When reading about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster one is overwhelmed with information.  Even now we are still learning about this disaster, and most importantly ways to prevent it in the future.  I will not be able to cover the entire disaster or even go into great detail regarding the results of this disaster but below is an overview of what many consider to be the most tragic occurrence in our recent history. In March 2011 when the northeast coast of Japan experienced a very serious 9.0 earthquake and damaging tsunami very few could predict how bad things would get.  The tsunami caused severe damage to the nuclear reactor at Fukushima Daiichi which caused Fukushima Daiichi to become the cause of deaths (of all ages), some of the worst long term health issues, and the site of one of the worst nuclear accidents that the world has ever known.

At least 20,000 people died as a result of the earthquake and tsunami.  As tragic as it is, even more deaths are predicted as a result of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear disaster.  It occurred when the tsunami knocked out one of the cooling systems which caused the nuclear reactors to melt.  But due to the fact that roads, bridges, utility lines, power, and many forms of communication were down the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was not able to make fast progressive decisions because they were not able to be provided with any data. For days after the disaster they were desperate for information on what was happening.

What was happening occurs as follows: the day after the tsunami occurred, a spark ignited the pressurized atmosphere of hydrogen and steam within the containment building that surrounds Reactor Unit No. 1 which caused the containment building at Unit 3 to explode the very next day causing a huge release of radiation.  On March 16th orders went out from Japan demanding an evacuation from all areas within a dozen miles of Fukushima which equaled around 160,000 people. From the beginning the results of this disaster appeared very bleak. A month after the disaster occurred the government of Japan announced that the severity of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster had reached a level 7.  A level 7 is the highest on the International Nuclear Event Scale, which had only been reached once before in the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster. Even two months after the incident, TEPCO and the government still struggled to bring the reactors under control.

Although the speed of evacuation and the radius of evacuation is a critique many critics make against the government, no one can critique the fact that the government knew how serious and dire this situation was and treated it as so.  Regardless of how serious the government understood the situation to be, the results from this disaster are incredibly tragic. Even years later we are still learning more about this disaster and about the damage that it still threatens. The biggest health threat this disaster caused was radiation exposure.  According to Jan Beyea, who is from the US expert consulting service Consulting in the Public Interest, believes that the number of deaths that will come from cancer as a result of the radiation exposure is higher than originally predicted.  He says that “although an individual’s risk is small, the mid-range, predicted number of future mortalities from cancer is closer to 1000 than the 125 figure calculated without considering long-term groundshine [gamma radiation emitted from radioactive materials deposited on the ground].” The number of expected mortalities has increased over the year due to the fact that land is now contaminated with caesium-134 and caesium-137 and can cause cancer years after initial exposure that was not originally calculated.

RSC.org illustrates the importance of this situation when they illustrate that “if nuclear power is to have a future, its proponents must indicate how they can make such reactors fail safe and how they will assure that siting decisions do indeed take account of possible, or even likely, natural events.”

Sources:

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/01/reassessing-health-effects-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-accident

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/japans-quake/lessons-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-disaster

The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima