The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Disaster: Investigating the Myth and Reality

The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, still suffers from relatively little comprehensive English language scholarship and easily accessible intelligent, objective analyses. While a wide range of government and independent investigation commission reports, investigative journalist accounts, scholarly analysis, and first-person accounts are available in Japanese, English language material on the accident itself has been dominated by confusing press coverage and highly specialized analyses for nuclear scientists. This book is one of a handful of valuable English language publications that give English language readers access to some of the main, critical points to understand and analyze the accident at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station. Nuclear physics is one of the most intellectually demanding disciplines, and nuclear reactors are among the most complicated facilities ever created by humankind. However, the proximate causes of the Dai-Ichi accident were quite simple. The magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the fourth largest in recorded history, severed all external power to the plant. This in itself was not a problem, since the plant had numerous onsite backup power sources. Moreover, the three active reactors were halted immediately. However, the ensuing massive tsunami, which exceeded all design parameters, then knocked out all onsite power—most devastatingly, the diesel generators located underground immediately behind the sea wall and the electricity distribution panels that channeled power flows throughout the power plant. This ‘total station blackout’ was unprecedented, and the reactors, though halted, still needed tens of thousands of tons of water over the next few weeks to remove residual heat. Despite the best efforts of those at the plant, the reactors were unable to be sufficiently cooled in the critical first few days. The fuel cores melted down from their own heat and melted through their reactor pressure vessels. Hydrogen gas was released into the reactor buildings, which ignited and blew off the roofs and upper walls of the reactor 1 building, and reduced much of the upper half of the reactor 3 building to rubble. The reactor 4 building also exploded, exposing spent fuel pools located in the upper parts of the building to the outside atmosphere. For Dai-Ichi plant manager Yoshida Masao and Prime Minister Kan Naoto, the continued viability of Japan as a nation was at stake.