One could also say that they should have immediately started pouring concrete on top of the whole thing so it would be 100ft underground by now.
The only thing that comes into question is how LONG do you hold out trying to leverage your best case solution? We don't know the story of the onsite struggle, NONE of us do.
Heck, they could have had 1/2 dozen engineers onsite saying "just hold on, we ALMOST have these swamped generators fixed, just a few more hours".
I get into these situations all the time. I work in a very large technical environment in the healthcare industry. One of my key functions is as lead engineer and troubleshooter. When something goes down, you triage the thing and come up with possible solutions to the problem. You ALWAYS stop, take the phone off the hook and THINK before you begin. Then you write out your list. The item on top of the list is the one that has the most positive outcome by taking the least amount of time without doing any permanent damage or costing any money. That first one almost never works, you then start stumbling down your list... the one on the bottom is the often repeated "hail Mary"... it's not going to make you any friends and it's going to bust the budget, but it will get things back online. They key to it all are the timelines attached as you go along. It's like being at an auction; you must pre-determine your maximum bid and if something isn't working, you pull the plug when the timer goes off and move on; you NEVER keep on bidding thinking it's "only" going to be another 10 bucks.
It has to be said as well... even the best of troubleshooters rarely know what the BEST solution was until the crisis is over and all the lessons have been learned. It is irresponsible to criticize the Japanese engineers without having been on the ground beside them as the variables unfolded in real-time.
concur 100% + 10 :)