Japan Tsunami 2011 Essay Example

Introduction

The tsunami which is a word to mean "huge waves" is a chain of aquatic waves whose origin is the large displacement of water bodies. They are majorly triggered by volcanic eruptions or earthquakes. Tsunamis change the sea level surface causing a water bulge and the water moves in all directions. This paper focuses on a case study of the Japan tsunami which occurred on Friday, 11th March 2011, the implications and majorly on a specific aspect of the tsunami which is the nuclear accident.

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The Japanese tsunami occurred from an earthquake which on the Richter scale was measured to have a magnitude of 9 (Mori, Takahashi, Yasuda & Yanagisawa, 2011).It was recorded to be among the biggest tsunamis in the world as this magnitude was measured to be an equivalent energy to power every home in the United States for 50 days, however it was also recorded to be 600 million times powerful than the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima. The earthquake shifted the earth's axis by a margin of 25 cm leading to 4 metres inside the Pacific Ocean.

The earthquake immersed when the Pacific plate converged with the North American plate at a critical plate boundary. The Pacific plate which moves at 8cm annually was sub-ducted beneath the North American one and the friction-free merge resulted in a sudden slip which caused the earthquake. The epicenter covered 129 kilometers off the coast of Honshu and 30 kilometers underneath the Pacific Ocean. This event was challenging due to many disasters associated with it including the nuclear plant accident which in Fukushima.

Nuclear Plant Accident

Tokyo Electrical Power Company (TEPCO) reported that the waves generated from the earthquake led to damage in the backup generators of the Fukushima nuclear plant. Despite that the three reactors that were functioning were successfully shut down, the power loss led to the failure of the cooling systems for the first few days. The reactor's core gained a lot of heat which caused an overheat in the fuel rods leading to melting down hence the release in the radiation (Suppasri, Shuto, Imamura, Koshimura, Mas, & Yalciner, 2013). The material fell at the bottom of the vessels digging sizable holes in each vessel. The holes then exposed the nuclear material .Hydrogen gas accumulated in the containment led to explosions due to high pressure on March 12th and 14th.

The government restricted the area and later a much wider area on 15th after the other explosion which led to higher levels of radiations. This led to an evacuation of 47000 residents as the workers tried to cool the reactors using sea water, the truck carried water and helicopters. The increased levels of radiations prompted warnings to some consumption of certain food supplies. At the end of much, it was noted that the ocean water was already contaminated through the tunnels and cracks in trenches. In April officials announced that the cracks were sealed and later in the month the irradiated water was pumped for treatment.

Radiations were still high in some evacuation places as others were safe and residents allowed to do limited activities. Later in August 2013, a smaller nuclear accident occurred in the same place where 330 tons of water used for cooling was disposed in the Fukushima surrounding. The leak was due to an open valve in the radioactive aquatic storage

Lesson Learnt From the Nuclear Accident

Seeking and acting on very recent and new data about hazards on nuclear disaster, incorporate modern and new risk ideas into nuclear security regulations, develop nuclear plant systems, adequate training to allow effective responses on such situations, reinforce capabilities for measuring risk from outside design basis occasions, offsite emergency reaction capabilities should be examined and necessary improvements should be implemented and finally advance nuclear safety culture (Mimura et al., 2011).

Infrastructure Impacts of the Tsunami

The waves moved 10 km in Sendai which led to 561 square kilometers flood in the area, the built tsunami walls were brought down at various locations, three buildings were brought down where people had gathered for safety, three nuclear power plants were destroyed which led to a declaration of the state of emergency since the radioactive materials had been released to the environment, 6 million homes lost their electric power, heavy snow and blocked roads and finally 300 tones which contain radioactive water were reported later in 2013 to be leaking to the Pacific ocean.

Social and Economic Impacts of the Tsunami

It was reported that 230,000 people had lost their homes from the quake and tsunami and were still living in impermanent homes. Secondly, the damage from the tsunami was estimated to be 300 billion dollars which are a great loss to the country (Saito, Ito, Inazu, & Hino, 2011). The loss of life was a major concern from the disaster, 16000 people died from the incident with a further 6000 people reported to have been injured and 3000 people from the disaster were noted to be missing.

Conclusion

Specialist flown from other countries together with Japanese soldiers and rescue teams were sent out to search for people and evacuate others from exclusion zones, Upgraded Tsunami cautionary systems were installed in the country with reconstruction of port facilities and extension of the tsunami defense mechanism, expert engineers were deployed to the city to construct modern buildings which would be more resistant to the quakes and tsunamis. Operation USA stated with shipments of food, winter clothing due to cold weather caused by the disaster, shelter and medical facilities.

Reference list

Mimura, N., Yasuhara, K., Kawagoe, S., Yokoki, H., & Kazama, S. (2011). Damage from the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami-a quick report. Mitigation and adaptation strategies for global change, 16(7), 803-818.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11027-011-9297-7

Mori, N., Takahashi, T., Yasuda, T., & Yanagisawa, H. (2011). Survey of 2011 Tohoku earthquake tsunami inundation and runup. Geophysical research letters, 38(7).

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2011GL049210

Saito, T., Ito, Y., Inazu, D., & Hino, R. (2011). Tsunami source of the 2011 TohokuOki earthquake, Japan: Inversion analysis based on dispersive tsunami simulations. Geophysical Research Letters, 38(7).

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2011GL049089

Suppasri, A., Shuto, N., Imamura, F., Koshimura, S., Mas, E., & Yalciner, A. C. (2013). Lessons learned from the 2011 Great East Japan tsunami: Performance of tsunami countermeasures, coastal buildings, and tsunami evacuation in Japan. Pure and Applied Geophysics, 170(6-8), 993-1018.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00024-012-0511-7