Fukushima, Three Years On: Disaster Still Lingers

20,000 people used to live here, now it's a ghost town. Welcome to Namie, Japan, now inside the nuclear Exclusion Zone created by the Fukushima disaster. Photo from www.Reddit.com.

Katherine Fuchs of Friends of the Earth writes: “Today is the third anniversary of the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan that caused three nuclear reactors in Fukushima to melt down. Three years later, 83,000 residents remain unable to return to their homes in the 4,500 square mile exclusion zone surrounding the wrecked reactors. With 31 reactors of the same design currently operating in the U.S., we should all be asking, “will it happen here next?”

Low levels of radiation will reach ocean waters along the United States’ West Coast next month, scientists said, as fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster drifts across the Pacific Ocean.

Radiation will be at levels low enough to leave humans and the environment unharmed, scientists predict, but there are calls for increased monitoring as federal agencies currently do not sample Pacific Coast seawater for radiation, reports USA Today.

As reported by Andrew Freedman at http://mashable.com/2014/03/11/three-years-after-fukushima/

“The disaster at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant in Japan on March 11, 2011, destroyed tens of thousands of lives and had ripple effects around the world as nations reliant upon or considering nuclear power rethought their plans.

The meltdown of three of the six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, about 130 miles north of Tokyo, was the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine in 1986. The result of a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and associated tsunami waves that reached heights exceeding 100 feet, the disaster demonstrated that nuclear power plant operators may not have anticipated the full range of worst-case scenarios that could beset their facilities.

The tsunami's swift and massive waves crippled the power plant by taking out its power supply and cooling system, with workers resorting to desperate measures to cool the reactors to prevent an even more significant disaster.

The damage at the plant was so severe that more than 100,000 residents of the nearby Fukushima Prefecture had to be relocated, and complex cleanup operations at the plant continue.

While the damage was confined to Japan, the waves were detected across the Pacific Ocean, moving at speeds of up to 500 mph.

In the U.S., the disaster spurred the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is responsible for overseeing the 100 nuclear power plants operating in the country, to re-assess safety planning and issue some new requirements for plants that are of similar design as Fukushima. Exelon, which is the country’s largest nuclear-reactor operator, runs 17 of the commercial reactors. According to a New York Times report, the company expects to spend up to $500 million upgrading its plants based on lessons learned from Fukushima.

“Fukushima woke up the world nuclear industry, not just the U.S.,” the chairwoman of the NRC, Allison M. Macfarlane, told the Times. “It woke everybody up and said: ‘Hey, you didn’t even think about these different issues happening. You never thought about an earthquake that could create a tsunami that would swamp your emergency diesel generators and leave you without power for an extended period. You never planned for more than one reactor going down at a site, you have to think about that now.’ ”

Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey have updated earthquake data for the central and eastern U.S., providing nuclear operators with new information about the earthquake risks their plants face, and the safety standards they should meet. Coastal plants face other risks, such as storm surge flooding from coastal storms such as hurricanes, and the long-term challenge of sea level rise due to global warming.”