Japan — Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Crisis (2011)

Japan — Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Crisis (2011)
 Updated: March 31, 2011

EARTHQUAKE, TSUNAMI AND NUCLEAR CRISIS

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, churning up a devastating tsunami that swept over cities and farmland in the northern part of the country and set off warnings as far away the west coast of the United States and South America. Recorded as 9.0 on the Richter scale, it was the most powerful quake ever to hit the country. As the nation struggled with a rescue effort, it also faced the worst nuclear emergency since Chernobyl; explosions and leaks of radioactive gas took place in three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station that suffered partial meltdowns, while spent fuel rods at another reactor overheated and caught fire, releasing radioactive material directly into the atmosphere. Japanese officials turned to increasingly desperate measures, as traces of radiation were found in Tokyo's water and in water pouring from the reactors into the ocean.

As of March 29, the official death toll had been raised to more than 11,000, and more than 17,000 people are listed as missing, although there may be some overlap between the two groups. The final toll is expected to reach nearly 20,000. More than 190,000 people remained housed in temporary shelters.

Live Updates on The Lede blog, including selected video clips and coverage from Twitter.

Multimedia: see what happens in a meltdown, a map of theareas of damage, satellite before and after photos, the cause of the quake and readers' photos.

Crisis Timeline

March 31 A long-lasting radioactive element, cesium 137, has been measured at levels that pose a long-term danger at one spot 25 miles from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, raising questions about whether Japan’s evacuation zone should be expanded and whether the land might need to be abandoned. Emails, blog posts and interviews give a glimpse into the strugglecarried on by the largely anonymous workers trying to prevent the world’s second-worst nuclear calamity from becoming even more dire, painting a picture of mixed panic, heroism and frustration.

Tests of milk samples taken last week in Spokane, Wash., indicate the presence of radioactive iodine from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, but at levels far below those at which action would have to be taken, the Environmental Protection Agency said.

March 30 The recent flow of bad news from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station has undermined the drumbeat of optimistic statements by government and company officials who have at times tried to reassure a nervous public that significant progress is at hand — only to come up short. A deluge of contaminated water, plutonium traces in the soil and an increasingly hazardous environment for workers at the plant have forced government officials to confront the reality that the emergency measures they have taken to keep nuclear fuel cool are producing increasingly dangerous side effects. And the prospect of restoring automatic cooling systems anytime soon is fading.

March 29 Workers at Japan’s crippled nuclear plant piled up sandbags and readied emergency storage tanks to stop a fresh leak of highly contaminated water from reaching the ocean, opening up another front in the battle to contain the world’s worst nuclear accident in decades. The Japanese government said the discovery of plutonium in the soil near the plant provided new evidence that the fuel in at least one of the plant’s reactors had experienced a partial meltdown. A full meltdown of the fuel rods could release huge amounts of radiation into the environment.

March 28 Highly contaminated water is escaping a damaged reactor at the crippled nuclear power plant and could soon leak into the ocean, the country’s nuclear regulator warned. The discovery raises the danger of further radiation leaks at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and is a further setback to efforts to contain the nuclear crisis as workers find themselves in increasingly hazardous conditions.

March 26 In the country that gave the world the word tsunami, the Japanese nuclear establishment largely disregarded the potentially destructive force of the walls of water. The word did not even appear in government guidelines until 2006, decades after plants — including the Fukushima Daiichi facility that firefighters are still struggling to get under control — began dotting the Japanese coastline. As a result, protections were based on outdated science.

March 25 Japanese officials began quietly encouraging people to evacuate a larger swath of territory around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a sign that they hold little hope that the crippled facility will soon be brought under control. The authorities said they would now assist people who want to leave the area from 12 to 19 miles outside the crippled plant and said they were now encouraging “voluntary evacuation” from the area. Those people had been advised on March 15 to remain indoors, while those within a 12-mile radius of the plant had been ordered to evacuate. The effort to contain the crisis at the plant suffered a setback when unexpected radiation injuries to workers suggested that the reactor vessel of the No. 3 unit may have been breached. That could release radiation from the mox fuel in the reactor — a combination of uranium and plutonium that is more toxic than the fuel in the other reactors.

March 24 The Japanese authorities are considering a plan to import bottled water from overseas after spreading contamination from a crippled nuclear plant led to a panicked rush to buy water in Tokyo. At the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, nuclear engineers say some of the most difficult and dangerous tasks are still ahead — and time is not necessarily on the side of the repair teams.

March 23 Radioactive iodine detected in Tokyo’s water supplyspurred a warning for infants and the government issued a stark new estimate about the costs of rebuilding from the earthquake and tsunami. The water announcement added to the growing anxiety about public safety posed by the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

March 22 Workers at Japan’s ravaged nuclear power plant renewed a bid to bring its command centers back online and restore electricity to vital cooling systems but an overheating spent fuel pool hampered efforts and raised the threat of further radiation leaks. Workers have now connected power cables to all six reactors at the plant though some of the machinery, including the water pumps that cool the reactors, might be damaged, officials said, requiring more repair work. It was revealed that just a month before a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant at the center of Japan’s nuclear crisis, government regulators approved a 10-year extension for the oldest of the six reactors at the power station despite warnings about its safety. Several weeks after the extension was granted, the companyadmitted that it had failed to inspect 33 pieces of equipment related to the cooling systems, including water pumps and diesel generators, at the power station’s six reactors.

March 21 Efforts to stabilize the hobbled nuclear power plant in Fukushima hit a snag when engineers found that crucial machinery at one reactor requires repair, a process that will take two to three days, government officials said. Another team of workers trying to repair another reactor was evacuated in the afternoon after gray smoke rose from Reactor No. 3. In the wake of Japan’s cascading disasters, signs of economic loss can be found in many corners of the globe, raising questions about the effect on the still-weak economic recovery in the United States, Europe and Japan.

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