Emergency Declared at Japan’s Nuclear Plants

Following the earthquake of 8.9 magnitude that hit Japan on 11 March 2011 state of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the units lost cooling ability. Nearly 14,000 residents were ordered to evacuate as workers struggled to get the reactors under control to prevent meltdowns.

Operators at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant fought to keep down heat and pressure inside two of its reactors. The 8.9-magnitude quake and the tsunami that followed cut off electricity to the site and disabled emergency generators, knocking out the main cooling system. Situation was most dire at Fukushima Daiichi's Unit 1, where pressure had risen to twice the normal level in the reactor.

The Japanese government for the first time declared a state of emergency at a nuclear plant in Japan's history. The emergency was first declared at the Daiichi plant. The Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the Daiichi site in northeastern Japan, also announced that it had lost cooling ability at three reactors at its nearby Fukushima Daini site.

3000 people within two miles of the Daiichi plant were told to leave their homes initially. The evacuation zone was more than tripled to 6.2 miles after authorities detected eight times the normal radiation levels outside the facility and 1000 times the normal radiation inside a control room.

Once a reactor is shut down, radioactive by-products give off heat that can ultimately produce volatile hydrogen gas, melt radioactive fuel or even breach the containment building in a full meltdown belching radioactivity into the surroundings.
10 of Japan's 54 commercial reactors were shut down because of the earthquake and tsunami. Japanese media reported that a fifth of the country's total nuclear generating capacity was offline because of the quake.