[WS;] But it withstood 9.1 for chrissake. The problem was protection against flooding which was inadequate even for 8.5 or less. Had they built a higher wall and located backup generators on a higher ground - all at a minuscule fraction of the plant's total cost - there would have been no problem, they whole thing would have shut down as the rest of their plants, and in fact it had. The problem started only when water destroyed backup power generators.
So it is quite reasonable to argue that better protective measures - which were well within the realm of attainability - would have made the thing pretty damn safe even in a 9.1 quake (as the rest of their plants have demonstrated.).
I think that far better arguments than hyped-up catastrophic scenarios against nuclear power generation can be made. The stuff that Gar posted a couple of days ago suggest heat pollution, long implementation time, and inability to adjust power output to actual demand, which in conjunction with high sunk cost crowds out renewables. These are very good arguments against. Another one is storage of spent fuel rods, but I see it as a temporary problem because it is possible to store them safely for the time being until future technology will utilize them in one way or another. I understand that these arguments have much less bombast than catastrophic scenarios - but then bombast does not have much appeal to me.
Wojtek