Nuclear meltdown in Japan

Part of: Nuclear accidents and incidents

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The 8.9 magnitude quake has left thousands of people dead and triggered a tsunami that devastated parts of Japan. The reactors shut down due to the earthquake account for 18 percent of Japan's nuclear power-generating capacity, according to the World Nuclear Association. Many of Japan’s 55 nuclear power plants are located in earthquake-prone zones such as Fukushima and Fukui on the coast. The IAEA estimates that around a fifth of nuclear reactors around the world are currently operating in areas of significant seismic activity.

ARTICLES
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mainichi.jp

[ 16.01.2012 ]
COMMENT: Russia ignoring case for beefing up nuclear disaster preparedness plans – even at risk of losing moscow to a fallout plume in major accident
MOSCOW – All nuclear power plants are dangerous. Each and every one of the world’s reactors in operation is inherently susceptible to an accident – something even the nuclear industry would acknowledge is true. But where countries like Japan strive to learn the tragic lessons of nuclear disasters such as the recent catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi, Russia, which remains a staunch proponent of nuclear energy, fails to take the potential threat seriously and prepare adequate population protection measures.
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TEPCO

[ 27.12.2011 ]
Panel’s interim report condemns response to disaster at Fukushima Daiichi
As the reactors at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant overheated and three of its reactors melted down, poorly trained operators misread a key backup system and waited too long to start pumping water into the units, a panel of Japanese government investigators reported Monday.
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flickr

[ 19.12.2011 ]
Japan’s PM declares Fukushima stable – environmentalists beg to differ
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan declared Friday that the end has come to the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, saying technicians have regained control of the melted-down reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
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Kyodo

[ 22.11.2011 ]
COMMENT: A chronicle of nuclear decay: Over half a year later, what have we learnt from Fukushima?
MOSCOW – Eight months since the fateful March of 2011, one of the world’s worst nuclear catastrophes that enflamed Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has ceased to be the stuff of front-page frenzy. We will likely still see radioactive goods and food products popping up on the store shelves around the world, reminding us of the terrors of nuclear energy, but for many, the panic caused by the threat of contamination spreading silently in a far-off country has become yesterday’s news. But does it mean that the problems of Fukushima – and, indeed, of the global nuclear power industry – are soon to be over? Not by a long shot.
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Asahi Shimbun

[ 21.11.2011 ]
COMMENT: Sobered by Fukushima lessons, Japan revamps first-response plans, expands evac zones around nuclear power plants – but Russia takes no heed
The consequences of the nuclear crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) have proven far more serious than the operator company or oversight authorities could have ever anticipated: Now Japan revises its first-response plans for populations residing near NPPs, introducing an unconditional evacuation provision for the nearest residences and expanding the protective planning zone to fifty kilometres. In Russia, the authorities keep insisting adverse effects of even a severe accident would not reach beyond three kilometres, and no evacuation would be needed at all.
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NISA

[ 09.11.2011 ]
Chain reaction scare at Fukushima only fission incident, say authorities, but environmentalists still fear criticality
A scare last week in which technicians and observers warned of a possible chain reaction in Fukushima Daiichi’s destroyed reactor No. 2 has now been determined to be a “spontaneous fission incident” – a process of radioactive decay that does not involve a chain reaction.
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