trippy said:
There (was) no reason to believe it was neccessary - end of story.
There was every reason to believe it was prudent - starting with the location and neighborhood history, continuing with the immaturity of the science available, then the obvious inadvisability of relying too much on that science's specific predictions or forecasts or any other inevitably and significantly uncertain output from it.
The question of how much is too much being, as always, a matter of uncertain judgment involving many human as well as technical factors - including any history of arrogance and overconfidence in the field involved, and the size of the risk being run in human fact.
But these facts, of situation and history and circumstance and human foible and economic or political constraint and all the messy rest,
these huge piles of evidence and reasoning that dozens of competent and scientifically trained people have used for decades now to support their warnings and objections to things like the design and location of the Fukushima power complex
are apparently invisible to the immersed in technological specialty. This fact, undeniable evidence of which litters this thread,
reduces the amount of confidence we can place in them and their assessments. What are we supposed to think, for example, when we are informed that tsunamis of great size can be produced by fairly moderate quakes -
as an objection to our observation that 9-proofing the Fukushima plant was a good idea and well-indicated by obvious circumstances? (see above).
trippy said:
It doesn't matter what standard the reactors are designed to, you can simply point at any incident and say 'See, I told you so', no matter how improbable the incident may have been.
Actually, we only say "see, I told you so" if we did in fact tell you so, while pointing at directly relevant incidents, based on reasoning from evidence. That is because we are fact based and evidence based reasoners - you are the one speculating here, and rather wildly, about the "improbability" of this event (including as always the presumption of silliness and irrationality in people you disagree with - the ad hominem is never far from the techie's hand).
trippy said:
At this point, there is no reason to believe that the reactors were of unreasonable design and failed facing reaosnable circumstances versus being of reasonable design and facing unreasonable circumstances.
Keep chanting that - works better with your fingers in your ears.
(It's a false dichotomy, btw - if you actually care about such things. There are two other combinations, even accepting the frame)
The unreasonableness of the Fukushima design and location is a matter of common knowledge, an assessment based on perfectly solid evidence and sound reasoning, and has been for decades. We did, in fact, tell you so.