Fukushima Disaster
March 11th, 2011: An under water earthquake
about 400 kilometers northeast from Tokyo with a
magnitude of 9.0 on the richter scale hits Japan
and destroys – before unleashing a tsunami – a
vast amount of power lines. The nuclear power
plant Fukushima Daichii goes offline, an
automatic quick response system drives control
rods between the nuclear fuel rods in all three
active reactors, in order to prevent further
fissioning. In order to keep the amount of cooling
water in the reactors constant, a system of diesel
generators goes online and provides the cooling
pumps with power. These generators become
however heavily damaged as a 14 meter high
tsunami wave spills over the protective wall in
front of the power plant and sweeps over the
compound. Cooling systems go offline. Nuclear
fuel rods, deprived of cooling water, are now half
exposed. Evacuations of residents within a three
kilometer radius of the plant begin. The radius is
later enlarged to twenty kilometers as the
situation worsens.
March 12th, 2011: A huge amount of steam
pressure is detected within reactor block 1, as
the fuel rods cook up the remaing cooling water.
In an attempt to prevent an explosion, authorities
allow the power provider TEPCO to release
controlled amounts of radioactive steam into the
atmosphere. These efforts are however without
avail: the first hydrogen explosion destroys the
reactor building around reactor 1 about six hours
later. Ocean water mixed with boric oxide is
pumped into the reactor, in order to hinder
further explosions. This very measure, along side
of steam discharging, is also taken in reactor
block 3, as steam pressure begins reaching
dangerous levels.
March 13th, 2011: Pressure continues to increase
in reactor block 3.
March 14th, 2011: A second hydrogen explosion
destroys the building around reactor block 3,
harming seven workers. Five of them are
contaminated. In the meantime the cooling
systems in reactor block 2 have gone offline, the
nuclear fuel rods here are completely dry.
March 15th, 2011: A third explosion rips through
reactor block 2, as the pressure continues to
increase. A hole is punched through the reactor
core, allowing large amounts of nuclear waste to
flow into the enviroment.
There's Terrible News From Japan Today
Large amounts of radioactive isotopes were
released into the water and atmosphere during
the Fukushima disaster, the most common of
them being iodine 131 and caesium-137. Iodine
131 has a halflife of 8 days, whereas caesium-137
needs 30 years, in order to decay to it’s half.
Caesium-137 is especially dangerous due to it’s
salt-like consistence and is easily ingested and
distributed throughout the human body. It’s often
found in soft tissues and has the highest
concentration in muscle fibers. It emits beta and
gamma rays while decaying and often causes
cancer decades after coming into contact with an
organism. Large amounts of caesium-137 were
released from Fukushima not only into the air,
but also into the ocean, contaminating various
fish populations and spreading mutations
throughout many marine food chains. This
counter shows the estimated decay of the
caesium-137 amounts released during the
Fukushima disaster.