Explosion of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station

Explosion of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station
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1 On March 11, 2011 at about 2:46 pm, a massive earthquake with magnitude 9.0 struck the seafloor of Honshu Island that created a series of large towering tsunamis which ravaged East Japan (Fukushima Daiichi Accident, 2018). The impact of the earthquake caused damage to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station which is located at the east coast of Japan; however, the flooding of the reactors with seawater due to the subsequent strikes of tsunamis lead to total electricity outage and failure of the cooling systems that de-stabilized the different reactors which then caused the reactors to explode (Sanger & Wald, 2011). Steam was released inside the reactor buildings to alleviate the increasing pressure inside the reactors; however, the steam released had high contents of hydrogen and was mixed with air which violently reacted that caused the explosion (Fukushima Daiichi Accident, 2018). There were six nuclear reactors on the power plant where reactors 4,5 & 6 were under maintenance when the earthquake struck but were also damaged (Fukushima Daiichi Accident, 2018). Reactors 1,3, and 4 had hydrogen explosions that resulted to considerable damage to personnel and structures (Fukushima Daiichi Accident, 2018). The reactor no. 1 was the first to explode due to the large buildup of hydrogen inside the reactor building (Sanger & Wald, 2011). The design of the nuclear power plant is one of the reasons that lead to its explosion. One way to prevent the explosion is to re-establish electricity using diesel generators but the diesel generators were placed, according to the design, in the basement that was flooded when the tsunami struck making the generators unusable (Sanger & Wald, 2011). Additionally, the w...