Fukushima

“A gripping, suspenseful page-turner” (Kirkus Reviews) with a “fast-paced, detailed narrative that moves like a thriller” (International Business Times), Fukushima teams two leading experts from the Union of Concerned Scientists, David Lochbaum and Edwin Lyman, with award-winning journalist Susan Q. Stranahan to give us the first definitive account of the 2011 disaster that led to the worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl. Four years have passed since the day the world watched in horror as an earthquake large enough to shift the Earth's axis by several inches sent a massive tsunami toward the Japanese coast and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, causing the reactors' safety systems to fail and explosions to reduce concrete and steel buildings to rubble. Even as the consequences of the 2011 disaster continue to exact their terrible price on the people of Japan and on the world, Fukushima addresses the grim questions at the heart of the nuclear debate: could a similar catastrophe happen again, and—most important of all—how can such a crisis be averted?

Learning from Fukushima began as a project to respond in a helpful way to the March 2011 triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown) in north-eastern Japan. It evolved into a collaborative and comprehensive investigation of whether nuclear power was a realistic energy option for East Asia, especially for the 10 member-countries of ASEAN, none of which currently has an operational nuclear power plant. We address all the questions that a country must ask in considering the possibility of nuclear power, including cost of construction, staffing, regulation and liability, decommissioning, disposal of nuclear waste, and the impact on climate change. The authors are physicists, engineers, biologists, a public health physician, and international relations specialists. Each author presents the results of their work.

Fukushima Fiction introduces readers to the powerful literary works that have emerged out of Japan’s triple disaster, now known as 3/11. The book provides a broad and nuanced picture of the varied literary responses to this ongoing tragedy, focusing on “serious fiction” (junbungaku), the one area of Japanese cultural production that has consistently addressed the disaster and its aftermath. Examining short stories and novels by both new and established writers, author Rachel DiNitto effectively captures this literary tide and names it after the nuclear accident that turned a natural disaster into an environmental and political catastrophe. The book takes a spatial approach to a new literary landscape, tracing Fukushima fiction thematically from depictions of the local experience of victims on the ground, through the regional and national conceptualizations of the disaster, to considerations of the disaster as history, and last to the global concerns common to nuclear incidents worldwide. Throughout, DiNitto shows how fiction writers played an important role in turning the disaster into a narrative of trauma that speaks to a broad readership within and outside Japan. Although the book examines fiction about all three of the disasters—earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns—DiNitto contends that Fukushima fiction reaches its critical potential as a literature of nuclear resistance. She articulates the stakes involved, arguing that serious fiction provides the critical voice necessary to combat the government and nuclear industry’s attempts to move the disaster off the headlines as the 2020 Olympics approach and Japan restarts its idle nuclear power plants. Rigorous and sophisticated yet highly readable and relevant for a broad audience, Fukushima Fiction is a critical intervention of humanities scholarship into the growing field of Fukushima studies. The work pushes readers to understand the disaster as a global crisis and to see the importance of literature as a critical medium in a media-saturated world. By engaging with other disasters—from 9/11 to Chernobyl to Hurricane Katrina—DiNitto brings Japan’s local and national tragedy to the attention of a global audience, evocatively conveying fiction’s power to imagine the unimaginable and the unforeseen.

This open access book presents the findings from on-site research into radioactive cesium contamination in various agricultural systems affected by the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in March 2011. This third volume in the series reports on studies undertaken at contaminated sites such as farmland, forests, and marine and freshwater environments, with a particular focus on livestock, wild plants and mushrooms, crops, and marine products in those environments. It also provides additional data collected in the subsequent years to show how the radioactivity levels in agricultural products and their growing environments have changed with time and the route by which radioactive materials entered agricultural products as well as their movement between different components (e.g., soil, water, and trees) within an environmental system (e.g., forests). The book covers various topics, including radioactivity testing of food products; decontamination trials for rice and livestock production; the state of contamination in, trees, mushrooms, and timber; the dynamics of radioactivity distribution in paddy fields and upland forests; damage incurred by the forestry and fishery industries; and the change in consumers’ attitudes. Chapter 19 introduces a real-time radioisotope imaging system, a pioneering technique to visualize the movement of cesium in soil and in plants. This is the only book to provide systematic data on the actual change of radioactivity, and as such is of great value to all researchers who wish to understand the effect of radioactive fallout on agriculture. In addition, it helps the general public to better understand the issues of radio-contamination in the environment. The project is ongoing; the research groups from the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences of The University of Tokyo continue their work in the field to further evaluate the long-term effects of the Fukushima accident.

