Nuclear Engineering

Fukushima Daiichi Disaster

Britannica.com

The Fukushima Daiichi Disaster happened on march 11th 2011. That day an earthquake and tsunami occured at Fukushima, and the surrounding areas. The 3 reactors in operation lost their cooling system, which caused a meltdown in those reactors, 2 of the operational reactors had a hydrogen explosion. The 4th reactor was idle and only had a hydrogen explosion, that was after the other ones. The disaster was caused by an underwater earthquake that caused a tsunami, which flooded the powerplant, and caused everything to fail. Unlike Chernobyl that could have been preventable, Fukushima couldn’t have been preventable, so people had to be evacuated from Fukushima, and the surrounding areas.

Clean Up of the Natural and Nuclear Disaster

Right away people worked to remove the top soil in Fukushima and the surrounding areas, which were full of radiation. Japan reported 23% of the recovery fund($14.5 billion) was not going to the clean up of the 2 disasters. The main challenge of the clean up in week 3 was removing the contaminated water from the tanks, especially since there was a run off of contaminated numbers well above normal going back into the ocean. But it took a lot of effort but the water got taken out and they stopped the runoff. The water is contained.