Today, it is no secret to anyone that on March 11, 2011, a terrible accident occurred at the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant. The disaster at Fukushima horrified not only the residents of the small prefecture, but the whole world.
Gauze bandages, dosimeters and other devices that cost a lot of money were bought by people not only in neighboring Vladivostok and Sakhalin, but also in such a distant country as Germany. Because of the Fukushima 1 accident, people literally went crazy, panic and excitement began. It is also known that the company that owns the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant suffered enormous losses, and Japan lost the race among other countries in the field of engineering.
Everyone has long known the reason that an accident occurred in Japan, the reason for which lies in the earthquake that covered Japan and stopped the power supply to the entire city and the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant in particular. In fact, the strength of the earthquake was not so great, that is, the builders of the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant should have assumed that such a natural disaster would happen someday. And so, in 2011 it happened, and its consequences were the Fukushima accident.
The location of the nuclear power plant in general was very strange, and it is not clear why the Japanese chose the location of Fukushima-1 precisely near the water, when this threatens the possibility of a tsunami; close to the mountains, which means a high probability of an earthquake. In short, the location of the power plant implied that there might be an accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in the future.
Let us dwell on the connection between water and nearby reactors of a nuclear power plant and try to characterize the first causes of the accident in Fukushima and what exactly happened when the accident occurred at the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant.
The reactors that led to the Fukushima accident were BWR type. Their specific characteristic is ordinary water, which serves as a coolant for the rods that are filled with nuclear fuel. Water enters the reactor through the active region with a strong or slightly weakened flow.
After water has fulfilled its main function in reactors of this type, it evaporates into the generator compartment and is not released into the atmosphere in any way. Steam is delivered through special tubes to the reactor; it is influenced by turbines, which produce current in a nuclear power plant. After this complex process, radioactive water turns into condensate and enters its original place - into the reactor. 
Since every student who teaches physics at school knows that it is impossible to turn off a nuclear reactor by simply pressing a button, a big problem arises. Even if all the rods that are designed to slow down reactions in the reactor are transferred to the core, the reactor will continue to operate, albeit with a force of no more than three percent of the total possible power.
But still, such a small part of the power output can heat the reactor due to the increase in temperature in the rods, and the water, which at that time will become condensate, will turn into steam. Well, then, of course, it will be released into the atmosphere in the form of radioactive steam.
But if the reactors are cooled, such a reaction will not occur, and it will be possible to avoid not only a technical breakdown due to a lack of electricity, but also the fact that an accident occurred at Fokushima.
Causes
Now let's move on to the actual explosion at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant and answer the question: Causes of the Fukushima accident.
Due to the fact that one disaster in Fukushima coincided with another, that is, an earthquake led to a tsunami, the situation at the nuclear power plant became critical. Due to the lack of electricity, the reactors carried out an emergency shutdown. But, as we already know, even when the BWR reactor was turned off, it continued to operate. So, it required the same cooling.
Emergency generators, which are supposed to cool the reactors and prevent the concept of a Fukushima disaster from occurring, were faulty due to the tsunami, according to the official version. But some scientists and researchers believe that the negligence of workers and management led to the nuclear disaster in Japan.
Let us explain this statement in more detail. One must take into account the fact that the emergency generators were only supposed to be turned on if there was an accident at Fukushima (which does not happen very often). Based on this, the generator system could simply stagnate, the lubricants would freeze or dry out, and there would not be enough fuel.
And simply, there might not be personnel available to repair the breakdown in a critical situation. Theorists also confirm their statements by the fact that emergency engines should have an improved degree of protection a priori. If the entire building could collapse, the reactor vessel would be damaged, then the diesel emergency generator is simply obliged to continue working and save the situation.
Without an emergency generator, the Japanese were forced to release steam into the atmosphere, although this is strange. After all, they could freely use seawater for cooling, but in this case, the reactor would have to be completely replaced.
As a result, hydrogen accumulated in the turbine compartment, which, due to many processes, became the reason that the Fukushima 1 disaster occurred and the city gained fame as the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident.
Consequences for all of Japan
Today, it is not clear who should be blamed for what happened, the world-famous accident at Fukushima 1. It is unclear whether the culprit of this event is a natural disaster in Japan, or whether the workers of the Fukushima nuclear power plant are to blame, who could not fix problems and prevent the biggest disaster, called the accident at the Japanese nuclear power plant Fukushima 1.
Or, maybe it’s still worth putting the blame on the owners of the nuclear power plant and presenting them with claims that they built the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant in an unfavorable natural environment, that they did not provide the station with the necessary level of protection and did not provide high-quality generators and reactors to operate at Fukushima 1.
But one thing becomes clear - Japan suffered a catastrophe, which was caused by the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, and suffered colossal losses from someone’s mistakes in various areas. 
