I remember dismissing as alarmist and uninformed the dire warnings of foreign observers on the severity of Fukushima back in March. Nuclear experts from around the world strongly suspected that meltdown was underway in one or more reactors in the hours and days following March 11 even as the Japanese government and the operator of the Fukushima facility strenuously rejected the very possibility of this, instead assuring the international community that the reactors' fuel rods were completely submerged at a safe temperature and that the situation was under control.
The failure of government and nuclear industry to give careful consideration to historical evidence of massive tsunami in the past- geologic findings published a decade before 3/11 showed that waves easily capable of overtopping the Fukushima plant's defenses had been generated by powerful quakes in the region 1000 years earlier- coupled with the superstitious belief that to prepare for the worst was to invite it, established a pattern of complacency that was seen in the authorities' response to the catastrophe.
The Japanese nuclear establishment and regulatory agency were as unprepared for 3/11 as was the Japanese shogunate of yore for the massed hosts of Mongol invaders. Unfortunately, this time there was no 'divine wind' to come to the rescue.
