The fifth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster was on Friday, March 11. Since that fateful day in 2011, the Japanese government and the United States have continued to deny the lingering effects of this catastrophic event.
An estimated $21 billion has been spent on cleanup efforts since 2011, including funding for a team of remote activated robots capable of going to high-dose radiation areas of the plant where humans cannot enter and survive.
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- 164,865: Fukushima residents who fled their homes after the disaster.
- 97,320: Number who still haven’t returned.
- 49: Municipalities in Fukushima that have completed decontamination work.
- 45: Number that have not.
- 30: Percent of electricity generated by nuclear power before the disaster.
- 1.7: Percent of electricity generated by nuclear power after the disaster.
- 3: Reactors currently online, out of 43 now workable.
- 54: Reactors with safety permits before the disaster.
- 53: Percent of the 1,017 Japanese in a March 5-6 Mainichi Shimbun newspaper survey who opposed restarting nuclear power plants.
- 30: Percent who supported restarts. The remaining 17 percent were undecided.
- 760,000: Metric tons of contaminated water currently stored at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
- 1,000: Tanks at the plant storing radioactive water after treatment.
- 7,000: Workers decommissioning the Fukushima plant.
- 26,000: Laborers on decontamination work offsite.
- 200: Becquerels of radioactive cesium per cubic meter (264 gallons) in seawater immediately off the plant in 2015.
- 50 million: Becquerels of cesium per cubic meter in the same water in 2011.
- 7,400: Maximum number of becquerels of cesium per cubic meter allowed in drinking water by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But perhaps the most staggering number of all of these statistics is the fact that the waste is being temporarily stored right next to the waterfront in a Wall-E style. The visual representation of the failure of this nuclear power plant is shocking.
Along the shore at the temporary storage site at Tomioka are 10.7 million 1-ton container bags containing radioactive debris and other waste collected in decontamination outside the plant.
Read more at “City” of Waste: Fukushima Cleanup Now Up to 10.7 Million 1-ton Bags of Radioactive Waste
