Officials acquitted of negligence in the Fukushima nuclear disaster

摘要

As JMA continued to update its estimate of the magnitude from 7.9 to 8.4 and then 8.7,1 received an email from my colleague Dr Thio in California estimating the magnitude at 9.0 about 20 minutes after the event began, confirmed by JMA five minutes later. Soon the first arrivals of tsunamis at ports along the Tohoku coast began to appear on the screen, followed by dramatic images of waves and inundation never seen before on TV. The tsunami killed more than 18,000 people along Japan's north-east coast, including Fukushima. Initially there was little mention of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), and it took weeks before the dire condition of the five units became clear, as graphically chronicled by Australian journalist Mark Willacy (2013).