#Japan reactor meltdown news how to#

'There has been no education regarding radiation,' says Katsunobu Sakurai, the mayor of Minamisoma, where 14,000 people were evacuated after the accident. Many claim they are being compelled to go home, even though radiation exposure levels, they feel, are still too high. As the work progresses, authorities expect that 70% of the evacuees will be allowed to return home by spring 2017.īut evacuees are torn over safety and compensation issues. Last September, the government began lifting evacuation orders for the seven municipalities wholly or partly within 20 kilometers of the plant. Now, the nuclear refugees face a dilemma: How much radiation in their former homes is safe? In a herculean effort, authorities have so far scooped up some 9 million cubic meters of contaminated soil and leaves and washed down buildings and roadways with the goal of reducing outdoor radiation exposure to 0.23 microsieverts per hour. Mystery cancers are cropping up in children in aftermath of Fukushima.How robots are becoming critical players in nuclear disaster cleanup.It also triggered the meltdowns at Fukushima and the evacuation of 150,000 people from within 20 kilometers of the nuclear plant as well as from areas beyond that were hard hit by fallout. The magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck northeastern Japan on 11 March 2011 and the 40-meter tsunami that followed left 15,893 dead and 2572 missing, destroyed 127,290 buildings, and damaged more than a million more.

#Japan reactor meltdown news how to#

The power plant itself remains a dangerous disaster zone, with workers just beginning the complex, risky job of locating the melted fuel and figuring out how to remove it. As workers make progress in cleaning up contaminated land surrounding its infamous reactor, evacuees are grappling with whether to return to homes sealed off since the accident there 5 years ago.

A long, grinding struggle back to normal is underway at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.