No one could have foreseen an event like that tsunami.
Actually, I did. My ESP warned me of it for a long time before and I looked for it constantly, knowing it was going to happen. I even told people.
"Tsunami." That's a Japanese word, isn't it?
The numerous engineering failures were all preventable, most especially the failed FMEA that allowed an loss of coolant accident to occur as the result of an unanticipated tsunami.
Engineers don’t try to predict what might happen, they design systems like this with sufficient redundancy that the worst case failure modes do not occur.
No one could have foreseen an event like that tsunami.
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Actually, there were studies that projected the event and recommendations to mitigate damage should the event occur, some as recent as about a year prior to the tsunami.
Well yes they could. There are lines on the hills where water came up to from past tsunami. There was a mayor? who had a wall built against the advice of others to protect the town. It blocked the view of the ocean. He passed away many years before the tsunami. It protected most of the town even though it was not high enough.
Actually it could and was. This happened on the Sanriku Coast, notorious in Japan for really big tsunamis. Near offshore plate slippage is chronic here. In the last two centuries there have been ten such incidents , the previous last in 1950, I think. This was a terrible place to put a large nuclear power plant in light of the known seismic history of the place.
But building a nuclear plant so close to the “Ring of Fire.?” Wouldn’t that in itself send up warning flags?
Why not? I could have foreseen it.
Exactly...…..recently, at least.
Hundreds of yards UPHILL from the reactor stand ancient stone monuments. They were placed there centuries ago. Written in archaic weather beaten kanji are the words: "Tsunami warning. Nothing is to be built below this elevation."
Many Japanes coastal hillsides are dotted with "Tsunami Stones," hundreds of years old to both memorialize those killed and to serve as an admonition and warning not to build below a certain elevation.
Humans are vain, and we tend to disregard ancient wisdom simply because it is ancient, overlooking the fact that it is also wise.
No one expected the Spanish Inquisition, either.