I recount the accident to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant starting on 11 March 2011 and continuing. I highlight some system-safety aspects, and compare with an idealised 8-step process for assessing and ensuring engineered-system safety to see where it went wrong. Nuclear accidents such as this have political and social consequences in a way in which even the worst commercial aircraft accident does not. I suggest some questions about engineered-system safety which the polity must answer somehow.