Radiation at Fukushima Plant at Deadly Levels
March 28, 2012
Damage to one of the reactors at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is much worse than previously thought, Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced today. On March 27, workers were able to insert a probe into reactor #2. Radiation was found to be 10 times as great as a fatal dose, the highest level yet recorded at the plant. The probe also revealed that cooling water in the reactor vessel was only 24 inches (60 centimeters) from the bottom, far below the level estimated when the government declared the plant stable in December. The instrument used to assess damage inside the reactor chamber was equipped with a tiny video camera, a thermometer, a water gauge, and a dosimeter (a small device for measuring the doses of atomic radiation).
The Fukushima Daiichi plant was severely damaged on March 9, 2011, by one of the worst natural disaster in Japanese history–a magnitude 9 earthquake off Honshu, Japan’s main island. The earthquake, in turn, triggered a massive tsunami that resulted in the deaths of thousands of people.
Nuclear energy experts suggest that the other two reactors at Fukushima that underwent meltdowns could be in even more serious states. Because of extreme radiation levels, neither has been examined closely. Before the disaster, the Fukushima plant generated one-third of Japan’s electric power.
Public reaction to the meltdown at Fukushima has persuaded the Japanese government to shut down all but 1 of the nation’s 54 nuclear reactors in operation before the disaster. The last is to be switched off in May.
Additional World Book articles
- Energy supply
- Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011
- Three Mile Island
- Japan 1923 (Back in Time article)
- Japan 2011 (Back in Time article)
- Big Waves: Tracking Deadly Tsunamis (a special report)
- When the Earth Moves (a special report)
