Meltdown: The Fukushima Disaster

Co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada and the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, Meltdown: The Fukushima Disaster revisits the tense hours in the control room of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, after the largest earthquake to strike Japan in recorded history generated a 30-foot tsunami that overwhelmed the facility's seawall and knocked out its emergency generators. Employing dramatic re-creations and animation, directors Wally Longul and Akihiko Nakai show how design flaws, misunderstandings, and mistakes combined to cause a meltdown that in hindsight was entirely preventable. The statistics—150,000 left homeless, more than a million buildings destroyed or damaged—might seem cold and abstract without interviews of survivors or stories of how individuals were affected, but as a blow-by-blow account of what went wrong with Fukushima No. 1, Meltdown effectively chronicles that story. Presented in both French and English versions, this National Film Board of Canada release is recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Gardner)