The March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami sparked a humanitarian disaster in northeastern Japan. They were responsible for more than 15,900 deaths and 2,600 missing persons as well as physical infrastructure damages exceeding $200 billion. The earthquake and tsunami also initiated a severe nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Three of the six reactors at the plant sustained severe core damage and released hydrogen and radioactive materials. Explosion of the released hydrogen damaged three reactor buildings and impeded onsite emergency response efforts. The accident prompted widespread evacuations of local populations, large economic losses, and the eventual shutdown of all nuclear power plants in Japan. "Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident for Improving Safety and Security of U.S. Nuclear Plants" is a study of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. This report examines the causes of the crisis, the performance of safety systems at the plant, and the responses of its operators following the earthquake and tsunami. The report then considers the lessons that can be learned and their implications for U.S. safety and storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste, commercial nuclear reactor safety and security regulations, and design improvements. "Lessons Learned" makes recommendations to improve plant systems, resources, and operator training to enable effective ad hoc responses to severe accidents. This report's recommendations to incorporate modern risk concepts into safety regulations and improve the nuclear safety culture will help the industry prepare for events that could challenge the design of plant structures and lead to a loss of critical safety functions. In providing a broad-scope, high-level examination of the accident, "Lessons Learned" is meant to complement earlier evaluations by industry and regulators. This in-depth review will be an essential resource for the nuclear power industry, policy makers, and anyone interested in the state of U.S. preparedness and response in the face of crisis situations.

In a speech delivered in Japanese at Cornell University, Naoto Kan describes the harrowing days after a cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami led to the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. In vivid language, he tells how he struggled with the possibility that tens of millions of people would need to be evacuated. Cornell Global Perspectives is an imprint of Cornell University’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. The works examine critical global challenges, often from an interdisciplinary perspective, and are intended for a non-specialist audience. The Distinguished Speaker series presents edited transcripts of talks delivered at Cornell, both in the original language and in translation.

March 11, 2011. The T hoku earthquake struck just before three on a Friday afternoon. Massive earthquake damage was followed by tsunami rising to heights of 40 meters that swept 10km inland, scouring the land of homes, school, communities, and people. The earthquake and tsunami alone were disasters of incredible proportion, resulting in over 15,000 deaths, over 100, 000 buildings destroyed, and economic losses estimated as high as $235 billion by the World Bank. And that was only the natural disaster. The manmade disaster began the same day, as the tsunami swept over the seawall of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, flooding the facility and destroying much of its equipment, including its onsite emergency power generators. Cut off from all external power sources, the reactors and spent fuel-rod assemblies began to overheat. Three reactors suffered meltdowns. Hydrogen gas explosions blew apart the outer containment buildings on three reactors. And the world watched as Japan struggled to bring the situation under control before the worst scenario came to pass. Despite further natural and manmade obstacles, the men and women at the plant succeeded in their efforts, gradually bringing the reactors under control, restoring power, and edging back, one inch at a time, from the very brink of disaster. This is their story, based on extensive interviews with the people who fought and won that battle, and especially with Masao Yoshida, the man who drove them all to get the job done. Here at last is the inside story of what they faced, what resources and information they had to work with, and why they made the decisions they did.

This book presents the results from the Japanese Fisheries Research Agency’s 3-year intensive monitoring of radionuclides in a variety of fish, plankton, benthos, and their living environments after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP) accident in March 2011. The book reveals the dynamics of contamination processes in marine and freshwater fish, mediated by the contamination of water, sediments, and food organisms; it also clarifies the mechanisms by which large variations in the level of contamination occurs among individual fish. Most importantly, the book includes a large amount of original measurement data collected in situ and for the first time assesses diffusion of radiocesium across the Pacific using both in situ data and a numerical simulation model. Also introduced are several new approaches to evaluate the impact of the release of radionuclides, including the measurement of radiation emission from an otolith section to identify the main period of contamination in fish. The FNPP accident represents a rare instance where the environmental radioactivity level was elevated steeply through atmospheric fallout and direct discharge of radioactive water into the sea over a short period of time. Replete with precise scientific data, this book will serve as an important resource for research in fields such as fishery science, oceanography, ecology, and environmentology, and also as a solid basis for protecting fisheries from damage resulting from harmful rumors among the general public.