JAPAN UPDATE – AT 10:07 A.M. ET:  As expected, the death toll is rising quickly.  Some 9,500 people are missing from one town alone.

In addition, there has been an explosion at a nuclear power plant, with danger of substantial radiation leakage into the atmosphere.  The Japanese government is distributing iodine tablets to reduce the danger from radiation exposure. 

Clearly, the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe will capture a great deal of the world's attention today.  But be careful.  I don't mean, in any way, to minimize the danger or the extent of the tragedy, but the political actors are waiting in the wings to make their propagandistic points.  Nuclear power, for going on two generations, has been largely safe and critically important.  Yes, of course, there have been exceptions.  But when you balance the exceptions against the good – and the fact that smoke isn't being belched into the air every day, nuclear power comes out well ahead.  And it doesn't depend on Mideast oil sources. 

We will of course have to measure the damage from any radiation release in Japan.  We will have to listen to the best people, not political scientists posing as real scientists.  If mistakes have been made, they must be corrected.  Charles Krauthammer said last night that the tragedy in Japan can set nuclear power back for a generation or more, and he's right.  That would be a terrible blow.  We hope that Japan will be able to contain any radiation damage, reduce casualties to a minimum, and, if it can be done with attention to public safety, build better, more damage-resistant plants in the future.

What continues to impress us is the calmness and resolve with which the Japanese are going about coping with this catastrophe.  There are reasons why societies are successful.  And they are coping with the horror without resort to dictatorial rule, a tribute to the legacy we left in Japan as the occupying power after World War II.  There's a little bit of America in the way the Japanese are facing the danger. 

March 11, 2011