ABSTRACT
The 11 March 2011 earthquake that struck o Japan’s coast epitomized what researchers call a compounded or cascading disaster.2 While the quake itself caused few direct fatalities, it created a tsunami as tall as 38 m in places, which devastated communities along Japan’s eastern coast and swamped backup cooling systems at nuclear power plants in the area. Atomic reactors are designed to automatically shut down in the event of an earthquake, but without batteries and diesel generators to draw away residual heat, the Fukushima’s reactors remained hot. Whether the backup systems were damaged primarily by the intensity of the quake or the tsunami has not yet been determined conclusively. Whatever the cause of the problem, the fuel rods in at least three of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Reactor complex operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) melted down after reaching temperatures in excess of 2000°F. Freed from their zirconium cases, the radioactive material tumbled free and likely burned holes through the thick steel plating of the containment vessels. As engineers manually pumped water into the vessels to try to keep the fuel rods and the reactors cooled, the heat released hydrogen gas through oxidation with the zircaloy shell on the fuel rods; the hydrogen ignited and blew o the tops of three of the reactor buildings. Decision makers had to deliberately vent the reactors to reduce pressure, and along with these intentional releases of radioactivity into the atmosphere, the “feed and bleed” process of pumping in water created more than a 100,000 metric tons of contaminated water most of which is being held in temporary tanks (with more than 10,000 tons already dumped into the sea).
