Meltdown!: The Nuclear Disaster in Japan and Our Energy Future
PROLOGUE Japan's Greatest Quake JAPAN MARCH 11th 2011 2:46 PM AN EARTHQUAKE STRIKES Arun Vemuri is not frightened when he feels his Tokyo office on the thirtieth floor of the Yebisu Garden Place Tower begin to sway He knows that the building is one of the safest in the city Like other Japanese buildings it is de signed to bend in an earthquake instead of breaking So for the first minute he is smiling at his coworkers and having a swinging good time Then the swaying turns into wild shak ing Office equipment topples and the CII jolting motion sweeps desks clear Arun ducks under his desk After six long minutes the shaking stops Arun and his colleagues leave the office and head down thirty flights of stairs No one seems anxious or fearful No rushing of feet or stomping of ground No racing through or overtaking Just a good old smiling saunter as if going down for a quick cup of coffee NO ORDINARY EARTHQUAKE Similar scenes are taking place all over Tokyo above left Though almost everyone seems calm they know that this is no ordinary earthquake Because the shaking lasts so long and skyscrapers are still swaying this has to
be a big one The most worrisome question is this is the quake's epicenter the place on Earth's surface directly above the underground spot where a quake begins on land or in the ocean An undersea quake could unleash a tsunami a Japanese word for harbor wave a powerful destructive wall of water rushing in from the sea Everyone scrambles for information Most cell phone service is out but the Internet is working Twitter is buzzing with news of earthquake damage and a powerful tsunami rolling into the Tohoku region at the northern end of Honshu Japan's main island Within hours horrifying pictures and video are spreading around the world Almost thirty thousand people in Japan are dead injured or missing mostly from the tsunami The Great Tohoku Earthquake is the most powerful ever to strike Japan and the tsunami makes it one of the worst disasters in that island nation's history Yet in some ways it is a familiar event for Japan where earthquakes are common The Japanese people know what it takes to recover from earthquakes and tsunamis N UCLEAR EMERGENCY What people do not yet know is that a much greater and more terrifying challenge lies ahead That evening news begins to spread about an emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant about 260 kilometers 160 miles northeast of Tokyo The government of Fukushima Prefecture state or province warns people who live within 3 km 2 mi to leave Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano tries to reassure the public We have declared a nuclear emergency state to take every possible precaution he declares at a news conference There is no radiation leak nor will there be a leak He could not be more wrong One reactor is already undergoing a meltdown and two others will soon follow It is the beginning of a disaster that will change life in Japan and alter the world's energy future JAPAN's GREATEST QUAKE
Chapter 1 EARTHQUAKE TSUNAMI MELTDOWN Although it strikes suddenly the Great Tohoku Earth quake has been building up for hundreds of years Like all quakes it happens because Earth s outer rocky layer called the crust is made up of many large slow moving pieces These are called plates The crust lies above another rocky layer called the mantle The mantle is so hot that it is not completely solid It flows in giant loops from Earth s core to the crust The pattern is the same one you can see in a pot of boiling water on a stove But the movement is much slower because the mantle is made of rock At the top of the mantle different loops flow in different directions The flowing mantle drags the crust with it That explains the cracking and movement of the plates Most of the Pacific Ocean lies above the Pacific Plate Japan sits just west of the Pacific Plate on three other plates Those are the North American Plate to the north the Eurasian Plate to the west and the Philippine Plate to the south EARTHQUAKE Year after year the Pacific Plate moves about 8 to 9 centimeters 3 to 3 5 inches closer to Japan That s about half as fast as your hair grows It plows
under the North American Plate and the Philippine Plate of the east coast of Honshu Japan s main island The rocks of the Pacific Plate lock with the rocks at the edges of the plates above it That bends the upper plates downward With every centimeter that the Pacific Plate moves the upper plates bend more With every centimeter the force on the locked rocks grows Finally that force becomes more than the locked rocks can handle The rocks start to crack crumble and split apart That increases the force on other nearby rocks even more Those rocks also break apart All along the line joining the plates the cracking quickly spreads That releases the bending force and the edge of the top plate springs upward 5 to 8 meters 16 to 25 feet That is how the Great Tohoku Earthquake begins Its underground starting point called the focus or hypocenter is about 32 km 20 mi beneath the epicenter on the ocean surface For 220 seconds or nearly four minutes the cracking spreads rapidly in two zones The cracks reach a total of 300 km 185 mi in length before they stop Some sections of rock have shifted by as much as 60 m 200 ft Part of the island of Honshu is now 2 4 m 8 ft closer to North America The quake is so powerful that it even shifts Earth s tilt The North Pole and the South Pole are 10 to 25 cm 4 to 10 in from where they were before EARTHQUAKE TSUNAMI
