The scrutiny on planning at the nuclear plant comes as the mystery of TEPCO chief executive Masataka Shimizu has been located. A little over a day ago several news outlets published rumor-filled accounts that he had committed suicide, checked into a hospital or fled the country. The company has now confirmed that Shimizu has been hospitalized for "dizziness" and "high blood pressure.

The plant had walls high enough to protect it from a six-meter wave, but the tsunami that hit on March 11 measured 14 meters high. The backup generators were also susceptible to flooding. In addition, the 40-year-old No. 1 reactor, which exploded during the disaster, was scheduled to go out of commission in February. "But shutting down the reactor would have made it much more difficult for Japan to reach its target of deriving half of its total generation of electricity from nuclear power by 2030 — or almost double its share in 2007," Reuters reported.

The report goes on to detail the mistakes made in radiation readings over the weekend, and problems with ventilation systems and pressure gauges in a plant that never received the upgrades required for U.S. plants.

But U.S. plants are not immune to natural disasters, nor to the now erroneous-seeming judgment calls reported from Japan. The operator of California's Diablo Canyon is currently seeking extensions to its own 40-year operating licenses, even though, as the New York Times reported this week, a new fault line was found just a half a mile from the plant. The Times report touches on how U.S. plants are generally more secure than those in Japan, because of post-Sept. 11 upgrades, but it also points out that "the inherent problem, risk experts say, is that it is hard to determine the size of the worst natural hazard." Such as, say, a 14-meter tsunami.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.