SCRAM mode to narrowly avoid meltdowns. At least 50 separate serious problems have been so far identified, including fire and the spillage of barrels filled with radioactive wastes.

There are four active reactors in California on or near major earthquake faults, as are the two at Indian Point north of New York City. On January 31, 1986, an earthquake struck the Perry reactor east of Cleveland, knocking out roads, bridges, and pipes within the plant, which (thankfully) was not operating at the time. Then Ohio governor Richard Celeste sued to keep Perry shut, but lost in federal court.

The fault that hit Perry is an off-shoot of the powerful New Madrid line that runs through the Mississippi River Valley, threatening numerous reactors. The Beyond Nuclear Project reports that in August 2004, a quake hit the Dresden reactor in Illinois, resulting in a leak of radioactive tritium. Nevada's Yucca Mountain, slated as the nation's high-level radioactive waste dump, has a visible fault line running through it.

More than 400 atomic reactors are online worldwide. We can only shudder to guess how many are vulnerable to seismic shocks. But one-eighth of them sit in one of the world's richest, most technologically advanced, most densely populated industrial nations, which has now admitted its reactor designs cannot match the power of an earthquake that just happened.

No matter the language, this translates into the unmistakable warning that the world's atomic reactors constitute a multiple, ticking seismic time bomb. Talk of building more can only be classified as suicidal irresponsibility.

Tokyo Electric's behavior since the quake defines the industry's credibility. For three consecutive days (with more undoubtedly to come), the utility has been forced to issue public apologies for erroneous statements about the severity of the damage done to the reactors, the size, and lethality of radioactive spills into the air and water, the ongoing danger to the public, and much more.

Once again, the only thing reactor owners can be trusted to do is to lie.

Prior to the March 28, 1979 disaster at Three Mile Island, the industry for years assured the public that the kind of accident that did happen was "impossible."

Then the utility repeatedly assured the public there had been no meltdown of fuel and no danger of further catastrophe. Nine years later, a robotic camera showed that nearly all the fuel had melted, and that avoiding a full-blown catastrophe was little short of a miracle.

The industry continues to say no one was killed at TMI. But it does not know how much radiation was released, where it went, or who it might have harmed. Since 1979, its allies in the courts have denied 2,400 central Pennsylvania families the right to test their belief that they and their loved ones have been killed and maimed en masse.

Prior to its April 26, 1986, explosion, Soviet Life Magazine ran a major feature extolling the virtually "accident-proof design" of Chernobyl Unit Four. Then, the Soviet Union of Mikhail Gorbachev kept secret the gargantuan radiation releases that have killed thousands and yielded a horrific plague of cancers, leukemia, birth defects, and more throughout the region, and among the more than 800,000 drafted "jumpers" who were forced to run through the plant to clean it up.

Since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the industry has claimed its reactors can withstand the effects of a jet crash, and are immune to sabotage. The claims are as patently absurd as the lies about TMI and Chernobyl.

So, too, the endless, dogged assurances from Japan that no earthquake could do to Kashiwazaki what has just happened. Yet today and into the future, expensive ads will flood the U.S. and global airwaves, full of nonsense about the "need" for new nukes. There is only one thing we know for certain about this advertising: it is a lie.

Atomic reactors contribute to global warming rather than abating it. In construction, in the mining, milling, and enriching of the fuel, in ongoing "normal" releases of heat and radioactivity, in dismantling and decommissioning, in managing radioactive wastes, in future terror attacks, in proliferation of nuke weapons, and much much more, atomic energy is an unmitigated eco-disaster.

To this list, we must now add additional tangible evidence that reactors allegedly built to withstand "worst case" earthquakes in fact, cannot. And when they go down, the investment is lost, and power shortages arise (as is now happening in Japan) that are filled by the burning of fossil fuels.

It costs up to 10 times as much to produce energy from a nuke as to save it with efficiency. Advances in wind, solar, and other green "Solartopian" technologies mean atomic energy simply cannot compete without massive subsidies, loan guarantees, and government insurance to protect it from catastrophes to come.

This latest "impossible" earthquake has not merely shattered the alleged safeguards of Japan's reactor fleet. It has blown apart -- yet again -- any possible argument for building more reactors anywhere on this beleaguered Earth.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030 is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and senior editor of www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared. In 1975, he spoke near the Kashiwazaki complex, urging its shutdown.