General Electric defended the design of the reactor, stating that the station blackout caused by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami was a "beyond-design-basis" event which led to Fukushima I nuclear accidents. According the Nuclar Energy Institute, "Coincident long-term loss of both on-site and off-site power for an extended period of time is a beyond-design-basis event for the primary containment on any operating nuclear power plant".

The reactors shut down as designed after the earthquake. However, the tsunami disabled all diesel backup generators which operated the emergency cooling systems and pumps. Pumps were designed to circulate hot fluid from the reactor to be cooled in the wetwell, but they did not have any power. The reactor cores overheated and likely melted. Radioactivity was released into the air as fuel rods were damaged due to overheating by exposure to air as water levels fell below safe levels. As an emergency measure, operators resorted to injecting seawater into the drywell to cool the reactors, but would also ruin them for future operation. Reactors 1–3, and by some reports 4 all suffered violent hydrogen explosions March 2011 which damaged or destroyed their top levels or lower suppression level (unit 2). Fires in spent fuel ponds also released radiation.

As emergency measures, helicopters attempted to drop water from the ocean onto the open rooftops. Later water was sprayed from fire engines onto the roof of reactor 3. A concrete pump was used to pump water into the spent fuel pond in unit 4.

The accident released up to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive iodine-131 per hour in the initial days, and up to 630,000 terabequerels total, about one tenth the 5.2 million terabecquerels released at Chernobyl.