Tag Archives: Death

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

2011 was a year very unfortunate for humanity full of natural disasters, especially for Japan where a series of earthquakes and tsunamis occurred and caused mass destruction. Fukushima nuclear plant was not an excpetion which only made things much worse. A series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, and releases of radioactive materials have occured which caused panic and chaos everywhere across Japan: cities and towns were evacuated. It was the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, and only the second disaster (along with Chernobyl) to measure Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

When the earthquake occurred the Reactor 4 had been defueled. Immediately after the earthquake, the remaining reactors 1-3 shut down automatically, and emergency generators came online to power electronics and coolant systems. Even though the tsunami following the earthquake quickly flooded the low-lying rooms in which the emergency generators were housed. The flooded generators failed, cutting power to the critical pumps that must continuously circulate coolant water through a nuclear reactor for several days in order to keep it from melting down after being shut down. As the pumps stopped, the reactors overheated and stopped working. As the water went away the reactor fuel rods began to overheat rapidly. In the hours and days that followed, Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced full meltdown.

Fukushima-meltdown-prevailing-winds1

The Japanese government concluded that the total amount of radiation released into the atmosphere was approximately one-tenth which was released during the Chernobyl disaster. Significant amounts of radioactive material have also been released into ground and ocean waters around Japan.

Sources used:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18718486
http://www.houseoffoust.com/fukushima/blueprint.html
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/japanquake/index.html

 

 

 

Hurricane Sandy and how global warming may have contributed to its destructiveness.

Hurricane Sandy approaching The Statue of Liberty.

For the past several centuries humanity has experienced a lot of natural disasters like tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis and even earthquakes. Millions of people died because of such events but nothing changed ever since. In the 21st century the amount of natural disasters seems to grow and the recent events which have occurred in the  Caribbean and the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States during late October 2012 have shown that we’re not protected by the modern technology and that we need to start thinking about the reasons behind such disasters. “Preliminary estimates of losses due to damage and business interruption are estimated at $65.6 billion (2012 USD), which would make it the second-costliest Atlantic hurricane, behind only Hurricane Katrina. At least 253 people were killed along the path of the storm in seven countries. The severe and widespread damage the storm caused in the United States, as well as its unusual merge with a frontal system, led the media and several government agencies to nickname the hurricane Superstorm Sandy.” – Article by Wikipedia clearly shows us how dangerous can such disasters be for humanity, but the most important question is if the hurricane could be caused by the Global Warming effect. For now, it is already clear that the climate change may have contributed a lot to Sandy’s impacts worse than it could have been.

Hurricane Sandy in NY.

There are several ways how the climate changes might have changed the impacts: sea level rise; anomalous warm sea surface temperatures; and possibly because of an unusual weather environment that some scientists think started the rapid disappearing Arctic sea ice. Let’s have a detailed look on these possible cases.

Firstly, “Water temperatures off the East Coast were unusually warm this summer — so much so that New England fisheries officials observed significant shifts northward in cold water fish such as cod” – Mentions huffingtonpost.com. This leads us to a conclusion that Hurricane Sandy might have used such environment because it is the ideal energy source for the hurricane.  Secondly,  an anomalous weather pattern in the northern hemisphere made Hurricane Sandy much more worse as well as for many other people on the East coast. Thirdly, scientists came to conclusion that the recent frequent events might be related to the loss of Arctic ice, which could be one of the most visible consequences of modern global warming. “Global warming heated the water of the Gulf and Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in greatly increased energy and water vapor in the air above the water. When that happens, extremely energetic and wet storms occur more frequently and ferociously. These systemic effects of global warming came together to produce the ferocity and magnitude of Hurricane Sandy.” – States George Lakoff, professor of linguistics in his blog(http://blogs.berkeley.edu).

 

These conclusions clearly show us that recent man-made Global Waming has contributed quite a lot to Hurricane Sandy and if we still keep not caring about this problem – the disasters which might occur in future might be fatal for everyone on the Earth.