motherjones:

“There’s no reason why, technologically, we can’t employ nuclear energy in a safe and effective way. Japan does it…”

— Barack Obama, speaking at a town-hall meeting in 2009. Read more in Kate Sheppard’s story, “Obama Touted Safety Record of Japan’s Nuclear Industry.”

Far by it for me to defend the president of the United States, but that was a reasonable statement. The plant is holding up well considering it was designed to withstand an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.2. The difference between 8.2 and 8.9 on the Richter scale is logarithmic (exponential). So the .7 isn’t as small a difference as it looks.

All things considered, he may want to revisit that thought.