The Fukushima Nuclear Power

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[Type the document title] Contents I. Introduction 1 II. Ethical theories and principles 2 III. Conclusions 2 IV. References 2 V. Appendices 2 I. Introduction On March 11, 2011 and earthquake of grade 9 on the Richter scale sacudio (the larger on the 1400 years or records history [1]) the Pacific coast of Tohoku in which the Fukushima nuclear power complex is located. The initial disaster did not represented any significant risk even the power cut that isolate the complex from the electric grid the generators in place kept the cooling system of the generators running and the 3 operating reactors active at that moment initiated an automatic shutdown to protect the cores, what nobody at this point was expecting was a tsunami with a wave higher than 15 meters that forty-one minutes later hit the seawall that originally was designed to withstand waves up to 6 meters. This caused significant flooding on all the installations and malfunction on the diesel generators, replacement batteries in place powered the cooling system, but couldn’t prevent those from overheating oxidising their protective cladding and melting their radioactive cores, producing significant amount of hydrogen in reactors 1,2 and 3 which eventually exploded damaging the containing vessels. Reactors 1, 3 and 4 had significant leaking given the structural damage, and contaminated water was released to the environment. Overall by the end of the first crisis, three of the six reactors suffered a partial meltdown with the consequent release of radioactivity that contaminated the atmosphere and water from the reactors that reached the ocean. The situation raised many ethical issues given the nature of the incident and the implications as well as the ... ... middle of paper ... ...ilosophy, 2012. [2] Robert Jan van den Berg, "Nuclear Waste and," Social and ethical aspects of the retrievable storage of nuclear waste, 2000. [3] Wikipedia - Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. [Online]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster [4] Steven Starr. Costs and Consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi Disaster. [Online]. http://www.psr.org/environment-and-health/environmental-health-policy-institute/responses/costs-and-consequences-of-fukushima.html [5] Zoe Schalanger. (2014, February ) Another Day, Another Spill of Radioactive Water From Fukushima. [Online]. http://www.newsweek.com/another-day-another-spill-radioactive-water-fukushima-229840 [6] Managing Director of Investigation - Sakon Uda, "The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission," The National Diet of Japan, 2012.

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