From Hiroshima to Fukushima

Japan has been the victim of the worst two nuclear disasters in the world. In the first event, on Monday, August 6 th 1945 (just 66 years ago), Hiroshima was bombarded by an American B-29 plane dropping the first atomic bomb on a civilian target. 1 The damage was incredible. Recent estimates of death toll in Hiro-shima bombing indicates between 90,000 up to 166,000 deaths most of them occurred in the first day of bombing of this city with a resident civilian population of 340,000. 2 Roughly, near 70% of the city's buildings were completely destroyed and another 7% were severely damaged. 1 After 3 days, another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki with resultant estimated death of 60,000 up to 80,000 out of a population of 250,000. 2 In both cities, most of the deaths were among civilians. It might be interesting to know the bomb in Hiroshima felt directly on a surgical clinic named Shima. 1 Increased risk of cancer was reported within few months among the survivors with the highest risk of leukemia. 3,4 Among those exposed in utero during bombing, additional increased risk of congenital anomalies and mental disabilities were noticed. 5 Recently, researchers have shown that risk of many cancers including leukemia as well as non cancer diseases such as cardiovascular diseases were increased in the survivors even several decades after the exposure. 3,4 Going north east from Hiroshima through only one hour flight, there is the beautiful city of Fukushima. This city became more famous worldwide not for its beauties but for the nuclear disaster that happened this year. On March 11 th , 2011 following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and Tsunami, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex was damaged. At the time of earthquake, one of its six reactors was defueled, two others in the cold shutdown for planned maintenance, but three others were running. 6 Forty seven minutes after the earthquake, ocean's waves with height of 13.1 m reached the plant despite the sea wall which was designed to withstand waves up to 5.7 m. Within minutes, the complex was flooded and all the electronically powered safety measures became affected including the cooling system. As a result of natural decay and fission in the absence of any cooling system, overheating of the reactors started with resultant melting of the reactors, multiple hydrogen explosions, fires and water leakage. Field measurements revealed that the levels …