On March 11, 2011, a giant tsunami from the Pacific Ocean swept over the 10-meter sea wall surrounding six reactors at the Fukushima power plant on Japan’s east coast. The crashing water caused reactor cores to overheat and melt, and subsequent hydrogen explosions damaged three reactor buildings. Radiation spewed in every direction. The country shut down all of its more than 40 reactors, and investigations began into radiation exposure to tens of thousands of nearby residents, as well as to wildlife on land and sea. But major questions still loom today, in part because the damaged reactors are too dangerous to enter, and in part because the plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), is reluctant to share information.
In the midst of this maelstrom, Japan in February started up a third reactor among those that had been shut down. But even as the government seeks to leave the disaster behind, Fukushima remains a wound that will not heal—for former residents, the local landscape and for the Japanese psyche. Two-thirds of the populace dreads another accident enough to oppose the restarts. More than 1,100 square kilometers of villages, mountains and forests remain uninhabitable, and future generations will still be cleaning up the plant site, according to Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). Echoing citizens' groups, some scientists are complaining that important questions about the disaster's impact are not being addressed. Authorities, they suspect, are subtly discouraging certain kinds of scientific research, possibly because they fear findings that could further alarm the public. In some ways they want this to go away and say things are back to normal, observes marine radiochemist Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Exacerbating widespread suspicions of a.................


 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/crippled-fukushima-reactors-are-still-a-danger-5-years-after-the-accident1/