Based on the design criteria they had at the time, yes, they were designed for a tsunami. They weren’t designed to hold or withstand a tsunami of the size they just saw - the likes of which hasn’t been seen for at least 100 years, and closer to 600 years if some accounts are accurate.
There were lots of people who didn’t believe the old signs. There were rocks with inscriptions chiseled into them in some of the worst hit prefectures that said “Do not build homes past this point.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html
Plenty of homes, farms and businesses were built below stones warning of past disasters. Ironically enough, this tsunami came within only a few hundred feet of that rock again. Seems like the folks centuries ago had a clue. The problem today is that scientists and engineers put HUGE bias on recently developed data. They want everything quantified out to the third decimal point. You can see this “bias of recent data” in the AGW debate writ large, as well as economic modeling, etc. It isn’t just one field. There’s a huge bias for recently developed and recorded data in most all fields of study with quantification of data.
Now, as to “they should have designed X.”
Most people who aren’t engineers have NO idea what it takes to hold back a wall of water such as they just took in this tsunami. Zippo. “Just build a wall to hold the sea out...”
Yea, right. Here’s a little engineering tip: It takes one level of construction to hold back a wall of calm water, such as a dam.
It takes quite another level of construction to hold back a surge of water such as this tsunami.
Let me just put this out there: The Japanese could have saved a total of three lives by putting up a huge concrete wall around those plants. They could have saved 20K+ people’s lives by following the warning carved on some rocks. Where should they have put their efforts? Millions of tons of concrete and rebar.... or saying “Let’s think about this a second... get me the surveyors and their instruments and let’s figure out how far the water would come inland if a wave X meters high came in on us...? The areas surrounding the nuclear plants never thought about the consequences of a wave the height of which the plants were designed to withstand. ie, if the wall of water had been within the plants’ design parameters, probably at least 5K people would still be dead. Who failed here? Not the engineers who designed the plants. They planned for a tsunami. They didin’t plan for *this* tsunami. The surrounding areas? They didn’t plan for even a tsunami of the height the nuke plant engineers planned for. Who is incompetent again?
I’d remind you that it is only recently (within the last 10 years) that scientists finally believed mariners and their accounts of “rogue waves” far out at sea - waves 60+ feet tall that come “out of nowhere” that can (and sometimes do) literally flip a ship over. Never mind just sinking it. Take a seaworthy vessel, crewed and captained by competent men, roll it upside down or break the keel and just sink it in a minute.
All the terribly smart PhD’s in the world thought that this was another mariner’s tall tale... and finally video evidence, coupled with the huge increase in computational power, synthetic apature radar and sea monitoring networks made the terribly smart, but non-sea-faring scientists say “Golly, guess the sea dogs were not just telling us landlubbers a bunch of tall stories....”
Some are saying that a couple of these Tornadoes may have been the strongest we have ever seen here in modern times. If so, then our nuclear plants were not built to withstand them.
Some of these are pretty scary just watching from behind my laptop...check out what happens right around 0:57....