Tokyo Electric apparently has had its way in Japan for the past few decades and now you can see how one small concession leads to another until you have a concentration of six Nuclear Power Plants built in a small city in North East Japan that suffered a massive tsunami only a short eighty years ago. I say short because in actuarial terms I believe you look at events possible within a hundred years. Possibly the nuclear time horizon should be more like five hundred years and I am not anti nuke.
BP's oil rig disaster was regulated by a co-opted agency whose name escapes me but who never the less proves the point that depending on regulators who really have no skin in the game is futile. I know that we are considered a litigious society but as a Libertarian I prefer private market solutions such as performance bonds and the court system to redress a harm committed.
The fact that the Congress has not taken off the $75 million dollar liability limit for offshore oil drillers is an indication of how powerful the oil lobby is. Banks with an even bigger lobby make sure no proposal to limit the size of our bank's ever sees the light of day.
Japan's earthquake and subsequent tsunami were devastating enough, but to have a major bulkhead of the infrastructure fail so completely in the hour of greatest need is the true calamity. To have the co-opted regulators who failed so miserably in protecting Japan re-assure its citizens, especially it's children, to remain in a nuclear hot spot is the final insult. I understand the Japanese character is stoic but their treatment by their government provokes revolution similar to the Congress's lack of action against the oil and bank lobbies.
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