Fukushima nuclear disaster: Plant planned tsunami risk assessment, but too late

Fukushima Daiichi plant operator promised a fuller assessment of the risk of tsunami just four days before the March 11 wave stroke, reports a disclosure in a three-page briefing paper obtained by The Associated Press. "If they had made the decision earlier, then they could have been prepared on March 11," said Hideyuki Hirakawa, an Osaka University expert on governance and the sciences, according to Yuri Kageyama, writing for the Huffington Post. "There is absolutely nothing you can do in four days."

While the estimates presented for the first time at the March 7 meeting did not order immediate actions, "The numbers I saw were bigger than what we had earlier assessed," said Masaru Kobayashi, who heads TEPCO's earthquake-safety section. "It had happened, and I felt bad."