Meltdown: Days 5-6

Yoshida told his crew to prepare vehicles in case an evacuation was necessary, and to find temporary shelter on the grounds of Fukushima Daiichi. But in the confusion of the moment his command was garbled, and nearly 650 workers clambered onto buses and immediately evacuated to Fukushima Daini, about 6 miles away.

For Yoshida, abandoning the premises was not an option. Leaving the plant without any workers would cause a major catastrophe—one far worse than the three explosions that had already happened.

When he and some of his coworkers volunteered to return to Fukushima Daiichi, they filed past a line of firefighters, policemen, and other employees who saluted them. “We felt like members of the Tokkotai,” he later said, referring to Japanese kamikaze pilots during World War II. “The people lined up outside never said as much, but I could tell by their expressions that they didn’t think we would return.”

He received the news with dismay. Because the reactor at unit 4 had been shut down when the tsunami swept in, it seemed likely that the explosion had come from a spent fuel pool. And that was a nuclear disaster of a whole different kind.

As the uranium 235 atoms in the fuel are split, their numbers begin to dwindle.

It becomes less likely that a neutron will strike a uranium 235 nucleus, and the fuel can no longer sustain a chain reaction. At that point, the fuel is considered spent.

When the plant lost power, operators had known that the spent fuel pools were in peril, but they also knew that they had some time to solve the problem.

Attempts to reassure people that things were under control were undermined by footage of units 1 and 3 belching smoke.

“We are on the brink,” he said. “We are now facing the worst-case scenario.”

Officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the United States had the same thought. They ran simulations and realized that a breach in the unit 2 torus combined with a meltdown in the unit 4 fuel pool would require everyone within a 50-mile radius of the plant—more than 2 million people—to evacuate.

That night, radiation fell from the clouds in a flurry of rain and snow, endangering the residents of towns that weren’t in the evacuation zone.

A plan to have Special Defense Forces helicopters drop water on the reactors was scuttled when it became clear that radiation levels above the reactors were too high for helicopter pilots to safely do the job.

It didn’t help that another fire had broken out at the unit 4 reactor, and attempts to reach the fuel pools by helicopter that morning were once again stymied by radiation.

Although the helicopter had to stay high above the reactors, skirting the areas of extremely high radiation directly above them, operators on board saw a glimmer of something in the spent fuel pool for unit 4—a snippet of sky, reflected on the surface of the water.

Anxious to stabilize the spent fuel pools, operators ran four more helicopter flights on the evening of March 17, but radiation levels above the reactors were still too high.

On the night of March 18, a team of elite firefighters from Tokyo arrived with fire trucks designed to put out fires in skyscrapers.

Seasoned professionals who were trained to navigate towering fires in the skyscrapers of Tokyo, they were nevertheless visibly shaken by the challenge of working close to the open reactor pools.

The following morning, the radiation levels at the plant dropped sufficiently for reinforcements to join the Fukushima 50, bringing the total number of workers on-site to 580.

Residents lived in classrooms or the school gym. Relief agencies served meals in the cafeteria. The school’s administrative offices functioned as a makeshift town hall.

Wearing radiation suits and able to take only what they could carry back with them on a bus, they had a scant two hours to sift through the wreckage and salvage what they could of their former lives.

Wearing radiation suits and able to take only what they could carry back with them on a bus, they had a scant two hours to sift through the wreckage and salvage what they could of their former lives.

Disaster memory spurs parents to teach their children about tendenko. It affects decisions about where to build houses and whether to build seawalls.

At less than 8 inches long, with a cheerful red cylindrical body, a saucer-shaped head, and four whirring propellers, the Mini-Manbo was decidedly cute.

Flecks of debris floated in the soupy water, making it difficult to pick out shapes.

Once again, the plant bustled with activity.

Before the disaster, part of the complex had been a bird sanctuary, and 220 acres of forest had to be razed in the cleanup.

Where grassy banks had once lined roadways, an unforgiving expanse of pale gray concrete now stretched as far as the eye could see.

Rather than wait, the Japanese government undertook a massive cleanup, digging up radioactive soil from contaminated towns and hauling it away.

Investigators sifted through radiation readings and TEPCO reports, scrutinized meeting transcripts, and gathered seismic and radiation data.

Investigators sifted through radiation readings and TEPCO reports, scrutinized meeting transcripts, and gathered seismic and radiation data.

Insufficient government regulation had made it easy for the company to build a plant that was vulnerable to disaster.

Before the tsunami, 408 spent fuel assemblies had been packed into cement casks on the plant grounds, in what is known as dry cask storage. Although they were rolled by the waves, the casks remained intact, and the fuel inside was untouched.

Fallout from the meltdowns will affect the region for decades, possibly centuries. Once-green towns were scraped bare of vegetation and topsoil.

The necessity of evacuating residents during the meltdown prevented rescue efforts after the earthquake and tsunami in nearby towns, and it also has been blamed for hundreds of deaths as the sick and elderly were uprooted—or left to fend for themselves.

But a lawsuit brought by more than four hundred sailors who were aboard the USS Ronald Reagan during the disaster alleged that they had developed cancer and other ailments as a result of their exposure.

But a lawsuit brought by more than four hundred sailors who were aboard the USS Ronald Reagan during the disaster alleged that they had developed cancer and other ailments as a result of their exposure.

A Japanese worker who participated in cleanup efforts at the plant starting in 2012 received workman’s compensation for cancer as well, and in 2018, another cleanup worker died of lung cancer that was attributed to his work at the plant after the disaster.

A Japanese worker who participated in cleanup efforts at the plant starting in 2012 received workman’s compensation for cancer as well, and in 2018, another cleanup worker died of lung cancer that was attributed to his work at the plant after the disaster.

Shaped like a seedling to represent the town’s determination to move forward, the sculpture is as tall as the wave that swept the townspeople away, serving as both a memorial and a warning to future residents.

Inside is an old-fashioned rotary phone that has played an unusual role in helping many move on after the disaster.