- Firstly, huge financial waste fell on Japan's shoulders. Although she is not the first person in financing the liquidation of the results of the Fukushima nuclear accident, the problem still affected her indirectly. The country will have to pay thousands of dollars to treat citizens and shelter affected families. In addition, Japan will now also have to worry about where to get the missing share of electricity that was generated by the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant. And the company that owns the nuclear power plant is asking to lend it a considerable amount to restore damaged areas that arose as a result of the accident in Fukushima.
According to some sources, Japan's losses after the Fukushima accident amount to 46 billion US dollars. Calculations say that the amount that Japan lost due to the concept of disaster is equivalent to what the country could have received from a nuclear power plant in 6 years of operation.
But on the other hand, the fact that the owning company will simply take on the debt may serve as some kind of shift forward in the financial and political plan of the country.
In order for Japan to provide the required amount to TEPCO, the company's management must give half of the shares to the state. Thus, more than half of the profits will go to the Japanese treasury.
IT IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW:
The second fact that Japan can benefit from the disaster is to get money for new reactors. After all, it is far from a secret that Japan cannot refuse to generate energy precisely with the help of nuclear power plants. That is why, having drawn a line through several states that old reactors are unreliable, Japan can receive some money from other countries to develop new nuclear reactors.
The second area where Japan suffered a downfall due to the accident at the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant is political, namely foreign policy. As the environmental disaster in Japan worsened the situation in the country, the political situation took on a different look. Japan is completely losing its position in the nuclear race, taking into account the fact that in its process, the eastern country was not a leader. But still, she stayed afloat. And now there is no chance of returning, even to their previous positions.
Although, even from this fact, Japan can, in some way, derive benefit - to throw off its underdeveloped engineering on old reactors and the inability to replace them with new ones. This would seem to explain the reason why Japan occupied such low positions in the world race and justify it. 
The third and most important consequence of the Fukushima nuclear disaster is human lives. Thousands of people are considered missing, many more have died, and the survivors are painful to even remember.
How many crippled destinies, tormented souls are now wandering around the world in search of cover. Some remain living in a radioactive dead zone in the prefecture, near the site of the Fukushima accident.
Many of the migrants, having traveled around the world and not finding shelter, return to their homeland, to ruined houses, which they repair, build again and try to live in a new way. But how can you live in a new way on the old ruins and corpses of millions of people with the fear that the thunder of an earthquake and tsunami will thunder again, and who knows whether you will be able to survive this time.
A lot of people who were left without family and home volunteer to the very epicenter of events and its outskirts to help in the liquidation of the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. They have nothing to lose anymore, when there was an accident in Fukushima, they lost everything dear to them, they lost the meaning of life. And now we decided to give ourselves for the good of the country, for the good of the people. 
Number of victims, losses after the accident
If we talk about the exact number of people who died or went missing, then it is impossible to name such a number. After all, it may happen that some resident was considered missing, but he had already died a long time ago, his body simply could not be found in the wreckage of the disaster. 
By converting the number of deaths and casualties from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant into a numerical equivalent, according to various data from different sources, we can draw the following conclusions. As of December 17, 2013, Japanese news reports the number of deaths in the accident - it is more than 1,603 people, and in August of the same year the death toll was 1,500 people. Almost twenty thousand more people are considered missing.
Many residents of the prefecture left their homes voluntarily, their number is more than 300 thousand citizens. There were two reasons why people left their homes:
- Destroyed houses after a tsunami hit the country;
- The location of the house was close to the most powerful radiation emission, as a result of which the Japanese were afraid of receiving an unacceptable dose of radiation.
But some citizens were so injured that they could not leave their homes on their own, but leaving them close to the scene of the incident was dangerous. The local government decided to evacuate people. The evacuation took place over two days. As of March 13, 2011, more than 180 thousand people were evacuated within a radius of 10 kilometers around the Fukushima Daini site and 20 kilometers around the second Fukushima Daiichi station.
The largest number of people were taken from the territory of Minamisouma-shi. The number of people was more than 70 thousand people, and the smallest number - 1.5 thousand people - were evacuated from Kuzuo-mura.
These numbers are terrifying when you consider the fact that such a number of people could constitute an entire state. And, imagine, it would disappear in one “wonderful” moment.
Not only ordinary residents suffered in the nuclear power plant accident, and not only because they lost loved ones and homes. Another terrible consequence that affected human lives was radiation exposure. Workers and residents around Fukushima 1 received a radiation dose 5 times higher than the permissible norm. More than thirty thousand employees, workers of the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant and some TEPSO managers received the most severe degree of radiation exposure.
Soon after the Fukushima accident, thousands of Japanese took to the streets of the Japanese capital and demanded that all nuclear power plants in the country stop operating. People began to fear more for their lives and those of their loved ones, set their life priorities differently and looked at real human values - life, family, home, health - from a different angle.
The Japanese expressed their protest and demanded that the government develop new alternative methods of generating energy; they were even ready to give up some household little things, but in return get safe living in their city. The government responded to this rally, but did not fulfill all the demands of the protesters, since this is impossible. 
