What a month it has been. Japan tottered dangerously under the impact of a deadly cocktail of catastrophes. The rest of the world held its collective breath. And then began turning blue in the face, because the moment of crisis seemed to linger for ever.

Everything else was in motion though. The slow meltdown of the fuel rods in Fukushima reactors was triggering frantic activities up north. The radiation plumes were about to reach some parts of North America, cried the nuke watchers. So time to check the US’s radiation preparedness level, they said. The result of this stock taking scared me out of my wits. Why? Because California apparently is not fully equipped to handle mass evacuation (in case of a meltdown). There were too many people in the cities and too many cars on the roads, shrieked the experts!!! And I kept thinking of Jaitapur and every other site in India which will soon host nuclear reactors, as per our grand energy expansion plans. I could not think of even one which is less crowded than California, or which has better roads. Can you? No, I did not think so.

So if quick escape during a nuke crisis is considered risky in the US, can you even begin to gauge India’s capacity to cope in a similar situation? No, I did not think so.