HLS 501 Assignment: The Fukushima Daiima Nuclear Disaster

The Fukushima Daiima Nuclear Disaster
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The origin and type of the natural disaster
The Fukushima Daiima Nuclear Disaster was an energy accident that occurred at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. The cause of the accident was a tsunami that earthquake caused on 2011, 11th March (Kushida, 2015). The tsunami caused equipment failures, resulting in releasing of radioactive materials and nuclear meltdowns. Since 1986 of the Chernobyl Disaster, the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster was the largest nuclear disaster reported in the world.
The magnitude of the destruction, structural damage, and harm to the environment and humans
The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant suffered severe damage from a magnitude 9.0 of the earthquake. The accident permanently ruined many nuclear reactors of the plant. People, who were living within the 30km distance surrounding the nuclear plant, were evacuated. The disaster caused massive radioactivity that contaminated 30,000 sq.km of the land surface including additional 200sq.km of the land located northwest of the nuclear plant. Yasunari (2011) opines that all individuals living in such regions were evacuated, and such areas were designated as permanent exclusion zones. The massive tsunami and severe earthquake struck the Pacific coastline of the eastern Japan. Six Fukushima Nuclear power plants were shut down. The external power of the plant was lost. The massive tsunami struck and damaged the seawater cooling system pumps thus destroying the last-resort means for generating heat (Tsubokura, 2012). Also, the diesel generators stopped working because of the failure of electrical insulation thus the whole AC power source was lost. The systems supplying water to the reactors were finally shut down when their control DC power supply lost energy after many hours of the accident.
The disaster declared a total economic loss of about U.S $400 billion of the value of the abandoned businesses, agricultural lands, properties, homes, and cities located within the roughly 800 sq.km of exclusion zones. A total of 159,130 people were evicted from the evacuated areas, departing their homes. Only a few of these people have obtained a small compensation to compensate their cost living. The radioactive cesium entered the ecosystem and contaminated soil, water, animals, and plants. The cesium has been detected in many Japanese foodstuffs such as tea leaves, milk, freshwater fish, spinach, and beef of 200 miles of lands around Fukushima. Yasunari (2011) identifies that routine consumption of foodstuff contaminated with radioactive cesium has been revealed to cause bioaccumulation of health problems. The impact of ionizing radiation in the internal organs is harmful to both living plant and animals including humans. Radioactive cesium has a half-life of 30 years, and it will take several years for any radionuclide to disappear.
Efforts to decontaminate the exclusion zones prove to be difficult since rainwater and melting snow erode the contaminated soils and re-contaminate other lands and homes. Moreover, regions contaminated with the radioactive cesium have been rendered infertile. The disaster discharged massive radioactive materials into the ocean. Tsubokura (2012) says that about 734,000 curies of radioactive cesium were discharged into the Pacific Ocean, and 60% of all fish catches along Japan were identified to be contaminated. The ban on fishing along the coast of Fukushima continues to be imposed, where 45% of the dwelling fish are found having higher levels of radioactive cesium than the current national regulatory limits.
Agency response and ethical dimension
The Japanese reaction happened after the disaster. The Japanese government declared a nuclear emergency on March 11th. Later Naota Kan (Japan Prime Minster) issued a directive that people living within a 30km zone around the nuclear plant to leave. Japanese authorities acknowledged that poor oversight and lax standards led to the nuclear disaster (Funabashi, 2012). Furthermore, the Japanese government was criticized for its tackling approach to emergency and slow release of important data on regions that were likely to be exposed to radioactive cesium from the reactors.
Following the disaster, the Prime Minster took an anti-nuclear stance by ordering the closure of others nuclear power plants because of tsunami and earthquake fears and also froze the plans to construct new nuclear reactors. The Prime Minister in 2011 July declared that Japan should minimize and eventually eradicate its dependency on nuclear energy, citing that the Fukushima disaster had shown the technological dangers (Aoki and Rothwell, 2013). In 2011 August, the Japanese government enacted a bill to subsidize electricity generated from renewable energy sources. The Japanese government asked for international assistance. Consequently, the United States provided fire trucks and 3,265 kilograms of special equipment to assist in assessing and monitoring the situation of the nuclear facility. France provided radiation-mobile robot equipment to assist Japan in addressing the nuclear accident. Also, Russia sent Landysh (water decontamination equipment) to assist in decontaminating the radioactive cesium.
The Japanese government agencies and the nuclear safety commission apologized for overlooking vital nuclear safety concerns. Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) was faulted for its unpreparedness and poor handling of the emergency. Kushida (2015) presents that Tepco had been working to cope with the accident, but the strategy employed was too poor to fix the spread of the radioactive cesium to the mainland and the ocean. Tepco sent a...