Fukushima Daiichi is a Japanese term referring to a nuclear power plant. Fukushima is the name of the prefecture where the plant is located, and Daiichi means number one. Fukushima’s prefector is located on the northeaster cost of Japan. (See the map).
Fkushima Daiichi is one of the world’s largest nuclear power plant. It was started on 1971. Now, the capacity of this plant is 1,933 MW.
Huge Disaster:
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has 6 units of operation, and the japanese were planning to build two more but a huge disaster occurred.
On March 11, 2011, 02:45 PM Japan Standard Time (GMT +09:00), an earthquake categorised as 9.0 MW stroke the northeastern coast of Japan where the nuclear plant is located. Before the earthquake happened, unites 4, 5, and 6 were out of service due to a regular maintenance. Unites 1, 2, and 3, however, were up an running. When the earthquake happened, units 1-3 where automatically shut-down and the fuel was being cooled down by the emergency generators which was designed for such accident. Every thing was running smoothly till the follow-up tsunami stroke the entire plant. The waves of the tsunami were about 14 meters high casing the cooling generators to stop. That led the reactors to overheat, then meltdown. The meltdown has caused a huge explosion which released a significant amount of radiation from the units exploded. The explosion spread a considerable amount of smoke and the government has evacuated the near by area. They evacuated residents who lives within 30-kilometer from the plant.
As of April 20, 2012, all the units where shutdown except for unites 5 and 6 because they were not running on the day of the disaster. They were under regular maintenance.
Due to this accidents, governments such as Germany has taken steps towards safe renewable energy. The question is, will they succeed and lead the entire globe to take the same step?
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant
What can japanese authorities do to avoid another disaster ?