Fukushima Earthquake Research Paper

In 2011 Japan suffered a huge tsunami that devastated more a 1/3 of its country. Three of the six nuclear reactors in Fukushima had a meltdown causing disaster in the whole city. Although the nuclear power caused the disaster this was a freak accident. Japan was not prepared for the tsunami and was not able to take the right safety precautions as they had to flee everybody out of the building. The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission called it a "manmade freak accident". That means that the disaster was one hundred percent preventable and was really due to human error. Today they have accelerated cleanup efforts and all nuclear power plants are more prepared with better detecting equipment to try to prevent a disaster like the one in

On Friday March 11, 2011 at 2:46pm, an earthquake struck Fukushima, Japan. The earthquake had a magnitude of 9.0 and did considerable damage in the region. This was a rare and complex double quake that lasted only about 3 minutes. Some events that happened that occurred after the earthquake are as followed: loss of power, loss of cooling, core damage, reactor pressure damage, and hydrogen explosion. This earthquake caused a 15-metre tsunami to strike the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan’s Tohoku coast. The tsunami caused much more damage than the earthquake. The tsunami resulted in 19,000 human deaths and destroyed millions of buildings.

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).

In March of 2011, a massive earthquake near Japan caused large tsunamis to wreak havoc on the homes, stores, and nuclear power plants at Fukushima, Japan. The tsunamis caused some of the emergency reactors that were keeping boiling, radioactive water cooled in the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant to fail resulting in hydrogen explosions and the release of several different radioactive isotopes into the water and surrounding air. As a result of this incident there have been numerous health and environmental issues occurring in the area surrounding Fukushima as well as places all over the world. Some of these effects includes radioactive tuna being distributed in the marketplaces in Saudi Arabia (Alkhomashi et al., 2015). There have also been symptoms of depression in mothers with infants (Goto et al., 2015). This issue is important because it is seen as the second largest radioactive accident of all time next to Chernobyl.

The most extreme way to produce power is by nuclear fission. They do this by splitting single atoms, Nuclear Energy Institute states ?Nuclear power plants obtain the heat needed to produce steam through a physical process. This process, called fission, entails the splitting of atoms of uranium in a nuclear reactor. The uranium fuel consists of small, hard ceramic pellets that are packaged in long, vertical tubes. Bundles of this fuel are inserted into the reactor.? Power produced this way also has drawbacks. Producing this kind of power also produces an extreme amount of heat. If the cooling system loses power the reactor temperature rises dangerously high which will then release radiation, causing

Fukushima Daiichi is the prime example of what happens when mother nature decides to pay a surprise inspection of one of mankind’s manmade modern marvels. It doesn’t take a genius to see the benefits of nuclear power. It does take a genius however to engineer a facility that can hold up safely against anything life can throw at it. Since man has focused his attention on nuclear energy as a power source in the mid twentieth century only a handful of major nuclear accidents, or disasters, have occurred. Fukushima Daiichi was among the handful of major nuclear accidents. On the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), a scale that rates nuclear accidents from 1-7 with seven being the

Ever since disaster struck Japan on March 11, 2011 Fukushima, Japan is now considered the “world’s radiation nightmare”. The tsunami that hit Fukushima led to the meltdowns of the reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Complex. Food contamination quickly became a major concern throughout all of Japan and nearby countries. Fish and other major foods for the Japanese contained an undetectable amount of radiation making the food unsafe for the people who depend on it to eat. Along with the food not being safe the value of the food dropped significantly making it hard for the famers of Fukushima to sell their product to the consumers. This disaster was the world’s worst nuclear accident in the past 25 years. The major problem is that after the tsunami happened tons of radioactive water and waste is being leaked into the ocean.

The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred in 2011 at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant following an underwater earthquake that produced tsunamis, eventually resulting in a full nuclear meltdown and toxic amounts of radiation being dumped into the atmosphere. This particular nuclear disaster is infamous because, despite the earthquake and tsunami, it is still considered a man-made disaster. Had Fukushima plant workers been properly trained regarding what to do in the event of a nuclear disaster and had the Japanese government reacted more swiftly and efficiently, the damage to the reactors would have been less extensive and a full nuclear meltdown could have been prevented altogether. The factors that led to the meltdown, however, can be learned from and used to develop better safety procedures and educate people so that hopefully the next nuclear accident can be avoided in the future.

