Meltdown: Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima
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Those towns are wildly different today than they were in 2011. In 2015, the evacuation order was lifted for the town of Naraha, about 9 miles from the plant. Two years later, residents were allowed to return to the towns of Namie and Iitate. About 40 percent of Okuma was opened up in 2019, as were about 1.5 square miles of Futaba in 2020. But residents have been slow to return. By 2018, only about 2,200 people had returned to Naraha, a town that had once had almost 8,000 residents. Two years after the evacuation order was lifted in Namie, about 1,000 people out of a former population of 21,000 had come back to their homes. Three hundred ninety-eight residents, out of the original population of 10,341, registered to return on the opening of Okuma, and fewer than 800 of the former population of 8,000 committed to return to Futaba. Of those who did move back, the majority were elderly.
The reasons so few came back are complicated. After living elsewhere for years, many had put down roots in new towns. Children were attending schools; parents had found jobs. The population of Fukushima had already been declining for years before the accident, as residents left the rural setting for opportunities in cities. With the tsunami, the economy of Fukushima had come to a sudden halt, so there were few opportunities for work for former residents if they returned. But a lot of the evacuees were simply reluctant to come back to towns where pockets of radiation might remain. Many said they felt they had been misled by the Japanese government during the disaster, so they refused to trust the government’s assurances that the towns were safe after the cleanup.
* * *
Outside the Fukushima cleanup zone, life has returned to the coastal towns of the Sanriku Coast. The rubble left by the tsunami has been cleared away, but the towns will never be the same as they were before the disaster. The Japanese government has been working to shore up tsunami defenses along the Tohoku coast. Forty-one-foot seawalls now line 245 miles of coastline. Many towns have enacted laws that prevent people from building on flatlands near the water.
Of those affected by the earthquake and tsunami, more than 47,000 people were still displaced from their homes nine years after the disaster. Most of those were from areas in the evacuation zone around the plant. But even for those who managed to return and rebuild, life is very different from the way it was before the crises. In all, close to 20,000 people died in the Great Tohoku earthquake and the tsunami that followed. Family members and neighbors are gone, and many of the survivors are still dealing with the trauma of seeing their loved ones or homes carried away by the water.
As they have for millennia, the residents of Tohoku have worked to memorialize those they lost—to preserve their memories of loved ones and create lasting reminders of the tsunami for future generations.
The Okawa Elementary School, where so many students and teachers drowned, has been dug out of the mud and swept clean. Students now attend classes in a new building, but the original school still stands as a museum and memorial to the seventy-four students and ten teachers who died there.
New monuments dot the coast. In Natori, a sculpture marks the top of a hill where two hundred people, hoping to escape the tsunami, were killed. Shaped like a seedling to represent the town’s determination to move forward, the sculpture is as tall as the wave that swept the townspeople away, serving as both a memorial and a warning to future residents.
In the town of Rikuzentakata, a single pine tree from a coastal forest of about seventy thousand trees survived the tsunami. But salt water had soaked its roots and eighteen months later, it died. The town preserved the nearly 90-foot-tall tree by creating an exact replica with a steel structure. The “miracle pine” stands today as a symbol of endurance and a reminder of the tsunami.
But one tribute seems to capture the pain of the tsunami victims and survivors more than any other. On a hillside behind Otsuchi, a telephone booth sits amid the long grass and flowers in a sunny garden overlooking the town. It’s a cheerful white structure with a peaked roof, glass panels, and a sign that reads TELEPHONE OF THE WIND. Inside is an old-fashioned rotary phone that has played an unusual role in helping many move on after the disaster.
Its owner, Itaru Sasaki, is a retired fisherman who moved to this spot years ago because of its sweeping views of the sea. On March 11, 2011, he watched from his safe garden on the cliffs as that sea swallowed Otsuchi. In the days following the tsunami, he added the sign to the phone booth that sat in his garden. Survivors, desperate to say goodbye to those they’d lost, began to visit. They stepped inside the glass booth, picked up the receiver of the disconnected old phone, and began to talk to their missing loved ones. “If you tell yourself there’s no sound,” Sasaki says, “there won’t be any sound. But if you listen very closely, you may be able to hear something.”
In the six years after the tsunami, 25,000 people visited Sasaki’s phone booth to leave messages for the dead. They were just some of the millions of Japanese citizens who had begun to find closure after the tsunami, to take the lessons of the disaster and move forward.
TIMELINE
March 11, 2011
P.M.