But still, the Japanese government decided to close another nuclear power plant, which was not very well protected and, in the event of new disasters, could lead to a second explosion. The people of Japan and the country itself would not have survived it.
Other consequences of the disaster at the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant
In addition to the fact that the Fukushima accident brought enormous losses to Japan and its residents, it also affected other countries, companies and lives.
For example, the operating company TEPCO suffered losses of more than twelve billion dollars, this is without taking into account the share of compensation that the corporation must pay to the affected families and workers of the nuclear plant. The amount of these payments is equivalent to 6 billion dollars.
Apparently, because of such debts, the company will soon face bankruptcy or nationalization. TERSO sees the only way out of the current situation as borrowing money from the government. This will be the first step towards the collapse of one of the largest electric companies in Japan.
For the world, the Fukushima disaster has caused a double-edged judgment.
- On the one hand, the disaster at the nuclear power plant caused so much panic that in many countries around the world people took to the squares and rallied to abandon the generation of electricity using nuclear power plants. Following the example of the Japanese, they wanted to save their lives and take care of nature, which suffers from such disasters no less than people.
Protests and rallies ended in different ways. Some countries have agreed to phase out nuclear power generation for the country. And some, like China, didn't even lift a finger. They will continue to use nuclear reactors despite all the rallies.
- But nature suffered the greatest catastrophe. It has been carrying the consequences of various catastrophes within itself for more than one year, and the number of these years has not yet been exhausted. And, if in a few years human life comes to its logical conclusion, the company goes bankrupt, and the country leaves the steps of leadership, then the earth will bear all the mutations, bullying and disasters for centuries.
How many deformities, mutagenic plants, and terrifying pictures of nature can be seen not only in the areas around the Fukushima nuclear power plant, but throughout the world. Anomalies happen every day, humanity becomes infected with unknown diseases every hour, people die from terrible diseases every minute. 
The consequences of the Fukushima 1 accident are intangible. No one can say what else will appear on the territory of the station in ten or twenty years. But there will definitely be something there, since such a powerful release of radiation into the atmosphere and water cannot remain without a trace. He will show himself sooner or later. And according to experts, liquidation work at Fukushima 1 will continue for more than forty years.
Based on the material we analyzed, we can draw some conclusions and themes from the Fukushima accident briefly:
It was the strongest earthquake in the history of the country, although in terms of the number of victims and the scale of destruction it was inferior to the earthquakes in Japan in 1896 and 1923. According to scientists, such a strong earthquake occurs in this country no more than once every 600 years. An analysis of data from the European Space Agency's Envisat satellite showed that the March 11 earthquake shifted the east coast of Honshu by 2.5 meters to the east. The strength of the earthquake in Japan is evidenced by the fact that as a result, the earth's axis shifted by 10 centimeters.
Alas, scientists were unable to predict this earthquake; Thanks to the early warning system, which unites about 1000 seismographs in Japan, it was possible to warn citizens about it on television only a minute before the start of the earthquake in Tokyo. It was later reported that this saved a large number of lives. The Japanese Meteorological Agency announced a tsunami warning, it was the highest on the danger scale, the height of the expected wave was estimated to be at least 3 m. As it turned out, the actual height of the wave was much higher than three meters.
The greatest casualties and destruction were precisely caused by the tsunami that arose from the earthquake. It hit the coast of Japan, sweeping away ships, boats, planes, buildings, cars, and people along its path. It was later established that the height of the tsunami that hit the city of Miyako in Iwate Prefecture was about 40.5 meters! This is approximately the height of a 12-story building... The village of Noda in the same prefecture was hit by a wave 37.8 meters high, and the city of Onagawa in Miyagi Prefecture was destroyed by a wave 34.7 meters high.
A significant area with a total area of 561 square meters was subjected to the destructive effects of the tsunami. kilometer, 327 of them were in Miyagi Prefecture. The area affected by the tsunami was determined with high accuracy using aerial and space photography. The tsunami affected 62 cities and villages in six prefectures in Japan. The tsunami even flooded Sendai Airport, located off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture. The wave crushed planes and cars, destroyed and flooded buildings, hangars, and warehouses. In the city of Sendai, waves also destroyed a section of the road on which there were cars filled with people.
I think many people have not yet lost their memories of the apocalyptic images of that day shown on television. Burning cities and oil tanks, a wave that crushes and turns houses, cars and boats into crumbs, helpless crying people who have become victims of a merciless element. The most developed country in the world was unable to resist anything from the blow from the depths and the crushing tsunami.
The tsunami completely or half destroyed 126 thousand buildings, 260,000 were partially damaged. The damage from the tsunami alone to the Japanese economy, transport and infrastructure amounted to about 215 billion dollars. On September 5, 2012, the official death toll from the earthquake and tsunami in 12 prefectures of Japan was 15,870 people, 2,846 in 6 prefectures were listed as missing, and 6,110 people were injured.
