That being said, and in hopes of taking nothing away from the brave souls dealing with this very serious situation...........there have been many problems and cover-ups in the past, and, also, there appears to be double speak even now...........
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110317/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_earthquake_nuclear_scandals
IMHO, the main reasons for this very serious situation are:
1. Tremendous forces of nature, a 9.1 earthquake and a 30 to 50 foot tsunami.......
2. The placement of multiple reactors, not of the best design, a few meters above sea level and close to the shoreline of an ocean, in a country known for earthquakes and tsunamis..............in addition, placing important plant equiptment, outside the reactors, right on the water's edge.............
I believe that these reactors will become a permanent monument to all those who had a hand in placing them there..........
8:}
Yeah, when they withstood the 4th strongest earthquake ever, as a triumph.
I believe that these reactors will become a permanent monument to all those who had a hand in placing them there..........
And do you know who that is? This is a good opportunity to get the truth out, and this is something you will not read in the newspapers.
The reason why Japanese have a "dense" build of power stations, such as four units at Fukusima Daini, and six units as Fukushima Daiichi, is that the Japanese utilities tried to site other plants in dispersed locations, some further inland away from the coast. But when these were planned, in the 1970s and 1980s, the utilities were prevented from obtaining permits to purchase other land for dispersed sites. They were prevented by the burgeoning Japanese anti-nuclear movement that arose during that time. So the companies could not obtain the land to build plants at other sites. They had to use land that was already approved for use, and in use, for power generation. Some of that is along coastlines, where the older units, that use once-through cooling, were sited to have access to a large thermal reservoir. If they had not been stopped by intervenors, the companies would have built more plants inland, using cooling towers or reservoirs, as a heat sink. So the anti-nuclear groups bear a large portion of the blame for these plants beings sited where they are. Because the power companies were still required to build capacity to meet the growing electrical demand of an increasingly industrialized and technological society. For a country like Japan, that has essentially no indigenous energy resources, that means nuclear, because while they still have to import uranium, they have to import much less than an equivalent amount of coal, petroleum, or LNG.
So, betcha didn't know that, didja? Betcha that didn't make the papers, did it?