2:46
The Japan Trench ruptures
The Great Tohoku Earthquake begins
The tsunami is generated
3:27
The first wave of the tsunami reaches the Fukushima Daiichi power plant
3:36
The second wave of the tsunami knocks out backup generators in reactors 1, 2, and 4
9:00
The cooling water in the unit 1 reactor boils down below the tops of the fuel rods
9:00
The operators for unit 2 begin preparing to inject water into the reactor
9:23
The Japanese government orders residents within 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) of the plant to evacuate, and those within 3 to 10 kilometers (1.9 to 6.2 miles) to stay indoors
10:00
The unit 1 radiation level begins to climb
March 12
A.M.
12:34
(8:34 A.M. local time) The tsunami reaches Crescent City, California
2:00
The corium in reactor 1 melts through the bottom of the reactor vessel
4:00
Water injected into unit 1 using fire engines stops the corium before it melts through the primary containment chamber
5:44
The evacuation zone is expanded to a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) radius of Fukushima
7:00
Prime minister Naoto Kan flies to Fukushima to meet with Masao Yoshida
9:00
The mission to vent unit 1 is aborted due to high radiation in the torus room
11:36
The RCIC system in reactor 3 stops working, and low water level triggers the HPCI system
P.M.
12:30
(3:30 P.M. local time) The tsunami reaches Antarctica
2:00
Operators use a compressor to open valves and vent unit 1
2:53
Unit 1 operators run out of fresh water
3:36
The unit 1 reactor building explodes, destroying power cables and injection hoses laid out for units 1 and 2
The evacuation zone is expanded to 20 kilometers (12.4 miles)
7:00
Operators begin injecting seawater into unit 1
March 13
A.M.
The USS Ronald Reagan registers radiation on deck 100 miles from the coast and relocates
2:42
Operators shut down the HPCI in unit 3
2:45
Operators try but fail to open the steam release valves in unit 3
8:41
Venting begins in reactor 3
9:00
The water in unit 3 falls below the tops of the fuel rods
10:40
The unit 3 core begins to melt
P.M.
12:00
Hoses are set up to inject seawater into unit 2
1:00
A battery is hooked up
to control panels to prepare for unit 2 injection/venting
March 14
A.M.
11:01
The unit 3 reactor building explodes, damaging hoses set up to vent unit 2
P.M.
12:00
The unit 2 water level begins to decline, and Yoshida orders injection of seawater
5:00
Water falls below the tops of the fuel rods in unit 2
6:00
Venting of unit 2 begins
7:20
The unit 2 core begins to melt
10:00
The drywell pressure soars in unit 2
March 15
A.M.
6:12
The unit 4 reactor building explodes
Operators hear that large explosion and notice a drop in pressure in the torus of unit 2; they assume the explosion happened there
11:00
Residents within a 20- to 30-kilometer (12.42- to 18.64-mile) radius of the plant are ordered to stay inside
Six hundred and fifty workers evacuate from Fukushima Daiichi; 70, who will become known as the Fukushima 50, stay behind
March 16
The U.S. ambassador to Japan, John V. Roos, recommends that all American citizens living within 50 miles of the plant evacuate
Helicopter check shows that there is water in the spent fuel pool at unit 4
March 17
Four military helicopters attempt to dump seawater into unit 3
March 18
Firefighters from Tokyo spray water into the spent fuel pools at unit 4 using high-pressure hoses
Radiation levels drop low enough to allow workers to return to the plant
March 19
The Japanese health ministry reports that it has found radioactive isotopes in cows’ milk from Fukushima prefecture
March 21
Power is restored to all plant buildings
The Japanese health ministry bans the shipment of milk and produce from four prefectures near Fukushima Daiichi
2013
300 tons of radioactive water are accidentally released from storage at the plant.
2015
The evacuation order for Naraha is lifted
August 2016
Construction of the underground ice wall is completed
2017
The evacuation orders for Namie and Iitate are lifted
2019
The evacuation order for 40% of Okuma is lifted
2020
A small portion of Futaba is reopened.
