Video: 48-foot wave hits Fukushima nuclear plant
By Brian Walker and Matt Smith, CNN
April 9, 2011 4:02 p.m. EDT Tokyo (CNN) — A brief video clip released Saturday captures the massive tsunami that crippled Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant, showing the wall of water that slammed into the facility and created an ongoing crisis. The video shows the giant wave generated by the historic March 11 earthquake crashing over the plant’s seawall and engulfing the facility, with one sheet of spray rising higher than the buildings that house the plant’s six reactors. Tokyo Electric Power, the plant’s owner, told reporters the wall of water was likely 14 to 15 meters (45 to 48 feet) higher than normal sea levels — easily overwhelming the plant’s 5-meter seawall. The footage was was shot from high ground about 900 meters south of the plant by a worker who evacuated before the tsunami hit, the Tokyo Electric Power Company said in releasing the six-second clip. Photos released by the company showed shattered windows, scattered papers and dangling ceiling tiles throughout the plant’s now-empty office annex. Two workers were killed in the basement of the No. 4 reactor’s turbine plant when the tsunami struck, and their bodies were recovered only last week. The tsunami knocked out generators and pumps needed to cool the plant’s three operating reactors following the magnitude 9 earthquake, leaving engineers struggling to prevent a bigger disaster as those units radioactive cores overheated. In response to the quake, Japanese regulators issued tougher standards for emergency power at nuclear plants Saturday.
