Page 42 - Environment: The Science Behind the Stories

inundated towns, villages, and productive agricultural land. As from their homes, including 100,000 people from towns near the
the water’s energy faded, it receded, carrying structural debris, Fukushima Daiichi plant where radioactive fallout contaminated the
vehicles, livestock, and human bodies out to sea. soil to unsafe levels. A 20-km (12-mi) area around the Fukushima
When the tsunami overtopped the 5.7-m (19-ft) sea- Daiichi plant has been permanently evacuated, and the full extent
wall protecting the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, it of nuclear contamination is still being determined (see The Science
flooded the diesel-powered emergency generators responsi- behind The STory, pp. 44–45). Some of the greatest concerns center
ble for circulating water to cool the plant’s nuclear reactors. on contaminated food and water, so domestically produced crops
With the local electrical grid knocked out by the earthquake and seafood will require testing for radiation for years to come. Full
and the backup generators off-line, the nuclear fuel in the cores recovery from these events is expected to take decades.
of the three active reactors at the plant began to overheat. One of the longest-lasting legacies of these events may be
The water that normally kept the nuclear fuel submerged the impact on the future of nuclear power in Japan and around
within the reactor cores boiled off, exposing the nuclear mate- the world. The Japanese government had championed a view
rial to the air and further elevating temperatures inside the that nuclear power was perfectly safe, but the events at Fuku-
cores. As the overheated nuclear fuel melted (called a nuclear shima have shaken public support for nuclear power in Japan. In
meltdown), chemical reactions within the reactors generated the summer of 2012, over 100,000 people marched in Tokyo to
hydrogen gas, which set off explosions in each of the three protest the restarting of nuclear reactors that had been shut down
reactor buildings, releasing radioactive material into the air. after the Tohoku quake, and public opinion surveys found 70%
As events worsened over several tense days, Japanese of Japanese wished for their nation to rely less on nuclear power.
authorities became desperate to cool the reactors, contain the In North America and Europe, the events at Fukushima
radioactive emissions, and prevent a full-blown catastrophe Daiichi caused a public already skeptical of the safety of nuclear
that could render large portions of their nation uninhabitable. power to become further wary of its use. But with the chal-
They sent in teams of engineers and soldiers who risked their lenges facing us in climate change (Chapter 18), many energy
lives amid the radiation and flooded the reactor cores with sea- analysts, scientists, and policymakers caution that we should
water pumped in from the ocean. not abandon a carbon-free source of energy like nuclear power,
The 1–2–3 punch of the earthquake–tsunami–nuclear acci- but rather refocus efforts on maximizing its safety. Whatever
dent left over 19,000 people dead or missing and caused $300 the eventual outcome of these analyses, the events of March
billion in material damage. Around 340,000 people were displaced 11, 2011, will not soon be forgotten—in Japan or elsewhere.

Matter, Chemistry, Matter is conserved
and the Environment To appreciate the chemistry involved in environmental sci-
ence, we must begin with a grasp of the fundamentals. Matter
The tragic events in northeastern Japan were the result of large- may be transformed from one type of substance into others, CHAPTER 2 • E ART h’s Physi CAL
scale forces generated by the powerful geological processes but it cannot be created or destroyed. This principle is referred
that shape the surface of our planet. Environmental scientists to as the law of conservation of matter. In environmental sci-
regularly study these types of processes to understand how our ence, this principle helps us understand that the amount of
planet works. Because all large-scale processes are made up matter stays constant as it is recycled in ecosystems and nutri-
of small-scale components, however, environmental science— ent cycles (p. 135). It also makes it clear to us that we cannot
the broadest of scientific fields—must also study small-scale simply wish away “undesirable” matter, such as nuclear waste
phenomena. At the smallest scale, an understanding of matter and toxic pollutants. Since harmful substances like these can’t
itself helps us to fully appreciate all the processes of our world. be destroyed, we must take prudent steps to mitigate their
All material in the universe that has mass and occupies impacts on the environment.
space—solid, liquid, and gas alike—is called matter. In our
quick tour of matter in the pages that follow, we examine
types of matter and some of the important ways they inter- Atoms and elements are chemical
act—phenomena that together we term chemistry. Once you building blocks s ys TE m s: mATTER , E NER gy, AN d
examine any environmental issue, you will likely discover
chemistry playing a central role. Knowledge of chemistry is The nuclear reactor at Fukushima used uranium to power its
crucial for understanding how gases such as carbon dioxide reactors, and uranium is an example of an element. An element
and methane contribute to global climate change, how pollut- is a fundamental type of matter, a chemical substance with a
ants such as sulfur dioxide and nitric oxide cause acid rain, given set of properties that cannot be broken down into sub-
and how pesticides and other compounds we release into the stances with other properties. Chemists currently recognize
environment affect the health of wildlife and people. Such 92 elements occurring in nature, as well as more than 20
knowledge is central, too, in understanding water pollution others that they have created in the lab. Elements especially gE o L ogy
and wastewater treatment, hazardous waste and its cleanup abundant on our planet include hydrogen (in water), oxygen
and disposal, atmospheric ozone depletion, and most energy (in the air), silicon (in Earth’s crust), nitrogen (in the air),
issues. Moreover, countless applications of chemistry can and carbon (in living organisms) (Table 2.1). Each element is
help us address these environmental problems. assigned an abbreviation, or chemical symbol (for instance, 41

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