Learn From Fukushima Nuclear

Earthquake 8.9 Richter Scale (RS) and following with Tsunami at Japan east beach last month made Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant broke out.

Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant is first generation that use boiling water reactor(BWR) system which steam is created to rotating the turbine.

Although old but Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant has stage of modern safety based on resistance caused by earthquake ground motion. It can resist at earthquake until 9 RS.



The safety procedure of Nuclear Power Station that if earthquake happen, reactor core will stop. However with stop fission reaction, the element that process area is not directly cold. It needs additional procedure to make cooling the element with the pumping cold water to element by emergency diesel generator if supply electric power fails due to earthquake.

There are three emergency diesel generators to supply electric power. If all is fail, it has battery reserve that can supply electric power for 8 hours but still not enough to make cooling the element.


The temperature of process element still above 1000c even though emergency cooling already done. This condition makes reaction between zirconium and water that created hydrogen gas until pressure inside reactor chamber increase. This condition makes force to open the manifold and release to the atmosphere and also potential to create explosive due to hydrogen met to oxygen with high temperature. Before open the manifold, the wind direction should be under consideration.

However, Japan government already do early anticipate by evacuated 170.000 people who inside radius 20km.


Accident in Fukushima on categorizes the 4th level because the reactor element doesn’t melt. That was still lower accident level than in Three-mile Island US which the 5th level and Chernobyl Ukrania the 7th level.























Japan now is planning to evaporate or store underground tritium-laced water from the Fukushima nuclear plant instead of releasing into the ocean.

Japanese electric utility Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) plans to release the tritium-laced water into the ocean have been opposed by local fishermen as they are concerned about the impact on their livelihood.

The water, which is used to keep the reactors cool to prevent further radioactive releases, is contaminated with radioactive material and has since been leaking and mixing with groundwater that is seeping through the facility.

However, there is no available technology to remove tritium, which is a relatively harmless radioactive isotope left behind in treated water.

TEPCO outside adviser Dale Klein was quoted by Reuters as saying that evaporation method was used after the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in the US but the amounts were much smaller.

"They have huge volumes of water so they cannot evaporate it like they did at Three Mile Island," added Klein.

The Reuters quoted Fukushima nuclear plant chief decommissioning officer Naohiro Masuda as saying that he is not clear when a final decision about evaporation will be made.

TEPCO is being forced to build hundreds of tanks to store contaminated and treated water.

Last week, the plant's operator announced plans to reveal all data on radiation levels recorded at the site in response to criticism over its lack of transparency.

TEPCO had also announced that it will not be able to process the radioactive water stored at the Fukushima plant by March as promised earlier, due to technical problems.