The 2011 Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant accident was Japan's greatest national crisis in the postwar era. In the midst of the crisis, the then Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government secretly commissioned experts to create a worst-case scenario in which the fuel rods in the fuel pool would dissolve and come into contact with concrete, releasing large amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
Depending on wind direction, 30 million people in the Tokyo metropolitan area would have to be evacuated. At that time, the entire eastern part of Japan would have become a nuclear wasteland. Looking back, the biggest surprise of the Fukushima nuclear accident may have been the many fortuitous events that were beyond our control, including the direction of the wind.
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