In the tsunami-affected prefectures, over 23 million tons of garbage had to be removed! This is despite the fact that in Japan only 4.9 million tons of waste can be recycled per year. The fight against garbage turned out to be complicated by the fact that there was a possibility of contamination of some of it with radioactive substances due to the accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant. Three years have passed since the catastrophic earthquake in Japan, but its consequences have not yet been eliminated; it will take a lot of time to heal the wounds inflicted by the raging elements.
The accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant - the Second Chernobyl?
An earthquake and tsunami led to a very serious accident at the Japanese Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant. This nuclear power plant, which has six power units with a capacity of 4.7 GW, located in Japan in the city of Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, was built in the 1960s and 1970s. It was operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
Due to the impact of the disaster and March, the operating reactors were turned off, and soon after that the external power supply was lost. Most likely, everything would have turned out well, but the tsunami wave flooded the backup diesel generators, as a result, the cooling system of the reactors in power units 1, 2 and 3 was left without power. This ended with overheating and melting of the cores of these reactors.
Next, the steam-zirconium reaction began (an exothermic chemical reaction between zirconium and water vapor, occurring at high temperatures), as a result of which hydrogen was released. Its accumulation in the rooms with the rectors caused a series of explosions that destroyed the buildings. A terrible picture of explosions at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant was shown on television.
Fortunately, one diesel generator survived at the nuclear power plant; with its help, it was possible to provide cooling for two reactors and two pools of spent nuclear fuel (SNF). Only thanks to this, nothing terrible happened at the fifth and sixth power units of the station, otherwise the accident at the nuclear power plant would have been even more serious. The accident occurred due to the fact that the nuclear power plant did not provide protection against the effects of a tsunami. Diesel generators were located at the bottom of each of the power units of the nuclear power plant, so the incoming tsunami wave easily flooded them.
As a result of the accident at the nuclear power plant and the explosions that occurred there, radioactive elements were released into the atmosphere and ocean, in particular iodine 131 and cesium 137. The first has a very short half-life, but the second has a half-life of about 30 years. A small amount of plutonium was also determined at the nuclear power plant industrial site. According to initial estimates, the total volume of radionuclide emissions (900,000 terabecquerels) amounted to 20% of the emissions after the Chernobyl accident.
146 thousand residents were evacuated from a 30-kilometer zone around the nuclear power plant. The area of contaminated land in Japan subject to decontamination amounted to 3% of the country's territory. Radioactive substances were detected in drinking water and vegetables, tea, meat and other food products not only in Fukushima Prefecture, but also in other areas of Japan six months after the accident.
Only at the end of December 2011, the Japanese government reviewed and approved the plan for eliminating the accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, drawn up by Japanese experts. This plan is designed for 30-40 years. Imagine, many eyewitnesses to this terrible accident will die, and their sons, and maybe even grandchildren, will deal with the liquidation of its consequences! It is not surprising that the accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant dealt a serious blow to the global nuclear energy industry. A number of countries have frozen their peaceful nuclear projects, and Germany even stated that by 2022 it will close its last nuclear power plant and switch to alternative sources of electricity.
After the completion of the cold shutdown of the reactors, the plan for eliminating the consequences of the accident at the first stage provided for the removal of spent nuclear fuel from the spent nuclear fuel pools (3108 rods were stored in the pools). The main task of the second stage will be the extraction of nuclear fuel from the reactors themselves. Next, dismantling of reactor equipment will begin. Everything will take up to 40 years!
Information was recently published that during the three years of liquidation of the accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, about 15,000 plant workers were exposed to severe radioactive radiation. About 30,000 people have been involved in work at the station over the past three years, it turns out that half of the Japanese liquidators received a radiation dose that exceeded the safe norm established by the country's government. There is a significant underestimation of data on radioactivity at the damaged nuclear power plant.
Unfortunately, many experts argue that Japan did not take into account the Chernobyl experience, and as a result, a number of mistakes were made. An increased radioactive background is still recorded on the territory of the nuclear power plant, and leaks of highly radioactive water from above-ground steel tanks are occurring. After the accident, radioactive substances were found in shallow groundwater, which flows into the ocean. For example, in groundwater at a nuclear power plant, an increase in the level of radioactive beta radiation was recorded to 63,000 becquerels per liter, while the permissible limit is only 10 becquerels per liter.
Fukushima Prefecture has already seen an increase in the number of cancer patients. The local newspaper Mainichi, citing data from the prefectural authorities, reported that the number of Japanese who died from the consequences of the disaster at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant increased to 1,605 people. Most residents died due to exacerbation of diseases caused by high levels of radiation and ineffective treatment. Some, as the newspaper writes, even committed suicide.
A number of experts are expressing concern that the development of the situation with the emergency nuclear power plant could result in large-scale radioactive contamination of not only the groundwater around the plant, but also the ocean waters. Of course, I would like this whole story with the emergency nuclear power plant to end with minimal losses for both the Japanese people and all of humanity, but there is a feeling that we will hear more than once about Fukushima-1 and not only good things. In the meantime, TEPCO plans to clean up and decontaminate nuclear power plants using robots. According to the latest calculations by the company's scientists, it will take at least 40 years and about 15 billion dollars to completely eliminate the consequences of the accident at the nuclear power plant.
