Japan Held Nuclear Data, Leaving Evacuees in Peril

Indeed, on the 3/11 as the events were unfolding and prior to the explosion, I was checking the Japanese "SPEEDI" network [1] for the very same information. I thought "wow, how cool is Japan for having this system up and on the Internet in the case of Nuclear disasters!"

But something was very peculiar -- the zones I wanted to monitor had all become listed "調整中" in Japanese and written "under survey" in English.

I smelled a cover-up. Before the Tsunami hit they had a small item explaining that due to the Earthquake some of the monitoring equipment had been disrupted. After the Tsunami, the same information read that the sites now had been originally disconnected via a tsunami.

You would think that they would work quickly to re-enable the affected zones, though even today the website shows that affected sites are still "under survey" -- if you jump to the top page, it clearly reads in Japanese "At the moment, all updating for monitoring data regarding Fukushima and Miyagi have been stopped."

[1] http://www.bousai.ne.jp/eng/ [2] http://www.bousai.ne.jp/eng/speedi/pref.php?id=07

I also don't think there were sufficient incentives to avoid this crisis to begin with. TEPCO is a monopoly and was rewarded with billions in loans for their failures.

The penalties for failing this way in a marketplace is bankruptcy. Not in this situation.

Even if one is a fan of government regulation instead of relying on competition (and there's good reason for that with safety such a critical issue), its clear the government wasn't paying attention to the risks either.

They could have put the generators above what the worst case tsunami could reach. They could have had a capability to fly in generators and fuel.

Also interesting was there were three agencies passing the buck to each other getting the word out. My experience is that when multiple parties are responsible for something, no one actually is, especially in a crisis.

"In one of the most damning admissions, nuclear regulators said in early June that inspectors had found tellurium 132, which experts call telltale evidence of reactor meltdowns, a day after the tsunami — but did not tell the public for nearly three months."

Nothing to worry about, as I have learned from Hacker News being exposed to radiation is no worse than eating a banana.