So goes the Japanese proverb that has proved prescient in at least one case.

Virtually none of the robots sent to examine the reactors whose cores had melted down returned to base. No machine can access, let alone neutralise, the severely damaged areas in them. Sending people to do the job is tantamount to execution.

This is the parlous state of three of the four reactors at the Daiichi Nuclear Plant in Fukushima prefecture, the result of a series of events occurring on March 11, 2011 that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) called "beyond the realm of predictability".

Yet, a brief look at the past proves this assessment to be at best a gross miscalculation, and at worst a mark of monumental negligence leading to death and destruction.

Some 300 stone monuments stand inland from the Pacific coast of Tohoku, the north-eastern region of Japan's main island of Honshu.

"Water came up to here," reads the message crudely carved into many of them. "Don't build below here."

They were erected by the survivors of two colossal tsunami: one in 1896 that killed approximately 22,000 people; the other in 1933, with nearly 7000 lives lost.

The official death toll of the catastrophe triggered by the magnitude 9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 surpasses 22,000 when so-called indirect deaths are included. Many bodies were swept out to sea and never recovered.

This was a 21st-century triple disaster. The tsunami that inundated 560 square kilometres of land, reaching up to 40 metres above sea level at some points, destroyed or significantly damaged 1 million buildings. Nearly two-thirds of the trees along the 230-kilometre coastline north of Chiba prefecture were washed away.

The meltdowns that occurred within days delivered the equivalent of 168 Hiroshima bombs'-worth of Caesium 137 into the atmosphere, and eight times that amount into the sea. Yet that still left thousands of times more in the damaged reactor cores, where 880 tonnes of radioactive fuel remain.

TEPCO, the owner and operator of the plant, has been streaming water into the reactor cores for 10 years now. This has resulted in well over 1 million tonnes of waste water that is dangerously contaminated being held in tanks, scheduled for release into the sea beginning next year. The government has assured people that this water will be safely diluted before being dumped in the sea, leaving only tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, which cannot be filtered out. However, tritium in water binds with organic material in animals and plants, eventually making its way into the fish that are a staple of the Japanese diet. Who could be persuaded to eat fish caught in those waters?

The livelihoods of 160,000 people forced to evacuate contaminated zones were shattered. Many more thousands living outside designated exclusion zones have been forced to abandon farming. All in all, the nuclear catastrophe has led to severe physical hardship, mass mental trauma and suicides.

Yet the government's long-term response has barely reached the level of the half-hearted apology. As in the aftermath of World War II, politicians and officials have offered the furtive bow, the meagre payout and the grim tight-lipped silence that accompany the enforced wait ... until all victims fall silent or die.

Liberal Democratic Party governments have committed the nation to rebuilding its nuclear power arsenal, as if shining a light on the sign crossing over the street at Futaba town, four kilometres from the plant, that read "Nuclear Power is the Energy of a Bright Future".

Before the catastrophe, Japan was planning to provide 50 per cent of its power through nuclear generation. By all rights, the meltdowns should have brought an end to all such generation. Yet the government is still aiming to provide 30 per cent of the nation's energy needs with nuclear power. Nuclear plants that have exceeded their use-by date are being recommissioned. Three new plants are under construction. Nine reactors are currently online, with another 18 in pre-start-up mode. This is nothing short of foolhardy in a country racked by extreme seismic volatility, in which one-tenth of the world's active volcanoes are found. This is no country for nuclear power plants.

While there is major investment in renewables, Japan today is upwards of 89 per cent dependent on fossil fuels for its energy. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's pledge to cut emissions to zero by 2050 lacks ethical credibility, a quality to which both Japanese elected officials and the bureaucracy have traditionally afforded low priority.

The decommissioning of the damaged reactors is set to take 40 years, by conservative estimate, at a cost exceeding 1 trillion Australian dollars. Tens of millions of cubic metres of contaminated soil remain in Fukushima prefecture. Even after this has been removed to other locations in the prefecture, it must still be eventually hauled elsewhere, a task that will take 30 years alone. But who will welcome such a perilous gift?

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The people of Tohoku have paid, and are continuing to pay, an exceedingly high price to maintain the shine on the government's cover-up, that everything in the energy sector is "back to normal" and "forging ahead".

But if the commitment to nuclear power continues, despite all the dangers inherent in the lay of the land, an even worse disaster, also "unpredictable", may be in the offing.

Had the winds of March 2011 been blowing in a different direction, towards Tokyo, the capital zone would have been perilously struck, necessitating the evacuation of tens of millions of panicking residents.

In his pitch for the 2020 Olympics, then prime minister Shinzo Abe stated to the world that the situation in Fukushima was "under control". This was back in 2013.

Prime Minister Suga's recent comment on how to deal with the enormous amount of radioactive water held in tanks - an amount that grows exponentially with the years - is "I will decide responsibly (on what to do) at a suitable time".

This, sadly, is the stock Japanese reply to many major problems facing the nation. Nobody, apparently, is able to figure out whose suitability he means.

Ten years on, Fukushima remains Japan's most unsuitable - and most inconvenient - social and political disaster.