Fukushima Book Summary - Fukushima Book explained in key points

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Fukushima summary

Name: Fukushima
Rating: 4 (52 reviews)
Author: David Lochbaum

David Lochbaum

The Story of a Nuclear Disaster

4 (52 ratings)

15 mins

Table of Contents

Fukushima
summarized in 6 key ideas

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What’s in it for me? Discover what went wrong in the Fukushima disaster, and why it could happen again.

On 11 March 2011, a monster earthquake struck off the coast of Japan. Its reverberation caused a massive tsunami, which barreled across the ocean intent on destruction. When it hit Japan, it caused a flood at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, leading to a disastrous meltdown.

All told, the Fukushima Disaster of 2011 claimed the lives of almost 20,000 people and did unimaginable damage across Japan. Yet today, it seems as though few authorities have learned any lessons from it.

How did the backup and emergency systems fail so completely? Why wasn’t there adequate tsunami protection? Why didn’t nuclear energy authorities heed the lessons of Chernobyl and other meltdowns? And most importantly, what can we do to prevent it happening again?

These blinks explain what exactly went wrong at the Fukushima plant in March 2011, how Japan reacted, and why we might not be safe from the next meltdown.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how the inspector who found a crack at the Fukushima plant was silenced;
why the meltdown was like a crime scene; and
why American inspectors aren’t sufficiently protecting their citizens.

The 2011 earthquake off the coast of Japan was one of the biggest in the country’s history and caused terrible destruction.

In ancient times the Japanese thought that the earthquakes typical to the region were caused by the movements of a giant catfish under the islands that make up Japan. Today, we have much more precise scientific knowledge of earthquakes, but the effects of the earthquake that rocked Japan on 11 March 2011 and the following tsunami surpassed even our current understanding.

The 2011 earthquake was one of the biggest in Japan’s history. It hit roughly 40 miles east of Japan, as one tectonic plate slid under an adjoining plate, a process called “subduction,” which released enormous energy – so great it even tilted the earth’s axis by a few inches!

After the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, which claimed 5,000 lives, Japan developed one of the most sophisticated earthquake warning systems in the world. It is powered by a network of some 1,000 motion sensors all over the country that pinpoint the exact location where an earthquake takes place.

After the 2011 earthquake hit, initial estimates put it at 7.9 on the Richter scale, a metric used to measure an earthquake’s magnitude. Over the next few days the Japan Meteorological Agency discovered that it was actually 9.0 – that’s 45 times more energy than their first estimate.

This meant it was the biggest earthquake ever detected by Japanese instruments, and among the five biggest in the world since we began to measure them.

The resulting tsunami was enormously powerful, far exceeding all previous calculations. When the waves from the tsunami reached the Antarctic (roughly 8,000 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter), they were still powerful enough to break off a mass of ice-shelf the size of Manhattan.

The human cost of the earthquake is just as staggering: in the end, the Fukushima disaster, as it became known, claimed over 18,000 lives.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was ill-equipped to manage such an enormous tsunami.

A few hours after the earthquake, tsunami waves began crashing against the shores of Japan. But as people clambered to reach safety among destroyed buildings, Japanese authorities soon realized that they might have an even bigger problem on their hands.

In addition to tearing down homes, the tsunami flooded the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, cutting off its power. This power was desperately needed to cool the plant’s nuclear reactors. If the cooling system fails, the fuel in the reactor will start melting after only 30 minutes. When this happens, a slough develops that is so corrosive it can eat its way through the six-inch steel wall of the reactor as well as the building itself, releasing radioactive material into the environment. In other words, it can cause a meltdown.

In the days following the disaster, the public struggled to get reliable information.

How did the public react to the tsunami? At first, they couldn’t. The tsunami caused considerable confusion, and reliable information was hard to come by.

In 1986 Japan introduced the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI). It uses a combination of meteorological data and real-time data from the nuclear plants to make predictions about the severity of radioactivity emerging from a plant and where that radioactivity would be.

Japan has the greatest number of nuclear plants in the world, but also has inadequate oversight and regulation.

After the Second World War, nuclear power offered Japan a means to avoid reliance on other countries for electricity. The country built nuclear plants faster than any other nation in the world, but its regulation and oversight lagged behind.

Today, strong ties between industry and government make adequate regulation and oversight difficult.

The Fukushima disaster devastated the economy and led to an outcry against nuclear power.

The accident at Fukushima Daiichi left unprecedented destruction in its wake, and not just in terms of human cost. The accident had, and still has, a huge negative impact on the Japanese economy.

Only two weeks after the accident TEPCO was already requesting a $25 billion loan from Japanese banks to help finance the necessary repairs. By mid-April the government estimated that the accident would make a $317 billion dent in the economy as a result of clean-up costs and reconstruction.

US authorities’ assurances that a similar accident couldn’t happen at home are unconvincing.

As the consequences of the Fukushima disaster became clear, the American people turned to their government with one burning question: Could it happen here?

In short: yes. While the conditions in the United States are certainly different from those in Japan (for example, no American plant has the same flood risk, nor does the United States see the same magnitude of earthquakes), this doesn’t exclude the possibility that similarly catastrophic accidents could happen.

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What is Fukushima about?

Fukushima (2014) tells the story of how one of the biggest tsunamis in Japan’s history combined with government neglect, corporate interest and propaganda to create the most serious nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The book was written by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit that brings together science and political advocacy.

Best quote from Fukushima

It was like trying to investigate a homicide and not having access to the crime scene. – Charles Casto, NRC

—David Lochbaum

Who should read Fukushima?

Anyone who believes nuclear energy is “safe”
People who want to know more about the Fukushima disaster

About the Author

David Lochbaum is the director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and one of the United States’ top nuclear experts.

Edwin Lyman is a senior scientist in the UCS Global Security Program. He specializes in nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and nuclear safety.

Susan Q. Stranahan is an award-winning journalist who has written about the environment and energy for over three decades. Some of her other books include Sesquehanna, River of Dreams and Beyond the Flames.

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