I was born and grew up in that town. But when I think about what's best for my children,
I can't go back yet.
Ten years have passed. But here, time has stood still.
Frozen at 2.46pm, the exact moment a massive earthquake struck north eastern Japan and
led to one of the worst nuclear disasters of all time.
This is Fukushima.
FUKUSHIMA: 10 YEARS ON
Japan has been hit by its biggest earthquake since records began.
An explosion was heard, and smoke seen at the power plant
The images of destruction and flooding, coming out of Japan are simply heartbreaking.
On the 11 March 2011, a magnitude nine earthquake struck here.
It caused a Tsunami which killed more than 15,000 people and led to a meltdown at TEPCO’s
Daiichi Nuclear Power plant.
Whole towns were washed off the map, leaving nothing behind.
Tens of thousands of people were evacuated.
But how did an earthquake lead to such an enormous disaster? And what was it like for
the people who were at the epicentre?
Chapter 1, The Triple Disaster
The disaster left Fukushima a ghost town, hidden away behind barricades.
Abandoned homes.
Washing hanging where it was left.
Once filled with people, it’s been overrun by nature.
But it wasn’t always this way.
After WW2, nuclear power offered new possibilities.
With few of its own natural resources like gas or oil, for Japan it was a way to avoid
relying on other countries for electricity.
By 1954, Japan had budgeted 230 million yen for nuclear energy, and it began to build
nuclear plants faster than any other nation in the world.
In 1967, Tokyo Electric Power Company built its nuclear plants in Fukushima and the Daiichi
plant became one of the largest operational nuclear power stations on the planet.
The Japanese government and energy companies and also major media outlets, they worked
together to create the safety myth. The idea that nuclear does not bring any harm to people.
It only emphasises the positive effects, whilst neglecting or almost consciously ignoring
the very risk and harm that comes with it.
But in 2011, everything changed.
The quake was the strongest Japan had seen for a thousand years. Even bigger than the
great Kanto earthquake In 1923.
It was so powerful that Japan’s coastline moved eight feet to the east and sank three feet down.
It set off aftershocks around the world. Tremors were felt as far as Beijing, United States,
and Cuba.
People thought they would be safe behind the barriers, but this time the tsunami lasted
a lot longer and was twice as powerful.
The tsunami flooded the nuclear power plant. Result? Massive overheating and reactors 1,
2 and 3 suffered meltdowns.
When the power supply failed, operators lost control of the plant, and a hydrogen explosion
blew the roof and walls off reactor 4.
Chernobyl was an explosion inside the reactor core. Fukushima was different in that it was
an explosion in the reactor building, there was a partial meltdown, hydrogen gas was vented
out of the core, and then it was that hydrogen gas that exploded. So the radioactivity we
see in the environment from Fukushima, is volatile elements that came out of the reactor,
as it was overheating and melting down.
Japan classified the event as a level 7, the same as Chernobyl, meaning it was a major
release of radiation with widespread health and environmental effects.
Following the explosion, the government set up an exclusion zone prohibiting residents
from living within 20 kilometres of the plant.
In the beginning of such an accident, nobody really knows how these things will develop.
And the Japanese government or local authorities, they reacted quite quickly and evacuation
started already on the day of the accident.
Chapter 2, The Warning Signs
For many the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl called for a re-examination of the dangers
of nuclear energy.
The way we characterise risk tends to be a combination of severity and frequency. But
in nuclear power, the frequency of one is high enough, you don’t want even one event
like that to happen.
But it was believed that an accident like that couldn’t happen in Japan.
“…beyond hypothetical assumptions…”
One report by TEPCO called the fallout “…beyond hypothetical assumptions”
The earthquake was stronger, and the tsunami bigger than anyone expected.
But for TEPCO there had been warning signs.
That was one of the first nuclear power plants imported from the united states, called ‘turn
key contract’ which means that you just depend on the manufacturer, so there was a
lack of basic know-how in dealing with nuclear design and everything.
The design for the nuclear plant meant that the emergency power sources were stored underground.
The idea was that this would protect them from the risk of a hurricane rather than a
tsunami.
But what the design didn’t account for, were some of the highest tsunamis in Japan’s
history.
And that mattered, because the only thing protecting the plant from a tsunami were these
walls.
They were meant to stop waves of up to 5.7 metres, but the tsunami had waves that peaked
at 17 metres high.
Thirteen years before the disaster, a TEPCO employee found a crack in one of the reactors
at Fukushima. When he reported it, TEPCO told him to conceal the evidence. He ignored the
advice and told the government regulators, who ordered TEPCO to deal with issue. So TEPCO
fired the employee.
In 2011, a New York Times report revealed 14 major lawsuits were filed against the Japanese
government regarding adequate nuclear safety. Despite failing, they did point to operators
who down-played serious hazards.
[TEPCO] they planned to address the structural problem but then after, they came to the conclusion
that it’s going to cost a lot of money and potentially it may shut down the plant.
So unfortunately they put higher priority on continuing the nuclear power plants operation
over taking measures against tsunamis.
Ten years after the disaster, Tokyo High Court held TEPCO and the Japanese government, liable
for negligence in Fukushima.
Chapter 3: The Aftermath
The area around the Fukushima plants was radioactive.
Many had lost their homes and their families.
When the tsunami came, I jumped in the car with my dog and my father and drove off as
quickly as possible. That was all I could do.
