Seconds from Disaster: Season 5, Episode 1

5 - 1: Japan's Nuclear Nightmare

On March 11, 2011, the largest ever recorded earthquake, a 9.0 on the Richter scale, and tsunami off Japan's coast result in 15,893 deaths, 2,572 missing, and 6,152 injured. Finally, there was the meltdown at the TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant causing Prime Minister Naoto Kan to resign five months later on August 25, 2011. The meltdown also displaced around 100,000 people from their homes, jobs, and farms in the nearly 12.5 mile exclusion zone around the reactor.