On the night of April 15, 1912, 100 years ago today, the allegedly unsinkable luxury liner RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg. Of the ship's 2,200 passengers, 1,500 lost their lives. Since then the Titanic has become an object lesson, an obsession and the subject of countless books and films.
The theories about why the largest and most expensive ship of its time failed in its promise and dropped to the ocean floor are plentiful and diverse. Investigators, researchers and conspiracy theorists have variously blamed the ship's design, the laxness of the crew, the inferior quality of the ship's rivets and hull steel, the poor design of the watertight compartments, record high tides, ocean mirages and of course, the infamous iceberg. Clearly, though, it was no one single cause, but a "perfect storm" of factors. The disaster would have been mitigated, though, by less arrogance and more precaution.
Presenting technology as completely safe, trustworthy or miraculous may seem to be a thing of the past, but the parallels between the Titanic and Japan's nuclear power industry could not be clearer. Japan's nuclear power plants were, like the Titanic, advertised as marvels of modern science that were completely safe. Certain technologies, whether they promise to float a luxury liner or provide clean energy, can never be made entirely safe.