![]() ![]() Rocks in the asthenosphere are under so much pressure that they move in and out of solid form-sometimes they are solid rocks, sometimes liquid magma. The puzzle pieces, called tectonic plates, sit on the asthenosphere, a layer of Earth that shifts and flows. But miles beneath the soil and sand, the mountains and oceans, Earth’s lithosphere is broken into a clumsy jigsaw puzzle of rock. It’s no wonder, then, that those of us sitting on its surface hardly notice the slow creep of its tectonic plates. The entire planet spins on its axis at more than 1,000 miles per hour (mph) and hurtles along its orbit through space at 66,660 mph. “The plant has a finite amount of space.Standing on Earth, it’s difficult to appreciate its movement. But that just postpones the problem,” said Kino Masato, who works for Japan’s Ministry of Economy in the efforts to rebuild Fukushima, to local high school students last year, per Aizawa Yuko at NHK World. “There is a possibility to increase the number of water tanks at the plant. While Japanese and international nuclear agencies have deemed it safe to release the cooling water into the ocean, neighboring countries and industries that rely on the ocean have pushed back against that plan, reports New Scientist. The water has been treated to remove almost all of the radioactive elements only tritium, which is a version of hydrogen and can’t be removed from water because it becomes part of the water molecules, remains. The plant’s operator, TEPCO, says that it will run out of storage space in 2022. “They need to remove all materials inside the damaged reactors, which is a mixture of melted nuclear fuels and structure materials emitting extremely high radiation.”Īnother pressing issue is the plant’s storage of cooling water. “Decommissioning is the most serious issue at the present,” says Kyushu University environmental chemist Satoshi Utsunomiya at to New Scientist’s Michael Fitzpatrick. Pandemic-related shutdowns delayed tests of a robotic arm designed to extract the melted fuel. The melted cores of the three reactors fell to the bottom of their containment vessels, in some places mixing with the concrete foundation below, which makes their removal especially difficult, per the AP. Several buildings had hydrogen explosions. When the tsunami hit the nuclear plant, the waves destroyed its power supply and cooling systems, which caused meltdowns in three reactors. Now, over 40,000 people still haven’t been able to return home, mostly because they lived in regions near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that are still considered unsafe due to radioactive contamination, per Yamaguchi in another article for the Associated Press. “So I don’t feel entirely safe.”Īt its peak, about 470,000 people had evacuated their homes after the disaster in 2011, per Kyodo News. “I have seen firsthand how nature is more powerful than what humans create,” says Aya Saeki, who lives in Ishinomaki near the embankment, to PRI’s The World. Photo by David Mareuil/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Police officers search Iwaki beach for signs of missing people on March 11, 2021. Ishinomaki is also protected by an inland embankment that will be 270 miles long when construction is completed in Fukushima. In order to protect the northeast region from future disasters, Japan constructed massive concrete seawalls around its coastline. The 9.0 magnitude earthquake is the biggest in the country’s recorded history, Carolyn Beeler and Marco Werman report for PRI’s The World. An elementary school in Ishinomaki that caught fire during the earthquake has been preserved and will be turned into a memorial site. But the city’s population has declined by 20,000 people. In the last ten years, many cities that were destroyed by the tsunami have been rebuilt, including Ishinomaki. “But I have also learned the warmness of people.” “A lot of precious lives were lost that day, and that can never be forgotten,” said Rie Sato, whose younger sister died in the tsunami, during a memorial ceremony held on Thursday, per Kyodo News. ![]() In Ishinomaki, a city in Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture, over 3,200 people died in the disaster ten years ago, and 418 are still considered missing, Chico Harlan reports for the Washington Post. ![]() Critics say that timeline is optimistic, Mari Yamaguchi reports for the Associated Press. Officials say that cleaning out the melted nuclear fuel from inside of the three damaged reactors could take 30 to 40 years. Photo by Behrouz Mehri - Pool/Getty Images At a national memorial service in Tokyo on March 11, 2021, attendees bow in front of an alter honoring more than 15,000 people lost in the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and triple nuclear meltdown. ![]()
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