The Japan Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Crisis

MOX Battle: Mixed Oxide Nuclear Fuel Raises Safety Questions

One of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi reactors contains a blend of uranium and plutonium fuel that may soon find use in the U.S. Does it pose more risks than standard uranium fuel?

What You Need to Know about the Japan Nuclear Crisis [Updated]

Confused by the fast-changing pace of events? Here are the key points to know

Nuke Reboot: Physicists List Lessons to Be Learned from Japan's Nuclear Crisis

For starters, retrofits could make U.S. reactors safer--and maybe even make nuclear power more palatable

Safety Concerns Often Amount to Status Quo at U.S. Nuclear Industry's Aging Reactors

Leaks, burst cooling pipes, faulty controls, misplaced fuel rods and engineers' warnings about design flaws have done little to slow down approvals for continued operation of the nation's aging nuclear plants

Could the Recent Pacific Megaquakes Trigger a West Coast Temblor?

A series of major earthquakes have struck beneath the Pacific Ocean in less than a year and a half. Could the U.S. west coast be next?

Fukushima Will Be a Wasteland

Scientific American's David Biello judges Fukushima to have reached Chernobyl proportions. Steve Mirsky reports

Day-to-Day Satellite Photos Reveal the Unfolding Crisis at the Nuclear Power Plant in Japan [Slide Show]

Aerial views of the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant from March 12 to March 17 show signs of the chaotic sequence of events ranging from explosions to fires

How Much Spent Nuclear Fuel Does the Fukushima Daiichi Facility Hold?

As Japan attempts to cool overheating nuclear fuel with seawater, experts worry that the damaged spent-fuel pools pose the greatest threat

Radiation's Complications: Pinning Health Problems on a Nuclear Disaster Isn't So Easy

Radioactive fallout seems like the obvious culprit behind the negative medical consequences that arose after the explosion at Chernobyl, but it's hard to measure even the dosage those contaminated received, let alone link it to medical problems

Should Japan's Reactor Crisis Kill the Nuclear Renaissance?

Any future discussion of nuclear power will have to take a hard look at regulation and safety, in particular the practice of storing spent nuclear fuel rods on-site

Fate of Nuclear Plant in Japan Hangs in the Balance as Melting Continues

Exposed fuel pools and low-pressure readings at the Fukushima Daiichi plant suggest growing hazard levels there, raising serious concerns about the course of the crisis

Fast Facts about Radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactors

Elevated radiation levels have been detected at and around the stricken nuclear power station in Japan, but the Chernobyl accident remains far more catastrophic

Is Seawater a Last Resort to Cooling Japan's Nuclear Reactors?

Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant normally relied on purified water to whisk away heat from its reactors, until the destruction wrought by the March 11 tsunami called for extreme measures

Fast Facts about the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

The speed of the Pacific Plate, the distance Japan's main island was displaced, and other facts and figures about the March 11 earthquake help to put this event into perspective

Does Potassium Iodide Protect People from Radiation Leaks?

Drugmakers are claiming to be running out of the thyroid cancer preventative, but depending on age and other circumstances, its usefulness is limited

How Radiation Threatens Health

As worries grow over radiation leaks at Fukushima, is it possible to gauge the immediate and lasting health effects of radiation exposure? Here's the science behind radiation sickness and other threats facing Japan

What Happens During a Nuclear Meltdown?

Nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi station in Japan are critically endangered but have not reached full meltdown status. Our nuclear primer explains what that means and how the situation compares with past nuclear accidents

Health Risk Fears Escalate as Japan Nuclear Plant's Radioactive Release Remains Uncertain

Even as increased levels of radiation are likely to be picked up in the U.S., experts suggest little health risk to those outside the immediate area near the damaged Fukushima nuclear facility

Workers Battle Fukushima Nuclear Crisis at Personal Risk

Threats of explosions and dangerously high radiation doses are just some of the risks facing workers trying to avert complete meltdowns at multiple reactors in Japan

Partial Meltdowns Led to Hydrogen Explosions at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant

Hydrogen and steam explosions pose ongoing risks at the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant, where three such events have already occurred in the past five days

A Visual Tour of the Massive Earthquake and Tsunami That Hit Japan [Slide Show]

Maps and on-the-ground views reveal the aftermath and its extent

Taking Waves: Nation's First Tsunami-Resistant Building Could Be Built on the Oregon Coast

The design, which features reinforcements at the base of a large stilted building to help prevent damage from powerful tsunamis, aims to provide a new city hall and vertical-escape shelter for 1,500 people

The worst nuclear plant accident in history: Live from Chernobyl

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine—The face mask and three radiation monitors I'm wearing here are grim reminders that I'm at the site of the worst nuclear accident in history.

25 Years After: Scenes from Chernobyl--The Worst Nuclear Accident in History [Slide Show]

On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine, Scientific American frequent contributor Charles Q. Choi traveled to the site and snapped these haunting images

Japan earthquake: The explainer

Around 3 P.M. local time on Friday, there was a massive earthquake about 100 miles off the east coast of northern Honshu Island, Japan. Initially calculated to be a magnitude 8.9, it has since been upgraded to at least a magnitude 9.0, which means that this earthquake released around 8,000 times more energy than the magnitude 6.3 shock that rocked Christchurch last month.

How Far from Fukushima Will Fallout Pose a Health Risk?

