“The Japanese nuclear generation plants are state of the art...”
Yes, and that is a problem for us. Our plants are 1970s technology or earlier. If this can happen to their “state of the art” plants, think of what an 8.9 quake here could do.
Read the safety reports from some of our plants and you won’t get much sleep. I saw a report online about a plant within 80 miles of me, and it wasn’t comforting in the least.
This plant is 1970s tech too. Controls might be newer by upgrade (don't know), but the plant itself is old with repair and mods just like here.
There are times when "high tech" fails when the old purpose built systems work better. So "high tech" isn't always "better". It's more the state of repair that counts. In that regards, the quake didn't help.