Fukushima: The nuclear disaster that shook the world - BBC News

[Music] a ten years have passed but here time has stood still frozen at 2 46 pm the exact moment a massive earthquake struck northeastern japan and led to one of the worst nuclear disasters of all time this is fukushima japan has been hit by its biggest earthquake since an explosion was heard and smoke seen at the power plant the images of destruction and flooding coming out of japan are simply heartbreaking on the 11th of march 2011 a magnitude 9 earthquake struck here it caused a tsunami which killed more than fifteen thousand people and led to a meltdown at tepco's daiichi nuclear power plant whole towns were washed off the map leaving nothing behind over a hundred thousand people were evacuated but how did an earthquake lead to such an enormous disaster and what was it like for the people who were at the epicentre the disaster left fukushima a ghost town hidden away behind barricades abandoned homes washing hanging where it was left once filled with people it's been overrun by nature but it wasn't always this way after world war ii nuclear power offered new possibilities with few of its own natural resources like gas or oil for japan it was a way to avoid relying on other countries for electricity by 1954 japan had budgeted 230 million yen for nuclear energy and it began to build nuclear plants faster than any other nation in the world in 1967 tokyo electric power company built its nuclear plants in fukushima and the daiichi plant became one of the largest operational nuclear power stations on the planet the japanese government and energy companies and also major media outlets they work together to create the safety needs the idea that nuclear energy does not bring any harm to the people right so it only emphasizes the positive effect while neglecting or almost sort of consciously ignoring the risks and harms that comes with it but in 2011 everything changed the quake was the strongest japan had seen for a thousand years even bigger than the great kanto earthquake in 1923 it was so powerful that japan's coastline moved eight feet to the east and sank three feet down it set off aftershocks around the world tremors were felt as far as beijing united states and cuba the tsunami flooded the nuclear power plant results massive overheating and reactors one two and three suffered meltdowns when the power supply failed operators lost control of the plants and a hydrogen explosion blew the roof and walls off reactor 4. chernobyl was a explosion inside the reactor core fukushima was different in that it was an explosion in the reactor building there was a partial meltdown hydrogen gas was vented out of the core and then it was that hydrogen gas that exploded so the radioactivity we see in the environment from fukushima is volatile elements that came out of the reactor as it was overheating and melting down japan classified the event as a level seven the same as chernobyl meaning it was a major release of radiation with widespread health and environmental effects following the explosion the government set up an exclusion zone prohibiting residents from living within 20 kilometers of the plant in the beginning of such an accident nobody really knows how the things will develop and the japanese government or the local authorities say reacted quite quickly and evocation started already on the day of the accident [Music] for many the nuclear disaster at chernobyl called for a re-examination of the dangers of nuclear energy the way we characterize risk tend to be combination of severity and frequency but in nuclear power frequency of one is high enough you don't want even one even like that to happen it was believed that an accident like that couldn't happen in japan report by tepco called the fallout beyond hypothetical assumptions the earthquake was stronger and the tsunami bigger than anyone expected but for tepco there had been warning signs that was one of the first nuclear problems imported from the united states called turnkey contract which means that you just depend on the manufacturer so there was a lack of basic know-how in dealing with nuclear design and everything the design for the nuclear plant meant that the emergency power sources were stored underground the idea was that this would protect them from the risk of a hurricane rather than a tsunami but what the design didn't account for were some of the highest tsunamis in japan's history and that mattered because the only thing protecting the plant from a tsunami were these walls they were meant to stop waves of up to 5.7 metres but the tsunami had waves that peaked at 17 metres high 13 years before the disaster a tepco employee found a crack in one of the reactors at fukushima when he reported it tepco told him to conceal the evidence he ignored the advice and told the government regulators who ordered tepco to deal with the issue so tepco fired the employee in 2011 a new york times report revealed 14 major lawsuits were filed against the japanese government regarding adequate nuclear safety despite failing they did point to operators who downplayed serious hazards they planned to actually address a structural problem but then after they came to the conclusion that it's going to cost a lot of money a potential it may shut down the plans so unfortunately they put higher priority in continuing nuclear programs operation over taking measure against tsunami in february 2021 10 years after the disaster tokyo high court held tepco and the japanese governments liable for negligence in fukushima the area around the fukushima plants