Not without a UFO...
On the morning of March 14, 2011, many Japanese newspapers came out with the headlines “UFO over Fukushimoya.” On March 13, in fact, not far from the emergency reactor of the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, eyewitnesses noticed several strange lights that could not be explained by a hallucination, an optical illusion, or a passing plane. Mysterious flickering lights appeared at 14:20, 15 km from the nuclear power plant. They united into a contour resembling a triangle.
Those who observed them noted that for the first 5 minutes the UFOs moved in one direction, but then they suddenly stopped, hung in the sky, hung, then began to move again, this time they were already rushing chaotically across the sky. It is curious that sometimes a periodic brighter glow of the spheres was observed; they flashed either all at the same time, or when several objects were combined into a group.
Eyewitnesses said that some kind of unusual rain of translucent fibers appeared over the nuclear power plant, as if some “hairs” were falling from the sky. A few minutes later the UFO moved towards the ocean, then, sharply increasing its speed, disappeared almost instantly.
Almost a month later, on April 8, 2011, a similar group of glowing lights (believed to be the same UFOs) was seen over a US military base in Hawaii.
On February 15, 2012, video surveillance cameras at the Japanese nuclear power plant again recorded the appearance of several UFOs above it. Ufologists assumed that UFOs were watching the developments of events at the emergency nuclear power plant. According to the most daring hypothesis, they even helped reduce emissions of radioactive substances and prevented a much more dangerous catastrophe for earthlings from occurring. By the way, there are materials on the Internet that UFOs were also observed at the height of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
If we already remembered the mysterious circumstances associated with the catastrophic earthquake, it is worth mentioning the version that the earthquake in Japan could have been caused by the American HAARP system. Perhaps the very first to speak about the involvement of the Pentagon and the HAARP system in the earthquake in Japan on March 11, 2011 was Benjamin Fulford, who at one time headed the Asia-Pacific department of Forbes magazine. He posted on the Internet a recording of his interview with former Japanese Finance Minister Koji Omi, made in 2007. The minister said that a group of oligarchs from the United States was demanding that control over the Japanese financial system be transferred to them, threatening to provoke artificial earthquakes in this country if they refused.
It is worth noting that at one time, Major General of the People's Liberation Army of China, head of the space object control service, Zhou Chengheo, directly accused the United States that the earthquakes and rainstorms that caused mass disasters in China in 2008 were the result of the influence of the HAARP system as part of the implementation of the Pentagon's secret military program "Weather as a Force Multiplier."
According to the major general, many survivors of the May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, immediately before it began, observed unusual fiery clouds in the sky, reminiscent of the northern lights, and they are precisely a sign of the use of meteorological weapons. Moreover, the Taiwanese satellite recorded a 50% drop in the level of electricity in the ionosphere above the earthquake zone, and this is what happens under the influence of HAARP. It is known that many animals anticipate an earthquake, and this threat provokes them into abnormal behavior, but in this case nothing similar was observed.
10 minutes before the first tremors in Japan on March 11, 2011, many eyewitnesses saw the so-called clouds in the sky
The main cause of the disaster at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant was the human factor, and not natural disasters, as previously stated. This conclusion was reached by experts from a commission of the Japanese parliament in a 600-page report published on July 5. The commission found that the fault was the negligence of the supervisory authorities and the operator of Fukushima-1, Tero (Tokyo Electric Power Company), as well as their incompetence during the liquidation of the consequences of the accident. The commission also encroached on the sacred, declaring that the Japanese mentality was also to blame: the desire to shift responsibility to the authorities and the reluctance to borrow foreign experience in matters of security and modernization.
A commission established by the Japanese parliament spent six months investigating the cause of the accident, and its findings contradict three previous reports. The disaster occurred in March 2011, and until now the main cause of the explosions at Fukushima was considered a natural disaster - a strong earthquake with a magnitude of nine and a tsunami 15 meters high had such destructive power that it was supposedly impossible to avoid what happened.
The report claims that the immediate causes of the accident were "foreseeable well in advance" and blames the accident on operator Thurso, which failed to make necessary upgrades to the plant, and on government nuclear energy agencies that turned a blind eye to Thurso's failures. safety requirements.
Government regulators - the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), as well as the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC) - were well aware that the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant did not meet new safety standards. The fact that the plant had not been modernized at the time of the accident indicates collusion between Thurso and the regulators. At the same time, all of the named structures understood that a tsunami could cause colossal damage to the nuclear power plant: the likelihood that it would lead to a power outage at the station (which happened), putting the country at risk of a nuclear reactor explosion, was obvious even before the accident.
