Fukushima: Decisions Under Pressure
1x52' HD
52' - English
Screener
52' - French
Screener
On March 11, 2011, an earthquake measuring magnitude 9 on the Richter scale shook the entire Japanese archipelago for nearly six minutes.
Less than an hour later, a tsunami of phenomenal proportions struck the country's northeastern coastline. Walls of seawater flooded remote regions up to 15 kilometres inland, claiming nearly 22,000 lives.
But another disaster was threatening the country: at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant, located along the Pacific coast, the tsunami had destroyed key components of the safety systems.
This failure triggered the meltdown of three of the plant's six reactors, followed by the explosion of part of their containment structures. The nuclear accident released highly radioactive substances into the environment, posing a severe contamination threat to the Japanese population.
Through the testimony of experts and Japanese citizens who lived through these events from the inside, the film seeks to understand the origins of this nuclear catastrophe and its consequences for the population.
This is, minute by minute, the story of the most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986. An event that shocked the world and upended the lives of millions of Japanese people: the Fukushima disaster.
