The actual blue ribbon panel report that this article refers to seems to be considered a very definitive report on what happened during those early days of the crisis. There are many articles out about this report now, from the New York Times to Time Magazine.
Even one of the most technologically advanced countries, with a long history of nuclear power use, can still be caught totally off guard by an unexpected calamity. It is truly frightening how close we all came to an even greater disaster--not that what actually happened wasn't bad enough.
For example, those many tons of spent fuel just sitting in those cooling pools could have easily become uncovered, overheated, and started releasing massive amounts of radiation as they burned up.
Twenty, thirty years from now, I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes apparent that the health of people in areas of Japan we now consider safe were also compromised all along, like in Tokyo.
Japan is still gradually shutting down nuclear power plants as they go offline for scheduled maintenance and soon, they will all be shut down. And they are still suffering from a shortage of power generating capacity, although you never hear about that in the news anymore. I guess it just goes to show how remarkably adaptable people are to new circumstances. Still, at some point, if Japan's economy ever starts growing at a decent clip again, that growth is going to be severely constrained without more power.
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