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Over the course of the Earth’s existence, there have been a numerous amount of natural disasters. They range from devastating hurricanes to violent, severe volcanic eruptions. While the ecosystem may take hundreds of years to come back from such a destructive occurrence, perhaps some of histories most crippling events stemmed not just from the storms that the Earth brewed itself, but from human creation and deadly natural disasters. As a level 7 on The International Nuclear Event Scale, the Fukushima disaster is considered one of the largest nuclear meltdowns in history, only second to Chernobyl. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is a disabled, 3.5-square-kilometer nuclear power plant and one of the largest 15 power plants in the …show more content…
The 9.0 scaled earthquake generated a follow up tsunami that rocked Japan. The majority of loss, damages, and casualties were an effect of the large tsunami. Along the entirety of the eastern cost, around 131,000 people were displaced, 5,200 were injured, 5,000 were reported missing, and nearly 16,000 people were fatally harmed. Because of the extreme damages of buildings, roads, and bridges, Japans faced an estimated economic lost of $500 billion USD. The entire island was in a state of distress. Water supplies were halted, gas and electricity were cut off, and communication technologies and right services were disrupted. Such events affected multiple companies and industries in Japan, among them was the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power …show more content…
After the first reactor was completed, the next five came quickly after. The sixth, final reactor was constructed in 1979. The Fukushima nuclear power plant uses Boiling Water Reactors, which are a less commonly used form of a light water nuclear reactor that is used for the generation of large amounts of electrical power—the most commonly used light water reactor being the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR). The typical core of a boiling water reactor contains about 100 tons of nuclear fuel. The nuclear fuel is composed of uranium dioxide that is held by a metal fuel rod bundle. In BWR, there are generally four bundles spaced out inside of the core. Boiling Water Reactors generally operate functionally for 16 to 22 months until the time comes for them to be refueled. After that time period, about a third of the bundles must be replaced with newer fuel rods in order to carryout productivity and the spent fuel is placed in the spent fuel
Early in the morning of April 27, 1986, the world experienced its largest nuclear disaster ever (Gould 40). While violating safety protocol during a test, Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl power plant was placed in a severely unstable state, and in a matter of seconds the reactor output shot up to 120 times the rated output (Flavin 8). The resulting steam explosion tossed aside the reactor’s 1,000 ton concrete covering and released radioactive particles up to one and a half miles into the sky (Gould 38). The explosion and resulting fires caused 31 immediate deaths and over a thousand injuries, including radiation poisoning (Flavin 5). After the accident more than 135,000 people were evacuated from their Ukrainian homes, but the major fallout occurred outside of the Soviet Union’s borders. Smaller radioactive particles were carried in the atmosphere until they returned to earth via precipitation (Gould 43). The Soviets quickly seeded clouds to prevent rainfall over their own land, so most of the radioactivity burdened Western Europe, Scandinavia, and the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans (Flavin 12). This truly international disaster had far reaching effects; some of these were on health, the environment, social standards, and politics.
When complicated systems fail catastrophically, there are processes that aim to fulfill three general objectives. One, is to assign blame, another, to understand what happened and what why it happened. Last, is to fix the specific feature or problem so that disaster will not happen again. In the article “Blowup” published in 1996 by The New Yorker, author Malcolm Gladwell examines catastrophes such as the Challenger explosion, and the near-disaster at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. He begins by defining the “rituals of disaster,” [1] a modern process in which physical evidence is collected and scrupulously analyzed to form a conclusion, and further explores the sociological aspects surrounding disasters, tying them to the human
Chernobyl, one word that still strikes pain and fear in the hearts of many, even after 28 years is still causing serious damage. It was largest nuclear disaster ever, Chernobyl was “. . . about 400 times more potent than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II . . .” (Walmsley “26 years on: helping Chernobyl's children”). The disaster was not immediately seen as a large threat, and this is why so many lives were taken or destroyed.
TOHOKU, Japan, Friday, Mar. 11 -Yesterday, a 9.0 magnitude Earthquake struck the east of Tohoku, Japan. The epicentre of the earthquake was located approximately 72 km east of Tohoku (38.3 degrees North latitude and 142.4 degrees East longitude), or 130 km east of Sendai as shown by the X in figure 3 below. The focus of the earthquake was 24.4 km under the epicentre. The earthquake therefore caused a tsunami due to the displacing of water above the Pacific Plate. The earthquake and tsunami together have caused approximately 20,000 deaths, 6152 injuries and 2500 people missing. Approximately 90% of these deaths were by drowning. Approximately 140,000 people have been displaced and over 500,000 buildings and structures have been destroyed or damaged. The early warning system of Japan stopped many bullet trains, and many residents received texted warnings of the earthquake and tsunami on their mobile phones giving them time to evacuate. Figures 1 and 2 show exactly how destructive the tsunami caused by the Tohoku Earthquake was.
Chernobyl (chĬrnō´byēl) is the uninhibited city in north Ukraine, near the Belarus boundary, on the Pripyat River. Ten miles to the north, in the town of Pripyat, is the Chernobyl nuclear powerstation, site of the worst nuclear reactor disaster in history ("Chernobyl", Columbia Encyclopedia). To specify, On April 26, 1986, Unit Four of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in Ukraine, injuring human immune systems and the genetic structure of cells, contaminating soils and waterways. Nearly 7 tons of irradiated reactor fuel was released into the environment—roughly 340 million curies. Included in the release were radioactive elements with a half-life of 16 million years. Yet, we humans cannot defe...
