Fukushima Research Paper

The basic causes of the meltdown were the damages to backup generators on reactors 1 through 3 by the sea water. This forced the emergency lights and cooling system to shutdown (which resulted in an overheating of the reactors). What made the situation worse is that Japanese officials were in a state of panic after the disaster. This is because they did not realize that the cooling systems were shut off and that the problem was compounded from the lack of response. ("Fukushima Utility")

In Pennsylvania, the worst nuclear power plant accident in the United States occurred. Nuclear power plants generate a mass of electricity using steam generators. The plants are very controversial concerning their safety with the environment and its role with unstable reactants like uranium and plutonium. On March 12, 1979, someone at the Three Mile Island’s second reactor, or TMI-2 for short, left a relief valve wide open leading large amounts of nuclear reactant cooling to the main reactor. All of the coolant leaving TMI-2 was recognized by the control panel in the plant but was disregarded as a loss that typically happens. At first, the surrounding towns were told that the incident wasn’t anything of worry. But after a couple days

Some radioactive gas was released a couple of days after the accident, but not enough to cause any dose above background levels to the local residents.

Event sequence following the earthquake to reactors one through three: “loss of AC power, loss of cooling, water levels down to top fuel, reactor pressure vessel damage, fire pumps with fresh water, hydrogen explosion” resulting to be the world’s worst nuclear disasters since Chernobyl. Although there were no direct fatalities linked to the accident, increases of diseases such as lung cancer, esophagus cancer, prostate cancer, stomach cancer, thyroid cancer, have increased 40-60% (http://apjjf.org/-Eiichiro-Ochiai/4382) being a more recent, will take years to see radiation induced

Indigenous people requested compensation and made a huge organization to resist the government and nuclear power plants. I partly agree with their opinion. Because if you continue to use the nuclear power plant from now on, there is a possibility that accidents like Fukushima will happen again. Because Japan has a large number of occurrences of earthquakes, I do not know when it will happen. It is time to think together how we can increase renewable energy usage. Asah Rehman says, “I see communities, who were thrown into the front line. I see the incredible transformation, they become stronger, they stand up” (This Changes Everything). My parents' house is located 30 kilometers from the nuclear power plant, and still people who have evacuated from areas with nuclear power plants live. Before the earthquake occurred, I have never felt the threat of nuclear power plant, so I did not think there was anything dangerous near our lives. Immediately after the accident, going out was prohibited, and daily necessities were not transported because of radiation. Due to this accident, people all over the world learned of the dangers of nuclear power plant. We can only protect our lives by our hands. In order to leave a clean earth to future generations, we should make use of past experiences and connect to the

On the 11th of March, 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck near the eastern coast of Japan. Emergency shutdown procedures went into effect when the earthquake was spotted, but this was not the main cause of the destruction of the nuclear reactor. The first line of defense was to immediately stop the nuclear fission within the reactor by inserting neutron absorbing rods to stop the reaction. After the engineers successfully stopped the nuclear fission reaction, immense heat and pressure was still prominent and needed to be relieved as soon as possible. Fresh water was brought in and dumped onto the rods but a tsunami inevitably followed as soon as the earthquake was felt as the source of the natural disaster was on the ocean floor. The tidal wave severely damaged the power supply system that was meant to maintain the flow was cold water. On March 12, 2011, diesel powered generators were initiated in an attempt to alleviate the failure of the generators that were powering the entire plant. Unfortunately, the diesel powered generator was insufficient enough to cool the large reactor as the heat building up within was accumulating in large amounts; more than what nuclear engineers originally presumed. Water continued to evaporate causing a hydrogen gas to form when the fuel rods underwent a chemical reaction with the steam. Hydrogen gas is an important element to take into consideration as too much of this element can cause an explosion within the reactor. Workers quickly

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

¨The first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction test was in December 2nd 1942( Anderson 1).¨ After that came more nuclear reactors and with more nuclear reactors, comes the greater chance of an accident. Throughout the world there has been only 99 accidents, but most of the nuclear accident have been quite minor. But three out of those 99 accidents were quite major. The three major accidents were at Fukushima, Japan, Chernobyl, Ukraine, and Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania.

Electric power generation stopped after reactor stopped working. Also, it is typically used external power in order to secure the reactor cooling process and the operations of automatic control of the reactor, but the earthquake has led to the occurrence of damage to the local network. Emergency generators began operating diesel-working but suddenly it’s stopped working due to the loss of control to stop all power supply, the reactors and this goes back to engineers.

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

Regarding the nuclear event at Fukushima, there is evidence of manmade errors, which resulted in the first three-core meltdown ever. As earthquakes hit Japan, the nuclear power plant lost power and pipes that served to provide the reactors with coolant and aid recirculation were damaged and cracked. Before the tsunami, which measured a 9 on the Richter scale, hit the Fukushima nuclear plant “a radiation alarm went off” (McNeill & Adelstein, 2011). Without coolant or proper circulation, it was a matter of time until the reactors proceeded to

The basic causes of the meltdown were the damages to backup generators on reactors 1 through 3 by the sea water. This forced the emergency lights and cooling system to shutdown (which resulted in an overheating of the reactors). What made the situation worse is that Japanese officials were in a state of panic after the disaster. This is because they did not realize that the cooling systems were shut off and that the problem was compounded from the lack of response. ("Fukushima

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.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant was completely shut down for 21 months following an earthquake in 2007. The 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused the failure of cooling systems at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant on March 11 and a nuclear emergency was declared. This was the first time a nuclear emergency had been declared in Japan, and 140,000 residents within 20 km of the plant were evacuated. The total amount of radioactive material released is unclear, as the crisis is on going. On 6 May 2011, Prime Minister ordered the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant be shut down, as an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 or higher is likely to hit the area within the next 30 years.