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earthquake
Remembering Fukushima... and the Other Road to Nuclear Nightmare
With nine nuclear-armed nations and roughly 12,000 nuclear warheads on this planet, worries about nuclear war are unavoidable. However, the danger of a nuclear disaster at a seemingly “peaceful” nuclear facility is often ignored.
Mar 23, 2026
Nine countries now possess nuclear weapons and we have just seen the start of a new war in the Middle East over one more nation supposedly trying to acquire them. While we consider the dangers of such weapons and their capacity to cause massive destruction, we often overlook the risks associated with what still passes for “peaceful” nuclear power. With that in mind, let me revisit a moment when that reality should have become far clearer.
I had crawled into bed on March 10, 2011, opened my phone, and scrolled through my Instagram feed. The app was still fairly new then, and I was only following a dozen or so accounts, several from Japan. One amateur photographer there had posted photos minutes earlier of a fractured sidewalk and a toppled bookshelf. A massive earthquake had just rattled Tokyo.
A news article confirmed that a magnitude 7.9 quake had indeed struck 80 miles off the coast of Japan. Later, it was upgraded to 9.0, 1,000 times more powerful in terms of energy released. Holy shit, I thought. That’s huge! Worried, I emailed my old college friend Ichiro, who lived in Tokyo, to make sure his family was safe. A short while later, he replied that they were fine, but that a massive tsunami had indeed flooded the Tohoku region north of Tokyo. Many were dead.
“It’s horrible. It’s chaos,” he wrote me.
The nuclear industry has a reasonably polite name for a disaster like the one that was rocking Fukushima. They refer to it as a “beyond design-basis accident” because no single nuclear plant design can account for every possible problem it might encounter in its lifetime.
By the time Ichiro’s message arrived, distressing images of the tsunami were already circulating online and the death toll was rising fast, though the floodwaters were by then receding. As I watched heartbreaking videos of screaming onlookers, capsized boats, floating debris, and cars submerged like toys in a bathtub, another tragedy was unfolding that few, even inside the Japanese government, were aware of. A nuclear plant in Fukushima, operated by TEPCO (the Tokyo Electric Power Company), had been swamped by the tremendous flooding and lost all power.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, built by General Electric (GE) in the mid-1960s, was designed to withstand natural disasters, but its creators never foresaw an earthquake like that. When the plant’s sensors detected the quake, its reactors automatically shut down. That emergency shutdown (or scram) halted its fission process, triggering backup power to keep cold seawater flowing through the reactors and spent-fuel containers to prevent overheating. Things at Fukushima were going according to plan until that massive tsunami battered the plant, washing away transmission towers and damaging electrical systems. There were backup generators in the basement, but those, too, had been inundated by waves of seawater, and an already bad situation was about to get far worse.
A power outage at a nuclear power plant is known as a “station blackout.” As you might imagine, it’s one of the worst scenarios any nuclear facility could possibly experience. If all electricity is lost, that means water is no longer being pumped into the reactor’s scalding-hot core to cool it down. And if that core isn’t constantly being cooled, one thing is certain: Disaster will ensue. The fission process itself may be complicated, but that’s basic physics. To make matters worse, there were three operating reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. Luckily, three others had already been shut down for maintenance. If power wasn’t restored in short order, that would mean that all three of Fukushima’s reactors were in very big trouble.
We would later learn that no one—not at TEPCO, GE, or among Japanese regulators—had ever considered the possibility that all the reactors might lose electricity at once. They had only drawn up plans for one reactor to go down, in which case the others could keep the plant running. But all of them offline, and every generator out of commission? There was no precedent or playbook for that.
The nuclear industry has a reasonably polite name for a disaster like the one that was rocking Fukushima. They refer to it as a “beyond design-basis accident” because no single nuclear plant design can account for every possible problem it might encounter in its lifetime. The fact that there’s a term for this should make you anxious.
Meltdowns and Fallout
Over the next several days, the emergency at Fukushima Daiichi only worsened. Every effort to restore power to its reactors hit a dead end. On-site radiation-detection equipment, which would have triggered warnings and guided evacuation efforts for those in danger, was no longer functioning. Plans to pump water into the reactors to cool them had faltered. Their cores kept overheating, and the boiling pools of spent fuel were at risk of drying out, potentially triggering a massive fire that would release extreme amounts of radiation.