was radioactive many had lost their homes and their families tens of thousands had been evacuated [Music] radiation showed up in local milk and vegetables devastating the farming and fishing communities information coming from the government and the press wasn't always clear the residents i spoke to said they wanted information to help them decide which information was correct people were trying to find out what was going on and there was just no information available which was just leading to speculation and sort of assumptions of worst case scenarios public confidence in nuclear power collapsed the triple disaster of the earthquake tsunami and nuclear fallouts made a huge dent in the japanese economy the disaster had a significant impact on sustainability overall nuclear power in japan's electric energy was 25 percent in 2010 it decreased to 6 percent in 2019 the price of natural oil and gas from foreign countries rose and so japan increasingly depended on fossil fuels and residents concerns over their future began to grow at the time of the accident the resident of fukushima went into a panic because most of them did not know anything about ladies and exposure and health at the beginning there was a public fear and anxiety that fukushima would end up with the situation in chernobyl but radiation exposure yukushima was much lower than that in chernobyl in fact we did an independent monitoring of radiation as we didn't trust government reporting but our results also confirmed that this was the case what we found in the decades after the chernobyl accident is that fear of radiation and the consequences of what we have to do to protect ourselves from radiation many scientists believe that those impact they're worse than the direct impacts of the radiation part of the stigma of radioactivity actually comes from the atomic bombs and there were certainly reports coming out of japan after fukushima that people were being stigmatized because they had been exposed to the radiation there are an awful lot of psychosocial consequences of a radiation accident that go way beyond the radiological risks like stress loss of livelihood a worry mental health issues foreign [Music] although no one died from radiation in fukushima the disaster still took lives it's been estimated that there have been over 2 200 deaths as a result of the trauma and stress the evacuees endured the 2011 disaster left fukushima changed forever the biggest difference between what happened in chernobyl and what happened in fukushima is that the japanese government believed the area has to be cleared the facility at fukushima is being decommissioned but it's a huge operation vast amounts of waste like contaminated water and soils being created and where to store it is still an ongoing issue according to government estimates the total compensation for the disaster could reach 21.5 trillion yen which is 198.3 billion dollars and the cleanup effort may not be completed until 2051. it would be difficult for this vision to return to how things work before the accident with decontamination still in the distant future it raises the question is it safe to go back after nuclear accidents there are usually a range of radioactive chemicals released into the environment the half-life is the time it takes for a radioactive element to decrease by one-half so for example for radioactive cesium which has a 30-year half-life so that means it takes 30 years for half of it to disappear from the environment although some parts aren't yet habitable it was reported in 2013 that radiation levels around fukushima were unlikely to harm health most of the doses are not much higher than it would be if you lived in cornwall say or chicago areas where there's this natural background from from granite so most of those areas are perfectly okay to go back to towns are slowly returning to life and so some of the residents returned to the original home while others are who can no longer live in the original homes live in the reconstruction public housing actually which were developed by the national town and national government state as part of the recovery the government created the fukushima innovation coast framework policy to develop the area so now the focus is on things like sustainable energy solar power making sure that the schools are open making sure that there are hospitals care homes for the elderly and that the basic infrastructure of life is there agriculture and the daiichi plant were once at the heart of fukushima's local economy now the unusable land is being transformed to create clean energy and a potential new source of income but not everyone wants to go back many evacuees have moved on with their lives in different parts of japan leaving fukushima in their past foreign when you think about the risk of the decommissioning process you still have 30 thousand people are still evacuating from the fishman area their own home so i would say even after 10 years which america is not over the earthquake that caused the fukushima disaster couldn't have been predicted but some argue that doesn't mean the fallout was unavoidable fukushima and its residents are slowly beginning to recover even if a completely decontaminated future is still many years away you

Channel: BBC News

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Keywords: bbc, bbc news, news, japan, japan news, japanese news, fukushima, fukushima news, fukushima nuclear, fukushima earthquake, earthquake, japan earthquake, fukushima evacuation

Id: mUBxtTEOiPI

Length: 17min 10sec (1030 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021