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The was a series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, and releases of radioactive materials at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/energy/nuclear/explainer-what-went-wrong-in-japans-nuclear-reactors )〕 It is the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.〔("Analysis: A month on, Japan nuclear crisis still scarring" ) ''International Business Times'' (Australia). 9 April 2011, retrieved 12 April 2011; excerpt, According to James Acton, Associate of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "Fukushima is not the worst nuclear accident ever but it is the most complicated and the most dramatic ... This was a crisis that played out in real time on TV. Chernobyl did not."〕 The plant comprises six separate boiling water reactors originally designed by General Electric (GE), and maintained by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). At the time of the quake, Reactor 4 had been de-fueled while 5 and 6 were in cold shutdown for planned maintenance. Immediately after the earthquake, the remaining reactors 1-3 shut down automatically, and emergency generators came online to control electronics and coolant systems. However the tsunami following the earthquake quickly flooded the low-lying rooms in which the emergency generators were housed. The flooded generators failed, cutting power to the critical pumps that must continuously circulate coolant water through a nuclear reactor for several days in order to keep it from melting down after being shut down. As the pumps stopped, the reactors overheated due to the normal high radioactive decay heat produced in the first few days after nuclear reactor shutdown (smaller amounts of this heat normally continue to be released for years, but are not enough to cause fuel melting). At this point, only prompt flooding of the reactors with seawater could have cooled the reactors quickly enough to prevent meltdown. Salt water flooding was delayed because it would ruin the costly reactors permanently. Flooding with seawater was finally commenced only after the government ordered that seawater be used, and at this point it was already too late to prevent meltdown.〔F. Tanabe, Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 2011, volume 48, issue 8, pages 1135 to 1139〕 As the water boiled away in the reactors and the water levels in the fuel rod pools dropped, the reactor fuel rods began to overheat severely, and to melt down. In the hours and days that followed, Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced full meltdown. In the intense heat and pressure of the melting reactors, a reaction between the nuclear fuel metal cladding and the remaining water surrounding them produced explosive hydrogen gas. As workers struggled to cool and shut down the reactors, several hydrogen-air chemical explosions occurred.〔〔(Hydrogen explosions Fukushima nuclear plant: what happened? )〕 Concerns about the repeated small explosions, the atmospheric venting of radioactive gasses, and the possibility of larger explosions led to a -radius evacuation around the plant. During the early days of the accident workers were temporarily evacuated at various times for radiation safety reasons. At the same time, sea water that had been exposed to the melting rods was returned to the sea heated and radioactive in large volumes for several months until recirculating units could be put in place to repeatedly cool and re-use a limited quantity of water for cooling. The earthquake damage and flooding in the wake of the tsunami hindered external assistance. Electrical power was slowly restored for some of the reactors, allowing for automated cooling.〔(Stricken reactors may get power Sunday ), ''The Wall Street Journal'', 19 March 2011〕 Japanese officials initially assessed the accident as Level 4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) despite the views of other international agencies that it should be higher. The level was later raised to 5 and eventually to 7, the maximum scale value.〔Justin McCurry. (Japan raises nuclear alert level to seven ). The Guardian. 12 April 2011〕〔('Now radiation in Japan is as bad as radiation level is raised to 7 for only the second time in history' ) ''Daily Mail'' 12 April 2011.〕 The Japanese government and TEPCO have been criticized in the foreign press for poor communication with the public and improvised cleanup efforts.〔 On 20 March, the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano announced that the plant would be decommissioned once the crisis was over. The Japanese government estimates the total amount of radioactivity released into the atmosphere was approximately one-tenth as much as was released during the Chernobyl disaster.〔 Significant amounts of radioactive material have also been released into ground and ocean waters. Measurements taken by the Japanese government 30–50 km from the plant showed caesium-137 levels high enough to cause concern,〔 leading the government to ban the sale of food grown in the area. Tokyo officials temporarily recommended that tap water should not be used to prepare food for infants.〔(Japan mulls Fukushima food ban: IAEA ), Reuters, 19 March 2011〕 In May 2012, TEPCO reported that at least 900 PBq had been released "into the atmosphere in March last year () alone" although it has been said staff may have been told to lie, and give false readings to try and cover up true levels of radiation. A few of the plant's workers were severely injured or killed by the disaster conditions resulting from the earthquake. There were no immediate deaths due to direct radiation exposures, but at least six workers have exceeded lifetime legal limits for radiation and more than 300 have received significant radiation doses. Predicted future cancer deaths due to accumulated radiation exposures in the population living near Fukushima have ranged from none to 100 to a non-peer-reviewed "guesstimate" of 1,000.〔 On 16 December 2011, Japanese authorities declared the plant to be stable, although it would take decades to decontaminate the surrounding areas and to decommission the plant altogether. On 5 July 2012, the parliament appointed The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) submitted its inquiry report to the Japanese parliament, while the government appointed Investigation Committee on the Accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations of Tokyo Electric Power Company submitted its final report to the Japanese government on 23 July 2012. Tepco admitted for the first time on October 12, 2012 that it had failed to take stronger measures to prevent disasters for fear of inviting lawsuits or protests against its nuclear plants. ==Unit 3 Reactor== Unlike the other five reactor units, reactor 3 ran on mixed core, containing both uranium fuel and mixed uranium and plutonium oxide, or MOX fuel (with the core comprising ~6% MOX fuel), during a loss of cooling accident in a subcritical reactor MOX fuel will not behave differently from UOX fuel. The key difference between plutonium-239 and uranium-235 is that plutonium emits fewer delayed neutrons than uranium when it undergoes fission. While water-insoluble forms of plutonium such as plutonium dioxide are very harmful to the lungs, this toxicity is not relevant during a Loss Of Coolant Accident (LOCA) because plutonium is very involatile and unlikely to leave the reactor in large amounts. Plutonium dioxide has a very high boiling point. The toxic effect of the plutonium to the public under these conditions is much less than that of iodine-131 and caesium. During a loss of cooling accident, the fuel is not subject to such intense mechanical stresses, so the release of radioactivity is controlled by the boiling-point of the different elements present.〔J.-P. Hiernaut, T. Wiss, D. Papaioannou, R.J.M. Konings, V.V. Rondinella, Journal of Nuclear Materials, 2008, volume 372, pages 215 to 225〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster (Unit 3 Reactor)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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