8.9 Magnitude Earthquake Hits Japan + Tsunami and Alerts

Whatever their regulations are, or their past history of scandal, the case being that the plant

1. Was not meant to withstand a 9.0 earthquake
   
2. Acted as it was supposed to in the case of an earthquake (shut down completely)
   
3. Activated back up generators in the case of the earthquake damaging power modules
   
4. Activated emergency battery power in the case that the back up generators were knocked out (which they were, by the tsunami)
   

The only issue of incompetence in this whole scenario was that they couldn't receive new compatible backup diesel generators before the battery's energy had run out, which ,in itself, was never supposed to have to be used in the first place.
What we have at the Fukushima plants is the worst case scenario under normal circumstances. Now there's just a new set of worst case scenarios to reflect the fact that everything else has failed.

To say that the plant was unsafe due to the Japanese government not taking it down is absurd. And you also have to realize that nuclear power is a huge source of energy to Japan in general. I'm sure decommissioning the Fukushima reactors would have lead to a serious lack of energy. After all, Tokyo had to go through rolling blackouts in order to re-allocate energy and accommodate the towns that were closer to the disaster area.