On March 11, 2011, at 2:46 p.m., a 9.0 magnitude earthquake shook Japan and created a tsunami of epic proportions. The earthquake was so powerful that it moved the Japanese coastline and made Japan “wider.”

The impact was shown by global positioning stations that were close to the epicenter that had moved eastward toward the United States by as much as 13 feet after the earthquake hit off the coast of Japan. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientists calculated that the earthquake was so strong that it redistributed the mass of the earth so that the day had been shortened by a couple of millionths of a second and the tilt of the Earth’s axis had changed slightly. Japan is on the Pacific plate, which moves about 3½ inches each year in a west-northwest direction. The earthquake on the east side of Japan released the tension being built up, and Japan shifted in an eastward position. With the release of energy, the land “unbuckled” and 250 miles of Japanese coastline dropped 2 feet in altitude. These 2 feet made the tsunami even more devastating because it allowed the waves to move even farther inland from the coast.1 While the first responders were trying to address cataclysmic disasters, a third disaster started forming on the northeastern shoreline of Japan at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant owned by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). The Japanese government issued a broad evacuation, but the warning was not dire because government officials stated that only a small amount of radioactive material was likely to leak from the power plant. The reactors were shut down during the quake, but officials noticed there were critical failures in the cooling systems of the reactors. A 6-mile radius was evaluated from the Daiichi plant, which included 45,000 people, because when the cooling systems fail in a nuclear reactor, pressure builds up within the reactor, and “small” amounts of radioactive vapor are released into the atmosphere. The officials stated that the evacuation was a precaution, and the radiation level should not be high enough outside the plant to affect the health of people in the surrounding areas.

The First Hours of the Disaster Cooling System With Reactor 1

A number of unprecedented challenges faced TEPCO employees as they tried to ensure there would not be a total meltdown of the active reactors at Daiichi. The first challenge they faced was that the emergency cooling system for Reactor 1 was not working consistently, if at all. It appeared that someone had manually shut down the valves of the condenser after the earthquake, but before the tsunami, to try to control the pressure inside the reactor. The valves had to be reopened with battery power, which was not available after the tsunami hit.

Because the valves were shut, the temperature inside Reactor 1 quickly climbed, causing significant damage, which made recovery for the reactor not a viable option. The fuel pellets started melting 5 hours after the earthquake, and by the morning of the next day, the fuel was a lavalike substance at the bottom of the reactor. This series of events would not have taken place, at least not as quickly, if TEPCO could have opened the valves to release the built-up pressure.

Emergency Command Center

The emergency response by the Japanese government was designed to be coordinated at an off-site command center near the Daiichi plant. When Kazuma Yokota, the person in charge of coordinating the emergency response, went to the center, he realized that there were some communication problems. The phone lines were down, the cell phone towers were down, the satellite phone was not working, and there was no backup power because of a broken fuel line for the backup generator. TEPCO’s main emergency communication systems were still online, so TEPCO personnel could communicate with third parties from the Fukushima Daiichi earthquake shelter and provide a video link and phone communications with Tokyo. However, because the off-site center was not available, government officials in Tokyo had to rely on information from TEPCO headquarters, which created confusion and inefficient transfer of information from TEPCO to the government officials in Tokyo. Communication became a critical problem when TEPCO had to vent radioactive gas to reduce the pressure inside the reactor vessel. The final approval of this release must come from the president of TEPCO, Masataka Shimizu. Shimizu was stuck in the city of Nagoya and was trying to get back to company headquarters in Tokyo. His initial attempts failed. He eventually asked for a military transport to fly him back to Tokyo but was denied permission by the Japanese minister of defense. The plane was to first to give relief supplies to tsunami victims and would come back to take the TEPCO president who eventually got back to Tokyo.

Filter Problems

TEPCO officials never thought that a disaster of this magnitude would hit the Daiichi plant, so they did not bother to install a filter on its emergency vent pipe to catch radioactive particles that would be released through the steam. In fact, the vent installation was not mandated by the nuclear regulators because they could not envision a scenario in which the pressure would climb to such a level that an emergency vent system would be needed. Therefore, the complete vent pipe system was voluntary. As a result, the venting of the steam was delayed until a 6-mile evacuation zone was completed instead of the original 2-mile zone.

Power Problems

TEPCO officials were completely unprepared to address the issue of auxiliary power during the first hours of the disaster. As the daylight faded during the first day, TEPCO employees were forced to go door to door of local neighborhoods trying to find flashlights. TEPCO employees also disconnected car batteries from automobiles nearby that were not washed away by the tsunami. The batteries were used to try to get the reactor gauges operational again. The lack of power also resulted in the shutdown of the automatic relief vents that would have reduced pressure quickly inside the reactor during the first critical hours. In addition, TEPCO employees did not have any way to check the strength of the plant’s emergency batteries. The result was that because there was partial power inside the plant, TEPCO employees miscalculated the amount of time they had to make their repairs. The batteries were barely functional and shut down before the workers had a chance to make critical repairs to stop the fuel from melting, which occurred many hours before it was forecast to occur.

Lack of Emergency Plans

It was evident early on in the crisis that TEPCO and its employees were unprepared for these events during this time. At the Daiichi plant, there was only one stretcher, one satellite phone, and 50 protective suits that employees could use to shield themselves against radiation. The emergency plan was designed to address only small emergencies and outlined how to address issues related to backing up key operational systems. The emergency plan did not have the vision or scope to address a crisis of the magnitude that hit the Daiichi plant.

There were contingencies in the plan to deal with the issue of communications being knocked out by the disaster, but the primary communication media used to link the plant with the outside world in the emergency plan was a fax machine. There were no contingencies to request help from outside sources if TEPCO employees could not manage the disaster themselves. For example, Tokyo firefighters, Japanese military forces, or the use of U.S. equipment was not included in the emergency plan. TEPCO’s response was that the emergency plan met, and in parts exceeded, the legal requirements set by the Japanese government. Some critics in Japan argue that the Japanese government and Japanese companies would rather not focus on or discuss emergency disaster plans because the Japanese people would become scared......

Questions

1. Develop a time line of all of the activities at TEPCO during the disaster.

2. Can these events be placed on the shoulders of just one group? Why or why not?

3. Can those who were harmed by the TEPCO events ever truly be compensated for their loss? Explain.

4. What are the benefits of nuclear power if disasters like this can happen? Is it worth it, or are there too many ethical and environmental problems to deal with?