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As a kid I saw the 1973 movie Tidal Wave, which was an Americanization of a Japanese film titled Japan Sinks.Scientists don’t like the term “tidal wave,” because tides have nothing to do with it. Tsunami, which is Japanese for “harbor wave,” is preferred. And in 2011 Japan suffered a big one. Then shit went nuclear.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: March 11, 2011--
The March 11, 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami was a triple disaster. The earthquake was a “megathrust,” and not the good kind. It was also under the sea and being wetter did not make it better. Taking place about 45 miles east of Japan, the magnitude 9.1 earthquake shoved one tectonic plate underneath another, making for the fourth most powerful quake in recorded history. With all that shake and rattle, the waves started to roll.
Residents only had eight minutes warning of impending salt watery doom. But many who made it to shelters were still fucked, because the goddamn tsunamis were over a hundred feet high. Almost 20,000 died, over 6,000 injured, and 2,556 went missing. Four years later a quarter million were still displaced from their homes. But of course, it was worse than that.
I’m a big fan of nuclear power; it’s clean and safe and the technology to keep it so is improving. Chernobyl was human dumbfuckery under a corrupt system that could have been avoided. The Fukushima meltdown also could have been prevented, because the planet had shown its anger before. What happened was that as soon as the earthquake hit, the plant automatically shut down. Then the diesel generators kicked in to power pumps that circulated coolant through the reactor cores. But then a 50-foot-high tsunami crested the plant’s seawall and flooded the generators. The power stopped, the cooling stopped, and three reactors went meltdown. Fuck.
Radiation was released into the air and ocean, and 154,000 people were evacuated. In the analysis of what went wrong, it was learned that once again, people fucked up. Reports in 2000 and 2008 both said tsunami flooding was a possibility and these were ignored. There was also criticism of how the response to the disaster was handled, with there being poor communication and delays in taking action. Nevertheless, it turned out to not be as bad as first imagined. Sixteen people suffered physical injuries from explosions. Two had possible radiation burns. There has been one confirmed cancer death from radiation exposure. Six other workers exceeded the lifetime limit of radiation exposure and another 300 got significant doses. Forecasts are that as many as 100 people may eventually die from cancer due to radiation exposure from the disaster.
Despite this, nuclear power really is safe, especially when strict controls are in place. And when you consider how utterly catastrophic the burning of fossil fuels has been for the environment, and that a whopping nine million peopledie from air pollution each year, nuclear power must be part of the overall strategy to wean ourselves away from that toxic fucking dinosaur fuel.
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