March 12, - Overnight, a 6. Officials report the earthquake and tsunami have cut off the plant's electrical power, and that backup generators have been disabled by the tsunami.
March 13, - People living within 10 kilometers 6. The total evacuated so far is about , So far, three units there have experienced major problems in cooling radioactive material.
The residents remaining within 30 kilometers of the plant, despite an earlier evacuation order, have been ordered to stay indoors. Officials quickly work to pump seawater into the reactor, as they have been doing with two other reactors at the same plant, and the situation is resolved. Workers scramble to cool down fuel rods at two other reactors at the plant - No.
Downtown Tokyo is not included. Up to 45 million people will be affected in the rolling outages, which are scheduled to last until April. March 15, - The third explosion at the Daiichi plant in four days damages the suppression pool of reactor No. Water continues to be injected into "pressure vessels" in order to cool down radioactive material. March 16, - The nuclear safety agency investigates the cause of a white cloud of smoke rising above the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Plans are canceled to use helicopters to pour water onto fuel rods that may have burned after a fire there, causing a spike in radiation levels. The plume is later found to have been vapor from a spent-fuel storage pool. March 18, - Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency raises the threat level from 4 to 5, putting it on a par with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania.
The International Nuclear Events Scale says a Level 5 incident means there is a likelihood of a release of radioactive material, several deaths from radiation and severe damage to the reactor core. April 12, - Japan's nuclear agency raises the Fukushima Daiichi crisis from Level 5 to a Level 7 event, the highest level, signifying a "major accident.
June 6, - Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters reports reactors 1, 2 and 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced a full meltdown. June 30, - The Japanese government recommends more evacuations of households 50 to 60 kilometers northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The government said higher radiation is monitored sporadically in this area. The coastline of the continents was changed drastically and almost all life on land was exterminated.
Read the story. Many thousands of Japanese have been killed by them in recent centuries. Take a tsunami quiz. The first wave in a tsunami is not necessarily the most destructive. Tsunamis are not tidal waves. They are able to cross entire oceans without great loss of energy. The Indian Ocean tsunami traveled as far as 3, miles nearly 5, kilometers to Africa, arriving with sufficient force to kill people and destroy property.
Scientists say that a great earthquake of magnitude 9 struck the Pacific Northwest in and created a tsunami that caused flooding and damage on the Pacific coast of Japan.
Scientists are able to calculate arrival time of a tsunami in different parts of the world based on knowledge of water depths, distances, and when the event that generated the tsunami occurred. More from National Geographic magazine: predicting the next giant earthquake. But the powerful shock wave of energy travels rapidly through the ocean, sometimes as fast as a commercial jet. Once a tsunami reaches shallow water near the coast, it is slowed down.
The top of the wave moves faster than the bottom, causing the sea to rise dramatically. In some places a tsunami may cause the sea to rise vertically only a few inches or feet. In other places tsunamis have been known to surge vertically as high as feet 30 meters. Most tsunamis cause the sea to rise no more than 10 feet 3 meters. The Indian Ocean tsunami of December caused waves as high as 30 feet 9 meters in some places, according to news reports.
In other places witnesses described a rapid surging of the ocean. Flooding can extend inland by a thousand feet meters or more. The enormous energy of a tsunami can lift giant boulders, flip vehicles, and demolish houses. They may be more like a very rapidly rising tide. This may be accompanied by much underwater turbulence, sucking people under and tossing heavy objects around. Entire beaches have been stripped away by tsunamis.
More than , people lost their lives, many of them washed out to sea. The Tohoku earthquake struck offshore of Japan, along a subduction zone where two of Earth's tectonic plates collide. In a subduction zone, one plate slides beneath another into the mantle, the hotter layer beneath the crust.
The great plates are rough and stick together, building up energy that is released as earthquakes. East of Japan, the Pacific plate dives beneath the overriding Eurasian plate. The temblor completely released centuries of built up stress between the two tectonic plates, a recent study found. The March 11 earthquake started on a Friday at p. It was centered on the seafloor 45 miles 72 kilometers east of Tohoku, at a depth of 15 miles 24 km below the surface.
The shaking lasted about six minutes. Scientists drilled into the subduction zone soon after the earthquake and discovered a thin, slippery clay layer lining the fault.
The researchers think that this clay layer allowed the two plates to slide an incredible distance, some feet 50 meters , facilitating the enormous earthquake and tsunami. Residents of Tokyo received a minute of warning before the strong shaking hit the city, thanks to Japan's earthquake early warning system.
The country's stringent seismic building codes and early warning system prevented many deaths from the earthquake, by stopping high-speed trains and factory assembly lines. People in Japan also received texted alerts of the earthquake and tsunami warnings on their cellphones.
The number of confirmed deaths is 15, as of June 10, , according to the reconstruction agency. More than 2, people are still reported missing.
Take a look at the beta version of dw. We're not done yet! Your opinion can help us make it better. We use cookies to improve our service for you. You can find more information in our data protection declaration. Waves of up to 1 meter have hit parts of Japan's coast following a 7. Authorities issued a tsunami warning for Japan on Saturday after a magnitude 7.
Tsunami waves of up to 1 meter 3. Officials said that there were no immediate reports of major damage.
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