The first anniversary of the Fukushima disaster is coming up, and being an IB student, I have left this blog completely dusted during exams and work. Now that work load has eased a bit , I might as well write an update on what has happened when I "abandoned" this blog.
Fukushima Daiichi
The plant has been officially called "stabilized" or in cool shutdown for almost half an year now, meaning that the water inside the core is less than 100 Degrees Celsius. All reactors has been confirmed to be taken offline contrary to earlier believe that only 1-4 will be taken offline. Reactor 1,2,3 has officially been confirmed that meltdown did occur in those reactors. An intern investigation from the Japanese authorities has been published, the report from Japanese authorities blamed multiple small factors that lead to one large disaster. A full report will be released during summer of 2012.
Other nuclear power plants in Japan
This is probably the most striking. Since the Fukushima Daiichi shutdown, lots of other reactors that were not harmed by the earthquake were shut down for "stress tests". They were not allowed to return into operation. There are currently only 2 (of the 54) nuclear reactors still in operation. With ~25% of electricity generated by nuclear power plants, it is quite obvious that there may not be enough electricity generated (though no blackouts at the moment). This situation may become worse during summer when more and more energy is required to cool down cities (via Air-conditioning, law of thermodynamics)
The cleanup from the disaster will take decades, as there is still decontamination to complete as well as solving the current energy crisis faced by Japan.
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