Fukushima accident, also called Fukushima nuclear accident or Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, Nuclear accident at the Tokyo Electric and Power Co. (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi (“Number One”) plant in northern Japan, which became the second worst nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power generation. Tsunami waves generated by the main shock of the Japan earthquake on March 11, 2011, damaged the backup electrical generators of the plant. Although all three of the plant’s six reactors that were operating were successfully shut down, the power loss caused cooling systems to fail in each of them within the first few days of the disaster. Rising residual heat within each reactor’s core caused the fuel rods to overheat and partially melt down, leading at times to the release of radiation, and explosions resulting from the buildup of pressurized hydrogen gas occurred in the outer containment buildings enclosing reactors 1 and 3. Some two months later it was revealed that melted material had fallen to the bottom of the containment vessels in reactors 1 and 2 and bored sizable holes in the floor of each vessel, which partially exposed the nuclear material in the cores. A government-mandated no-fly zone around the plant was established, and a land area with a radius of 12.5 mi (20 km) around the plant was evacuated.
