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The Fukushima Disaster

Japan's biggest earthquake and fear of a global nuclear meltdown. How close did we come?

In 2011, Japan was hit by the worst earthquake in the country’s history. Enormous tremors caused devastation all throughout Japan, and the tsunami that followed wreaked further havoc. But the damage didn’t end there. 200 km north of Tokyo, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was in danger. It had been so severely damaged that there were fears of a full-scale, global, nuclear melt-down….

But how close did the world really come to nuclear disaster? Whose brave actions ensured even greater devastation was avoided? And have the lessons of Fukushima been learned?

This is a Short History Of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster.

Written by Danny Marshall. With thanks to Dr Edwin Lyman, Director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

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50 minutes