We've been asking the wrong question.

In the days since the earthquake, tsunami and resulting nuclear crisis in Japan tore our eyes from revolutions in North Africa, there have been the expected news stories looking at the safety of nuclear reactors in the United States.

All is fine, we are told. Preparations have been made. Risks have been assessed. Regulators are looking over private operators' shoulders.

Besides, we're told, the Fukushima reactors facing potential meltdowns are designed differently than U.S. reactors, including the ones at San Onofre, about 25 miles southeast of my home in Irvine, and the Diablo Canyon generating plant in Avila Beach, near San Luis Obispo.

Unfortunately, those assurances aren't very reassuring for several reasons.

The first is human failure. The Los Angeles Times reported that emergency workers at the Fukushima complex had let a pump run out of fuel, and before it could be restarted nuclear rods had been exposed to the air. A second error – a worker mistakenly closed a vent – also propelled the crisis.

That such simple errors can lead to such catastrophic consequences puts the lie to assertions that the technology, and the industry, can be trusted.

Secondly, the Times also reported last week that the San Onofre plant was built to withstand a 7.0 quake, and a 25-foot tsunami. That means the facility would have been overwhelmed by a quake the size of the one off the coast Japan.

That quake erupted along a different and more volatile kind of fault line than those that routinely shake California. But the problem is that experts don't have exhaustive knowledge of the matrix of California's faults. On July 13, 1986, a 5.4 quake 32 miles off the coast of Oceanside killed one person and injured 29 more. It was a relatively small quake but notable because seismologists still don't know for certain what caused it – whether it was a previously unknown fault, or part of a known system.

And in 1976, Pacific Gas & Electric closed down its Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant in Eureka rather than retrofit it after a quake erupted on yet another fault line that the experts hadn't known about.

Given the scope of what we don't know, and thus can't plan for, and the propensity for humans to screw up, it's hard to give weight to assurances that all is safe. And this is the problem with our local, regional and national reaction to the crisis in Japan. We should not be asking whether our reactors are safe. We should be asking, given the potential effects of a meltdown, whether we want to be playing this game of Russian roulette in the first place.

There is an argument to be made that the risk of environmental disaster from nuclear energy is preferable to the assured ecological degradation that comes from coal-fired plants. But that argument assumes an either/or scenario, that we can choose long-term environmental catastrophe from coal, or fire up the nuclear reactors.

We know those are not the only options.

Most of California is blessed with an enviable climate that promises intense, harnessable sunshine nearly every day of the year. There is no environmental risk to capturing solar energy, and it is indefensible that the state does not require all new buildings to include solar panels on the roofs. The state already is making strides toward tapping wind power, though more could be done.

In 2007 and 2008, permits were issued for more than 200,000 new housing units in California. Had they each been required to have solar roofs, the state would have staked out new and effective ground in the effort to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. It was an opportunity missed.

But we can still move in the right direction. Solar roofs would add to construction costs, but sometimes the solution to problems moves beyond dollars and has to be weighed against risk. Requiring solar panels to all new construction, including building additions, would add relative pennies to the cost of buildings that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This is something state energy policy officials should be pursuing with vigor, while the rest of us begin to shake loose of our assumptions of what is safe, and what is sustainable.

We need to start asking ourselves the right questions.

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Scott Martelle, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, is an Irvine-based writer.

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