Nuclear Power is an energy source that has been used since 1954 and has always had the public debate as to whether it should be used or not. Many of the public feel it is too unsafe to its surrounding areas to be utilized, however, if it used properly it has strong potential. Many precautions are used when dealing with nuclear power and procedures are put into place in case of disaster. However due to the inadequate fortification of nuclear power plants, disasters or issues that occur worldwide could cause malfunction of power plants and result in large devastation in areas that surround the effected plants.
On Friday March 11th 2011 at 2:46pm a 9.0 magnitude earthquake rocked Japan and majority of the Japanese population (Lerner K. Lee 2014). This event triggered all power plants affected to go into an emergency state and execute emergency
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All procedures were followed accurately and without issue making the situation safe and worry taken off the plant. At 3:42pm the entire site was flooded by a 15-metre tsunami cause by the earthquake, which disabled 12 of the 13 back-up generators, the heat exchangers for dumping reactor waste heat and decay to the sea, drowned the diesel generators, and overwhelmed the electrical switchgear and batteries, all of which are located in the basements of the turbine building, making authorities call a state of nuclear emergency. (M.H. 2014) This caused major complications with the emergency cool down plan and forced engineers to try and come up with new ways to make the situation stable. Without a way to take out some of the excess heat from the reactor core, even with the reactors shut down and fission chain stopped, radioactive decay heating caused reactors to overheat and the rod casing begin to melt and release radioactive fission products. Plans were made to stop the situation immediately, initially beginning by attempting to avoid a