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.
Because the tsunami was so significant it caused the power supply to disable and thus causing a nuclear accident. When the quake hit, eleven reactors at 4 of the nuclear power plants were shut down immediately. The cores of operating units 1, 2, and 3 overheated and melted in the first 3 days after the tsunami hit. Power from the backup generators were unavailable to run the cooling pumps but eventually was able to achieve a ‘cold shutdown’. (World Nuclear Association). The high temperatures caused explosions
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This report could have brought about changes before this significant earthquake hit. At 7:03 pm on that Friday, a nuclear emergency was declared. At 8:50 pm the Fukushima Prefecture issued an evacuation for people within 2 km of the plant. By Saturday March 12th, the prime minister extended the evacuation zone to 20 km. This major accident was rated at a level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale due to the high radioactive releases into the air. The main radionuclide that was released into the air was volatile iodine-131. Another main radionuclide was caesium-137. Cesium can be taken into the body but does not concentrate in any particular
On March 11, 2011 an earthquake that measured 9.3 Richter scale occurred 43 miles of the coast of Northern Japan. This caused tremendous amounts of damage to the island of Tohouku. What happened is the quake initially destroyed buildings and property. However, a tsunami occurred, which devastated the region and the Fukushima nuclear power plant. ("Fukushima Accident")
(Events of Fukushima Nuclear disaster) The Fukushima Nuclear disaster had many effects on the environment and health, some of its effects on the health are, infection of skin and that is mainly caused because of radiation and chemicals in the water after the incident and little supply of clean water, it also impacted the citizens physiologically (mainly the mothers, kids and workers) who might have diseases as anxiety and depression, problems in pregnancy, related to deficiency of iodine in the body, and some hormones not functioning properly, all these causes might lead to still birth, and miscarriage and finally, radiation syndrome which is caused because of the release of massive amounts of radiation, spread of cancer (as thyroid cancer) because of radiation, and ascend of genetic inheritable diseases As in Diagram 2 (Health Concerns in Fukushima), we can signify that the percentages of cancer increased highly because of the disaster in comparison to nowadays and especially between people of ages (1month-20years)
Introduction: The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. It measured 7 on the Nuclear Event Scale, which is the highest rating. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was initiated by a magnitude 9 earthquake. This earthquake caused a tsunami with waves reaching up to 133 feet to crash on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. This caused major damage to the nuclear plant. Workers were needed to keep this already terrible incident from escalading. The Fukushima Daiichi cleanup workers are
The Fukushima disaster was caused by an earthquake and its following tsunami which caused a failure in the backup systems (World Nuclear Association, 2016). The tsunami knocked out the generators that powered the cooldown processes for three of the Fukushima power plants which caused the radiation leaks and other complications. Consequentially, the disaster was initially classified as a level 5 on the INES scale. Further investigation after the disaster was under control changed it to a level 7 disaster, the highest level on the INES scale. The estimated radioactive releases were about one tenth of Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history.
“Be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” – Bruce Lee. Water is powerful as Bruce Lee said, but in 2011 the region of Tohoku Japan learned just how devastating water could be the hard way. What caused the Tsunami was a magnitude 9.0 earthquake which was the most powerful earthquake to ever hit Japan. Why most people know about these events are that the combo of the earthquake and tsunami caused nuclear meltdowns in the Fukushima Power plant. All three of those events were a trifecta of events that caused massive damage and heartache to the people of Japan. It would be hard to plan for all three of these disasters to happen at once but investigating the topic and what was planned could help plan for future tragedies. What happened to public and environmental health in the wake of the Tohoku region earthquake and tsunami.
On March 11, 2011, Fukushima, Japan; a nuclear powered town, 250 km from Tokyo, was struck with two natural disasters. These further led to three nuclear reactors emptying highly radioactive substances.
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
I. (Gain Attention and Interest): March 11, 2011. 2:45 pm. Operations at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant continued as usual. At 2:46 pm a massive 9.0 earthquake strikes the island of Japan. All nuclear reactors on the island shut
On March 11th, 2011 Northeastern Japan was hit with a magnitude 9 earthquake, which led to a tsunami (Oskin, 2015). Two disasters struck Japan and made an impact globally. An estimate of 230,000 homes were destroyed, leaving individuals without shelter, food, or clothes (Oskin, 2015). The disasters kept growing once officials realized the tsunami had taken a nuclear power plan, leaving the area with a level seven nuclear meltdown and radioactive water (Oskin, 2015). Japan is still recovering from the disasters and debris and toxins are being found washed up on shore all around the world (Oskin, 2015).
In 2011 Japan was struck by a 9.0 earthquake followed by a devastating tsunami, leaving them with the responsibility to clean up the mess it made. The earthquake created a wave which hit Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant causing many problems. Radioactive leaks were a major problem which was a result of the tsunami. Radiation began to contaminate the Pacific ocean which impacted the fish in it as well. Radiation also contaminated underground water sources because of unreachable fuel rods stored in an unstable building. This tsunami has created a great deal of problems for the citizens of Japan.
On March 11, 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake occurred off the east coast of Japan, generating massive tsunamis, which severely damaged coastal areas. The earthquake and tsunami also hit the nuclear power plants (NPP) located in the coastal area in Tohoku and led to the loss of the entire core cooling capacity of three reactors of Fukushima Daiichi NPP and severe damage to the nuclear cores.1 Although deaths related to the release of radiation have not been reported six years after the disaster, the Japanese government and medical professionals have noticed an increase in mental health problems in emergency workers and evacuees. Numerous evacuations, physical detachment from homes and personal belongings, and stigmas between evacuees have been
The height of waves triggered by the quake varied in different coastal regions, from 1.4 meters at Sedai port in Miyagi Prefecture to 60 cm at Onahama Port in Fukushima Prefecture. A one meter high tsunami wave hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant which was struck by the massive tsunami in March 2011 sending its three reactors into meltdown at the time.
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
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)
The earthquake made the nuclear leak, and the nuclear leak not only affected the human activities, but also affected the environment as well. The nuclear radiation affects the soil and the sea around the station. Many fish died and the sea was polluted.