According to US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks Japan was warned three years ago their Emergency Response Plan was outdated and earthquake preparedness at Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear power plant was dangerously inadequate. Beyond the warning, neither the US nor the Japanese government undertook any steps to correct the situation and we are now witnessing a desperate adaptive emergency response that relies upon the efforts of a handful of workers knowingly sacrificing their lives to try and avert a meltdown.

To make matters worse, TEPCO, the company that owns and operates the stricken plant has been caught falsifying safety records in the past and the reactor design had a known flaw.

Tokyo Electric Power Co injected air into the containment vessel of Fukushima reactor No 1 to artificially “lower the leak rate”. When caught, the company expressed its “sincere apologies for conducting dishonest practices”.

The misconduct came to light in 2002 after whistleblowers working for General Electric, which designed the reactor, complained to the Japanese government. Another GE employee later confessed that he had falsified records of inspections of reactor No1 in 1989 – at the request of TEPCO officials. He also admitted to falsifying other inspection reports, also on request of the client. After that incident TEPCO was forced to shut down 17 reactors, albeit temporarily.

Despite assurances by US officials and utilities to the contrary, it doesn’t appear the US is any better prepared than Japan. Like TEPCO, US utilities like PG&E that operates the Diablo Canyon power plant have been caught red handed with sloppy service and maintenance records and safety violations.

But the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which sits less than a mile from an offshore fault line, was not required to include earthquakes in its emergency response plan as a condition of being granted its license more than a quarter of a century ago. Though experts warned from the beginning that the plant would be vulnerable to an earthquake, asserting 25 years ago that it required an emergency plan as a condition of its license, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission fought against making such a provision mandatory as it allowed the facility to be built.

Officials at Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the utility that operates Diablo Canyon, did not respond to calls seeking comment before the story was published. After publication, a spokesman for the company said the plant does have an earthquake procedure that had been implemented during a 2003 earthquake near the facility, and that staff are trained to respond. The company did not provide further details upon request.

Dale Bridenbaugh, a GE employee who was not the whistleblower, resigned 35 years ago after becoming convinced that the design of the Mark 1 reactor used at Fukushima was seriously flawed. Five of the six reactors were built to that design.

Mr Bridenbaugh told ABC News: “The problems we identified in 1975 were that, in doing the design of the containment, they did not take into account the dynamic loads that could be experienced with a loss of coolant.”

During the BP Gulf oil spill we learned that the Emergency Response Plan had been copied from earlier, decades old plans at different drilling sites and included a “plan” to care for arctic walruses and phone numbers for deceased scientists. Oversight of these so called emergency response plans appears to be almost zero and the energy industry clearly cannot be trusted to police itself.

UPDATE: US Congressman-US may not be prepared for a nuclear disaster

As Japan struggles to contain its growing nuclear crisis, a congressman and a disaster-preparedness expert raised concerns that the United States is not prepared to respond to a nuclear disaster.

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., wrote a letter to President Obama on March 13 saying that the federal government lacks a coordinated plan for responding to a major nuclear incident. Markey wrote that key agencies tasked with emergency response in the event of a nuclear disaster are unclear about what their roles would be and even about which agency would be in charge.

“It appears that no agency sees itself as clearly in command of emergency response in a nuclear disaster,” Markey wrote.

Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, echoed Markey’s assessment, saying current disaster-response plans are confusing and leave too much uncertainty.

“It’s definitely not as clear as it needs to be,” Redlener said. “Part of the problem is a tremendous overlap on the federal, state and local levels.”

The White House says that the lead agency in responding to a potential nuclear disaster depends upon the source and the nature of the nuclear release. It says federal disaster-response plans clearly establish which agency would be in charge under different scenarios. For example, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would lead the response to a release from a nuclear power plant, the Department of Energy would coordinate response to a crisis involving nuclear weapons in its custody, and the Department of Homeland Security would lead the response to a deliberate attack.

TEPCO releases new video of the damaged reactor