Taming Nuclear Power. What have we learned from the Fukushima disaster?

We analyze the main causes and consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in comparison with the previous major accidents of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl (among a total of 30 civilian nuclear accidents). Aside from the earthquake and tsunami, there appear similarities due to human factors as well as to technical defects of the installations. Several lessons from TMI had not been drawn at Fukushima. There have been severe failures of the crisis management in the three cases. There does not exist a well-defined intervention procedure for this type of accident (as opposed to the case of major industrial or forest fires). In the present context where several European countries, but not all, have decided to give up the exploitation of nuclear power plants, we address the problem of what efforts should be made in order to reach an acceptable safety of nuclear power, and what would be the corresponding impact on nuclear-generated electricity