Only a few days ago a serious earthquake with an eight point nine magnitude hit Japan, then if that weren’t bad enough a tsunami caused by the earthquake also hit Japan. During both the earthquake and tsunami thousands of homes and buildings were demolished, making all those people that have not died now homeless. If all this was enough then you should stop reading because besides the earthquake and the tsunami there is now a serious threat of a nuclear meltdown in four out of the six nuclear reactors. Which would devastate Japan for centuries to come. After further reading of the article I saw that the article said that the wave of the tsunami at its height was twelve feet high. And what I also found out was that there was also a fire in Kesennuma, a city with a population of over seventy thousand people.
In my opinion what happened in Japan is like a perfect storm, the conditions were all just aligned so that Japan got the worst possible situation. I never knew about the fire from people talking but since I read the article I learned a few more bits of information that I had not learned from watching the news or hearing people talk. For example, that there were also waves that hit the west coast that sunk several ship and made seven foot waves in Hawaii. I had no idea anything happened to the west coast. I guess that shows how ignorant I am to world events, but with everything going on now in my life I have very little time to think about a country thousands of miles away from me. Although this article was very informative, I have to say I hated it. The only reason I say that is because I hate reading articles by force, if there is an interesting article by all means I will read it and blog about it, but that’s never the case, current events in my eyes are always boring!
After reading similar articles, along with what I learned from this post, I am now wondering whether the destruction by tsunami and earthquake, or the radiation and risk of full nuclear meltdown are worse. As far as I know, four of the nuclear reactors in Japan were damaged, and they are all in need of emergency cooling. Because the systems and backup systems that are normally used or would be used in case of emergency, were all damaged, the reactor workers are pouring seawater on the fuel rods (the nuclear elements that power the plant) to cool them down. Despite the efforts of the emergency crews, the cores are still heating up, and a lot of radiation is escaping into the atmosphere as irradiated steam. If there is a full meltdown, that area of Japan could become the next Chernobyl. Even with the existing damage, it is going to take Japan a long time to recover; I hope they can contain the current situation.
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