Chapter One DANGEROUS WAVES Atsufumi Yoshizawa was just finishing his shift at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant Two seawalls stretched into the Pacific Ocean like arms protecting the collection of turquoise-blue and white buildings Yoshizawa a nuclear engineer helped run the plant which produced electricity for millions of customers including people in Tokyo 177 miles 285 kilometers away It was a relaxed Friday afternoon March 11 2011 But the seafloor was restless The bottom of the sea is part of Earth’s crust which is made of massive plates that fit loosely together like puzzle pieces They usually slide past each other about as slowly as fingernails grow But off the eastern coast of Japan along a crack in the crust called a fault the edges of two plates pushed against each other locked in battle No one at Fukushima Daiichi was aware of the struggling undersea plates on March 11 It was business as usual at the plant Since the 1880s many electrical plants have burned coal to make steam power to generate electricity But nuclear plants use another method they split the smallest pieces of matter atoms to make heat When an atom’s nucleus splits it releases energy in waves most in the form of heat Many types of atoms can produce abundant nuclear energy This process is called fission It is safe as long as people are protected from its intense heat and dangerous radiation The Fukushima nuclear plant housed six huge containers called reactor vessels Each was about six stories high with walls made of steel 5 inches 13 centimeters thick plus concrete Each reactor
held thousands of fuel rods made of uranium a silvery metal made of atoms that split easily A satellite image of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was taken before disaster struck On this Friday afternoon as Yoshizawa walked down a plant corridor tremendous energy was about to be released but not inside the plant’s reactors At 2 46 p m about 80 miles 129 km off the coast the seafloor rose violently It was the epicenter of an earthquake Japan experiences more than 2,000 earthquakes a year ranging from weak tremors to quakes that sway buildings Sensors detect the traveling waves of motion and send warnings to TV and radio stations and cellphones Students duck under desks surgeons pause operations and high-speed trains stop But Yoshizawa knew this earthquake was different He fell to his hands and knees as the building swayed and ceiling panels crashed down I managed to look out of a window and saw parked cars bouncing up and down from the sheer
force of the earthquake he said I had never experienced anything like it 1 It lasted five or six minutes The magnitude 9 0 earthquake was one of the strongest ever recorded Thousands of miles away it caused water to slosh in Norway’s fjords and ice in Antarctica to crack It shoved Japan about 8 feet 2 4 meters east and it even changed the way Earth spins Sensors at the plant triggered the automatic shutdown of fission inside Fukushima Daiichi’s three active reactors units 1 2 and 3 When the earthquake cut off electricity to the plant generators switched on to keep lights and equipment running Yoshizawa joined manager Masao Yoshida in the plant’s earthquake-proof bunker They determined that the plant’s employees were safe and the 40-year-old plant was undamaged The devastating tsunami that followed the magnitude 9 0 earthquake carried boats far inland But the jolting plates had disturbed the ocean Large waves were traveling away from the epicenter of the earthquake They approached Japan’s coast at 100 mph 160 kph Almost an hour after the earthquake they surged up to 6 miles 10 km inland Former Fukushima resident Ryo Kanouya remembered the soup of seawater cars houses and everything the tsunami carried 2 The waves
flooded 216 square miles 560 square km killing almost 20,000 people Inside the windowless bunker Yoshizawa heard reports of the destruction and couldn’t imagine a tsunami that big 3 he said later The plant’s designers hadn’t imagined it either To withstand earthquakes they had built Fukushima Daiichi on solid rock But when crews dug away 27 yards 25 m of soil before construction they put the plant within easy reach of tsunami waves At 3 42 p m the first of seven waves struck the plant One was more than 50 feet 15 m high more than twice the height of the plant’s seawalls The huge oncoming tsunami hit Japan with tremendous force sweeping away everything in its path Lights went out and machines went silent Tsunami waves had flooded basements destroying generators and electrical circuits Plant engineer Takeyuki Inagaki later remembered a terrifying situation And the operators weren’t sure what was happening We couldn’t even tell if there was water in the nuclear reactors 4 Water did not belong around the plant’s electronics Yet it was essential inside reactors Electric pumps normally circulate water through the reactor containers to keep fuel rods from overheating Even after fission is shut down hot fuel rods