Amid conflicting evacuation recommendations, radiation experts say that exposures to date have been relatively low outside the power plant and that people in the U.S. will not face any danger

Signs, signs, everywhere signs: Seeing God in tsunamis and everyday events

It’s only a matter of time—in fact, they’ve already started cropping up—before reality-challenged individuals begin pontificating about what God could have possibly been so hot-and-bothered about to trigger last week’s devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Nuclear Cover Up: World's Largest Movable Structure to Seal the Wrecked Chernobyl Reactor

To safely enclose and robotically dismantle the 25-year-old makeshift confinement sarcophagus at Chernobyl, contractors are now erecting a massive steel structure weighing more than 29,000 metric tons

Will Fukushima Disaster Spell the End for a U.S. Nuclear Revival?

The full impact of the nuclear emergency in Japan will depend on how bad it gets

The essential lesson from the Japan earthquake for the U.S.

As we watch in the images rolling in from Japan we are yet again reminded of the sudden destructive potential of mother Earth. The number of fatalities is currently in the hundreds; the number displaced from their homes is in the tens of thousands. The tsunami generated by this magnitude 8.9 earthquake sent a wall of water sweeping across Japan, and across the Pacific. It was more than 30 feet high in places and reached six miles inland carrying cars, homes and everything else with it. Although the earthquake was 230 miles northeast of Tokyo, this was the worst shaking that people have felt in a city used to earthquakes. Explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station have leaked radioactive material into the surrounding area, and we will undoubtedly hear of other catastrophic impacts over the next few days.

Japan earthquake demonstrates the limits—and power—of science

Will seismologists ever be able to reliably predict the exact location, time and magnitude of earthquakes like the one that just devastated Japan and sent tsunamis racing across the Pacific Ocean?

The spread of the tsunami from Japan across the Pacific [Video]

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released this video showing the spread of the tsunami generated by a magnitude 8.9 quake off Sendai, Japan, on March 11.

How to Cool a Nuclear Reactor

Japan's devastating earthquake caused cooling problems at one of the nation's nuclear reactors, and authorities scrambled to prevent a meltdown

Averting a "Japan syndrome": Reactor expert says Japan's woes shouldn't stop a nuclear renaissance

Less than a year ago I was opposed to nuclear energy for reasons that I explained in this post. Nuclear power, I believed, was just too risky. Then I got an e-mail from Rod Adams, a former U.S.

Failure of imagination can be deadly: Fukushima is a warning

The extent of the damage at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear facility is still unknown, but comparisons to Chernobyl were inevitable as soon as fuel rods became exposed and an explosion rocked the site.

Beware the fear of nuclear....FEAR!

It is frightening to watch what’s going on with Japan’s nuclear plant at Fukushima. It is also worrying to watch the fear racing around the world as a result of those events, fear that in some cases is far in excess of what’s going on, or even the worst case scenarios of what might happen.

Nature: Earthquake dispatches from the correspondent in Japan [Updated]

Our partners at Nature have a correspondent in Japan. On their blog The Great Beyond they post regular dispatches, which we reproduce below and will update as new articles come in.

Nuclear Accident Is Long-Feared "Station Blackout"

At a press briefing, physicist Ken Bergeron explained the type of accident occurring at Fukushima. Steve Mirsky reports

A Guide to Earthquakes

What causes tremors? What makes them stop? Can they be predicted? Are our buildings as safe as they can be?

Seconds Before the Big One: Progress in Earthquake Alarms

Earthquake detection systems can sound the alarm in the moments before a big tremor strikes—time enough to save lives

Impact of the Japan earthquake and tsunami on animals and environment

On Friday, March 11, Japan was rocked by an earthquake. People were displaced, a nuclear reactor was in trouble, and the world watched as a tsunami flooded Japan, threatened the islands of the Pacific, and ultimately hit the western coasts of North and South America.

A "sixth sense" for earthquake prediction? Give me a break!

This post is a slightly edited version of my December 29, 2004, post written in reaction to media reports about a "sixth sense" in animals, that supposedly allows them to avoid a tsunami by climbing to higher ground.

Deja vu: What does the Gulf oil spill tell us about the Japanese nuclear crisis?

For the second time in under a year, a large-scale energy disaster is unfolding before our eyes. Two different industries. Two different crises. Can we apply any lessons from the Gulf oil spill, and what can we expect for the nuclear industry moving forward?

Poor risk communication in Japan is making the risk much worse

The radiation crisis in Japan worsens for two reasons: one that we’ve heard about, one that we haven’t but which may in the end do far more harm.

Fukushima Crisis Worsens as U.S. Warns of a Large Radiation Release

A top U.S. nuclear regulator has now given a dire assessment of Japan's nuclear crisis, saying that radiation from uncovered spent fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi plant could force emergency workers to abandon their fight to prevent meltdowns there

Japan's nuclear crisis and tsunami recovery via Twitter and other Web resources

Conditions are changing rapidly at the Fukushima power plant, where at least two of its six nuclear reactors have partially melted down. The editors of Scientific American are following the developments, and part of the effort involves following various Twitter users.

How Weather Could Link Japan Radiation to U.S.

Japan's Giant Shock Rattles Ideas about Earthquake Behavior

Few experts thought the seismic zone off Sendai, Japan, was capable of such violence.