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How Did This Happen?
Back on March 11, 2011 tragedy struck in northern Japan when a powerful earthquake caused a massive tsunami that crashed into Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and caused multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns.
The earthquake had been building up in the Earth’s crust for decades and when it finally released the earth moved more than 20 meters over a 500-mile zone and the resulting eathquake released as much energy as a 45-megaton hydrogen bomb. This is 30,000 times more powerful as the bomb that leveled Hiroshima!
This was the fourth strongest earthquake recorded since 1900 and the strongest earthquake to strike Japan in recorded history. It actually shifted the Earth’s axis by somewhere between 4 and 10 inches, altering the length of a day by nearly 2 microseconds.
When The Tsunami Hit!
The tsunami slammed into the coast of Japan at a height of more than 40 meters (140 feet) before it swept over the land, killing more than 15,000 people and destroying or damaging more than a million buildings. This was among the worst natural disasters to hit a nation known for natural disasters, and that was only the start.
When the earthquake hit there were three operating reactors (units 1, 2, and 3). Units 4, 5, and 6 were shut down, albeit with spent reactor fuel sitting in pools that required cooling. The quake itself caused the operating reactors to scram (shut down) as they were designed to do.
With the electrical grid busted by the earthquake, Fukushima’s emergency diesel generators kicked on and powered the site including cooling water pumps—again, as they were designed to do.
But then the tsunami hit. Seawater climbed over the seawall and inundated the diesel generators, shutting them down. Lacking cooling water, the fuel—including the radioactive fission products—heated up and began to melt.
How to check radiation levels in your area from your vehicle air filter or exhaust.
Six years later, residents are unwillingly returning to Fukushima
Thousands of residents who were evacuated from their homes in 2011 after a meltdown in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been granted permission by the Japanese government to return to their former homes.
At the moment, around 52.000 former residents are waiting to be allowed back in. Most of them are not eager to return to an irradiated area but have no other choice. If they leave their homes unattended for another year, they risk losing their housing subsidies.
The Japanese government explains that it will only allow resettlement of those areas that are deemed safe and free of radiation. A recent study carried out by officials shows that some areas in the Exclusion zone, especially those 60 kilometers away from the plant, are not as irradiated as they were six years ago, meaning that they are safe for humans.
