Hogwash. This wasn't some rapid emergency where they lost control of the plant, the reactors shut down properly during the earth quake and most systems were fin

Hogwash. This wasn't some rapid emergency where they lost control of the plant, the reactors shut down properly during the earth quake and most systems were fine. The problem was the tsunami took out several of the backup generators which needed to power the cooling pumps when the reactors weren't producing power and there was no connection to the grid (actually several generators had been moved in 1990 to higher ground and survived the tsunami, but their switching station was kept in the old, unprotected building so they still couldn't provide power). It took days for the reactors to overheat. Radiation levels were being monitored both on the ground and by aircraft, the problem was this data was ignored - in many cases people were evacuated into areas with more intense radiation. Of course when dealing with unknowns your predictions have error bars, but you can most certainly still make valid estimates, and there is no excuse for not doing so.