Within three days, following a series of fires, hydrogen explosions, and panic among those aware of what was happening, Fukushima’s Units 1, 2, and 3 experienced full-scale core meltdowns. Over 150,000 people within an 18-mile radius had already been forced to evacuate, and radiation plumes would take two weeks to spread across the northern hemisphere, although the Japanese government wouldn’t admit publicly that any meltdown had occurred until June 2011, three months later.
The only good news for the 13 million people living 150 miles south in Tokyo was that, during and immediately after the meltdowns, prevailing winds carried much of Fukushima’s radioactive material away from the smoldering reactors and out to sea. It’s estimated that 80% of the fallout from Fukushima ended up in the ocean, meaning most of it headed east rather than toward population centers to the south and west. The other fortunate news was that the spent fuel containers had somehow survived it all. If their water levels in the pools had been drained, far more radiation would have been released.
But Tokyo wasn’t completely spared. After years of research, scientists discovered that cesium-rich microparticles had blanketed the greater Tokyo area, an unpopular discovery that drew backlash and threats of academic censorship. Areas around the Fukushima exclusion zones recorded the highest radiation levels. Japanese government officials continually downplayed the dangers of the accident and were reluctant to even classify the event as a Level 7 nuclear disaster, the highest rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale, which would have placed it on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Japanese officials have also failed to conduct long-term epidemiological studies that would include baseline measurements of cancer rates, which has cast doubt on thyroid screenings that found troubling incidents of cancer far higher than researchers expected.
Radioactive Fish
Prior to the earthquake, the ocean’s cesium-137 levels near Fukushima were 2 Becquerels (a unit of radioactivity) per cubic meter, well below the recommended drinking water threshold of 10,000 Becquerels. Just after March 11, 2011, cesium-137 levels there spiked to 50 million before decreasing as sea currents dispersed the radioactive particles away from the coast. The ocean, however, had been poisoned.
In the years that followed the Fukushima nuclear disaster, researchers documented a frightening, yet predictable trend. Radioactive isotopes in seawater were taken up by marine plants (phytoplankton), which then moved up the food chain into tiny marine animals (zooplankton) and, eventually, to fish. Cesium-137 consumed by fish can reside in their bodies for months, while Strontium-90 remains in their bones for years. If humans then eat such fish, they will also be exposed to those radioactive particles. The more contaminated fish they eat, the greater the radioactive buildup will be.
In 2023, over a decade after the incident, radiation levels remained sky-high in black rockfish caught off the Fukushima coast. Other bottom-dwelling species have been found to be laden with radioactivity, too, including eel and rock trout. Further concerns have been raised about the treated radioactive water that TEPCO continued to release into the ocean, prompting China to suspend seafood imports from Japan. Aside from those findings, there have been very few studies examining the effects of Fukushima’s radiation on ecosystems or on the people of Japan.
The world is unpredictable, and even the safest nuclear power plant can’t guarantee that it will hold up against whatever tragedy is coming next.
“Japan has clamped down on scientific efforts to study the nuclear catastrophe,” claims pediatrician Alex Rosen of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. “There is hardly any literature, any publicized research, on the health effects on humans, and those that are published come from a small group of researchers at Fukushima Medical University.”
Recognizing such levels of radiation, even if confined to the waters near Fukushima, would cast the country’s nuclear industry as a significant threat—not only to Japan but globally. Any admission that Fukushima’s radiation is linked to increased cancer rates would raise broader concerns about nuclear power’s future viability. Radiation exposure is cumulative and, although Fukushima didn’t immediately cause mass casualties, it wasn’t a benign accident either. It took decades before it was accepted that Chernobyl had caused tens of thousands of excess cancer deaths. It may take even longer to completely understand Fukushima’s full effects. In the meantime, the still ongoing cleanup of the burned-out facilities may cost as much as 80 trillion yen ($500 billion).
It’s been 15 years since Fukushima’s reactors experienced those meltdowns, and we still don’t fully understand their long-term repercussions. Nuclear power advocates will argue that Fukushima wasn’t a serious incident and that nuclear technology is still safe. They’ll minimize radiation threats, remain optimistic that new reactor designs will never falter, dismiss the fact that there’s simply no permanent solution for radioactive waste, and overlook the inseparable connection between nuclear power and atomic weapons. After all, among other things, we’ll undoubtedly need nuclear energy to help power the artificial intelligence craze, right?
