Nukes: the next BP-style hysterics?

Ned's friends know that he is no particular proponent of nuclear power, feeling that the cost is prohibitive without massive government subsidies, mainly in the form of the Price-Anderson Act, a 60-year-old law that limits potential liabilities for plant operators. However, he is sensing the start of the same hysterics that characterized the BP-Transocean-Halliburton-Cameron oil spill in the GOM. We hear of three nuclear plants in Japan that are near meltdown and that are being cooled with seawater, which will destroy the plants and emit some radioactivity as steam. But the nuclear plants in Japan are not situated like those in the U.S. The Japanese built theirs along the most active earthquake coast in the world, virtually daring the Plutonic Powers to do their worst, and they did. Moreover, they built ineffective seawalls to protect the plants. Finally, the generators that were to keep the cooling systems operative were placed in the basement, where they flooded and were put out of commission, so not only was it a colossal geodisaster, howbeit a predictable one, but there were colossal human miscalculations as well. Ned does not anticipate anything like that happening in the U.S. Having said that, he would favor the gradual abandoning of nukes as an energy source, as plants wore out.