The Fukushima nuclear disaster took place in Japan on March 11th, 2011. The events that caused the actual disaster rooted from the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, which was the largest disaster to hit japan since 1986. In general the natural disasters that hit, set off a huge nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The disaster consisted of a series of failures at the power plant such as nuclear meltdowns and releases of radioactive materials.
Within the days that followed the disaster, the 3 major reactors at the power plant, experienced full meltdowns. This series of events affected Japan in a huge way because Japan gets almost all of its energy from nuclear power plants. Not only did the disaster influence the way in which Japans’ energy was distributed throughout, but the leak of radioactive material affected the atmosphere and environment.
After the earthquake struck, all affected plants shut down immediately, the plants that were affected weren’t built to handle a tsunami and earthquake of this severity and to this extent.
Several of the plant workers at Fukushima were injured badly, or killed by the conditions of the earthquake and the tsunami.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/fukushima_accident_inf129.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/26/japan-fukushima-disaster-probe_n_1169837.html