The operators and regulators at Fukushima were wholly unprepared for what unfolded on that fateful day in 2011. They never imagined that an earthquake of such magnitude could trigger a tsunami so immense that it would destroy the power grid, knock out water pumps, and disable backup generators. Likewise, no one can guarantee that nuclear plants or radioactive storage tanks are safe in war zones, or that the rivers and lakes needed to cool reactors globally won’t one day run dry or become too hot to do so—something that has already happened in Europe. Ultimately, we can’t anticipate every mishap, human error, or—especially in the age of climate chaos—every natural disaster that may come down the pike. The world is unpredictable, and even the safest nuclear power plant can’t guarantee that it will hold up against whatever tragedy is coming next.
Fifty miles south of where I live in Southern California, an old nuclear facility sits idle on the Pacific Coast in an earthquake-and-tsunami-hazard zone, not unlike the site where Fukushima was built. It’s not the only such plant in California, but it’s the one I often visit. When I’m there, I think about Fukushima and imagine what would happen if a similar, unexpected disaster reached California’s shores and how such an event would forever alter this land.
Searching for Solace at San Onofre
The morning light was peaking over the sandstone bluff, and the offshore breeze was soft and brisk. I’m barefoot in a wetsuit, trudging my surfboard down a dirt road at San Onofre, a state park in northern San Diego County, for a “dawn patrol” surf session. A series of high tides—likely made more extreme by rising sea levels—has eroded a large portion of the parking lot below, so the beach can only be reached on foot or by bike. I’m not complaining. It’s worth the short trek. The absence of vehicles down here also means fewer surfers in the water.
San O, as it’s lovingly referred to, has a rich surf history spanning 100 years. Duke Kahanamoku, the “father of modern surfing,” who popularized the ancient Hawaiian sport in Southern California and often visited San O in the 1940s, helped to solidify it as one of the region’s premier breaks and an early hub of SoCal surf culture. The waves are long and rolling thanks to an extensive cobblestone reef. It’s a magical place.
Things around here have changed quite a bit, however, since “The Duke” first paddled his heavy wooden board into the surf. Just down the beach, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station sits precariously perched 100 feet from the water. Its two large domes are an ominous sight. Constructed in the 1960s, the plant is no longer producing electricity, but the station’s 123 large concrete-and-steel storage vessels remain, housing 3.6 million pounds of highly radioactive waste. Since nobody wants the toxic stuff, it just sits there, looming, awaiting the next big earthquake like the one that shook Fukushima. San Onofre is designed to withstand a 7.0 shaker, but scientists believe the area is capable of producing one 10 times larger and 32 times stronger. With 8.4 million people living within a 50-mile radius, any geological upheaval at San O could make a hell of a mess. It’s a worrisome thought I’d rather not dwell on.
Although it is a state park, the ground that San Onofre sits upon is leased from the federal government because it lies within the 195-square-mile boundary of the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base. More than a base, Camp Pendleton is a testing ground, where heavy artillery often booms in the distance. An occasional mock raid can occupy the beaches; helicopters sometimes swarm, and Amphibious Combat Vehicles crawl ashore. There’s even a faux Afghan village that was built at Camp Pendleton, costing taxpayers $170 million, where Marines can imagine terrorizing towns from Iran to Gaza. So strange that amid all this madness, San Onofre is where I search for solace.
In 2013, a radioactive gas leak from one of the nuclear plant’s steam generators, which are also within the military reserve, led to its closure. Southern California Edison (SCE), which operates the facility, reassured the public that there was nothing to be concerned about. Few, however, would consider SCE a trustworthy source. Over the years, the company has been caught in a series of lies about the safety of San Onofre, including falsifying firewatch records and grossly mishandling waste. Not dissimilar to TEPCO’s Fukushima deceit.
Like all nuclear power plants, San Onofre needed a lot of water to cool its three reactors, sucking in an astonishing 2.4 billion gallons of seawater a day. As you can imagine, that thirst had a serious impact on ocean ecology, killing fish and wrecking kelp beds. It’s taken over a decade, but some of what was destroyed is finally coming back to life after years of restoration. Despite the progress, discharge pipes still release radioactive effluent laced with cesium-137, cobalt-60, and tritium—a mile offshore 170 times a year. But SCE says there’s nothing to worry about. They also insist they don’t have much of a choice. All that leftover waste needs to be kept from overheating, and using seawater is the only option available.
