The Fukushima accident: from the tsunami to radiation monitoring across the globe

by Andreas Knecht (Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich/ETH (ETH))

Wednesday 12 Dec 2012, 14:30 → 15:30 Europe/Zurich

26-1-022 (CERN)

After the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11, 2011, and the ensuing damage to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactor complex a worldwide effort began to monitor the released radioactivity as it spread around the globe. At the University of Washington, Seattle, we started a monitoring program for airborne radioactivity 5 days after the earthquake and only a day later started to detect the first radionuclides that were released at the Fukushima plant. We monitored the radionuclide concentrations in air over a period of three weeks after which the activity had mostly fallen below our detection threshold. In this talk, I will review the events that lead to this tragic accident and report on the worldwide effort in monitoring the released radioactivity both in air and water.