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So those problems at Fukushima Daiichi must be quite serious then?
Just to underline my facetiousness the new shield at Chernobyl is making the news for being rolled in to place thirty years later. The likelihood of any ex-Soviet state coping with a major event today must be slight and then the US is struggling to cope with pretty fundamental infrastructure problems even before a crisis.
benborp-
I think like most other countries in the world, radiation isn't something they were set up to deal with. When it happened, neither the Japanese government nor any of the embassies could deliver useful or consistent information about the radiation threat for days. The British government, (unsurprisingly) took a week to come to the conclusion that it was pretty safe but you could come get some iodine tablets to feel better if you wanted.
It is also a lot slower to fix - not just the enduring dangers but also the constant decontaminating processes. Someone I spoke to who went to work up in Fukushima at the start of the work there said they actually only got an hour or so a day doing actual constructive work.
All the stuff they could fix quickly they did, primarily as a morale boost and point of national pride. Tokyo went through a lengthened period of what felt like mourning, mainly due to the fact that because there was worry about power supply, the neon lights all were off for some time after.
beseku
Similar thing happened after the huge earthquake in 2011(?). Quarter of the train lines into Tokyo were buckled or misaligned. The majority feel fed in days. Same for the highways.
It was unbelievable.