However, NISA did not monitor the station for compliance with international regulations, and Thurso did nothing to reduce the risks. “If Fukushima had been modernized to new American standards introduced after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the accident could have been prevented,” the report states. The commission also found a conflict of interest in the activities of regulators, declaring a conspiracy that NISA was created as part of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) - the very structure that actively promoted the development of nuclear energy in the country.
Terso has long justified itself by saying that the failure at the station occurred precisely because of the tsunami: it is impossible to protect a single object from a wave 15 meters high, sweeping away everything in its path. The commission argues that, in fact, Thurso simply ignored repeated warnings from experts about the likelihood of a tsunami of such magnitude that the station's designers did not count on it in 1967.
The commission concluded that the emergency protection system for the nuclear reactor was activated as soon as seismic activity began (almost immediately after the earthquake began and almost an hour before the most powerful tsunami waves hit the station). Let us note that it was precisely this circumstance (an emergency shutdown of the reactors) that saved the station from a full-scale nuclear disaster. However, parliamentary experts do not pay much attention to this fact, but immediately move on to criticizing the operating company. The main complaint that experts make to Terso is the vulnerability of the energy supply system: it was the system that failed, which led to irreversible consequences, including the release of radiation into the atmosphere and the ocean. Without electricity, the reactor cooling system at the station stopped working, which resulted in explosions, fires and a leak of radioactive material. The diesel generator and other emergency sources of electricity were located on the territory of the station or directly next to it, and because of this they were almost immediately washed away by the tsunami, the commission believes.
The electricity supply system, vital for the operation of the nuclear power plant, was not diversified, and from the moment the plant remained completely de-energized, it was no longer possible to change the course of the situation. Meanwhile, according to the commission, the very first strong impacts of the earthquake caused such damage to the plant’s security systems that would have led to radioactive leaks even when the generators were running. True, here, on this key issue, the authors of the report resort to more cautious formulations (“I think...”, “there are reasons to believe...”) - the fact is that to confirm this version it is necessary to get into the premises of the destroyed reactor, which cannot be accessed. Experts only suggest that "the force of the tremors was great enough to damage the main safety systems, since the necessary checks of the equipment that were supposed to protect the station from seismic activity were not carried out."
Experts also accuse "the government, regulators, Thurso and the prime minister of mismanaging the crisis situation." Prime Minister Naoto Kan (he left this post in August 2011) did not announce the introduction of a state of emergency in time; he and his cabinet members also bear responsibility for the chaotic evacuation of the population (in total, 150 thousand people were evacuated from the affected area). “Evacuation plans changed several times in one day: the initially specified three-kilometer zone was first expanded to 10 kilometers, and then to a radius of 20 kilometers,” the report says. In addition, hospitals and nursing homes within the 20-kilometer affected area struggled to transport patients and find places to house them. In March, 60 patients died during the evacuation. Due to the random movement of residents, many received radiation doses, while others were moved from place to place several times before being finally housed and suffered unnecessary stress as a result.
The commission found that people living at a distance of 20-30 kilometers from the station were initially asked not to leave their homes, although already on March 23, data were published that in some areas within a 30-kilometer zone high levels of radiation were noted. However, despite this, neither the government nor the emergency response headquarters made a prompt decision to evacuate these areas - people were removed from contaminated areas within a radius of 30 kilometers from the nuclear power plant only a month later, in April. As a result, the evacuation zone in some areas exceeded 20 kilometers. In addition, during the evacuation, many residents were not warned that they were leaving their homes forever, and they left, taking with them only the most necessary things. The government was not only extremely slow in informing the local administration about the accident at the nuclear power plant, but also failed to clearly explain how dangerous the situation was. The prime minister is also accused that his intervention in crisis management led to confusion and disrupted coordination between services designed to eliminate the consequences of the disaster.
However, it is not entirely clear who the prime minister could have interfered with: from the point of view of the commission, both Terso and the government regulator NISA were completely unprepared for an emergency of such a scale, and their activities were extremely ineffective. According to experts, Terso simply withdrew: instead of directly managing the crisis situation at the station, company employees shifted all responsibility onto the Prime Minister and simply broadcast Naoto Kan’s instructions. The company's president, Masataka Shimizu, was not even able to clearly explain to the prime minister the plan of action for the operators at the station. Note that he resigned two months after the accident in May 2011.
Experts also argue that, to a large extent, the consequences of the accident were so severe because of the very mentality of the Japanese: a culture of universal obedience, a desire to shift responsibility to superiors and an unwillingness to question the decisions of this superiors, as well as because of their insular isolation and unwillingness to learn from others' experience.
However, behind these lyrical digressions about the peculiarities of the Japanese worldview, it is difficult not to notice the serious political component of the report. Addressing the deputies in their opening remarks, experts clearly say that negligence led to the disaster, the reason for which lies in insufficient control on the part of civil society (read: these same deputies) over such a dangerous industry as nuclear energy. In the list of measures that the commission recommends taking in order to reduce the likelihood of similar incidents in the future, number one is the need for parliamentary oversight of regulators. Thus, we can say that it is not without reason that the commission places such a serious degree of responsibility for the disaster on government regulators and the operating company subordinate to them.
The accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant was assigned the maximum level of danger - the seventh, a level that was assigned only to the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. After the earthquake and tsunami, the reactor cooling systems at the power plant failed, leading to a major radiation leak. All residents from the exclusion zone within a radius of 20 kilometers were evacuated. After a series of explosions and fires at the uncontrolled station, a decision was made to decommission it, but it will take at least 30 years to completely eliminate the consequences of the accident and shut down the reactor. After the Fukushima disaster, the Japanese government decided to temporarily abandon the use of nuclear energy: in the spring of 2011, preventive inspections of all nuclear reactors in the country began. A few hours before the publication of the parliamentary commission's report, Japan re-commissioned the nuclear reactor at the Oi nuclear power plant.
The explosion in Japan in 2011 left a heavy imprint on the lives of all people living in and outside the disaster area. Until now, the thought of an explosion in Fukushima makes the heart skip a beat, and the consequences are terrifying in their pictures.
Experts say that the explosion will be present for many years to come, and all liquidation work will be completed in at least 40 years. Let's figure out what caused the explosion at a nuclear power plant in Japan to become so powerful and change the lives of thousands of people.
The story begins in 2011, then, on March 11 at about 15:00 local time, Japan was shaken by an earthquake off the Pacific coast. This earthquake was recorded as the fifth most powerful in the entire history of research (magnitude fluctuations from 9.0 to 9.1). For Japan, this was the strongest earthquake that has ever happened.
The consequences became such that three functioning power units stopped working from the six available, each with a capacity of 4.7 GW. It seems that this should not have caused any thoughts that a Fukushima explosion might happen. But, no such luck, after the earthquake, Japan was hit by a powerful tsunami, which caused the entire power supply that was available to cease. The nuclear power plant was left without him too. 
It would seem that in such a serious installation there should be some backup methods of generating electricity, but there were none. Diesel generators, which were installed on the ocean shore, were designed to remove the remaining heat generated by the reactors. But the backup generators also crashed and were left without power supply. It is worth noting that the heat release of the reactor at that time was approximately 6.5% of the total power level.
Power units were urgently delivered to the power plant. They were intended to replace diesel units that had failed. But again a misfortune happened, since the installations that were available did not fit the system. 
There were, of course, emergency batteries, but they stopped functioning after two hours of operation, as they were intended for less complex cases.
Repair problems
Another reason was sea water. Due to the tsunami, salt water flooded all the basements, subsequently shorting out the main power distribution panels. In this regard, all attempts to restore electricity were in vain.
One problem clung to another and it all resulted in a bunch of consequences. The fact that the reactors were not cooled led to the formation of steam, which increased the pressure in the first three power units. The fastest reaction between zirconium and water vapor occurred in the first power unit.
To prevent a premature explosion at a nuclear power plant in Japan under high pressure, workers collected all the radioactive steam in a hermetic shell. An incredible fact - the pressure of the containment at the allowable 400 kPa more than doubled and was equal to 840 kPa.
It became clear that the pressure needed to be reduced somehow. The workers of the nuclear power plant solved this issue in the following way: to release excess steam from the containment into the atmosphere. At the same time, it was guaranteed that everything would be filtered and atmospheric contamination with radionuclides would not be critical. The steam had to be passed through the wet material. 
When steam was released, a reaction occurred in the shell between zirconium and water vapor, and hydrogen condensate formed. There was no ventilation at all because there was no power supply; the emergency system also ran on electricity.
It became clear that an explosion at a nuclear power plant in Japan was inevitable.
Stages of explosions
And so it happened, a day after the earthquake, on March 12, there was a powerful explosion in Japan in 2011 - hydrogen exploded in the first power unit. The question that arises before us is why the owners and workers of the nuclear power plant did not foresee a possible explosion in Fukushima, because the nuclear plant was located in an area where earthquakes were not uncommon. 
Special knockout panels were installed. But terrible human negligence played a role here. Since these panels responded to even the smallest earthquake, they sometimes opened, which made the plant employees very unhappy.
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Therefore, back in 2007, management issued instructions to weld the knockout panels to the walls of the building, despite the high percentage of the fact that at any moment something could cause an explosion in Japan. To say that this caused the entire roof of the building to be destroyed is an understatement. 
Not only were four people injured immediately after the explosion, but the radiation level increased 9 thousand times higher than the permissible norm (1015 μ3v/hour). And this is a more terrible harm to the body than a broken leg or burn.
The Fukushima explosion was on the front pages of all media, as there was a huge probability that another unit - No. 3 - would explode. The cooling system on it also failed, so all the same manipulations were carried out as in the case before the explosion occurred at the nuclear power plant for the first time.
Two days after the first reactor explosion occurred in Japan, a second explosion occurred in Fukushima. Its wave was felt by everyone at a distance of forty kilometers from the location of the nuclear power plant. Three times more people were physically injured than the first time a nuclear power plant exploded in Japan, and the radiation level was 751 μ3v/hour.
