Lessons From a Meltdown But truly long term planning has never been a forte of our species. So the urgency of our energy needs combined with the entrenched interests of big corporations - in this case the nuclear, construction and ancillary industries - has left us with a Faustian pact with only the most dangerous solutions. 

• (Japanese authorities planned Tuesday to raise their rating of the severity of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis to the highest level on an international scale, equal to that of the 1986 Chernobyl)