Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster 2011

Higashi Nihon Daishinsai

Friday, 11 March 2011

The earthquake came first, but it was not like all of the other earthquakes they had known. The ground shook so violently, for so long that afternoon on March 11, 2011, the earth liquefying in many places. The destruction of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake was unimaginable, but the wall of water was next...

9.0 magnitude undersea megathrust earthquake triggered extremely destructive tsunami waves of up to 37.9 meters (124 ft) that struck Japan minutes after the quake, in some cases traveling up to 10 km (6 mi) inland. The quake has moved portions of northeast Japan by as much as 2.4 m (7.9 ft) closer to North America and shifted the Earth's axis by 25 cm (9.8 in). This deviation led to a number of small planetary changes, including the length of a day and the tilt of the Earth. The speed of the Earth's rotation increased, shortening the day by 1.8 microseconds due to the redistribution of Earth's mass. The degree and extent of damage caused by the earthquake and resulting tsunami were enormous, with most of the damage being caused by the tsunami. 13,498 deaths has been confirmed, 4,916 injured and 14,734 people missing. 45,700 buildings were destroyed, earthquake and tsunami created an estimated 25 million tons of rubble and debris in Japan... But it wasn't over, yet.


Nuclear disaster

Japan declared a state of emergency following the failure of the cooling system at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, resulting in the evacuation of nearby residents. Officials from the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency reported that radiation levels inside the plant were up to 1,000 times normal levels. It was reported that radioactive iodine was detected in the tap water in Fukushima, Tochigi, Gunma, Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama, and Niigata, and radioactive cesium in the tap water in Fukushima, Tochigi and Gunma. Radioactive cesium, iodine, and strontium were also detected in the soil in some places in Fukushima. Food products were also found contaminated by radioactive matter in several places in Japan. On April 5, 2011, the government of the Ibaraki Prefecture banned the fishing of the sand lance after discovering that this species was contaminated by radioactive cesium above legal limits. Some 45 per cent of 1,080 children under 15 from the Japanese Fukushima Prefecture have tested positive for thyroid exposure to radiation, a nuclear watchdog report says. Earlier, a Japanese civic group and Acro, a French body that measures radioactivity, reported that they had tested ten residents of Fukushima City aged between six and 16. All of them had trace amounts of radioactive substances in their urine. Thousands of Japanese recently took to the streets of Tokyo to protest against nuclear energy. In a culture that is generally non-confrontational and obedient, it is a serious sign of discontent. Some believe it is too early to tell what the real dangers of this situation are. Scientists know that large doses of radiation given in one blast is a significant health threat, but they say there is not enough information about long-term exposure to lower doses of radiation and the types of damage it can do. Now in the wake of an international crisis, there are allegations that the government and the power companies have worked out a deal to help each other, and that the media has been bought off.

“The first thing the government should do is let the citizens know the real cost of nuclear energy. Until now the priority has been to profit from energy. The PR machine of the government has been emphasizing the benefit of nuclear energy and the citizens have been brainwashed to believe in it,” ecological economist Yoshihiko Wada said.

For months the Japanese government has attempted to bury its head in the sand and try to ignore the severe levels of radiation being emitted into the air and sea. The Japanese government have attempted to ignore how serious the meltdowns have been, but the thruth is that Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind. There are twenty nuclear cores exposed with the potential to release twenty times the radiation of the Chernobyl disaster. Fukushima is going to dwarf Chernobyl. Chernobyl was different — a critical reactor exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactor cores are still melting down. The Japanese government has had a level 7 nuclear disaster going for almost a week but won’t admit it. What Fukushima's triple meltdown means? Here is the information they don't want you to know. The highest levels of radiation were released into the atmosphere in the early days, when at least two and possibly three hydrogen explosions, the result of the building up of heat and steam inside the cores, occurred in the reactor buildings, releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere. When the nuclear plant entered its state of emergency, the fuel rods inside these reactors began to melt from their upright position and slump down to the bottom of their containers, or pressure vessels, which are designed to keep them sealed up and isolated. That's a problem because the nuclear fuel in a state of meltdown can, in the worst-case scenario, burn through its container and the plant infrastructure to leak into the ground around the facility. Fukushima is not far off the water table. When that molten mass of self-sustaining nuclear material gets to the water table it won’t simply cool down, it will explode. The Japanese are still talking about days or weeks to clean this up. That’s not true. They cannot clean it up. And no one will live in that area again for dozens or maybe hundreds of years.

The history of nuclear energy goes back more than half of a century, to when the first experimental reactors were built in the 1950s. The technology of nuclear energy production is still new. There were "several bumps" in its development, including the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986 and this year’s accident at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan.

50 heroes of Fukushima

Over 20 workers had been injured by 18 March, including one who was exposed to a large amount of radiation when the worker tried to vent vapour from a valve of the containment building. 3 more workers were exposed to radiation over 100 mSv, and 2 of them were sent to a hospital due to beta burns on 24 March. Two other workers, Kazuhiko Kokubo, 24, and Yoshiki Terashima, 21, were killed by the tsunami while conducting emergency repairs immediately after the quake. Their bodies were found on March 30. Fukushima 50 is the alias given by the media to a group of employees of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant who stayed after TEPCO management proposed withdrawing all its employees from the plant on 14 March... The following night hundreds joined the original Fukushima 50. The workers and volunteers were assigned the mission of stabilizing the reactors. Their activities included assessing the damage and radiation levels caused by the explosions, cooling stricken reactors with seawater and preventing any risk of fire. These workers remained on-site despite risks of radiation poisoning. The Fukushima 50 were present when an explosion and fire occurred at the Unit 4 reactor.

Amid destroyed homes and rotting debris, survivors of Japan's earthquake and tsunami are stoically trying to keep their lives together, while fresh health fears surface over radiation. Victims still queue for basic necessities, nearly four months after the disaster struck.

“I want to tell people we need more help, more supplies and things are still bad here,” says a volunteer worker from Tokyo.

satellite photos before and after


globalgiving - japan earthquake relief fund


japan society relief fund





countdown to megaquake