Fukushima: Five Years Later

Japan is still cleaning up one of the worst nuclear disasters the world has ever seen. Steve Featherstone went there to see how much they have accomplished and how far they have to go.

- Steve Featherstone

I. ON MARCH 11, 2011, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan struck the Northeast coast of the main island. The ground shook for six minutes, cutting electrical power to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. 

A 50-foot wall of water spawned by the quake exploded over Daiichi’s seawall, swamping backup diesel generators. Four of six nuclear reactors on-site experienced a total blackout. In the days that followed, three of them melted down, spewing enormous amounts of radiation into the air and sea in what became the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

The Japanese government never considered abandoning Fukushima as the Soviet Union did with Chernobyl. It made the unprecedented decision to clean up the contaminated areas—in the process, generating a projected 22 million cubic meters of low-level radioactive waste—and return some 80,000 nuclear refugees to their homes. This past September, the first of 11 towns in Fukushima’s mandatory evacuation zone reopened after extensive decontamination, but fewer than 2 percent of evacuees returned that month. More will follow, but surveys indicate that the majority don’t want to go back. Some evacuees are afraid of radiation; many have simply moved on with their lives.