Fukushima: the facts

Just as nations worldwide had accepted nuclear power was key to tackling climate change, nuclear disaster struck. What went wrong at the Fukushima Daiichi plant? The crisis was principally a result of flooding. When the earthquake hit, the three nuclear reactors operating at the plant did exactly as they were designed to do: they shut down. With off-site power wiped out, emergency diesel-generators kicked in and started pumping cooling water to the fuel rods in each reactor. These cooling systems, designed to keep reactor containment vessel temperatures to around 260°C, operated exactly as they should – until one hour later when the tsunami swept through.