Fukushima as Australia's nuclear heritage

On 11 March 2011 a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and resultant tsunami caused a full meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant located on the island of Honshu, on the east coast of Japan. It took 4 weeks for the radionuclides to circumnavigate the Earth and descend into the Southern hemisphere. Although scholarly activity has continued apace in relation to different aspects of Fukushima as an event and site, very little of this work has examined the implications of Australian uranium being found inside several of Fukushima Daiichi's reactors at the time of the disaster. This paper explores Fukushima as a central, yet heretofore neglected, artefact of Australia's cultural and environmental heritage.