![]() He orders authorities to widen the evacuation zone to 6.2 miles (10 kilometers). Shortly before 6 a.m.: Prime Minister Kan decides to go to Fukushima. March 12: Evacuation Area Expands, the Roof Blows Their dosimeters read off-the-scale levels of radiation, indicating that the core of Unit 1 is exposed and its fuel rods ruptured.ħ:03 p.m.: Prime Minister Naoto Kan declares a nuclear emergency.ĩ:00 p.m.: The Japanese government issues evacuation orders for the several thousand residents living within a 1.9-mile (3-kilometer) radius of the power plant.įukushima Daiichi Nucler Power Plant seen the day after an 9.0 magnitude strong earthquake struck on Maoff the coast of north-eastern Japan. ![]() Just before 6 p.m.: A work crew goes to the 4th floor of the Unit 1 reactor building without protective clothing. The control room for Units 1 and 2 goes dark, depriving power plant operators any capacity for monitoring the two reactors. Without the regular flow of cooling water, a meltdown will inevitably follow.ģ:37 p.m.: With flooding having destroyed the generator’s backup batteries, Unit 1 loses DC power as well. In five of the six reactors, AC power is lost without the power, water pumps can’t provide a steady flow of cool water to the reactors’ intensely hot cores. It destroys seawater pumps, drowns power panels that distribute energy to water pumps and surges into basements where backup generators are housed. The first wave arrives at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in the form of a 13-foot-high wave, which is deflected by a sea wall built to withstand waves up to 33 feet high.ģ:35 p.m.: A second wave, this one over 50 feet high, breaches the wall. The earthquake has a magnitude of 9.1, making it the largest earthquake in Japan’s history-and one of the five most powerful earthquakes globally recorded since modern record-keeping began.ģ:27 p.m.: The earthquake sets off a tsunami. March 11, 2011: An Earthquake Precipitates CrisisĢ:46 pm: The westward-moving Pacific Plate, an oceanic tectonic plate, lurches downwards beneath the Okhotsk plate along the Japan Trench, causing an earthquake 43 miles off the northeastern coast of Honshu, Japan’s most populous island. A broken picture frame lies in the mud within the exclusion zone, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away from Fukushima Nuclear Power Planton Apin Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.
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