It’s better not to think too much about a future Armageddon or what might be swimming beneath me while I’m out there bobbing between sets of waves. Surfing is supposed to help relieve my anxiety, not exacerbate it. It’s a little like backpacking in the wilds of Montana, which I also love to do, without constantly worrying about being chomped by a grizzly bear while in my sleeping bag. There are hazards to living in this crazy world—the worst of which, I’ve come to believe, are of the man-made variety.
As I slide my surfboard into the back of my van and peel off my wetsuit, I glance at San Onofre’s domes, which will start to be dismantled this year, and ponder the horrors still affecting Japan, fearing that someday a destructive tsunami may batter this beach, too. Sadly, it’s almost inevitable.
With nine nuclear-armed nations and roughly 12,000 nuclear warheads on this planet, worries about nuclear war are unavoidable. However, the danger of a nuclear disaster at a seemingly “peaceful” nuclear facility is often ignored. The future of atomic energy remains uncertain, but it is our duty to eliminate this hazardous energy source before another Fukushima triggers a war-like catastrophe all its own.
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Over 1,000 Dead From Devastating Earthquake in Morocco
Death toll expected to climb as emergency workers search for survivors in Marrakesh and other impacted villages and cities.
Sep 09, 2023
This is a developing story... Check back for updates...
The strongest earthquake to hit the country of Morocco in more than 120 years has left over 800 people dead and many thousands more trapped, missing, or injured.
The quake registered 6.8 on the Richter scale with the epicenter located in the Atlas Mountains and not far the city of Marrakesh where historic buildings—many built of mortar and stone not designed to withstand such tremors—collapsed and the streets filled with people overnight trying to flee the destruction and danger.
"The problem is that where destructive earthquakes are rare, buildings are simply not constructed robustly enough to cope with strong ground shaking, so many collapse resulting in high casualties," Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, told the Associated Press. "I would expect the final death toll to climb into the thousands once more is known. As with any big quake, aftershocks are likely, which will lead to further casualties and hinder search and rescue."
Morocco's interior ministry put the death toll at 822 as of Saturday morning, with 672 injured, but later revised those numbers to reflect that over 1,000 people are confirmed dead and more than 1,200 injured. Both numbers are almost certain to keep rising. Though the stronger impacts were closer to Marakesh, the earthquake was felt across the country, including in Casablance, Essaouira, and the capital city of Rabat.
Large nations, including both the United States and China, sent their well wishes to the people of Morocco.
"I am deeply saddened by the loss of life and devastation caused by the earthquake in Morocco," said U.S. President Joe Biden in an overnight statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with all those impacted by this terrible hardship."
Biden said his administration as in contact with Moroccan officials and willing to send whatever help might be necessary. "We are working expeditiously to ensure American citizens in Morocco are safe," Biden said, "and stand ready to provide any necessary assistance for the Moroccan people."
"On behalf of the Chinese government and people, I would like to express my deep grief for the victims and sincere condolences to the families," said China's President Xi Jinping.
Dr. Mohammad Kashani, associate professor of structural and earthquake engineering at the University of Southampton, spoke with the Guardian to offer his analysis of the disaster.
"The earthquake was magnitude 6.8 with 18.5km depth, which is quite shallow," explained Kashani. "The shallow earthquakes are normally more destructive. The location is at the boundary of the Eurasian and African plates. Almost all earthquakes occur at the boundary of tectonic plates due to their movement."
"It is too early to see the extent of damage," he continued. "However, from what I’ve seen in photos and videos this very similar to the earthquake that occurred in February in Turkey. The area is full of old and historical buildings, which are mainly masonry. The collapsed reinforced concrete structures that I saw in the photos were either old or substandard."
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Facing Compounding Crises, Syria Requires Long-Term Investments
The Syrian children and people need attention—they deserve dignified shelters, access to healthcare, a good education, and proper nutrition.
Apr 04, 2023
Nothing could have prepared us for what we sawin the wake of the Türkiye-Syria earthquake.
As physicians who regularly deploy to areas in need, we are no strangers to crisis situations. In the last few years, we have volunteered in war zones from Yemen to Ukraine, building resilience in the local communities, improving access to healthcare, providing emergency response, and strengthening health care systems in crisis or low-resource-affected countries. Wars and natural disasters are the enemies of health. They destroy lives, neighborhoods, and infrastructure. They displace populations and disrupt public health infrastructure. They increase mortality, worsening chronic diseases, and infectious outbreaks. They maim physically and leave unseen psychological scars.
