Fukushima three years later
On March 11, 2011, The Great East Japan Earthquake struck, having a magnitude
of 9.0. Not only did this extreme earthquake do a considerable amount of damage
it caused “a 15 meter tsunami
that disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi
reactors, causing a nuclear accident. All three cores largely melted in the
first three days.” The reactors were allegedly supposed to withstand the worst
earthquake conditions.
Three years later, “a dark threat of further tragedy yet
hangs over Fukushima. On the fourth floor of Reactor Number 4—the reactor that exploded on the first day
of the earthquake—1,331 spent fuel rods remain stored in cooling water in a
large steel tank. The tank, jolted by the quake, tilts to about 30 degrees. The
six reactors at Fukushima have produced 14,225 spent fuel rods, all of which
are stored in the same way at the reactor sites. To underscore the lethal
potential of this situation, a single exposed spent fuel rod, 4 meters-long and
1 centimeter in diameter, will kill a man in four seconds.” Although it has
been three years since the Fukushima meltdown Japan is still dealing with the effects
of contamination on everything that comes in contact with it. The people who
resided near Fukushima had to leave their lives behind, making the area surrounding
Fukushima somewhat of a no-man’s-land.
“Neither the Japanese government nor Tokyo Electric knows
how to dispose of the radioactive water, which presently amounts to about
500,000 tons, 400 tons per day, every day. This water was used to cool the
meltdowns. Worse, underground water veins that originate from the nearby
mountain range, amounting to about 1,000 tons a day, run beneath the meltdown
reactors and must be pumped and stored before the water runs amok in rivers and
the Pacific.” The issue of the toxic water disposal is very concerning and
still very prevalent today. Tanks have begun leaking due to the extreme
temperature of the water itself. The Nuclear Regulation Authority came up with
a solution “Not every drop of the contaminated water is imminently dangerous to
our health, so the less radioactive water should and must be dumped offshore,
into the Pacific Ocean.”
http://mashable.com/2014/03/11/three-years-after-fukushima/
http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/170736
