ACT: On the Fukushima Disaster

The Fukushima disaster occurred after an earthquake and tsunami in 2011, causing a nuclear accident. The cores of three reactors melted, making it the largest civilian nuclear accident since Chernobyl. The cleanup is still ongoing, with Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) responsible for cleaning and rebuilding infrastructure. They are cooling the cores, cleaning debris, and filtering the radioactive water. The radiation will decrease significantly by 2041. There have been concerns about TEPCO releasing partially filtered water into the Pacific Ocean. The environment has been negatively affected, with large amounts of radioactive materials released into the atmosphere and contaminating land and sea. The disaster also impacted the Japanese economy, particularly seafood and fishing businesses. The demographics impacted varied, but more men and elderly people stayed in place, while families and women aged 40-64 evacuated. Only 25% of the original population returned to their ori Hey guys, welcome back to another banging acting episode. Today we will be talking about the catastrophic Fukushima disaster. This is Tegan and Naya and we will break down what the Fukushima disaster is, the effect it had on the environment as well as the people, and what people are doing to stop it. We have a special guest expert, Sharon Jong, joining us today to help us understand more about what happened to Fukushima. Let's get right into those questions. What is the Fukushima disaster and what happened? On March 11, 2011, after the major earthquake, a tsunami disabled all the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors, causing a nuclear accident. All three cores mostly melted in the first three days. It was a huge accident, as it was the largest civilian nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986. Wait, seriously? Yes, the Fukushima event has been rated 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, the same level as the Chernobyl accident. Is it still an ongoing issue? Yes, it is still an ongoing issue and is still being cleaned up. While the big event was the radioactive cores melting and the big explosion, there is still an issue with cleaning the melted core and debris, as well as dumping toxic waste. Who is in charge of cleaning the site? The TEPCO, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, is in charge of the cleaning of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. They work on cleaning the radioactive area up and rebuilding some of the infrastructure to keep it in check. So, what are they doing to clean all of this up? The solution to this problem that TEPCO is doing is cooling the heated cores, cleaning the debris, and filtering the waste water created by the Fukushima disaster. The contaminated water is still being filtered using a system called APLS, Advanced Liquid Processing System. Cleaning the disaster costs up to $20 billion. The radiation will never fully go away, though. However, the radioactive material will be significantly lower because it will drop by half by 2041. I heard that TEPCO was dumping large amounts of still radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Is that true? Yes and no. Due to the damage of the integrity of the reactor vessels, radioactive water accumulates inside the reactor and turbine buildings. Hence, the need to filter all the toxic water is still present. However, there are insiders saying that TEPCO has been releasing the water that was still early on in the filtering process. Wow, that's so terrible. How has this affected the environment? Like any radioactive disaster, it has affected nature negatively. The National Institutes of Health released a statement saying, The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, FDNPP, accident which occurred in March 2011, has released large amounts of radionuclides such as radioiodine and radiosesium into the atmosphere, resulting in the contamination of terrestrial and marine environments. What is even worse is that a whole 80 square miles, 207 square kilometers of land was affected. And that's not even counting the sea. Did this hurt any other things in the environment and the people? While this accident hurt and killed many citizens and workers, it also affected the Japanese economy and their people's seafood and fishing businesses. At the time, China had a ban on all imported Japanese seafood, and Hong Kong said they would ban seafood from 10 Japanese provinces, including Fukushima. What makes it worse, both China and Hong Kong are major importers of Japanese seafood, so the economy went down. How does this relate to justice? Most of the people were Okinawans or Japanese in the Fukushima disaster, but the event was not targeted. Many in the Okuma and the surrounding areas were evacuated or mainly affected. Are all demographics equally impacted? All people were given the same opportunity, but it is shown that more men and people staying with the elderly, 70 or older, stayed in place and tried not to evacuate. In contrast, the highest rate of people who evacuated were families and women aged 40 to 64. And why is that? There was only a little room for the rich and the high class to have better opportunities in a disastrous event. But different age groups left slightly differently. And now we're going to take a quick break for an ad. The Kremlin wants the real men to provide themselves by joining the fight in Ukraine. Be all you can be. Join the fight. In conclusion, the Fukushima event was a horrific event that affected 561,000 people. Only 25% of the original population of Fukushima returned to their original households. The Fukushima disaster is ongoing. The TEPCO is responsible for picking up the wreckage. Thank you guys for listening to today's episode, and we hope you learned more about the Fukushima nuclear event. If you didn't know about it or didn't know as much about it, in the next episode, we will review some leftover questions, like was somebody at fault for this event? Was it the right idea to send a suicide squad? Hang around. The next episode will be available wherever you get your podcasts. Sit tight, and we'll be right back. This was Teague, Anaya, and special guest Karen. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening.