“Chernobyl” Live

Approximately 10 years ago, New York’s twin towers collapsed before the world’s eyes, of which anti-Americans could have said, “Well, they deserved it.” But this time, the entire world (including rivals Russia, China and South Korea) clearly supports Japan, more than it has supported the U.S. since 2001.

The world’s third largest economy has been hit by something that should not be labeled as “deserved,” but by a double catastrophe (earthquake + tsunami) that is at risk of becoming a “triplet” by transforming into a nuclear cataclysm.

In the same way that the largest military power of our time was hit by “terrorists” (which they thought they knew the best way to combat), so has Japan been “victim” to enemies that no other state can better defend itself against — earthquakes.

No one offers better expertise or more generous donations for the prevention of damage caused by terrestrial movements than Japan. So even tens of thousands of kilometers away, where seismic waves were not felt, people have felt “shaken.” If the vulnerability of a state as “high-tech” as Japan could be so great, then what could be expected of a country as “low-tech” as Romania?

For the last three days the question, “How many of us would die?” was mulled over on television, and we were not the only people in the world asking this question. But in a country where on the eve of the tsunami the topics of the day were some mundane divorces, it is understandable that this grave subject could not be treated decently.

Everyone has had questions, even the Americans, particularly on the West Coast, where a tsunami caused slight destruction. But the Germans, Scots, Austrians and Italians — who are not in seismic zones but who have nuclear reactors — have made the parallels between the situation in Japan and the risks at home.

The dicta of “safety is priority number one in the nuclear industry” and “Japan has strict rules for construction material” have been questioned in recent days, and the comparison to the Chernobyl disaster did not take long to appear. Back then, because of the censorship that dominated the USSR, panic infiltrated stealthily like a shrewd plague

Now the Japanese authorities, who find themselves with approximately 160 people with “possible irradiation” after having announced that there are no risks, should be watched closely. The same applies to the “low-tech” methods of cooling the nuclear reactors with sea water and boron.

The “Arab revolutions” were simply “shows,” but Chernobyl “live” (Fukushima) could transform television viewers into actors in a world tragedy. Mere spectators cannot prevent the radioactive clouds from rising out of the country where, ironically, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the start of humanity’s “nuclear era.”