Science Media Centre

A tsunami has struck the coast of Japan following a magnitude 6.9 earthquake, with further tsunamis expected. The Australian Science Media Centre gathered expert reaction – please feel free to use these comment in your reporting. Professor James Goff, is Director of the Australia-Pacific Tsunami Research Centre and Natural Hazards Research Laboratory, University of New […]

Five years on from the Fukushima meltdown, the SMC asks if we have seen any effects in New Zealand. And have our attitudes towards nuclear power changed? It was the worst nuclear event since Chernobyl. In the wake of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, a crippled Japanese nuclear powerplant went into meltdown, and the world […]

Three years on from Fukushima, questions are still being asked about the long term impacts of radiation contamination for local communities and the wider environment. Public attitudes towards nuclear energy and perceptions of the associated risks have shifted globally, though not always in the same direction. Visiting nuclear energy specialist Prof Robin Grimes, the current UK […]

Three years ago on March 11, 2011, the largest recorded earthquake in Japan’s history struck off the country’s north-eastern coast, triggering a massive tsunami and the worst nuclear power plant accident since Chernobyl. Our colleagues at the Science Media Centre of Japan collected comments from Japanese scientists about what progress has been made in cleaning […]

Three-hundred tons of highly radioactive water is pouring into the Pacific Ocean every day from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. Dr David Krofcheck is a senior lecturer at the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland. He spoke to Radio New Zealand about the impact the leak of radioactive material could have.

Radioactive water is leaking from holding tanks at the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan . Minor earlier leaks have been reported but this latest breach is believed to be the worst so far, with an estimated 300 metric tons of contaminated water escaping. Our colleagues at the UK SMC collected the following expert […]

A new study of contamination at the Fukushima power plant has identified increased amounts of radioactive plutonium in the environment, but experts are stressing that the resulting levels of radiation are very low and pose little risk to human health. The research, published in the journal Scientific Reports, has identified small amounts of the radioactive […]

On March 11 last year a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit off the coast of Japan triggering a powerful tsunami. Resulting waves reached heights of 40 metres and pushed a wall of seawater inland as far as 10 km in some regions. The human toll was immense, with over 15,000 people confirmed dead and an additional […]

The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has published a paper on radioactive sulphur detected in California, from the Fukushima nuclear plant. Scientists undertaking measurements in La Jolla, California, found that neutrons that leaked from the Fukushima nuclear reactor generated the radioactive sulfur, which was likely carried by strong westerly winds to […]

On Tuesday Japan upgraded the incident level for the Fukushima nuclear power plant from 5 to 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), a classification reserved for the most severe nuclear crises. The level 7 classification has only been used once previously – for the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. What does the the […]