Fukushima 3 years later

The disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Power Plant resulted in a meltdown of three of the plants six nuclear reactors. A giant tsunami which crashed into the coast of Japan where the Fukushima Power Plant was located caused the plant to meltdown. Shortly after the tsunami, the plant began leaking nuclear radiation into the environment, which quickly began spilling into the nearby sea. The Fukushima Power Plant meltdown is the largest nuclear accident recorded since Chernobyl (1986) in Ukraine. Together, these events are considered to be the two worst accidents in nuclear power plant history.

Today, over three years since the tsunami struck, the most serious issue with clean up surrounds the large amounts of water which have been contaminated by radioactive materials that have leaked from the damaged reactors. It is expected to take many decades to be able to completely clean up this toxic radioactive water. Most of the efforts over the last three years have been to contain the contaminated water to keep it from further poisoning the ocean that surrounds Fukushima. Unfortunately, the addition of underground concrete walls surrounding the plant have not drastically reduced the leaks.  At this point, no deaths have been directly recorded in relations to short term radiation exposure from the plant. However, nearly 20,000 lives were lost as a result of the tsunami itself.

After investigation by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission it was determined that the disaster could have been avoided. The commission discovered that the plant was nowhere near prepared to withstand the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that followed. It was also discovered that the plant did not meet basic safety requirements, which are common around the nuclear power industry. Another study, which compared Japanese power plants along the coastline showed that they are particularly ill, prepared for tsunamis. If the proper safety measures were set in place, the incident at Fukushima could have been drastically lessened or even avoided all together.