EARTHQUAKE, TSUNAMI AND NUCLEAR CRISIS
On March 11, 2011,
an earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, churning up a devastating tsunami that swept over cities and farmland in the northern part of the country and set off warnings as far away the west coast of the United States and South America. Recorded as 9.0 on the Richter scale, it was the most powerful quake ever to hit the country. As the nation struggled with a rescue effort, it also faced the worst nuclear emergency since Chernobyl; explosions and leaks of radioactive gas took place in three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station that suffered partial meltdowns, while spent fuel rods at another reactor overheated and caught fire, releasing radioactive material directly into the atmosphere. Japanese officials turned to increasingly desperate measures, as traces of radiation were found in Tokyo's water and in water pouring from the reactors into the ocean. A month after the quake, nuclear officials put the crisis in the same category of severity as the Chernobyl disaster.
As of April 25, the official death toll had been raised to 14,133, and more than 13,346 people were listed as missing, although there may be some overlap between the two groups. The final toll is expected to reach nearly 20,000. More than 130,000 people remained housed in temporary shelters; tens of thousands of others evacuated their homes due to the nuclear crisis.
Live Updates on The Lede blog, including selected video clips and coverage from Twitter.
Multimedia: see what
happens in a meltdown, a map of the
areas of damage, satellite
before and after photos, the
cause of the quake and
readers' photos.
Crisis Timeline
April 28 The latest warning about the country’s fiscal health came when
Standard & Poor’s lowered its outlook on Japan to negative, saying that the costs of rebuilding the devastated areas — which it estimated to be as high as ¥50 trillion, or $609 billion — could lead to a lower credit rating unless the government stepped up its efforts to keep high government debt levels from rising much further.
April 26 As troubles at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and fears over radiation continue to rattle the nation, the Japanese are
increasingly raising the possibility that a culture of complicity made the plant especially vulnerable to the natural disaster that struck the country on March 11. Already, many Japanese and Western experts argue that inconsistent, nonexistent or unenforced regulations played a role in the accident.
April 22 The Japanese government
earmarked almost $50 billion in emergency spending for the first step in the country’s largest reconstruction effort since World War II. Government estimates put the total damage from the quake and tsunami at $300 billion.
April 20 The government is considering
establishing a “caution zone” around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant with a radius of 12 miles, one that would be legally enforceable, in contrast with the current evacuation, which is technically voluntary.
April 19 In a sign of the difficulties facing engineers trying to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, a pair of robots sent to explore inside their buildings
came back with disheartening news: Radiation levels are far too high for repair crews to go inside. Technicians began the difficult task of
pumping highly radioactive water out of the basement of a turbine building at a damaged nuclear power plant in
Japan, but officials cautioned that the work would be slow and difficult.
April 18 The Tokyo Electric Power Company
laid out an ambitious plan for bringing the reactors at its hobbled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into a stable state known as cold shutdown within the next nine months and for trying to reduce the levels of radioactive materials being released in the meantime.
April 15 The leader of
Japan’s largest opposition party called for Prime Minister
Naoto Kan to resign,
abruptly ending an uneasy political truce forged after the devastating earthquake and tsunami.
April 12 Japan has
raised its assessment of the accident at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant from 5 to 7, the worst rating on an international scale, putting the disaster on par with the 1986 Chernobyl explosion, in an acknowledgement that the human and environmental consequences of the nuclear crisis could be dire and long-lasting. While the amount of radioactive materials released so far from Fukushima Daiichi so far has equaled about 10 percent of that released at Chernoby, officials said that the radiation release from Fukushima could, in time, surpass levels seen in 1986.
