¹ NHK Special, メルトダウン – 福島第一原発あの時何が, (“Meltdown - The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant: Behind the Scenes.” Broadcast repeatedly in January 2012.

² Ibid, p.28.

³ See David McNeill, “Sato Eisaku's Warning,” Japan Focus, April 23, 2011. (March 22, 2012)

⁴ Ibid. Sato wrote a book claiming that he had been toppled as governor, then framed on corruption charges, because of his growing opposition to nuclear power. See 知事抹殺 つくられた福島県汚職事件 (“Annihilating a Governor”) (2009, Heibonsha). He and local people helped thwart Tepco plans that experts say could have made the March 11 disaster much worse. A decade earlier, the company proposed to load hundreds of tons of Mixed Oxide fuel containing tons of plutonium. If it had succeeded, the fuel would have presented an even greater challenge “in terms of the threat of widespread and large-scale plutonium dispersal and devastating human health impacts,” says Shaun Burnie, an independent nuclear analyst.[4

⁵ “Past 3,500 years saw seven M9s,” Kyodo News, Jan. 27, 2012

⁶ Kyodo News, “Tsunami Alert Softened days before 3/11,” The Japan Times, February 27, 2012.

⁷ “Rethink of tsunami risk was way too late,” Associated Press, February 22, 2012. A definitive warning had already been made in 2009. At a panel meeting on nuclear regulatory policy in June that year, tsunami expert Yukinobu Okamura, with the government's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (ASIT), insisted that new evidence of the massive Joban earthquake and tsunami that hit the Tohoku coast in 869 AD be considered more closely. “I would like to ask why you have not touched on this at all,” he demanded. “I find it unacceptable.”

⁸ Personal interview, March 27, 2012. He added: “If (nuclear plants) have to be built in Japan, there must be meticulous care in running them. This wasn't the case here. Tepco didn't raise its tsunami wall an inch. That's criminal negligence

⁹ See David McNeill & Nanako Otani, “Waiting for Doomsday: Living Next to ‘The World's Most Dangerous Nuclear Power Plant, ‘The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 19 No 2, May 9, 2011.

¹⁰ The single generator that survived saved the idling reactors 5 and 6 from meltdown, it later emerged. The generator was 13 meters above sea level.

¹¹ See David McNeill & Jake Adelstein, “Tepco's Darkest Secret,” Counterpunch August 12-14, 2011. (April 13, 2012)

¹² “Panel: Wide Communication Gaps Hindered Response in Fukushima,” The Asahi Shimbun, December 27, 2011. (March 25, 2012)

¹³ Mari Yamaguchi, “Nuke Evacuation Fatal For Old, Sick,” Associated Press, March 10, 2012.

¹⁴ 575 deaths ‘related to nuclear crisis, ‘The Yomiuri, February 5, 2012. (March 22, 2012)

¹⁵ See Norimitsu Onishi and Martin Fackler, “Japan Held Nuclear Data, Leaving Evacuees in Peril,” The New York Times, August 8, 2011. (March 7, 2012). The Speedi system can now be found online at http://www.bousai.ne.jp/eng/.

¹⁶ Mark Willacy, “Japan ‘Betrayed Citizens’ Over Radiation Danger,” ABC News, January 20, 2012. (March 7, 2012)

¹⁷ Personal interview, April 6, 2012. Also, see “Inside Japan's Nuclear Meltdown,” Frontline PBS, February 28, 2012. (April 17, 2012)

¹⁸ Quoted in Takashi Hirose, Fukushima Meltdown: The World's First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster, Fukushima Meltdown, (Kindle edition, 2011). “Most of the media believed this and the university professors encouraged optimism. It makes no logical sense to say, as Edano did, that the safety of the containment vessel could be determined by monitoring the radiation dose rate. All he did was repeat the lecture given him by TEPCO.” As media critic Takeda Toru later wrote, the overwhelming strategy throughout the crisis, by both the authorities and big media, seemed to be reassuring people, not alerting them to possible dangers.

¹⁹ Japan's government later officially raised Fukushima to INES Level 7 - the same as the 1986 Ukraine disaster.

²⁰ Dan Edge (Director), “Inside the Meltdown,” BBC, Feb. 23, 2012. David McNeill was a consultant on this documentary.