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1. The plants were hit with an earthquake larger than had ever been believed they would face. They took it and were fine.
2. Then the plants were hit by a Tsunami that wiped out that whole section of Japan. They still haven't recovered. The plants took it and were fine.
3. The plants lost power. They shifted automatically to the secondary, took it, and were fine.
4. The backup ran beautifully, just as it was supposed to
5. Then the recovery wasn't able to re-link the plants back to the grid fast enough and that is what caused excess build-up. No "meltdown" event, no massive spewage, the numbers that everyone freaked out were silly. At one point (I was in Japan supporting the recovery effort at the time) everyone started freaking out about the water having certain portions of radioactive material, so I had to do the math - you would have had to drink 15 gallons of the water a day every day for something like two years before it became actually dangerous.
The Fukushima Daichi plants, contra the easy bumper stickers and the wavetop view of "nuclear, bad thing happened, stuff went bad" are actually a powerful testament to the safety of this energy source.
Fair enough but that's not saying a serious leak wouldn't be dangerous, like Chernobyl?