Oh yeah:

Highly radioactive water from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is pouring out at a rate of 300 tonnes a day, officials said on Wednesday, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the government to step in and help in the clean-up.

The revelation amounted to an acknowledgement that plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) has yet to come to grips with the scale of the catastrophe, 2 1/2 years after the plant was hit by a huge earthquake and tsunami.

Ya think?

The problem, apparently, is the steady flow of groundwater from inland hills through the Fukushima site. Tepco had tried to build a “bypass” to shunt the groundwater around the plant, but that obviously hasn’t worked. And the proposed solution?

Tepco and the industry ministry have been working since May on a proposal to freeze the soil to prevent groundwater from leaking into the reactor buildings.

Similar technology is used in subway construction, but Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that the vast scale of Tepco’s attempt was “unprecedented in the world.”

In other words, Tepco and the Japanese government are so desperate that their best option is a harebrained scheme straight out of the Evil Supervillain playbook.

You know, unlike many in the GMD community, I am not necessarily opposed to nuclear power. But the potential risks are so great that the industry needs to be held to the highest of standards in design, operation, maintenance, and emergency planning. And when we see Entergy operating just like any other corporation — when quarterly profits drop, order up a round of layoffs — it’s clear that those standards are, at the very least, potentially compromised.

The American nuclear industry is struggling against the onslaught of abundant, cheap natural gas. If those struggles get worse, thanks to new extraction technologies or widespread adoption of renewables, do they keep cutting back? And when do we cross the Fukushima line, when the system is too overstressed to respond in an emergency?

Or is it already?