Because of Japanese instinct, TEPCO wanted to build it on a hill high above the coastline.　
February 19, 2018
The following is from this week's issue of a serial column in the weekly Shincho by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world.

Newspapers are flattering the U.S.
Eisenhower was a good man, a rarity among Americans.　
He granted Japan a World Bank loan, which enabled Japan to build the Tomei and Meishin expressways, run the Shinkansen bullet train, and reconstruct itself to the point where it could host the Tokyo Olympics.　
Still, the U.S. would not allow Japan to get involved in nuclear power.
If Japan possesses nuclear technology, even for peaceful use, it will one day retaliate for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That is why they were reluctant to allow Japan to introduce nuclear power.　
But the Japanese are smart.
If the U.S. would not go for it, we talked the British into introducing graphite-moderated nuclear reactors and started generating electricity.　
Natural uranium was the only fuel needed.
Burning it would produce enough plutonium, so much so that Russia built a reactor of the same type at Chernobyl.　
The U.S. president changed course.
Instead of giving Japan nuclear power plants, the U.S. decided to control and supervise everything.　
Thus, Westinghouse and GE low-enriched light water reactors were provided to nine utilities.　
U.S. put TEPCO in a GE boiling water reactor.
The GE guys who came in were high-handed.　
Because of Japanese instinct, TEPCO wanted to build it on a hill high above the coastline.　
GE went to the trouble of having the hill cut down and put it lower, as if they were lecturing a 12-year-old child, saying, "It's going to cost a lot of money to pump water."
It is why the tsunami hit them on March 11, 2011.　
This article continues.