Editor’s note.

Over a single April day in 1986, a little-known place called Chernobyl became infamous. Twenty-five years later, a similar fate befell Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture. The Fukushima disaster was better contained than Chernobyl, but if an emergency hits another nuclear power facility, it may well do so in an unanticipated way and present unforeseeable challenges. Are nations adequately prepared for an unpredictable “next one?” Here,Sonja Schmidof Austria,Augustin Simoof Cameroon, andManpreet Sethiof India assess improvements over the last 30 years in preparedness for a nuclear power disaster – and debate how preparedness should be further improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]