7.9: Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

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In 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan was badly damaged by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami. Three reactors up and running at the time were shut down automatically, and emergency generators came online to power electronics and coolant systems. However, the tsunami quickly flooded the emergency generators and cut power to the pumps that circulated coolant water through the reactors. High-temperature steam in the reactors reacted with zirconium alloy to produce hydrogen gas. The gas escaped into the containment building, and the mixture of hydrogen and air exploded. Radioactive material was released from the containment vessels as the result of deliberate venting to reduce the hydrogen pressure, deliberate discharge of coolant water into the sea, and accidental or uncontrolled events.

An evacuation zone around the damaged plant extended over 12.4 miles away, and an estimated 200,000 people were evacuated from the area. All 48 of Japan’s nuclear power plants were subsequently shut down, remaining shuttered as of December 2014. Since the disaster, public opinion has shifted from largely favoring to largely opposing increasing the use of nuclear power plants, and a restart of Japan’s atomic energy program is still stalled (Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\)).

A photo and a map, labeled “a” and “b,” respectively, are shown. Photo a shows a man in a body-covering safety suit working near a series of blue, plastic coated containers. Map b shows a section of land with the ocean on each side. Near the upper right side of the land is a small red dot, labeled “greater than, 12.5, m R backslash, h r,” that is surrounded by a zone of orange that extends in the upper left direction labeled “2.17, dash, 12.5, m R backslash, h r.” The orange is surrounded by an outline of yellow labeled “1.19, dash, 2.17, m R backslash, h r” and a wider outline of green labeled “0.25, dash, 1.19, m R backslash, h r.” A large area of light blue, labeled “0.03, dash, 0.25, m R backslash, h r” surrounds the green area and extends to the lower middle of the map. A large section of the lower middle and left of the land is covered by dark blue, labeled “less than 0.03, m R backslash, h r.” — Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): (a) After the accident, contaminated waste had to be removed, and (b) an evacuation zone was set up around the plant in areas that received heavy doses of radioactive fallout. (credit a: modification of work by “Live Action Hero”/Flickr).

The energy produced by a reactor fueled with enriched uranium results from the fission of uranium as well as from the fission of plutonium produced as the reactor operates. As discussed previously, the plutonium forms from the combination of neutrons and the uranium in the fuel. In any nuclear reactor, only about 0.1% of the mass of the fuel is converted into energy. The other 99.9% remains in the fuel rods as fission products and unused fuel. All of the fission products absorb neutrons, and after a period of several months to a few years, depending on the reactor, the fission products must be removed by changing the fuel rods. Otherwise, the concentration of these fission products would increase and absorb more neutrons until the reactor could no longer operate.

Spent fuel rods contain a variety of products, consisting of unstable nuclei ranging in atomic number from 25 to 60, some transuranium elements, including plutonium and americium, and unreacted uranium isotopes. The unstable nuclei and the transuranium isotopes give the spent fuel a dangerously high level of radioactivity. The long-lived isotopes require thousands of years to decay to a safe level. The ultimate fate of the nuclear reactor as a significant source of energy in the United States probably rests on whether or not a politically and scientifically satisfactory technique for processing and storing the components of spent fuel rods can be developed.