When we touched down last month, our team of physicians was shocked by the endless piles of rubble littering the streets. We knew the former inhabitants of these buildings were either dead or injured. The lucky ones were left displaced in temporary shelters with deep psychological scars that will take a long time to heal. Scattered among the rubble, we saw signs of normal life: chemistry homework, blankets, pillows, colorful plastic cars, dolls. Each represented a person lost to the earthquake.
By conservative estimates, the earthquake has impacted 23 million people, killing more than 45,000 civilians in Türkiye and at least 8,500 in Syria. This figure will sadly continue to climb in the weeks and months ahead. For many victims, this crisis is not their first –10% of those killed in Türkiye were Syrian refugees.
Immediately after a crisis, aid providers and policymakers take stock of the most pressing needs but often fail to think past the emergency to what will strengthen a community in the long run and ensure they are prepared for the next emergency that may come their way.This is especially the case in Syria, which just entered its 13th year of civil war.
Because of the ongoing war, our organizationMedGlobal already had teams present on the ground. Victims flooded into our hospitals in Darkush, Syria just hours after the earthquake. Our surgeons performed more than 600 surgeries, deployed mobile clinics to treat the displaced in the temporary shelters, and distributed much-needed medical supplies to hospitals. But even then, the sheer enormity of the crisis demanded more. For two weeks, we joined eight other physicians from the U.S. to complement the emergency response with training and resilience building.
Building resilience is harder and more complicated compared to the initial emergency phase. It goes beyond addressing immediate needs and focuses on bridging gaps in the system itself. It means training local providers and equipping them with the tools and technology to weather the storm and serve their communities.
Investing in public health infrastructure is as important as emergency response. Countries like Syria, which continue to face crisis after crisis, desperately need humanitarian aid groups and the broader international community to prioritize both emergency response and long-term capacity building, including training healthcare workers, focusing on secondary and tertiary medical care, and improving health governance.There are also significant needs for shelter, food, and medicine. The destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure has led to widespread contamination and worsened the cholera outbreak in the country.
Further, psychological trauma from ongoing war, displacement, and isolation is rampant, as is drug abuse, especially among young men. Our organization runs one of two hospitals in the region for patients with advanced psychiatric disease, as well as a primitive drug rehabilitation center. There are no community resources for dealing with patients with serious mental health problems, and there is a shortage of psychiatric medications. Our drug rehabilitation center is similarly not adequately resourced to deal with the scale of the crisis. The center director told us that 25% of young men are addicted to drugs, including crystal meth, captagon, and opioids. Health care providers are not equipped to deal with this crisis boiling under the surface. Syria has become a narco-state, and more resources must be directed toward this serious problem before things spiral out of control.
Here is the harsh reality: 90% of people in Syria live in poverty and two million Syrian children have been displaced from schools. The earthquake has exacerbated years of violent conflict and economic blockade. Idlib is an open-air prison, cut off from the outside world. Half of its population is displaced from other regions in Syria, fleeing bombs, chemical weapons, and torture.
Syria needs sustained support – which requires political solutions. Humanitarian aid sent to Damascus seldom gets to Northwest Syria. With Russia's help, the Assad regime has weaponized humanitarian aid to deprive populations hostile to its rule of getting food and medicine. Building resilience in war-torn communities starts by making sure they’re resourced. For that to happen, there should be a continuation of UN-run cross-border relief through the three border crossings temporarily open in the wake of the earthquake. Access to resources should be sustained – not only relegated to times of great crisis.The public health capacity we built through in-person trainings and providing resources was crucial, but this work needs to be scaled by international aid agencies, NGOs, and global leaders.
While in Syria, our team took care of Hasan, a four-year-old boy rescued from the rubble of his family house in Salkin after 44 hours. He lost his mother and siblings. Our surgeon had to amputate part of his left foot because it was severely crushed. He was deeply traumatized, like tens of thousands of other children who lost family members, shelter, and any sense of safety and security.
Children like Hasan will need long-term care, not only for physical injuries but for psychological trauma. More than anything, Hasan and the Syrian children and people need attention – they deserve dignified shelters, access to healthcare, a good education, and proper nutrition. They deserve a sense of normalcy and a resolution to the long war and compounded disasters.
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