Rebecca Rissman - Swept Away: The Story of the 2011 Japanese Tsunami

nurenu saki no kasa
(It is best to have your umbrella before the rain falls)
Japanese Proverb

Masao Yoshida grumbled as he sat down in the conference room. The square-jawed plant manager ran the sprawling seaside Fukushima

Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. The plant was located on the northeastern coast of the main island of Japan, Honshu. The workers at Fukushima Dai-Ichi and 53 other nuclear plants worked hard to provide 30 percent of Japans power. Yoshida had lots of work to do and didnt appreciate being hastily called into a meeting in the middle of the day. He joined a group of serious, quiet men in their 50s and 60s around a conference table and waited for the meeting to begin. Some wore tailored business suits. Others wore the companys crisp blue jumpsuits.

Yo. A giant earthquake, they warned, could trigger a tsunami that could overwhelm the plant.

This news was irritating, but not altogether surprising. The plant had already been rebuilt once to boost its tsunami protection. A thick concrete seawall blocked the plant from the oceans tall waves. When Fukushima Dai-Ichi was built, this wall stood about 10 feet tall. In 2002, scientists warned that it was too short. Fukushima leadership heeded the warning and rebuilt it to stand nearly 19 feet tall. But now, Yoshida saw, this new report was advising that the wall needed to be rebuilt again, to a staggering height of almost 50 feet!

It wasnt that Yoshida was unafraid of tsunamis. Far from it. He and the other managers present that day understood that tsunamis were a constant threat. As they drove into work, some had even passed tsunami markers.

Now, as Yoshida and his colleagues took in the reports details, they began to discuss the new information.

Is this pressing? one asked.

How promptly should we take this up? asked another.

The conversation continued like this for a short time, until the group eventually agreed to review the matter further at a later date.

Yoshida sighed as he stood up to leave the meeting. He wasnt worried. It certainly didnt seem likely to him that a 50-foot tsunami would happen anytime soon.

Fukushima Dai-Ichi, 2007

Employees at Fukushima Dai-Ichi oversee the process of loading fuel into nuclear reactor 3.

Atsufumi Yoshizawa walked quickly down a long, gleaming corridor. It was almost the end of his shift. Nearly every corner of the sprawling Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant was clean and orderly, just as he liked it. Yoshizawa mentally reviewed everything he still needed to finish. He had spent the day supervising a routine shutdown of nuclear reactors 5 and 6, and he wanted to be sure everything was in order before he drove home.

Yoshizawa was an important figure at Fukushima Dai-Ichi. He was quiet and shy, but his 30 years at the plant had given him the confidence and expertise to supervise large crews of workers. He knew the inner workings of Fukushima Dai-Ichi by heart. He had spent the majority of his adult life monitoring the way the plant utilized a process called to heat giant pools of water. When the water got hot enough, steam was created and used to turn turbines. The plant used these turbines to create electricity. The process, he knew, seemed extraordinarily complex. But to him, it was familiar and safe and simple.

Yoshizawa had often watched the scientists who controlled the plants nuclear fission. He knew where they stored rods of enriched , the plants very powerful and dangerous radioactive fuel. He loved observing them as they bundled rods of enriched uranium together, and then lowered them into water in a pressurized container. These bundles would instantly begin to heat the water and create steam.

In order to keep the bundles from overheating, the scientists would use materials called control rods to slow the nuclear fission process. If they needed to reduce the temperature of the water, they simply lowered the control rods farther into the uranium bundles to slow the rate of the nuclear reactions, and therefore reduce the temperature of the bundles. When they wanted to increase the temperature of the water, they simply removed the control rods from the bundles.

Everyone at the plant worked hard to make safety a high priority. Each of the that must be contained. All employees were well educated on the subject of radiation energy and how it can travel through other materials. In small amounts, they learned, it is harmless to living things. People are exposed to small amounts of radiation on a daily basis through X-rays and microwaves. But high doses of radiation can be very harmful, or even lethal.

And of course, the workers at Fukushima Dai-Ichi knew that the plant produced enormous quantities of radiation. It had six separate nuclear reactors to house the nuclear fission process. Each of these was built to keep the radioactive materials safely contained. The reactors were encased within layers of steel and concrete. These barriers were designed to keep radioactive solids, liquids, and gasses contained.

Without warning, violent shaking knocked Yoshizawa to his hands and knees. The walls and floor began to buck wildly as the sounds of shattering glass and falling objects rang around him. It was an earthquake. A big one. Frantically, Yoshizawa looked around for something to hide under. There was nothing in the hallway, so he crawled desperately into a nearby room and found shelter beneath a desk. Factory workers were scrambling to find protection. Someone screamed. A huge ceiling tile exploded on the ground just in front of Yoshizawa.

He looked out a window and saw something bizarre. The cars parked outside were actually bouncing up and down off the ground. Yoshizawa couldnt believe his eyes. He had lived though hundreds of earthquakes, but none had been like this. It seemed like the earthquake went on forever. Yoshizawa thought about his wife and daughter. Thankfully they were at home in Yokohama, just south of Tokyo. He hoped they were far enough away to be safe.

Just then, he was plunged into darkness. The plant had lost power.

In the dark, Yoshizawa could hear his colleagues checking on one another. A few seemed to be crying.

Despite the strength of the quake, Yoshizawa wasnt concerned about the plant; it was designed to withstand earthquakes. He knew that Toyko Electic Power Company (TEPCO), the owners of the plant, had spent tens of billions of yen implementing additional safety measures for Fukushima Dai-Ichi. There was a huge earthquake-proof control room that could be used to operate the essential functions of the plant. There was a seawall protecting the plant from any waves that might follow an earthquake. There was even an elaborate backup system in place to keep the nuclear fuel cool in the event of a power loss. Yoshizawa was confident that the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant was a very safe place to be.