By Mimi Mato, Saturday, May 12, 2012, 10:32 am for the original French version.
English fixed by Pimprenelle Xwzq, Sol hog, and Marguerite Dehler.
 

Strange question, is it not?
At first glance it is, like some of the metaphysical "where do I comfort?" or "where do Iran?",
but by using derision to introduce an actual subject that is as much serious as perennial is simply more of courtesy to the despair I feel.
 
To explain, I just want to show you in 8 illustrations the basis of my blues of tonight.
 
I could have entitled it with
""Why the supposedly peaceful nuclearization of Japan is logically on top on the podium of global human crap","
but it was rather too long and a bit simplistic too:
This nonsense is not exclusively Japanese.

The proof:

This is a map of the world's seismic zones.

Earthquakes occur where tectonic plates clash, a bit like "pieces" of "skin" on the surface of milk when it starts to boil on a flame.
Nowadays we know the shape, the limits and the movements' directions of the Earth's "pieces of skin".
Here is the world map of their arrangement:

If we follow the boundaries of these plates seeking the place of the most complex and the most subject to countervailing pressures, we find ourselves in Japan:

• On one hand, we can see the Pacific plate material abutting against the Eurasian plate after having traveled through 2/3 of this ocean, the largest on Earth, with the geologically whopping speed of 10 cm / year.
• On the other hand, the very massive and very inert Eurasian continent tries to contain with all its mass this huge and very dynamic but "thin" (in comparison, of course) Pacific plate.

As the confrontation of these two giants (in volume, the two largest of our planet) generates unheard forces, gigantic pieces are broken, detached from their "original" plates at the most vulnerable places, becoming ones floating above the magma in the same direction as the most dynamic neighboring one, but "absorbing" the tension between it and the facing next one, e.g:

1. The Philippines plate, certainly comes from a break of the Pacific plate, moves in the same direction as the Pacific one, but this last one sinks and melts into the magma before touching the Eurasian continent: By the Philippines plate, the amount of forces against the Eurasian continent are a bit lowered.
2. The Okhotsk plate, formerly considered to be a small broken "corner" of the North American plate is pushed and carried by the Pacific plate towards the Eurasian plate. On this vulnerable "corner" lies about the half of Japan.

We are actually at the most complex place on Earth:
On the one hand we are in the presence of 4 plates :

On the other hand the way they move is specific to each:

A consequence of these incredible tensions on these gigantic masses, the forced fast, and therefore very violent, sliding of the Pacific and/or the Philippines under Eurasia drifts the material of the two plates towards the abyss.

The Ocean trenches stemming from this confrontation are the deepest on Earth, as deep as 9 ~ 11 km below the surface of the ocean (cf, Wikipedia-fr / List of oceanic trenches), while the average under the Pacific is 5 km.

Eurasia therefore forces the Pacific plate down approximately 5 km before touching it to continue below for a distance at least equal, and to finish by melting into magma: The "skin of the milk" is absorbed, it "sunk in the milk" under a more massive and colder skin.

As a result of this, Eurasia is a little "twisted downward" but barely moves. The Pacific "slips" below, creating friction, breaks, jerks, etc, generating earthquakes almost all the time. In addition, once below, the Pacific plate, lighter in weight than the magma, tries to go upward, therefore "seeks to" stay "stuck" under Eurasia, and to do this, twists, crack and break, all this with crashes:

Knowing this, and that this situation has been a known fact since the beginning of the last century (1910: Wikipedia-fr / Alfred Wegener - The continental drift),
therefore shows that human stupidity has done this:

(Each red dot is a nuclear power plant)

Unless aiming to destroy the whole Humanity along with the remainder of Life on Earth, the very last place of the world to "peacefully nuclearize" was Japan!

As stupidity rarely comes as one, I invite you to look where the other ones are:

and to compare those with the first.

(I cannot give it to you here again: This f**g FB does not allow to use the same image twice in the same article ...)

Update ** June 28, 2012: **
I've superimposed the two maps, it is not great but it is very telling:

Thus, following the simple 'law of probabilities', it is / was perfectly logical that the first and most frequent severe nuclear accidents induced by earthquakes would be located, in the following order:

1. In Japan,
2. On the west coast of USA,
3. In western-central Europe (France, England, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece)
4. Between the "Russian-Syria" and India.

Knowing that

• The average time between two "major" nuclear accidents is about 20 ~ 30 years,
• severity increases with each new accident, e.g. radioactivity amount released by each accident,
• radioactivity becomes "negligible" only toward the 300 (cesium) to approximately 240,000 (plutonium) years,

How long before the average level of the surface radioactivity on Earth will be high enough
to prohibit any human life then and "simply" put any life form whatsoever?

It seems obvious to me that survival conditions will get more difficult the shorter the time between accidents occur...
(Thus, without taking in account the debilitation of species, speeded up too, by the massive releases of mimetic sex-hormones molecules, pesticides, GMOs, etc, etc, etc.)

Hence, blues.