Fukushima Earthquake

An earthquake of a magnitude of 9.0 that occurred in Japan at 2:46 pm on Friday March 11, 2011 did a significant amount of damage in the region, as the following tsunami did even much more damage, flooding about 560 square kilometers resulting in a human death toll of about 19,000 and the destruction of coastal ports, towns and buildings (Fukushima Accident, 2016). Eleven reactors at four different nuclear power plants in the region were operating at the time and were all shut down when the earthquake struck, but one of the plants, the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant showed signs of a problem on day five (Fukushima Accident, 2016). The reactors proved to overcome adverse conditions caused by the earthquake, but vulnerable to the tsunami. Unfortunately, three Tepco employees were killed directly by the earthquake and the tsunami (Fukushima Accident, 2016). Immediately after the earthquake, the Daiichi plant had a loss of AC power which led to the loss of cooling causing the water levels to go down to top of fuel and the core damage then begins which damages the reactor pressure vessel and then the fire pumps with fresh water leading to a hydrogen explosion (Fukushima Accident, 2016). The spent fuel storage pools survived the earthquake, tsunami and hydrogen explosions without any