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MARCH 4: On March 11, Japan marks a decade since a major earthquake and tsunami left more than 22,000 people dead or missing and triggered the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
Here is a brief timeline of events after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake, the largest on record in Japanese history:
March 11, 2011: A magnitude 9.0 earthquake hits the northeast coast of Japan, causing a tsunami that devastates towns and villages. The tsunami invades the backup power and cooling systems at Tokyo Electric Power Co’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, eventually causing collapses in three of six reactors. Two months later, TEPCO confirms that mergers took place.
The government declares a nuclear emergency and tells residents within a 3 km radius of the plant to evacuate. The evacuation zone is expanded in stages to a radius of 20 km over the next two days. More than 160,000 people are finally evacuated.
March 12: TEPCO begins to inject seawater to cool the fuel rods of the reactors. People stock up on groceries and supplies in Tokyo, some 250 km away, amid fear of radiation.
Naoto Kan, prime minister at the time, later says that he feared having to evacuate Tokyo.
March 16: Emperor Akihito gives a rare televised speech expressing deep concern about the crisis.
March 22: Technicians working at the plant connect power cables to all six reactors and turn on a pump in one to cool the overheating nuclear fuel rods.
April 4: Engineers release more than 10,000 tons of contaminated water, roughly 100 times more radioactive than legal limits, that had been used to cool overheated fuel rods after running out of storage capacity.
May 20th: TEPCO President Masataka Shimizu, 66, resigns, taking responsibility for the nuclear crisis.
26 of August: Kan confirms that he will resign.
December 16: Japan states that damaged reactors are in a stable “cold shutdown” state.
July 1, 2012: Kansai Electric Power Co restarts the 1,180-megawatt No. 3 unit at its Ohi Atomic Plant, Japan’s first nuclear reactor to return to operation since the Fukushima crisis, despite public concerns about nuclear safety.
July 5, 2012: A commission appointed by parliament concludes that Fukushima was a “profoundly man-made disaster” that could have been prevented and mitigated with a more effective response.
December 26, 2012: Shinzo Abe elected prime minister after his Liberal Democratic Party won the general election, overthrowing the Democratic Party of Japan, in power at the time of the crisis.
July 22, 2013: TEPCO admits that since the reactor rupture in 2011, radioactive water has continued to leak from the plant into groundwater, rendering it radioactive, with implications for drinking water and the Pacific Ocean.
September 7, 2013: In a bid led by Abe, Tokyo is declared the site of the 2020 Summer Olympics, promising to showcase a rebuilt Fukushima. Abe says the damaged plant is “under control.”
April 1, 2014: People begin to return to the 20 km exclusion zone around Fukushima when decontamination of the area is completed.
June 3, 2014: TEPCO begins work on an “ice wall” to slow the flow of groundwater to the destroyed plant, but the accumulation of contaminated water continues, slowing down recovery efforts.
November 5, 2014: TEPCO removes 400 tons of spent uranium fuel from a damaged reactor building, the first of four sets of used rods to be disposed of in a cleanup expected to take decades.
February 7, 2018: TEPCO ordered about 1.1 billion yen ($ 10 million) to be paid to 321 Fukushima residents for damages in a class action lawsuit.
September 5, 2018: Japan acknowledges for the first time that radiation at the Fukushima plant killed a worker there and ruled that compensation must be paid to the family of the man in his 50s who died of lung cancer.
September 19, 2019: Former TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and former executives Ichiro Takekuro and Sakae Muto were acquitted of criminal charges of professional negligence that resulted in injury and death in the only criminal case to emerge from the crisis.
March 1, 2021: TEPCO said it had moved spent uranium fuel from a damaged reactor to a safer location, the second successful operation of its kind and the first to be carried out remotely, due to high radiation in the reactor building. – Reuters
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