Читать книгу The Energy World is Flat - Lacalle Daniel - Страница 5

At 2.46 pm on the 11 March 2011, the largest earthquake in the history of Japan triggered a giant tsunami wave that would change the energy world forever.

I was on a conference call in my office when the prices of the Japanese yen started to swing wildly. Something had happened. Shortly after, the news was hitting the wires: “Massive 9.0 Earthquake Hits East Coast of Japan. Tsunami Warning Issued”. While Japan had a long history of earthquakes, such as the Unzen earthquake and tsunami in 1792 that left a death toll of over 15,000,1 a tremor of 9.0 on the Richter scale was at a whole new level, and would make this earthquake the largest in the history of Japan and the fifth largest globally since records began in 1900.

Within minutes, a series of giant tsunami waves reached Fukushima Daiichi power plant. More than twice as high as the protective seawalls, the waves flooded the power station and damaged the back-up generation and cooling systems. The situation was out of control, and radiation was eventually released, making Fukushima the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986, both rated level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.