This has been a little lost in the fallout -- no pun intended -- from last year's nuclear disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan. But a shutdown of the aging and problem-plagued San Onofre nuclear plant in Southern California could mark a sea change in the way that we view and deal with nuclear power in this country as well. Indeed, major news from the two troubled plants, half a world apart from each other, raise serious questions about the ability of humans to safely harness the power of the atom. Indeed, in the days after the April 2011 earthquake and tsunami crippled the Japanese facility and caused a series of deadly and destructive releases of radiation, Americans cast a wary eye to San Onofre; just like Fukushima, the plant that's visible to motorists on the busy I-5 between Los Angeles and San Diego stands perilously close to an earthquake fault, and hard against the Pacific coastline. Since then, San Onofre has indeed fallen on hard times -- not because of Mother Nature but because of Father Time. Its two functioning units (the original unit has long been shut down) date to the early 1980s, around the time that nuclear-plant commissioning in ...
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