GLOSSARY
asthenosphere: a layer of Earth’s mantle that lies above the outer core and below the lithosphere; the rising and sinking of molten rock in the asthenosphere creates currents that move tectonic plates
atom: the most basic unit of an element; an atom is made up of a nucleus and the electrons that surround it
chain reaction: a chemical process in which a reaction creates by-products that, in turn, initiate further reactions
cold shutdown: in a nuclear reactor, the state in which the fuel’s temperature is below the boiling point of water (212°F)
containment: in a nuclear power plant, structures surrounding the reactor vessel to prevent radioactive isotopes from escaping into the environment
core: the center of a nuclear reactor, where fission takes place; it includes the fuel rods, control rods, and water
corium: a lavalike substance that forms from the melted core during a meltdown; corium can be made up of fuel rods, structural steel, concrete, and other reactor materials in molten form
critical: a state in which a nuclear reactor is producing enough free neutrons to keep a chain reaction going but not so many that the reaction gets out of control
crust: a layer of the Earth made up of solid rock and minerals that, along with the uppermost mantle, makes up the outermost layer of the Earth (see lithosphere); there are two types of crust—oceanic crust (underlying the ocean basins) and continental crust (making up the continents)
decay heat: thermal energy that continues to be released by nuclear fuel after the reactor has been shut down
displacement: what happens when an object takes the place of water by pushing it out of the way
diverge: to move apart
dosimeter: a device that measures the amount of radiation absorbed over time
drywell: the open space that surrounds the reactor vessel within the primary containment
earthquake: tremors, resulting from a release of energy when a tectonic plate slips, that are felt on the Earth’s surface
electrons: negatively charged particles that surround the nucleus of an atom
element: a chemical component that cannot be broken down into smaller parts through a chemical reaction; it is defined by its atomic number, which is the number of protons in its nucleus
epicenter: the point on Earth’s surface directly above the point from which energy radiates during an earthquake
fission: the act of dividing something into parts; in nuclear fission, the nucleus of an atom is split into two pieces
friction: in physics, a force that resists objects’ sliding over each other
Geiger-Müller counter: a device that measures the amount of radiation emitted by a radioactive substance at any given point in time
hypocenter: the place where a fault ruptures in an earthquake
ionizing radiation: radiation that is energetic enough to knock electrons out of an atom, creating ions
isolation condenser: a system that cools a nuclear reactor by running the steam it produces through a series of cooled pipes to condense back into water
kinetic energy: energy created by motion
liquefaction: the process by which soil or sand takes on the characteristics of a liquid
lithosphere: the solid outermost layer of the Earth, consisting of the uppermost mantle, oceanic crust, and continental crust, which is broken into tectonic plates
Love waves: seismic waves that travel along Earth’s surface and vibrate in a side-to-side motion
magma: a hot, semi-liquid material found deep beneath Earth’s surface; when cooled, it forms rock
mantle: a layer of the Earth between the crust and the core constituting most of Earth’s volume; it includes the uppermost mantle (which also forms the base of the lithosphere), the asthenosphere (below the lithosphere and upon which the tectonic plates float), and the mesosphere (the thickest part of the mantle, lying below the asthenosphere and above the core)
megawatt: a unit of measure equal to 1 million watts; a watt is a measurement of energy released over time
molecule: two or more atoms that are bonded as the result of a chemical reaction
moment magnitude scale: an internationally recognized system for classifying the strength of an earthquake
neutrons: particles found in the nucleus of an atom that are neither positively nor negatively charged
nuclear boiling water reactor: a reactor that uses nuclear fission to produce steam used to generate electricity
nuclear fission: the act of splitting the nucleus of an atom into two parts
nucleus: of an atom, an area that lies at the center of the atom and contains the atom’s most fundamental parts, neutrons and protons
potential energy: stored energy resulting from the position of an item
pressure: the force exerted against a container by molecules pushing against the surface
primary waves (P waves): seismic waves that travel through Earth’s interior; they are able to pass through liquids
protons: positively charged particles found in the nucleus of an atom
radiation: energy that is emitted by an atom as particles break free during radioactive decay
radiation sickness: illness caused by exposure to large amounts of radiation
radioactive: the condition of emitting particles produced by nuclear fission or radioactive decay
radioactive decay: the process by which radioactive i
sotopes break down into more stable forms
radioactive isotope: a variation of an element that is unstable due to extra neutrons in its nucleus; radioactive isotopes emit radiation as they decay toward a more stable form
Rayleigh waves: seismic waves that travel along Earth’s surface and produce a rolling motion
reactor: the part of a nuclear power plant where nuclear fission occurs
ria: an ocean inlet formed when a riverbed flooded
rotational energy: kinetic energy that is the result of an object turning around an axis (rotating)
scram: in a nuclear reactor, an emergency procedure that shuts down the reactor by stopping the chain reaction of fission
secondary waves (S waves): waves that travel through the solid and semi-solid layers of the Earth’s interior but are stopped by liquids
seismic: having to do with vibrations in Earth’s crust