I believe the problem here is a bit tricky and fundamentally a lack of trust in the government. The reason why Japanese are not panicking yet is because they tr

I believe the problem here is a bit tricky and fundamentally a lack of trust in the government. The reason why Japanese are not panicking yet is because they trust their government and themselves to cooperate and help each other. In US this is a bit different and trust in Japanese government, with an history for downplaying problems or just keeping them secret, is lacking. The reasoning would be that the Japanese government, in order to prevent general panic, will downplay the problems, until it's too late, just to reassure its citizen that they are dealing with it. In the US many believe that things are already worse than what they're being told and would rather be ready to react immediately after something changes rather than be caught in the middle of the rage if something should go wrong later. A similar pattern is what happened for Chernobyl, although the political situation there was very very different.