What can we learn from Fukushima disaster?

The overarching lesson learned from the Fukushima Daiichi accident is that nuclear plant licensees and their regulators must actively seek out and act on new information about hazards that have the potential to affect the safety of nuclear plants.

What is the story all about Fukushima nuclear disaster?

Following a major earthquake, a 15-metre tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors, causing a nuclear accident beginning on 11 March 2011. All three cores largely melted in the first three days.

Was the Fukushima disaster human error?

While Japanese authorities consider releasing radioactive water from a further nuclear power plant, the Fukushima II Daini plant, a report highlighting human error in the disaster has been presented to the IAEA.

What happened at Fukushima as a result of the nuclear disaster?

At the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the gigantic wave surged over defences and flooded the reactors, sparking a major disaster. Authorities set up an exclusion zone which grew larger and larger as radiation leaked from the plant, forcing more than 150,000 people to evacuate from the area.

How did Fukushima affect the environment?

The reactor accident in Fukushima in 2011 resulted in the release of radioactive material (radionuclides) into the atmosphere. The radioactive fallout was dispersed locally, regionally and globally over land and sea by the weather (wind and precipitation).

Was the Fukushima disaster preventable?

The Fukushima accident was preventable, if international best practices and standards had been followed, if there had been international reviews, and had common sense prevailed in the interpretation of pre-existing geological and hydrodynamic findings.

What caused the Fukushima earthquake?

The earthquake was caused by the rupture of a stretch of the subduction zone associated with the Japan Trench, which separates the Eurasian Plate from the subducting Pacific Plate.

Who was responsible for Fukushima nuclear disaster?

The executives — Tsunehisa Katsumata, Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro — were the only people charged over the handling of the disaster, which forced more than 160,000 people in northeastern Japan to evacuate their homes to escape nuclear fallout that left areas surrounding the plant uninhabitable.

What caused the explosion at Fukushima?

The hydrogen explosion in reactor 4 was caused by hydrogen coming out from the spent fuel pool. In that pool, there were (and are) used nuclear fuel rods that released and still release decay heat. As the water level dropped, the used fuel rods were exposed to the air and hydrogen was formed.

How did Fukushima affect marine life?

Overall, the radioactivity levels in the marine biota near Fukushima were lower than predicted by some early studies immediately following the accident, and exposures were too low for acute effects at the population level to be observed in marine organisms ranging from microalgae to mollusks to fish.