Lesson 1: People died from evictions, not radiation
DR. Kelvin Kemm
A decade has passed since the great earthquake in eastern Japan, and the name Fukushima is engraved on history. But few people know what happened. The phrase “the lessons of Fukushima” is well known. But how do people implement them when they don’t know what happened or what lessons they should be learning?
After lunch on March 11, 2011, a huge earthquake struck 72 kilometers from the Japanese Oshika peninsula, 72 kilometers from the Oshika peninsula. It registered 9.0 on the Richter scale, making it the largest quake ever recorded in Japan. The underwater ground movement, which was over 30 km below the surface of the sea, picked up a huge volume of water, like a huge, moving hill. Meanwhile, the ground shock wave was moving towards land at high speed. It hit Japan and rocked the ground for six terrible minutes.
The shock wave moved under 11 nuclear reactors, including two separate Fukushima complexes: Fukushima-Diani and Fukushima-Daiichi. (Diani means “Complex 1” and Daiichi means “Complex 2.”) All 11 reactors were shut down as intended, and no doubt all reactor operators breathed a sigh of relief. It was premature.
The seawater heap was still on the move. As the water mound entered shallow water closer to the land, it was in places lifted into a towering wave up to 40 meters high. Then, about 50 minutes after the earthquake, the tsunami hit the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant. A few kilometers away, when water hit the Fukushima-Diani nuclear power plant, it was “only” 9 m high, which was not as devastating as in Daiichi. Diani didn’t make the news.
The water leaped over the protective walls in Fukushima-Daiichi. The sigh of relief from half an hour earlier turned into concern and fear. Over at the Fukushima Diani power plant, 12 km south, water also caused damage to machinery, but the reactors were not damaged. There was no risk of radiation being released, so the Diani power plant was of no interest to the international media. Diani was safely shut down to a “cold shutdown” after two days.
For the past decade, any reference to “Fukushima” only meant the Daiichi power plant and not the other.
The devastating tsunami swept up to 10 km inland in places and washed away buildings, roads, telecommunications and power lines. Over 15,000 people were killed, mostly from drowning.
Although all nuclear reactors had been shut down to what was known as a “hot shutdown” condition, the reactors were still very hot and required residual cooling for many hours after the urgent quick shutdown. People instinctively know not to put their hands on a car’s engine block immediately after turning it off. Nuclear reactors are the same and must cool down until they reach the safe state known as a “cold shutdown”.
A nuclear reactor has pumps that run water through the reactor until it cools down. But the Fukushima electric pumps failed because the tsunami washed away the incoming power lines. Therefore, the reactor system was automatically switched to diesel-powered generators to keep the cooling pumps running. But the water had washed away the diesel fuel supply, which meant the diesel engines only worked for a short time. Then they switched to emergency batteries; However, the batteries were never designed to last for days and could only provide emergency power for around eight hours.
The result was that hot fuel could not be cooled sufficiently and over the next three or four days the fuel melted in three reactors, much like the way a candle melts.
The world media watched and broadcast the blow-by-blow action. The Japanese authorities panicked in the international spotlight. The non-circulating cooling water boiled off in the reactors, causing a chemical reaction between hot fuel exposed to hot steam. This led to the generation of hydrogen gas. As the steam pressure increased, the engineers decided to open valves to relieve the pressure. That worked as planned, but it also released the hydrogen.
Since hydrogen was light, he went to the roof where the ventilation system didn’t work because there was no electricity. After a while, a stray spark ignited the exploding hydrogen and blew the light roof off the building right in front of the world’s television cameras. The Fukushima news just got a lot more dramatic. The authorities really wanted to show the world positive action.
They gradually ordered the evacuation of 160,000 people who live in the Fukushima area. That was a mistake. Over the days and weeks it became clear that not a single person had been killed by nuclear radiation. Nor was a single person injured by nuclear radiation. Even today, a decade later, there is still no evidence of long-term radiation damage to people or animals. Unfortunately, however, people died during the eviction.
So one of the lessons from Fukushima is that the largest earthquake and tsunami ever recorded can hit a large amount of nuclear power and no one is injured by nuclear radiation.
Another lesson is that an evacuation order that was issued too hastily has harmed and killed people.
The Director General of the World Nuclear Association, Dr. Sama Bilbao y León said: “The rapid and lengthy evacuation has resulted in well-documented significant negative social and health effects. Overall, it is believed that the evacuation was responsible for more than 2,000 premature deaths among the 160,000 people evacuated. The rapid evacuation of the frail elderly, as well as those in need of hospital care, has had an almost immediate toll. ” [emphasis added]
She added: “Regardless of what happens, it is important that authorities take an all-hazards approach in future public health and safety scenarios. All human activities involve risks, not just nuclear power generation. Measures to mitigate a situation should not have an impact worse than the original events. This is especially important when managing the response to incidents in nuclear facilities – where fear of radiation can lead to an overly conservative assessment and a lack of perspective on relative risk. “
So, a decade later, we can reflect on the accumulated teachings. Above all, nuclear energy is far safer than expected. Even when dreaded meltdowns occurred and reactors were destroyed, resulting in a financial catastrophe for the owners, no people were harmed by radiation.
We also learned that it would have been far safer for local residents to stay in a house than to join the eviction. We have also learned that governments and agencies need to listen to the nuclear experts and not overreact, even though the television news cameras are watching terribly closely.
Fukushima certainly produced some valuable lessons. Governments, the news media and the public must learn the right lessons from this.
Dr. Kelvin Kemm is a nuclear physicist and CEO of Stratek Business Strategy Consultants, a project management company based in Pretoria. He conducts business strategy development and project planning in a variety of areas for various clients.
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