Fukushima nuclear plant

Another nuclear disaster rated equal to Chernobyl happened at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan on the 11th of March 2011. Nuclear reactors were damaged by strong earthquakes and tsunami. Crisis level at the Fukushima nuclear plant was raised to level 7 after 1 month of the disaster. Level 7 is classified by IAEA as the worst level on an international scale. 

However, there are problems. The main problem associated with a nuclear power station is that the reactor produces highly radioactive waste materials. These waste materials are difficult to store and cannot be disposed of very easily. Also, leaks of radioactive material have occurred at various sites throughout the world. Accidents at a small number of nuclear power stations, such as Three Mile Island in the US (1979) and Chernobyl in the Ukraine (1986) have led to a great deal of concern about their safety. More recently, in March 2011 a major nuclear accident happened at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in northern Japan. On this occasion the accident was not caused as a result of the plant itself undergoing a problem, but as a result of an earthquake near Japan that gave rise to a tsunami. This damaged essential... 

Just 8 years later, the reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant catastrophe released enough radioactivity that it is plausible that some of the people in the nearby communities will sicken, and some of them will die. 

The 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant accident How and why it happened... 

While the world s attention was focused on the dangerous work being performed at Japan s Fukushima nuclear power plant, a larger cleanup task looms ahead — one in which the damaged nuclear reactor is just one component. 

D. Biello, "Partial Meltdowns Led to Hydrogen Explosions at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant" in Scientific American, (2011). 

Japan imported its first commercial nuclear power reactor from the UK. Tokai-1, a 160 MWe gas-cooled (Magnox) reactor built by GEC. It began operating in July 1966 and continued until March 1998. Prior to the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, and the nuclear disasters that resulted from it, Japan generated 30% of the country s electricity from its 50 nuclear reactors. The 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused the failure of cooling systems at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant on March 11 and resulted in the closure of many of Japan s nuclear plants for safety inspections. The last of Japan s 50 reactors (Tomari-3) went offline for maintenance on May 5,2012, leaving Japan completely without nuclear-produced electrical power for the first time since 1970. 

Plants can serve as bioaccumulators of uranium, a topic that has recently received special attention after the accidents at the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power plants. Frame 3.1 verbally quotes parts of a notice published in one of the leading scientific journals in the field of environmental monitoring (CaldweU et al. 2012). 

We may all say accidents happen. However, their occurrence may not only take human lives, destroy millions of dollars in property and lost business, they may also cost us our jobs and reputations. The Bhopal, India, accident in 1984 released methyl isocyanate and caused over 2500 fatalities. A petroleum refinery blew up in Houston, Texas, in 1989, killing 23 workers and damaging properly totaling U.S. 750 million, spewing debris from the explosion over an area of 9 km. Many thought that after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the United States in 1979 and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in Ukraine in 1986, we would finally get a handle on how to prevent accidents. Unfortunately, the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 proved otherwise (see Picture 2.1). 

A man-made disaster The TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the resnlt of collusion between the government, the regnlators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties.. .. Therefore, we con-clnde that the accident was clearly man-made. We believe that the root canses were the organizational and regulatory systems that supported faulty rationales for decisions and actions, rather than issues relating to the competency of any specific individual. 

Politically, the impact of the Fukushima accidents was variable. Notably, Germany announced immediate closure of several nuclear plants, with an intention to shutdown the others by 2023. 

According to the European Nuclear Society, as of the year 2012, there were 435 nuclear power plants operating around the world. With an installed electric net capacity of about 368 GW, these reactors were running in 31 countries. The country with the largest nuclear capacity is the United States with 104 power reactors followed by France (58), Japan (50, though by May 2012, all of these had been temporarily taken out of commission because of concern over the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant accident), and the Russian Federation (33). As of 2012, there were 63 nuclear power plants with a total installed capacity of 61 GW under construction in 15 countries. 

Before the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Japans energy policy was to expand nuclear power so that over 50 percent of its electricity would come from nuclear plants by 2030. Japan had planned to build fourteen more nuclear reactors, but that plan has changed. Instead, Japan is now looking at developing renewable energy resources like wind turbines, solar power, and biomass. 

During walkthroughs at the Fukushima Daiichi plants, personnel would also enter and assess the emergency diesel generator rooms. Although nuclear plants generate... 

Furthermore, the issues raised by Deepwater Horizon are not confined to the offshore oil and gas industry. At the time of writing, the consequences of the severe damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan are still being ascertained. But it is clear that those consequences will be profound substantial quantities of radioactive materials have been released, a significant fraction of Japan s power-generating capability is lost forever, and the cost of clean-up and remediation is going to be enormous. Indeed, the Fukushima accident may result in a massive slowdown in the construction... 

The Fukushima nuclear power plants will never generate electricity commercially again. This means that the Japanese economy will suffer shortages of electrical power for many years to come, even if oil or gas-based replacement power plants can be quickly built and commissioned. 

A (a) The Three Mile Island nuclear reactor, site of a small nuclear accident in 1979. Oj) The Chernobyl nuclear reactor, site of a major nuclear accident in 1986. (c) Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan before the nuclear accident in 2011. 

A few of the worst nuclear disasters in history are those which took place at Three Mile Island in the USA in 1979, at Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986, and more recently following an earthquake in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. Nuclear disasters are very dangerous if they do occur, and the possibility of a nuclear disaster represents a primary reason that some people oppose the construction of new nuclear power plants. 

Fukushima—Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Complex, Japan Earthquake and tsunami leading to ongoing release of radioactive materials and enormous financial loss. 

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