Fukushima Argumentative Essay

It’s clear that a Nuclear power plant such as the Fukushima Daiichi can be classified as an HRO if not an Ultra HRO, where an accident has an effect that, even in the technologically advanced Japan, can threaten the lives of millions and negatively impact their health for many years.

On March 11th, 2011 an earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The actual earthquake did minimal damage to all 4 reactors. The resulting tsunami destroyed the 16 diesel backup generators dedicated to cooling the reactors. As a result of overheating, hydrogen explosions damaged Reactors 1, 2, and 3. Reactor 4 was offline for maintenance at the time, but over 1,400 fuel rods in a stored above the reactor were exposed to air. The result was the release of approximately 370,000 terabecquerels of radiation. The situation was declared a Level 7 (major ongoing radioactive accident) by the International Atomic Energy Agency . The only other time this level has been reached was at Chernobyl in 1986.

The disastrous meltdowns that cause whole cities to become uninhabitable, as well as leaving families homeless and laborers without jobs, have defined the negative perspective of what people see in nuclear power. However, even after such catastrophes, the pure raw energy output makes nuclear power essential for the future of the human race. As time passes, the world’s energy usage has grown an increasingly massive size every year due to the consumption swell of energy. Despite nuclear plants being a heavily controversial topic internationally, its advantages are very well recognized and it’s causing nuclear plants to slowly become the basis of our growing society.

Recently, the deserted Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has been emanating an alarming amount of radiation. Kyodo of Japan Times reported that the radiation reading has reached its highest level since its emergence in March 2011 (Kyodo, 2017). As a result, there is a greater presence of air and water pollution in Fukushima that could easily spread to surrounding areas. Therefore, it seems appropriate that in an interview with the Washington Post, radio-ecology expert Tom Hinton stated Fukushima is “an area that is among the most radioactively contaminated in the world” (as cited in Andrews, 2016). This resurgence has generated conspiracy theories, false maps and, interestingly, little news coverage. While many across different continents

The nuclear technology debate returns. Narrations about nuclear power in post-Fukushima Japanese and Western films

“An atom is the fundamental block of all matter, atoms are composed of smaller subatomic particles neutrons, [Neutral], protons [Positive (+)] and electrons [negative (-)]. Nuclear energy is the energy formed from the nucleus of an atom through different methods as fission (which is the way in which an atom is split into smaller subatomic particles by hitting its nucleus with a neutron) and fusion (which is the process in which new heavier atoms and large amounts of energy are produced by bonding atoms together). (Nuclear Energy).Nuclear energy has various pros and cons, some of its advantages are that it reduces global warming as a result of decreasing greenhouse gases emission and CO92 production. While, its main disadvantage, is that the

Purpose: To inform the audience about the heroic actions of the Fukushima Daiichi cleanup workers.

There have been lots of nuclear accident around the world. One of the accident that had a major impact on the world was the Chernobyl disaster. The disaster took place on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. The disaster was caused by a reaction explosion induced by design faults and staff application errors. The accident took place in the course of scheduled tests to check the power supply mode in the event of external sources loss. Even after 10 days, explosions and ejections of radioactive substances continued. The release of radiation and radioactive substance polluted the places within 30 km of Chernobyl, and those areas have been closed for a long period of

According to a new study, gathered by the researchers from Costas Synolakis of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and Utku Kânoğlu of the Middle East Technical University in Turkey who went through all the reports about Fukushima’s disaster in 2011, the nuclear disaster should have never happened. During the research the found design problems, saying: “…the diesel generators as the linchpin of a future disaster. Fukushima Daiichi was a sitting duck waiting to be flooded.”

March 11, 2011 a 9.1 magnitude earthquake hit Japan and it’s the largest earthquake ever to hit Japan. Several nuclear reactors in Fukushima were damage by the 30-foot tsunami wave that was caused by the earthquake. Surprisingly, seaborne radiation from Japan's Fukushima nuclear catastrophe has been identified on the West Coast of the United States. Cesium-134, the supposed unique finger impression of Fukushima, was measured in seawater tests taken from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach in Oregon ("Fukushima Radiation Has Reached U.S. Shores"). So is Fukushima poisoning the Pacific Ocean? My answer is yes.

The rapidly decreasing fossil fuels (such as coal, natural gas, and petroleum oil) and massive dumping of carcinogenic, bio-recalcitrant pollutant materials on earth are major problems in the world over the past decades.1 The industrial revolutions accompanied with release of toxic pollutants into the water sources and air. The polluted water and air are the primary sources for the most of the human made-diseases, global warming, and unpredictable weather changes. A rare but dangerous disaster like Fukushima accident on March 11, 2011, insist scientific community to find a risk-free, safe energy sources. The Fukushima accident released radioisotopes into the sea water. The accident has created an awareness towards clean energy and pollution

After considering both sides of advantages and disadvantages about nuclear energy, people are thinking and trying to make life better. The purpose of supporting nuclear is because it can produce energy without fossil fuel and it will not produce any bad effects of environmental chemical such as carbon dioxide. On the other side, people are against nuclear because it is not safe enough and if unpredictable incident happens to the industry they need to make appropriate decision quickly and as soon as possible. Both sides of people have own purpose to make world safer to live usefully.

Fukushima represents a catastrophe that had world wide implications for the nuclear power sector. On March 11, 2011, following a major earthquake, a 15 m tsunami hit the coast of Japan. This natural disaster caused a great deal of damage to the surrounding areas, but had a particularly dangerous effect on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. In response to the initial earthquake, the operating units at Fukushima were automatically shutdown (Hindmarsh, 5). The 15 m tsunami, which hit the plant, flooded it under several meters of water. This combined caused the entire plant to suffer a complete power blackout. It was not believed that the plant would lose all power, nor that a tsunami of such size could occur (Hindmarsh 28). Resulting from the loss of power, existing cooling functions for the reactors were shut down also and as a result, fuel in the core was damaged, and radioactive material was released into the environment (Hindmarsh 12). Charles Perrow's Normal Accident Theory (NAT) proposes "a framework for characterizing complex technological systems such as air traffic, marine traffic, chemical plants, dams, and especially nuclear power plants according to their riskiness" (“Normal Accidents” 5). Perrow suggests that systems that are highly complex and tightly coupled create the environment for ‘normal accidents’ to occur; that is, accidents that are inevitable (“Normal Accidents” 88-89).

Chemical accidents can happen anywhere, and anytime. That is one of the reason it is very important to be safe and cautions when you are working in the lab area. Regardless of what supplies you might be using that day. Not too long ago there was a major nuclear accident that took place on March 11, 2011 in Japan. It was known as the Fukushima accident.

This paper will address how the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant violated the following NSPE Canons of Engineering Ethics: holding the paramount of safety, health, and welfare of the public, and avoiding deceptive acts. The misjudgment and underperformance by the engineers during the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake caused a large uproar of rejection towards nuclear power in Japan, which could have been prevented if the engineers had not misconducted before the events.