Ron Dore wrote [regarding Mueller's book]

"We all tend to be more impressed by statements of non-refutable facts that provide arguments for our gut-feelings, but "deceptive misreporting" is going a bit far. Let me say ...that my own gut feeling is that the present level of nuclear phobia in Japan is disastrous..."

When someone cites WHO as saying that there were only
50 deaths from Chernobyl and leaves out its projection of 4,000 additional deaths, that is deceptive. The current nuclear phobia in Japan is a direct result of exactly that sort of deception by the government and utilities in Japan. The authorities told people that there was no risk, and then reportedly refused to make needed improvements because that would look like an admission of defects in the past and raise questions about remaining defects, or because they would lead to lawsuits. So, naturally, now that there has been precisely the kind of catrastrophe that people had been told was impossible, no one believes any current assurances of safety from the same people who deceived them in the past. The friends of nuclear power in Japan turned out to be its worst enemies.

Ellis Krauss wrote:

"A tsunami that big had not been prepared for because no one predicted an earthquake that big and such a tsunami hadn't occurred for 1000 years. Do you prepare for a once/1000 year disaster? Possibly but hard to blame authorities for not spending taxpayer money on an occurrence so rare.

The nuclear power plants are quite a different issue."

But this is the same reasonable-sounding argument tthat was used for not spending far less money to build a higher seawall to protect Fukushima: "because no one predicted an earthquake that big and such a tsunami hadn't occurred for 1000 years." Cf. Mike Smitka below.
I suspect the real difference is cost. How much would it cost--and what would be the consequences--of building a high seawall all along the coast. What would it cost to protect one nuclear facility?

Had the higher wall been built, as it was at Onagawa, Fukushima would not have been a catastrophe. I've seen back and forth evidence on how many experts warned TEPCO that they should build such a wall, and regarding TEPCO's own internal documents and discussion on this issue. Wikipedia, citing a Mainichi article no longer on the web, says that:

"In 2007 TEPCO did set up a department to supervise all its nuclear facilities, and until June 2011 its chairman was Masao Yoshida, the chief of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. An in-house study in 2008 pointed out that there was an immediate need to improve the protection of the power station from flooding by seawater. This study mentioned the possibility of tsunami-waves up to 10.2 meters. Officials of the department at the company's headquarters insisted however that such a risk was unrealistic and did not take the prediction seriously."

Did Yoshida or anyone else ever present their findings to NISA or other government agencies, or leak them to the press? I don't know. But I do know that TEPCO leaders have no ability to look objectively at something that will surely raise costs today for an eventuality that seemed extremely likely not to occur during their lifetimes. Nor did the governement agencies promoting nukes. I have no idea how a truly disinterested group of experts would have assessed Yoshida's argument. However, in talking about his investigation committee, Funabashi has complained that, even among academics, too many have ties that interefere with objective judgment.

Mike Smitka wrote:

"So if the last previous large tsunami
was over 1,000 years earlier -- and records were from a different part of the coast -- then do you really build that into your scenarios [for Fukushima]?"
So, you seem to be arguing that, even in hindsight, this was a reasonable decision given what people knew at the time, my scenario A. It would be interesting to know how many experts outside of the utilities or government agencies, or outside of Japan, now agree with that assessment.

MS continues:
"2. The disaster was because several backup systems failed, if it was only the tsunami then there wouldn't have been a problem."

My understanding is that neither the government nor TEPCO ever designed a back-up plan in case all electric power went out because the government said that it was not necessary. They asserted that it was impossible for the all power to be lost. Hatamura talks about this in interview cited below (not the part I excerpt).

MS continues:
"...Yet as incompetent as the TEPCO management may be, short of making different design decisions in the mid-1960s, it doesn't look as though a greater degree of competence could have made a difference."

"Again, if a plant is soon to be decommissioned, how much retrofitting do you want to do, particularly if it leads to shutdowns in the interim?"

Consider this scary information from an interview with Yotaro Hatamura, the head of the government-created investigation committee: http://tinyurl.com/7bwx5e5

"After the Chuetsu earthquake of 2007, it was learned that the fire-suppression pipes at the nearby nuclear power plant had burst and were unusable. A determination was made [by TEPCO for Fukushima] that those pipes needed to be properly integrated into the building, which was done.
As the same time that those pipes were being built, I believe that someone came up with the idea that since a system of fire-suppression pipes was being built, it also made sense to build the system so that it could be used as an emergency cooling system as well.
If that had not been done, you could have brought firefighting pumps; you could have brought anything if there had not been a system of pipes in the building, nothing could have been done to cool the plant.
[If this system had not been installed] Without a doubt, a massive accident would have occurred. You wouldn't have been able to cool the reactors. What would have happened? The pressure vessels would probably have ruptured. The containment vessels would also probably have ruptured. . Had that happened, the resulting damage would have been many times that of Chernobyl, an unimaginable disaster that would have made the eastern part of Japan totally uninhabitable."

So, it was total serendipity. A far worse catastrophe was avoided only because there happened to be an earthquake in 2007 that alerted TEPCO to a problem that they hadn't thought about, and they were able to retrofit it in time. I don't know whether other experts agree on Hatamura's estimate of the potential severity of the damage compared to Chernobyl. But it does seem that a greater degree of competence would have made a difference--and did make a huge difference--and that retrofitting was not only possible but that enough was done to prevent a far, far worse catastrophe.

MS continues:

"We should remember too that the Onagawa plant was hit harder both in terms of the initial shock and the subsequent tsunami but did not experience problems."

Only because one man insisted on building a higher seawall and, unlike Yoshida at Fukushima, he happened to prevail. See Mainichi at http://tinyurl.com/7kgd3tz

Richard Katz
The Oriental Economist Report