Ten of my relatives are missing. I haven’t been able to get in contact with them. I’m
very worried about them.
Tens of thousands had been evacuated.
Radiation showed up in local milk and vegetables, devastating the farming and fishing communities.
We get our income from our produce, so if we can’t sell it we won’t have an income.
We are not getting information on what is happening at the nuclear plant. This is exactly
the time when we should be harvesting plants, but we have no idea whether or not we will
be able to sell them.
In the aftermath, information coming from the government and press wasn’t always clear.
The residents I spoke to said they wanted information to help them decide which information
was correct.
People were trying to find out what was going on and there was just no information available,
which was just leading to speculation and assumptions of worst-case scenarios
Public confidence in nuclear power collapsed.
No more Fukushima!
The triple disaster of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear fallout made a huge dent in the
Japanese economy.
The disaster had a significant impact on sustainability overall. Nuclear power in Japan’s electric
energy was 25% in 2010, but it decreased to 6% in 2019.
I think it will have a big impact internationally. Japan’s electricity output has fallen and
we’re worried about power cuts.
The price of natural oil and gas from foreign countries rose and so Japan increasingly depended
on fossil fuels.
And residents concerns over their future began to grow.
At first, I heard that there would not be any health concerns, but how long will this
last. I would like to receive clear information.
At Chernobyl, children were diagnosed many years after the disaster. Children here may
be fine now, but if there’s any risk I want to find out as soon as possible.
At the time of the accident, the residents of Fukushima went into a panic because most
of them did not know anything about radiation exposure and health.
At the beginning there was public fear and anxiety that Fukushima would end up with the
situation in Chernobyl. But radiation exposure in Fukushima was much lower than that in Chernobyl.
In fact, we did an independent monitoring of radiation as we didn’t trust the government
reporting, but our results also confirmed that this was the case.
What we found in the decades after the Chernobyl accident is that the fear of radiation and
the consequences of what we have to do to protect ourselves from radiation, many scientists
believe that those impacts are worse than the direct impact of the radiation itself.
Part of the stigma of radioactivity actually comes from the atomic bombs. And there were
certainly reports coming out of japan after Fukushima that people were being stigmatised
because they had been exposed to the radiation.
There are an awful lot of psycho social consequences of a radiation accident that go way beyond
the radiological risks. Like stress, loss of livelihood, and worry, mental health issues,
I don’t know what to do. The future is looking very bleak.
Some evacuees lost their homes by evacuating compulsorily on government orders, others
had to evacuate independently from Fukushima due to considerable contamination. Despite
their difference in status and condition, they are all victims of the nuclear disaster.
It’s been a year since my father died. I am going to pray to get over my grief so that
my children feel better.
Although no one died from radiation in Fukushima, the disaster still took lives.
It’s been estimated that there have been over 2200 deaths as a result of the trauma
and stress the evacuees endured.
CHAPTER 4 THE RECOVERY
The 2011 disaster left Fukushima changed forever.
The biggest difference between what happened in Chernobyl and what happened in Fukushima
is that the Japanese government believe the area has to be cleared.
The facility at Fukushima is being decommissioned, but it’s a huge operation.
There are vast amounts of waste, contaminated water and soil, and where to store it is still
on ongoing issue.
According to government estimates, the total compensation for the disaster could reach
21.5 trillion yen, or 198.3 billion dollars, and the clean-up effort may not be completed
until 2051.
It will be difficult for this region to return to how things were before the accident.
With decontamination still in the distant future, it raises the question…. is it safe
to go back?
After nuclear accidents, there are often a range of radioactive chemicals released into
the environment. So the half-life is the time it takes for a radioactive element to decrease
by one half. So for example radioactive cesium which has a thirty year half-life, so that
means it takes thirty years for half of it to disappear from the environment.
Although some parts aren’t yet habitable, it was reported in 2013 that radiation levels
around Fukushima were ‘unlikely to harm health’
Most of the doses are not much higher than it would be if you lived in Cornwall say or
Chicago, areas where there’s natural background from granite. So, most of those areas are
perfectly ok to go back to.
Towns are slowly returning to life. And so, some of the residents have returned to their
original homes, while others who can no longer live in their original homes, live in reconstructed
public housing, which was developed by the town and national government.
I live in Fukushima because I would like to watch over Fukushima, my hometown, which was
confronted with enormous difficulties, as long as I live.
As part of the recovery the government created the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework policy
to develop the area.
So now the focus is on things like sustainable energy, solar power, making sure that the
schools are open, making sure that there are hospitals, care homes for the elderly, and
that the basic infrastructure of life is there.
Agriculture and the Daiichi plant were once at the heart of Fukushima’s local economy.
Now the unusable land is being transformed to create clean energy, and a potential new
source of income.
But not everyone wants to go back. Many evacuees have moved on with their lives in different
parts of Japan, leaving Fukushima in their past.
I want to lead a quiet life. Somehow, I survived, and I now want to live in peace.
Today there are 9 operational nuclear reactors in Japan.
When you think about the risk of the decommissioning process, we still have 30 thousand people
evacuating from the Fukushima area, their own home, I would say that even after 10 years,
the Fukushima accident is not over.
The earthquake that caused the Fukushima disaster couldn’t have been predicted, but some argue
that doesn’t mean the fallout was unavoidable.
Fukushima and its residents are slowly beginning to recover.
Even if a completely decontaminated future is still many years away.