page_title: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
section_title: Japan
hierarchical_section_title: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster / Reactions / Japan
caption_attribution_description: English: Localisation of towns NW of Fukushima Daiichii whose evacuation has been decided on April 11th, 2011 Français&#160;: Situation des localités au nord-ouest de Fukushima-Daiichi dont l'évacuation a été ordonnée le 11 avril 2011
context_page_description: The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was a 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima Prefecture. It was the most severe nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, and the only other disaster to receive the Level 7 event classification of the International Nuclear Event Scale.
  The accident was started by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on Friday, 11 March 2011. On detecting the earthquake, the active reactors automatically shut down their fission reactions. Because of the reactor trips and other grid problems, the electricity supply failed, and the reactors' emergency diesel generators automatically started. Critically, they were powering the pumps that circulated coolant through the reactors' cores to remove decay heat, which continues to be produced after fission has ceased. The earthquake generated a 14 m high tsunami that swept over the plant's seawall and flooded the plant's lower grounds around the Units 1–4 reactor buildings with sea water, filling the basements and knocking out the emergency generators.
context_section_description: Japanese authorities later admitted to lax standards and poor oversight. They took fire for their handling of the emergency and engaged in a pattern of withholding and denying damaging information. Authorities allegedly wanted to "limit the size of costly and disruptive evacuations in land-scarce Japan and to avoid public questioning of the politically powerful nuclear industry". Public anger emerged over an "official campaign to play down the scope of the accident and the potential health risks".
  In many cases, the Japanese government's reaction was judged to be less than adequate by many in Japan, especially those who were living in the region. Decontamination equipment was slow to be made available and then slow to be utilized. As late as June 2011, even rainfall continued to cause fear and uncertainty in eastern Japan because of its possibility of washing radioactivity from the sky back to earth.
  To assuage fears, the government enacted an order to decontaminate over a hundred areas with a level contamination greater than or equivalent to one millisievert of radiation. This is a much lower threshold than is necessary for protecting health. The government also sought to address the lack of education on the effects of radiation and the extent to which the average person was exposed.
  Previously a proponent of building more reactors, Prime Minister Naoto Kan took an increasingly anti-nuclear stance following the disaster. In May 2011, he ordered the aging Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant closed over earthquake and tsunami concerns, and said he would freeze building plans. In July 2011, Kan said, "Japan should reduce and eventually eliminate its dependence on nuclear energy". In October 2013, he said that if the worst-case scenario had been realized, 50 million people within a 250-kilometer (160 mi) radius would have had to evacuate.
  On 22 August 2011, a government spokesman mentioned the possibility that some areas around the plant "could stay for some decades a forbidden zone". According to Yomiuri Shimbun the Japanese government was planning to buy some properties from civilians to store waste and materials that had become radioactive after the accidents. Chiaki Takahashi, Japan's foreign minister, criticized foreign media reports as excessive. He added that he could "understand the concerns of foreign countries over recent developments at the nuclear plant, including the radioactive contamination of seawater".
  Due to frustration with TEPCO and the Japanese government "providing differing, confusing, and at times contradictory, information on critical health issues" a citizen's group called "Safecast" recorded detailed radiation level data in Japan. The Japanese government "does not consider nongovernment readings to be authentic". The group uses off-the-shelf Geiger counter equipment. A simple Geiger counter is a contamination meter and not a dose rate meter. The response differs too much between different radioisotopes to permit a simple GM tube for dose rate measurements when more than one radioisotope is present. A thin metal shield is needed around a GM tube to provide energy compensation to enable it to be used for dose rate measurements. For gamma emitters either an ionization chamber, a gamma spectrometer or an energy compensated GM tube are required. Members of the Air Monitoring station facility at the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Berkeley, California have tested many environmental samples in Northern California.
  The 2020 Summer Olympics torch relay will begin in Fukushima and the Olympic baseball and softball matches will be played at Fukushima Stadium, despite the fact that the scientific studies on the safety of Fukushima are currently in great dispute.
  Japan government has decided to pump radioactive water to Pacific after Tokyo Olympics.
caption: Japan towns, villages, and cities in and around the Daiichi nuclear plant exclusion zone. The 20 and 30 km (12 and 19 mi) areas had evacuation and shelter in place orders, and additional administrative districts that had an evacuation order are highlighted. However, the above map's factual accuracy is called into question as only the southern portion of Kawamata district had evacuation orders. More accurate maps are available.[345][346]
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