The U.S. had a Fukushima - in 1959

I had heard nothing about Atomics International's near-disaster at Santa Susana, Calif., until now.

I don't doubt Tokyo Electric is being at least reasonably honest about events there. That said, if something similar happened in the United States today, I wouldn't hold my breath.

The Santa Susana cover-up continued long after 1959, after all. A full 30 years later:

Once the widespread nature of contamination was known, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was brought in to aid in the cleanup. One focus of concern was the level of contamination in the actual power plant buildings.

“The EPA demanded that they be able to inspect the buildings themselves before they were torn down to make sure they had been cleaned up,” (Dan Hirsch, president of the nonprofit anti-nuclear group the Committee to Bridge the Gap), said. “When the EPA arrived on the appointed day, three of the five buildings they were supposed to study had been already torn down, including the SRE. And some of the debris from those buildings was taken to regular municipal trash facilities. Radioactive metals went to a metal recycler and got melted into metal products.”

The story goes on to note that workers applied for compensation, but, because records were either imprecise, missing, or suppressed, they were largely denied.

Beyond that, Boeing, which had bought Atomic Dynamics' parent, and still is site owner, opposed a California bill on site clean-up as late as 2008.

And, that's the problem with nuclear power here.

It is safe, itself, to date, when compared to fossil fuels, but the nuclear power industry is at least as duplicitous as Big Oil.

And, that's not so much an "indicator" of capitalism in general as it is of hypercapitalism, American style. Of course, at times in the past, like the run-up to WWII, German and Japanese companies had their own ethical issues.