Fukushima accident, also called Fukushima nuclear accident or Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, accident in 2011 at the Fukushima

Daiichi (Number One) plant in northern Japan, the second worst nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power generation. The site is on Japans Pacific coast, in northeastern Fukushima prefecture about 100 km (60 miles) south of Sendai. The facility, operated by the Tokyo Electric and Power Company (TEPCO), was made up of six boiling-water reactors constructed between 1971 and 1979. At the time of the accident, only reactors 13 were operational, and reactor 4 served as temporary storage for spent fuel rods. Tsunami waves generated by the main shock of the Japan earthquake on March 11, 2011, damaged the backup generators at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Although all three of the reactors that were operating were successfully shut down, the loss of power caused cooling systems to fail in each of them within days of the disaster. Residual heat within each reactors core rose and caused the fuel rods to subsequently overheat, leading at times to the release of radiation. Explosions resulting from the buildup of pressurized hydrogen gas occurred in the outer containment buildings enclosing reactors 1 and 3 on March 12 and March 14, respectively, but the inner containment structure around each reactor remained intact. Workers sought to cool and stabilize the three cores by pumping seawater and boric acid into them. Because of concerns over possible radiation exposure, government officials established a 30-km (18-mile) no-fly zone around the facility, and an area of 20 km (12.5 miles) around the plant was evacuated. A third explosion occurred on March 15 in the building surrounding reactor 2 and was thought to have damaged the containment vessel housing the fuel rods, which led government officials to designate a wider zone, extending to a radius of 30 km around the plant, within which residents were asked to remain indoors. That development, along with a fire touched off by rising temperatures in spent fuel rods stored in reactor 4, led to the release of higher levels of radiation from the plant. In the days that followed, some 47,000 residents left their homes, and workers at the plant made several attempts to cool the reactors using truck-mounted water cannons and water dropped from helicopters. Those efforts met with some success, which temporarily slowed the release of radiation; however, they were suspended several times after rising steam or smoke signaled an increased risk of radiation exposure. As workers continued their attempts to cool the reactors, the appearance of increased levels of radiation in some local food and water supplies prompted Japanese and international officials to issue warnings about their consumption. At the end of March, the evacuation zone was expanded to 30 km around the plant, and ocean water near the plant was discovered to have been contaminated with high levels of iodine-131, which resulted from leakage of radioactive water through cracks in trenches and tunnels between the plant and the ocean. On April 6 plant officials announced that those cracks had been sealed, and later that month workers began to pump the irradiated water to an on-site storage building until it could be properly treated.

On April 12 nuclear regulators elevated the severity level of the nuclear emergency from 5 to 7the highest level on the scale created by the International Atomic Energy Agency placing it in the same category as the Chernobyl accident, which occurred in the Soviet Union in 1986. The radiation effects from the Fukushima I nuclear accidents are the results of release of radioactive isotopes from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant after the 2011 Thoku earthquake and tsunami. Radioactive material was released on several occasions after the tsunami struck. This occurred due to both deliberate pressure-reducing venting, and through accidental and uncontrolled releases These conditions resulted in unsafe levels of radioactive contamination in the air, in drinking water, milk and on certain crops in the vicinity of the prefectures closest to the plant,and in fish caught 50 miles off the coast. Drinking water was above the limit for infants for several days in the second week after the accident. Several workers received more dosages of over 100 millisievert (mSv) while working on the plant site with two of them hospitalized with high exposures around the ankles after standing in radioactive cooling water. Water levels within units 2 and 3 (but outside the containment) were reported to be very high at "over 1000" and 750 mSv/h on 27 March.