The harm that came from the earthquake was harsh and most everything was destroyed. Buildings collapse, people died, and landslides occurred, trapping everyone hopelessly in the zone where the
I. (Gain Attention and Interest): March 11, 2011. 2:45 pm. Operations at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant continued as usual. At 2:46 pm a massive 9.0 earthquake strikes the island of Japan. All nuclear reactors on the island shut down automatically as a response to the earthquake. At Fukushima, emergency procedures are automatically enabled to shut down reactors and cool spent nuclear fuel before it melts-down in a catastrophic explosion. The situation seems under control, emergency diesel generators located in the basement of the plant activate and workers breathe a sigh of relief that the reactors are stabilizing. Then 41 minutes later at 3:27 pm the unthinkable occurs. As workers monitored the situation from within the plant, citizens from the adjacent town ran from the coastline as a 49 foot tsunami approached. The tsunami came swiftly and flooded the coastline situated Fukushima plant. Emergency generators were destroyed and cooling systems failed. Within hours, a chain of events led to an explosion of reactor 1 of the plant. One by one in the subsequent days reactors 2, and 3 suffered similar fates as explosions destroyed containment cases and the structures surrounding the reactors (Fukushima Accident). Intense amount...
Humans can not be the only thing that is hurting the Earth. When you really think about it, Earth goes through a lot of natural disasters, which cannot be controlled. According to an activist, Tim Haering, “Tsunamis, floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, disease nature kills more than we kill each other.” Earth throws in all of these natural ...
Nuclear reactors are the future of energy production. Nuclear energy can produce over 500 zeta joules of power; which is equal to about 1000 times the current energy consumption of the world. The usage of nuclear energy is declining and if power companies do not begin utilizing nuclear energy, a lot of needless pollution will be released into the atmosphere causing further damage to our already badly damaged planet. Usage of nuclear energy had been steadily rising until the fukushima disaster in Japan. This disaster caused nuclear energy usage and acceptance to drop drastically. Germany began phasing out nuclear energy and plan to have all reactors shutdown by 2022. Nuclear energy should be fully utilized because nuclear reactors have a high energy output, great longevity, and lower carbon dioxide emissions.
The “World Nuclear Power Plants in Operation”. Nuclear Energy Institute. April. The. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'.
Chernobyl was the worst accident in the history of power plants. There were still reactors running until recently. Greenpeace spoke out against it with a powerful quote, “Chernobyl is a time bomb: every day that this reactor operates it becomes more dangerous", said Tobias Muenchmeyer, Greenpeace nuclear expert. To avoid further accidents, people that work at nuclear plants should be careful with what they do. The government should also have the ability to step in and shut down a plant that is unstable and poses a problem to the community. For the good of out world, workers should be supervised more carefully and all leaks and problems should be reported to a higher authority. The public should also be warned because if they know that they live around an unstable power plant, they will take precautions and perhaps move to a safer area.
Currently, Chernobyl holds the record for largest nuclear incident in the world. Some areas of Europe were substantially contaminated by the radiation released; particularly Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. The explosion of the reactor caused for massive evacuation for anyone who was even remotely close to the explosion. This turned most cities around the area into ghost towns with populations ranging from double digits to the low hundreds. Even though a large majority evacuated, a large portion were still affected by the radiation because they were within the range of the incident and/or they took too long to move out of the vicinity. This caused millions...
One of the most significant environmentally damaging instances in history was the Chernobyl incident. In 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in Ukraine exploded. It became one of the most significant disasters in the engineering community. There are different factors that contributed to the disaster. The personnel that were tasked with operating the plant were unqualified. The plant’s design was a complex one. The RBMK reactor was Soviet design, and the staff had not be acquainted with this particular design. As the operators performed tests on the reactor, they disabled the automatic shutdown mechanism. After the test, the attempt to shut down the reactor was unsuccessful as it was unstable. This is the immediate cause of the Chernobyl Accident. It later became the most significant nuclear disaster in the history of the
While the early warning saved thousands of people, the Japan’s Meteorological Agency underestimated this earthquake as the subduction zone of Japan should not produce the magnitude 9.0 quake (Oskin, 2013a). The Tohoku Earthquake and its tsunami approximately killed 16 thousand people, injured 6 thousand people and around 3 thousand people were missing. Most people died from drowning. Around 300 thousand buildings, 4000 roads, 78 bridges, and many more were affected by the earthquake, tsunami, and fires from leaking oils and gas. Electricity, telecommunication, and railways were severely damaged. The debris of 25 million tons was generated and carried out to the sea by water (BBC News, 2012). The country’s authorities estimated more than 309 billion US dollars of damages. Landslides occurred in Miyagi and liquefaction in Chiba, Tokyo, Odaiba, and Urayasu (USGS, 2013). Furthermore, the tsunami destroyed protective tsunami seawalls. Approximately 217 square miles of Japan covered in water (Oskin,
The death toll climbs to over 10,000 and is still rising (Branigan 2). The disaster in Japan began without warning on Friday March 11, 2011 at 2:46pm with a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, the strongest ever recorded in the country (Fackler 3). A massive thirty-three foot high tsunami, generated by the earthquake, swept over lands in northern Japan, taking objects and debris with it. To make matters worse, the tsunami caused the cooling systems at several nuclear power plants to fail. The disaster in Japan was a tragic event, and it had a plethora of causes and effects.