Five years have passed since 11 March 2011, the day Japan experienced the most severe natural disaster of the last decade. The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant occurred following a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, powerful enough to permanently shift Japan's main island more than two metres to the east
Five years have passed since 11 March 2011, the day Japan experienced the most severe natural disaster of the last decade. The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant occurred following a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, powerful enough to permanently shift Japan's main island more than two metres to the east, triggering a tsunami that crippled the plant's reactors. Now that more than 20,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands have been left homeless, a number of unresolved issues remain in Japan. Although progress has been made, the country still has a long way to go before it recovers from the catastrophe.
Those who lived in the red zone, within a 20-kilometre radius of the nuclear plant, cannot return to their homes due to extremely high radiation levels. The population is attempting to boycott Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's efforts to reopen the country's nuclear power plants, which had been shut down following the disaster. However, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which operated the Fukushima Daiichi plant, maintains that nuclear energy is the best form of energy for Japan, unless the country intends to worsen its environmental impact and become dependent on imported sources. In the meantime, the legal battle continues: recently, three former Tepco executives were charged with professional negligence.
As for the most complex phase of the clean-up operations — namely the removal of the highly radioactive fissile material found at the bottom of the reactors — Tepco has yet to draw up a plan. The financial cost would be astronomical: it could take up to forty years and more than 20 billion dollars to decontaminate and dismantle the plant. The cost of damages, including compensation for evacuated residents, is estimated at more than 100 billion dollars. The government has already spent more than 1.5 billion dollars collecting and storing the radioactive soil from the disaster area in hundreds of black bags.
There is, however, one positive note: 1,500 spent nuclear fuel rods have been removed from reactor number four. Tepco is also working to reduce the 400 tonnes of rainwater and groundwater that seep into the plant's basements every day, in order to prevent contamination and the need for treatment and storage. Furthermore, in some parts of the site workers are able to move around without protective face masks and hazmat suits (from the English hazardous materials).
Robots take on the task of cleaning up nuclear waste
Looking ahead, the most urgent issue to resolve is that of the reactors. It is still unknown where the nuclear waste is located or how to clean it up. Since humans would not survive exposure to it, Tepco has decided to assign robots the task of cleaning the containment vessels, although this plan has proved ineffective in the past.
Outside Japan, and particularly along the western coast of North America, there is still considerable concern as radiation levels reaching the Pacific-facing coastline are higher than previously thought. Research carried out by marine radiochemist Ken Buesseler revealed that the quantity of caesium in the waters off Vancouver Island, Canada, is approximately six times higher than when this toxic metal was first introduced into the oceans following nuclear bomb tests — a practice abolished in 1963. This high accumulation of caesium in the Pacific appears to be continuously increasing.
In 2012, the World Health Organization revealed that in areas with higher radiation levels, the risk of developing certain forms of cancer such as leukaemia and thyroid cancer is 4–7 per cent greater. However, it is still too early to determine what the long-term effects of the disaster will be. The health consequences could worsen both in Japan and in other nations affected by the catastrophe.
Translated by Francesca Clemente