Here are some shocking facts about Fukushima nuclear tragedy

As with most disasters, several things had to go wrong to produce such a catastrophic outcome. Below is a detailed account of how the devastation unfolded. 

The 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was the worst nuclear event since the meltdown at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union 25 years prior. As with most disasters, several things had to go wrong to produce such a catastrophic outcome. Below is a detailed account of how the devastation unfolded.

Havoc unleashed

Fukushima tragedy started with an earthquake. It resulted in 465,000 evacuations, $360 billion in economic losses and increased radiation levels in Tokyo, 140 miles away.

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Around 18,500 people were killed or left missing in the disaster, most of them claimed by the towering waves that swept across swathes of the northeast coast after one of the strongest quakes ever recorded.

Contamination of food and water

Foodstuffs were contaminated by radioactive material that was deposited on the leaves or directly on agricultural produce such as fruit and vegetables, or that was absorbed via the roots of fruit and vegetable crops.

As a result of the Fukushima accident, not only was radioactive material released into the atmosphere, but it also entered the water – primarily the water that was fed into the reactors for emergency cooling, but also the groundwater penetrating into the reactor. Large quantities of contaminated water were pumped out of the reactor, cleaned of radioactivity by filtering and stored in numerous tanks on the reactor site.

Decontamination measures

The Japanese authorities have taken numerous steps to decontaminate the areas affected by fallout from the reactor accident.

In an exclusion zone extending up to about 30 kilometres around the power plant (towards the north-west), the ambient dose was more than 50 millisieverts (mSv) per year in 2011. To this day, people are only permitted to enter this exclusion zone with special authorisation, in protective clothing and with a dosimeter. Prior to the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, this area was inhabited by some 25,000 people.

Storage of contaminated material

Huge quantities of contaminated soil (around 20 million cubic metres in total), primarily from the decontamination of gardens, as well as organic waste such as leaves and branches were stored temporarily in situ in plastic bags. For a number of years, this material has gradually been transferred to a centralised storage facility in the direct vicinity of the Fukushima reactor site.

Lessons learnt

Among the lessons to be learned from the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daichii nuclear power plant are that emergency generators should be better protected from flooding and other extreme natural events, and that increasing the spacing between reactors at the same site would help prevent an incident at one reactor from damaging others nearby.

• Catastrophe followed when the March 11 tsunami knocked out power supply and the cooling system for the main reactors
• Massive atmospheric emissions of radiation hit peak on March 15 and remained high for days afterward
• In May 2012, more than 164,000 people from the contaminated area were registered as evacuees
• As of Dec 2020, there were still more than 36,000 people evacuees; the power plant decommissioning will take until at least 2041

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