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How vulnerable are US nuclear reactors to the kind of disaster that is occurring at Fukushima Daiichi? Considering that one in three Americans lives within 50 miles of a nuclear plant, the public deserves access to all information that can shed light on this question. Yet a straight answer has been difficult to obtain from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the nuclear industry.

The situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been an ongoing disaster since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. According to an estimate by the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan, by April 27 approximately 55 percent of the fuel in reactor unit 1 had melted, along with 35 percent of the fuel in unit 2, and 30 percent of the fuel in unit 3; and overheated spent fuels in the storage pools of units 3 and 4 probably were also damaged.

When Albert Einstein developed his theory of relativity, he made extensive use of "thought experiments" -- hypothetical exercises that, while impossible to carry out in real life, are useful for testing complex theories. In one well-known case, he compared the passage of time on a train traveling at close to the speed of light with that of a stationary observer in order to elucidate a concept known as the "relativity of simultaneity."

On March 11, 2011, I was in a lunch meeting in Washington, DC, when I learned that an earthquake and tsunami had struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Initially I was optimistic that the plant's operators would be able to handle the situation. But as the accident grew to a level 7 in seriousness over the following weeks, my thoughts turned to the only other comparable accident in history -- and its lasting effects on my life.