Fukushima Daiichi, Population, and What Comes Next

Japan is a nation home to over 120 million people. Around 10 million of those people live in Tokyo, marked by the purple dot on the map below. While most of us are probably somewhat familiar with the mega-city of Tokyo, the focus of this project brings us far outside of the city's limits to a prefecture north of Tokyo called Fukushima, which is outlined in blue on the map below.

About 100 miles (or 150 kilometers) north of Tokyo is the Fukushima prefecture. This prefecture is home to about 2 million people. The Fukushima prefecture highlights many symbols of Japanese culture including hot springs, cherry blossom trees, delicious fruit, and sake. But many of us are familiar with Fukushima for a different reason. Specifically, we know about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, which is located on the coast of the Fukushima Prefecture as indicated by the orange dot on the map below.

A 9.0 earthquake off the eastern coast of Japan caused a massive tsunami that killed thousands and wiped out power to many coastal areas. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, located right on the coast, was severely flooded and lost power. The tsunami disabled most of the backup power generators as well, leaving the reactors without their critical cooling systems. The cores of the active nuclear energy generators melted, and seawater was injected in an effort to cool the cores, creating large amounts of contaminated water. An excess of steam and hydrogen gas was generated and vented, but the volatile hydrogen gas exploded, further damaging the reactors and launching radioactive iodine and cesium into the air. The reactors remained without power or fresh water cooling for two weeks, and the destroyed cores are still to this day too dangerous to approach, complicating cleaning efforts.

The map below shows the evacuation radii that the local Fukushima government and the national government enforced at different points of the disaster. The red buffer indicates the 2Km evacuation zone imposed 6 hours after the earthquake occurred on March 11th, 2011. 30 minutes later, the government increased the evacuation radius to 3Km (orange) and ordered everyone within 10Km (yellow) to stay inside buildings. The next day, the evacuation radius was increased to 20Km (green). By the end of March, the government requested a voluntary evacuation up to 30Km (blue) away from the Nuclear Power Station. On April 21st, 2011, the Japanese government set the 20km radius as a strict no-go zone.

After the initial evacuation, what happened to the population of the towns surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi Station? The map below shows census data for the Fukushima prefecture in 2010 and 2015. The pink dots indicate areas where the population did not change by much in that 5-year period. The purple dots indicate areas where there were people living in 2010, but five years after the Fukushima Daiichi accident there were no people living there. Notice how the purple dots are concentrated along the coast near the Fukushima Daiichi Power Station, and how they trail inland moving north. The green buffer indicates the initial 20Km evacuation radius. As of 2015, there are some areas inside the evacuation zone that have been repopulated, and there are some areas outside of the initial evacuation zone that are uninhabited.

The map on the left shows the radiation within a month of the accident, while the map on the right shows the radiation a year after the accident. Due to the weather patterns and how the radioactive particles from the explosions were dispersed, areas located northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi Station have much higher radiation levels than other areas.

This resulted in some towns being safe to return to while others were still too dangerous to repopulate. As time passes, more areas will be deemed safe to return to, but some of these places will remain abandoned for decades to come. In some cases, residents have been allowed to return to their hometowns, but have chosen not to. It's been years since they've been forced to evacuate, so some residents have rebuilt their lives elsewhere and have decided to not return. Others are concerned about residual radiation. For the residents who do choose to return, they find themselves in an unrecognizable ghost town. As remediation efforts continue and contaminated soil and water are dealt with, it will be interesting to see how re-population progresses in these evacuated areas.

Japan has 18 nuclear power stations other than the Fukushima Daiichi Station. These other stations are at various levels of operation. Some of the older stations (constructed in the '60s and '70s) are being decommissioned while other stations are being constructed now (or were supposed to be operational by now but got pushed back because of Covid). Japan pulled back on its nuclear energy ambitions after 2011 but still utilizes these stations to supply themselves with some power.

Japan, being a resource-lacking island nation, imports the vast majority of its energy from other countries in the form of fossil fuels. After 2011, the amount of energy that Japan made from its nuclear stations decreased, and Japan bridged the gap between supply and demand by outsourcing more of its energy to fossil fuels. This moves Japan in the wrong direction, both in terms of economic independence and sustainability. Instead of looking back to fossil fuels, Japan should look forward and make use of what resources it does have to build a stable energy system based on renewable sources such as geothermal or hydro/tidal energy.

As for what comes next for these nuclear power stations in Japan, there is a push for national divestment from nuclear energy. Between safety concerns, radioactive waste issues, and the fact that nuclear energy is not actually renewable, people are starting to turn to other, more sustainable, energy sources. I will actually be traveling to Japan (at some point once we get Coivd under control) to learn about nuclear divestment and natural disaster mitigation at the National Institute of Technology, Fukushima College. So this story is far from over for me, and I hope this makes you think about where you get your energy, and how that can directly impact you and the planet.

Not everything can fit into a four-minute presentation. If you would like to learn more about nuclear energy, the Fukushima Daiichi Power Station, and the impacts of this disaster not only on Japan but also on the rest of the world, take a look at these resources below.