The disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011 was one that should have never happened. Looking back, a perfect storm of old technology, damage from the tsunami, and system failures is to blame for the meltdown.
Reactors 1-3, ones most affected, rode out the quake without serious damage. It was the tsunamis that fallowed that started the chain reaction. On March 11, 2011 at 2:46pm a 9.0 earthquake hit off shore northeast of Japan, it lasted about 6 minutes. As expected, the 11 reactors at the four nearby nuclear plants were shutdown automatically when the quake hit. When the two plates on the ocean floor below slid roughly 164 feet, Japan as a whole shifted east and a colossal wall of water began to speed toward the shore. When a severe …show more content…
An hour after the quake, the nearly 50-foot wave that hit the Fukushima plant effectively cutting all power to the plant. Each reactor has three different safety systems to keep the fuel rods from melting due to the heat produced by the nuclear fission. The first circulates water through the rods, but this system failed due to the power outage. The second, spays the rods with coolant, these were ran off diesel engines. The tsunami caused the 12 of 13 these diesel generators to fail, mainly due to their placement underground. With the power gone, the generators had switched to battery power, these were also damaged by the seawater, thusly were of little help. The third and final safety system takes the steam from the reactor, cools it and puts it back into the reactor. The problem this time was that the water level in the reactor had dropped below the rods, probably due to a leak caused by the quake. With all three safety systems failing the rods continued to heat and the steam build up. As a last ditch effort, seawater was pumped into the reactor and its containment vessel. Eventually the steam that filled the building built up to the point where it gave enough to cause the exterior drywall of the
Reactors 1-3, ones most affected, rode out the quake without serious damage. It was the tsunamis that fallowed that started the chain reaction. On March 11, 2011 at 2:46pm a 9.0 earthquake hit off shore northeast of Japan, it lasted about 6 minutes. As expected, the 11 reactors at the four nearby nuclear plants were shutdown automatically when the quake hit. When the two plates on the ocean floor below slid roughly 164 feet, Japan as a whole shifted east and a colossal wall of water began to speed toward the shore. When a severe …show more content…
An hour after the quake, the nearly 50-foot wave that hit the Fukushima plant effectively cutting all power to the plant. Each reactor has three different safety systems to keep the fuel rods from melting due to the heat produced by the nuclear fission. The first circulates water through the rods, but this system failed due to the power outage. The second, spays the rods with coolant, these were ran off diesel engines. The tsunami caused the 12 of 13 these diesel generators to fail, mainly due to their placement underground. With the power gone, the generators had switched to battery power, these were also damaged by the seawater, thusly were of little help. The third and final safety system takes the steam from the reactor, cools it and puts it back into the reactor. The problem this time was that the water level in the reactor had dropped below the rods, probably due to a leak caused by the quake. With all three safety systems failing the rods continued to heat and the steam build up. As a last ditch effort, seawater was pumped into the reactor and its containment vessel. Eventually the steam that filled the building built up to the point where it gave enough to cause the exterior drywall of the