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FUKUSHIMA DAI-ICHI NUCLEAR DISASTER (2011)
The Fukushima disaster comprised a series of equipment failures, nuclear reactor meltdowns and releases of radioactive materials at the Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant following the T?hoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. The plant was maintained by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
Immediately after the earthquake the three operating reactors (out of six) shut down automatically and emergency generators came online to control electronics and coolant systems. However, the tsunami following the earthquake flooded the low-lying rooms in which the emergency generators were housed causing them to fail and cutting power to the critical pumps which circulated coolant water to prevent the reactors from melting down. Saltwater flooding of the reactors could have prevented meltdown but the decision was delayed, partly because of a lack of information about the scale of the disaster and partly because flooding with seawater would permanently ruin the costly reactors. Eventually the Japanese government ordered flooding by seawater, but it was too late to prevent meltdown.
In the intense heat several hydrogen-air chemical explosions occurred. Concerns about the repeated small explosions, the atmospheric venting of radioactive gases and the possibility of larger explosions led to a 20 km-radius evacuation around the plant. However, because Japanese government officials did not act on information provided by the US Department of Energy, evacuees were in many cases sent to areas of even higher radioactivity.
Although the Japanese government estimates that the total amount of radioactivity released into the atmosphere was approximately one-tenth of that released during the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986, significant amounts of radioactive material have also been released into ground and ocean waters leading the government to ban the sale of food grown in the area.
Japanese officials initially assessed the accident as level 4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. It was not until 11 April 2012 that the level was eventually raised to 7 by the Japanese authorities, the highest possible, despite assessments of level 6 or 7 by international agencies almost immediately after the disaster.
The Japanese parliament�s Independent Investigation Commission report, published in July 2012, concluded that �It was a profoundly man-made disaster � that could and should have been foreseen and prevented. And its effects could have been mitigated by a more effective human response� In the introduction to the report, the commission chairman wrote, �What must be admitted � very painfully � is that this was a disaster �Made in Japan�.
Source: Thirlwell, J (2012)
Required:
Use the above case study and other reports on the Fukushima nuclear disaster to identify operational risk failures.
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