Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
In my opinion, if it's anything that would be used on a normal fire, it doesn't count as "desperate". Shooting gallons and gallons of water from a distance to cool down something is nothing to bat an eyelid at.

In any case, while terrifying due to its nuclear aspect, the reactor is much less of a disaster than countless oil fires and what not that have been caused in the aftermath.

In any case, calling this a "screw-up" is a misnomer. The only real counter to a disaster of this magnitude would be to never build anything near a coast or a continental line. Following this strategy, most of the world's biggest cities would have to be abandoned.
I think it can be called a screw-up, since the plant apparently withstood the earthquake quite fine - but could not deal with the power failing (among other things, the first set of emergency generators failed due to the tsumani even though they should have been prepared for just that case, and while they had additional emergency generators on hand, they lacked the right cables to connect them). Add in the fact that the reactor with the worst troubles should have been shut down for good at the beginning of this year but had his lifetime extended just last month, and it doesn't look like only mother nature is at fault here.

On the plus side, we can be happy that three of the six reactors had been shut down for maintenance for a longer period of time already when the Earthquake hit. I can only hope they can contain the fallout as well as possible, what with Japan's extremely high population density leaving so many people at risk if any higher quantities get in-land via air or water.