--- title: How Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Disaster Happened | TIME description: The 9.0 magnitude Japan earthquake has created one of the most serious nuclear crises the world has ever faced. TIME explains how the Fukushima catastrophe unfolded canonical: https://time.com/video/OCaxIAFI/ og:title: How Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Disaster Happened og:description: The 9.0 magnitude Japan earthquake has created one of the most serious nuclear crises the world has ever faced. TIME explains how the Fukushima catastrophe unfolded og:url: https://time.com/video/OCaxIAFI/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/OCaxIAFI/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Disaster Happened twitter:description: The 9.0 magnitude Japan earthquake has created one of the most serious nuclear crises the world has ever faced. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: How Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Disaster Happened [Watch (HLS stream): How Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Disaster Happened](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/OCaxIAFI.m3u8) (4:03)  _Published 2011-03-17. The 9.0 magnitude Japan earthquake has created one of the most serious nuclear crises the world has ever faced. TIME explains how the Fukushima catastrophe unfolded_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:11 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Fukushima Nuclear Plant To Release Treated Radioactive Water To Sea As Soon As Thursday](/video/7rCFaHz4/) ### Fukushima Nuclear Plant To Release Treated Radioactive Water To Sea As Soon As Thursday [Japan Will Start Releasing Fukushima Water Into the Sea in Two Years](/video/5a8Mu8Rk/) ### Japan Will Start Releasing Fukushima Water Into the Sea in Two Years [A Village Mourns on the Anniversary of Japan's Earthquake](/video/7SuuhnEA/) ### A Village Mourns on the Anniversary of Japan's Earthquake --- ## Transcript >> The 9. 0 magnitude Japanese earthquake has had many frightening after effects, but perhaps none more so than what unfolded at the Fukushima number 1 nuclear plant where explosions and radiation leaks across the plant's 6 reactors have resulted in evacuations and emergency containment procedures. The Fukushima 1 plant houses boiling water reactors that were built in the 1970's. Dr. Ronald Ballinger, a professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT explained to TIME over Skype how the reactors work and how the earthquake tested their design. >> So in a boiling water reactor, water comes in the vessel and steam is produced directly in the reactor vessel and the steam goes out and runs a turbine. Think of a coffee cup full of water, you stick an electric heater down into the water and it heats the water up. In the case of the boiling water reactor the heater is the fuel rod and it produces steam. >> On Friday, March 11th when the massive earthquake rocked the nuclear plant, there were many safety measures in place, but the chain of events and their magnitude challenge all the backup plans. >> They had an earthquake, a big one, and those reactors automatically shut down. Then they had the tsunami. Now when the reactors shut down the power grid was lost, and so they had diesel generators on site, but the tsunami washed away everything. And so they were in a situation where they couldn't run pumps. They couldn't get water into the vessel to keep the fuel cool and they damaged and locally melted some of the fuel. >> In nuclear reactors the main danger is that without enough cooling the radioactive fuel could become so hot that it melts through the reactor walls releasing high amounts of radiation into the environment. Boiled water reactors like the ones at the Fukushima plant have their fuel surrounded by multiple layers of containment to prevent this kind of release. >> The fuel rods themselves are the initial barrier for release. Then there's the pressure vessel itself, the primary coolant system, then there's the containment vessel. >> To cool down the fuel, engineers injected sea water mixed with boric acid into each containment vessel, but the intense heat converted the water to steam and a reaction with the coating on the fuel rods created an excess of volatile hydrogen gas. >> So you know they had to vent the hydrogen somewhere. Otherwise the pressure would go too high and they wouldn't be able to get water into the reactor. >> In 2 of the reactors, number 1 and number 3, the hydrogen gas was vented into the building surrounding the containment vessel. >> There's a façade kind of superstructure which is the outer part of the building. The top part of that, the hydrogen was vented up into that area and it pooled apparently and that's where the explosion occurred and that's when you saw all of the debris and stuff like that. >> These explosions release very little radiation because the buildings are not part of the reactor containment, but in reactor number 2 some hydrogen gas ignited within the containment vessel itself causing a small crack and releasing moderate amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere. More radiation was also released when there was a fire in reactor number 4 which was shut down at the time of the earthquake. The flames were in a separate tank called the spent fuel pool where radioactive fuel is stored when not in use. >> If damage occurs in the spent fuel pool, then some of those fission products can get out. If it's a gas, it'll be airborne. >> Scientists the world over have their eyes on the reactors at Fukushima and each of them might offer a different prediction on the risks as engineers worked to keep the reactors cool. For now the world can only watch and wait to see if modern engineering can overcome a catastrophe so far beyond what anyone thought possible. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"How Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Disaster Happened","description":"The 9.0 magnitude Japan earthquake has created one of the most serious nuclear crises the world has ever faced. 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