As one of the world’s leaders in the technological advances Japan can be considered to be one of most advanced and developed nations. Despite the great advances that have been innovated and developed Japan is still quite vulnerable, like any other nation, to natural disasters. Natural disasters are unpredictable and more often than not end up to be very catastrophic on the land on and the people who inhabit it. Earthquakes have the ability the level buildings to ground and in some cases in can cause a tsunami. In Japan there is a nuclear power plant in Fukushima Daiichi that was unable to withstand the strength of the natural occurrences and caused a meltdown of its core reactors. The goal of this paper is to inform readers of a general history
…show more content…
On March 11, 2011 after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, a 15-metre tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors and within the first three days all three cores largely melted (World Nuclear Association 2016). The tsunami flooded the Daiichi plant which disabled 12 out of the 13 back-up generators on site, disabled the heat exchangers for dumping reactor waste heat and decay heat to the sea which eventually caused the three units to lose the ability to sustain proper reactor cooling and water circulation functions (World Nuclear Association 2016). After two weeks, the three reactors (units 1-3) were stabilized with water addition and by July they were being cooled with recycled water from the new treatment plant. It was only declared an official 'cold shutdown condition ' in mid-December 2011. The FDNPP accident was rated 7 on the INES scale, due to high radioactive releases over days 4 to 6, eventually a total of about 940 PBq (World Nuclear Association …show more content…
Restrictions for tap water were canceled by April 1, 2011. 131-I levels dropped faster than expected suggesting a shorter effective half-life in tap water than 8 days and did not indicate any exceedances of the early regulatory limit for 134Cs + 137Cs of 200 Bq/kg (Merz, et al, 2015). Later monitoring did not show any detectable 134Cs + 137Cs in tap
On March 11, 2011 after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, a 15-metre tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors and within the first three days all three cores largely melted (World Nuclear Association 2016). The tsunami flooded the Daiichi plant which disabled 12 out of the 13 back-up generators on site, disabled the heat exchangers for dumping reactor waste heat and decay heat to the sea which eventually caused the three units to lose the ability to sustain proper reactor cooling and water circulation functions (World Nuclear Association 2016). After two weeks, the three reactors (units 1-3) were stabilized with water addition and by July they were being cooled with recycled water from the new treatment plant. It was only declared an official 'cold shutdown condition ' in mid-December 2011. The FDNPP accident was rated 7 on the INES scale, due to high radioactive releases over days 4 to 6, eventually a total of about 940 PBq (World Nuclear Association …show more content…
Restrictions for tap water were canceled by April 1, 2011. 131-I levels dropped faster than expected suggesting a shorter effective half-life in tap water than 8 days and did not indicate any exceedances of the early regulatory limit for 134Cs + 137Cs of 200 Bq/kg (Merz, et al, 2015). Later monitoring did not show any detectable 134Cs + 137Cs in tap