The most unfortunate thing is that on March 15, 2011, the third explosion occurred at a nuclear power plant in Japan at power unit No. 2. The situation was so difficult that neither management, nor scientists, nor workers knew what to do. This time, the management, in order to avoid a third incident called Japan nuclear power plant explosion, decided not to release steam into the atmosphere.
They chose another available option - to lower it into a bubbler pool (a tank or container for extinguishing the kinetic energy of a jet of steam-water mixture). Subsequently, the explosion was much smaller. But, in contrast to the first two cases, the third reactor explosion in Japan did much more harm. 
If the degree of radiation in the first case exceeded the permissible norm by 9000 times and amounted to 1015 μ3v/hour, then after the third case under the world famous name in all media Japan explosion, the number increased to 8217 μ3v/hour. The figure is terrifying and says that life in this territory is simply impossible.
People were immediately evacuated, the workers were taken to the hospital. Only 50 people remained at the scene of the accident, as they were called kamikazes, or suicide bombers, who watched the remaining power units.
Other nuclear power plants
According to experts, an explosion in Japan could happen again. Not far from Fukushima-1, another nuclear power plant was located - Fukushima-2. But the explosion at Fukushima No. 2 did not occur, although there were many problems with cooling there. It’s scary to even imagine what would have happened if there had been another explosion in Japan.
Let's sum it up
So, let’s summarize all the facts that we explained in this article:
- The earthquake that caused the explosion of a nuclear power plant in Japan was the most powerful in the country's history.
- The tsunami was the second reason that there was an explosion at a nuclear power plant in Japan. The maximum wave height reached 40.5 meters. After it, more than 20 thousand people suffered and went missing.
Today, the results of the Fukushima explosions are manifested in various gene mutations, diseases and abnormalities. People don't know what to do about it and continue to fight stubbornly.
In the scientific field, today they have developed a new robot that will be able to clear away the rubble of a nuclear power plant.
The Fukushima explosion should serve as a good lesson for those who want to build more installations of this type. Life-threatening installations should be located as far as possible not only from the habitat of the general population, but also away from places where natural disasters occur. After all, Mother Nature is unpredictable, and we must protect our lives and the lives of all the inhabitants of the planet.
Which nuclear disaster is the most dangerous in human history? Most people will say: “Chernobyl”, and they will be wrong. In 2011, an earthquake believed to be an aftershock of another, the 2010 Chilean earthquake, generated a tsunami that caused reactor meltdowns at the TEPCO nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. Three reactors melted down, and the subsequent release of radiation into the water turned out to be the largest in human history. In just three months after the disaster, more radioactive chemicals were released into the Pacific Ocean than were released during the Chernobyl disaster. However, in reality, the actual figures may be much higher, since, as several scientists have shown in recent years, official Japanese estimates do not correspond to reality.
And as if all this wasn't enough, Fukushima continues to dump an astounding 300 tons into the Pacific Ocean! — radioactive waste daily! And Fukushima will do this indefinitely because the leak cannot be fixed. It is simply inaccessible to either humans or robots due to extremely high temperatures.
Therefore, it should not be surprising that Fukushima has already contaminated the entire Pacific Ocean with radiation in just five years.
Fukushima could easily be the worst environmental disaster in human history, but it is almost never talked about by politicians, well-known scientists or news agencies. It is interesting to note that TEPCO is a subsidiary of General Electric (GE), one of the largest companies in the world, with significant control over both the media and politicians. Could this explain the lack of coverage of the Fukushima disaster that we have seen over the past five years?
In addition, there is evidence that GE was aware for decades that the Fukushima reactors were in terrible condition, but did nothing. The findings led 1,400 Japanese citizens to sue GE for its role in the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
And even if we can't see the radiation, parts of the west coast of North America have already been feeling its effects for the past few years. So, shortly after Fukushima, fish in Canada began bleeding from their gills, mouths and eyes. The government ignores this “disease”; meanwhile, it has reduced native fish fauna, including North Pacific herring, by 10 percent. In Western Canada, independent scientists record a 300 percent increase in radiation levels. According to their data, this level in the Pacific Ocean is rising every year. Why is this being ignored by the mainstream media? Perhaps the reason is that the US and Canadian authorities prohibited their citizens from talking about Fukushima so that “people would not panic”?
Further south [of Canada], in the US state of Oregon, starfish began to lose legs and then completely disintegrate when radiation reached the region in 2013. Sea stars are now dying in record numbers, putting the region's entire ocean ecosystem at risk. However, government officials say it is not Fukushima's fault, although it was after Fukushima that radiation levels in Oregon tuna tripled. In 2014, radiation on California beaches increased by 500 percent. Government officials responded by saying that the radiation was coming from a mysterious "unknown" source and that there was nothing to worry about.
Contamination map of the Pacific Ocean (Photo: US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)