Ten years after the Fukushima disaster, the fallout is far from over
On the site of Japan’s nuclear disaster, 10 years on from the meltdown that changed the world forever, authorities are grappling with impossible choices.
Today marks a decade since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Towns surrounding the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi plant have long since been abandoned but the fallout from the March 11, 2011 event is far from over.
Every single day, 100 tonnes of groundwater seeps into one of the broken reactor basements at the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
That’s a problem, because the water is mixing with radioactive debris and needs to be treated and stored. But TEPCO has more than 1.2 million tonnes of contaminated water sitting in storage tanks that are very quickly running out of capacity.
Estimates suggest the tanks will reach overflow point next year. And one of the choices for Japanese authorities is hugely unpopular and potentially devastating: Release more than 1 million tonnes of the treated radioactive water into the sea.
According to local reports, there is still 900 tonnes of melted reactor debris inside three reactors that experienced meltowns. The plan to extract it was described by the Japan Times as “near-impossible” because “the radioactivity remains extremely high near the reactor containment vessels — enough to instantly kill a human and to disable a robot”.
The plan is to decommission the plant by 2051.
The earthquake, tsunami and triple nuclear meltdown led to the deaths of almost 16,000 people and was one of the most powerful natural disasters on record. Waves up to 40m high travelled 700km/h and smashed into the coast, where they surged for a further 10km inland, destroying towns and swallowing villages.