On March 11th, 2011, the northern section of Japan was hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, followed by a 15 meter tsunami, causing the death of over 15000 people. (Spacey) Even though the earthquake and the tsunami caused a tremendous amount of deaths in the northern region of Japan, the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear power plant caused a severe damage to northern Japan’s ecosystem that people still cannot go back to their homes; despite it is 4 years after the disaster. After the earthquake, the tsunami destroyed the power supply used by Fukushima’s three nuclear power stations, causing severe levels of meltdown to be occurred inside the reactors in the timespan of 3 days. It was not until 2 weeks after the tragedy, when the reactors were finally stabilized, and took several months to approach what is called a “cold shutdown condition”, in which the fission in the reactors are completely stopped.(Fukushima A)

They have not been told that their homes will never again be habitable. Pictures taken of these zones showed items wrapped in saran wrap signaling crews that these items must be destroyed. Only authorized personal are allowed in to said zones and suits and proper materials are too be worn. Those towns who were not after directly by the radiation still wait to be rebuilt as Japan tries its best to figure out what needs priority. Tokyo only narrowly escaped harmful radiation, and if the accident had spun further out of control, contamination in the metropolitan area would have been serious enough to warrant the urgent departure of its 30 million residents.

On March 11, 2011 two catastrophic disaster struck Japan; a natural disaster in the form of a tsunami that followed an earthquake resulting in a man-made disaster, a nuclear power plant meltdown. The Fukishima nuclear power plant meltdown resulted from multiple system failures. When the tsunami waves struck it was double the size of the height of the plants seawall, which flooded the plant (Edge, 2011). Water ended up in the basement of the power plant rendering the backup diesel generators inoperable and unable to cool the reactors (Edge, 2011). The entire Fukishma plant lost power, causing malfunctioning of the plant and a nuclear meltdown. Initially, the Japanese government ordered an evacuation of everyone within two miles of Fukishima, but after an explosion shook the plant, the government widened the areas to 12 miles forcing more than 100,00 people to flee (Edge, 2011). Interestingly, the United State government advised American in Japan to stay at least 50 miles away from the Fukishima plant (Davis, 2011).

On March 11, 2001, Japan experienced a magnitude 9.0 earthquake followed by a large tsunami that caused disastrous damage to the Fukushima-Daiichi reactors. Before 2011, one of Japan’s major power sources came from nuclear generation. 27% of Japan’s power came from the Fukushima-Daiichi reactors in coastal Sendai. While the earthquake did not cause severe damage, the tsunami damaged the infrastructure and was forced to shut down, resulting in a loss of 10 gigawatts of electricity from nuclear generation. Other plants were shut down following these due to government concern for public safety. As a result, only two reactors ran in Japan for more than a year. Japan relied heavily on nuclear power, particularly because it was it’s least expensive resource. As a way to fill this gap of power, Japan began to import heavily on natural gas, crude oil, and coal. Unfortunately, importing oil was

Eastern Japan sits right off a major earthquake fault line. Therefore, it was a matter of time before a sizeable earthquake occurred that would severely damage Japan. On Friday, March 11, 2011, a catastrophic nine magnitude earthquake hit eastern Japan, the most devastating the country had ever encountered. Equally devastating was the catastrophic tsunami that followed. This tsunami, being one of the worlds all time worst, was able to generate waves of water reaching as much as eighty feet which engulfed many of the hardest hit areas during this disaster. This catastrophe resulted in severe, yet preventable damages to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. To begin with, the electricity being provided to reactors one, two, and three

On 11th March 2011, the catastrophe hit the east part of Japan, and many people were killed by the earthquake and the following Tsunami. The earthquake and the Tsunami disabled to supply electricity for Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants. Although cooling system is necessary for the safety on nuclear power plants, it had also stopped, then three units of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants went on meltdown. According to World Nuclear

As history has depicted Emergency preparedness is not full proof, even with the best technology. It is impossible to predict the magnitude, timing and the aftermath of all natural disasters. However, the leaders of the nuclear plant such as the Fukushima nuclear plant must be cognizant, of the importance of emergency preparedness through simulation of different possible scenarios, it seems the company was overconfident in their ability to keep their nuclear materials contained within the their designated areas. Sadly, such assumptions resulted in one of the worst disasters in Japan’s history. Prior to the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, the executives were warned about the inadequacy of the wall built to prevent water from spilling from the ocean onto the complex. Most scientists had feared that the barrier protecting the nuclear complex was not strong enough to endure huge waves in the event of a strong Tsunami, and their fears came to light on March 11, 2011.