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Analysis: The legacy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster
The movement was so severe that the country moved a few metres east, the local coastline dropped, and it triggered a tsunami which killed thousands of people.
But what many people outside Japan remember is the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant (hereafter just ‘Fukushima’), which released a plume of radiation into the surrounding area and ocean.
The disaster took place just as some nations were considering the idea of a “nuclear renaissance”. The impact of Fukushima on the nuclear industry was severe, in Japan and beyond.
Nuclear heat
When the earthquake hit, there were 11 reactors operating at four nuclear power plants in the affected Miyagi region.
These were the four reactors at Fukushima Daini, three reactors at Onagawa, one reactor at Tokai, and three reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. Daiichi’s three other units were not in operation at the time, with the fourth reactor down for refuelling.
All the units shut down automatically when the quake hit — but this is not enough to stop a plant from generating heat. Even after a plant has shut down it continues to produce “decay heat”, which amounts to 6-7% of the heat power produced by a fully operating plant.
This heat quickly diminishes. But to avoid nuclear meltdown, it is imperative that the reactor is kept cool in the first day or so after the reaction has stopped taking place.
This was what happened at the eight reactors sited at the Daini, Onagawa and Tokai plants, which were able to access the back-up power needed to run the cooling process.
At Fukushima Daiichi, however, the process failed. The result was the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl accident in 1986 in what is now Ukraine.
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Five Years After Fukushima, ‘No End in Sight’ to Ecological Fallout
The environmental impacts of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are already becoming apparent, according to a new analysis from Greenpeace Japan, and for humans and other living things in the region, there is “no end in sight” to the ecological fallout.
The report warns that these impacts—which include mutations in trees, DNA-damaged worms, and radiation-contaminated mountain watersheds—will last “decades to centuries.” The conclusion is culled from a large body of independent scientific research on impacted areas in the Fukushima region, as well as investigations by Greenpeace radiation specialists over the past five years.
“The government’s massive decontamination program will have almost no impact on reducing the ecological threat from the enormous amount of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster,” said Kendra Ulrich, senior nuclear campaigner at Greenpeace Japan. “Already, over 9 million cubic meters of nuclear waste are scattered over at least 113,000 locations across Fukushima prefecture.”
According to Radiation Reloaded: Ecological Impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident 5 Years Later, studies have shown:
- High radiation concentrations in new leaves, and at least in the case of cedar, in pollen;
- apparent increases in growth mutations of fir trees with rising radiation levels;
- heritable mutations in pale blue grass butterfly populations and DNA-damaged worms in highly contaminated areas, as well as apparent reduced fertility in barn swallows;
- decreases in the abundance of 57 bird species with higher radiation levels over a four year study; and
- high levels of caesium contamination in commercially important freshwater fish; and radiological contamination of one of the most important ecosystems – coastal estuaries.
The report comes amid a push by the government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe to resettle contaminated areas and also restart nuclear reactors in Japan that were shut down in the aftermath of the crisis.
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Former-PM Admits “Future Existence Of Japan Was At Stake” As Mutations Appear In Fukushima Forest
Former-PM Admits “Future Existence Of Japan Was At Stake” As Mutations Appear In Fukushima Forest
“The future existence of Japan as a whole was at stake,” admits Japan’s prime minister at the time of the 2011 quake and tsunami, revealing that the country came within a “paper-thin margin” of a nuclear disaster requiring the evacuation of 50 million people. Naoto Kan expressed satisfaction at the three TEPCO executives facing charges over negligence, but this shocking admission comes as AFP reports, conservation group Greenpeace warned that “signs of mutations in trees and DNA-damaged worms beginning to appear,” while “vast stocks of radiation” mean that forests cannot be decontaminated.
In an interview with The Telegraph to mark the fifth anniversary of the tragedy, Naoto Kan described the panic and disarray at the highest levels of the Japanese government as it fought to control multiple meltdowns at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.
He said he considered evacuating the capital, Tokyo, along with all other areas within 160 miles of the plant, and declaring martial law. “The future existence of Japan as a whole was at stake,” he said. “Something on that scale, an evacuation of 50 million, it would have been like a losing a huge war.”Mr Kan admitted he was frightened and said he got “no clear information” out of Tepco, the plant’s operator. He was “very shocked” by the performance of Nobuaki Terasaka, his own government’s key nuclear safety adviser. “We questioned him and he was unable to give clear responses,” he said.
“We asked him – do you know anything about nuclear issues? And he said no, I majored in economics.”
“When we got the report that power had been cut and the coolant had stopped working, that sent a shiver down my spine,” Mr Kan said. “From March 11, when the incident happened, until the 15th, the effects [of radioactive contamination] were expanding geographically.
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The Worst Nuclear Disaster in US History That You’ve Never Heard About
The Worst Nuclear Disaster in US History That You’ve Never Heard About
The United States government deliberately hid “the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history,” according to experts and an in-depth investigation by NBC4 Southern California. Whistleblowers have also come forward to expose the little-known catastrophe, which occurred north of Los Angeles in 1959 and leaked over 300 times the allowable amount of radiation into surrounding neighborhoods. That contamination is now linked to up to a 60% increase in cancer in the area, but the government still refuses to acknowledge its colossal mistake.
The ongoing tragedy was driven by America’s darkest demons, from dogmatic militarism to aggressive corporatism, and ongoing government and corporate efforts to cover-up the disaster are nothing short of staggering.
In 1947 — two years after the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Japan — the North American Aviation corporation opened a 2,800 acre nuclear test site in Ventura County, just miles from the San Fernando and Simi Valleys — two adjacent valleys located north and northwest of the city of Los Angeles. North American Aviation amassed power during World War II, when it produced more aircraft than any other company and flexed its muscles as an early and powerful player in America’s emerging military-industrial complex. One of its expansions came in the form of building the Santa Susana Field Lab (SSFL), where researchers would perform top-secret nuclear tests involving rocket engineering, missiles, and nuclear energy and power.
“The Worst Nuclear Disaster in U.S. History”
For twelve years, things ran smoothly, but on July 1, high levels of radiation leaked from the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE). Workers initiated a contamination cleanup and started and stopped the reactor for two weeks. On July 13, however, the situation grew far more dire: a power surge occurred in one of the nuclear reactors and employees were unable to shut it down.
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