Monday, June 13, 2016

Into The Zone: A look at the billion dollar cleanup following the Fukushima disaster

Click here if you wish to access this 27:47m video produced by Journeyman Pictures directly from YouTube.
Mark Willacy [of Australian Broadcasting Corporation] travels to radiation-poisoned Fukushima as few residents return home after evacuation lift. He uncovers startling new evidence of the dangers that still lurk there, and the near insurmountable task of cleaning it up.

Five years after the nuclear meltdown, the Fukushima countryside remains full of radiation and virtually empty of people. As levels spike on the radiation meter at Fukishima a guide from the plant operator TEPCO warns Willacy: "they don’t want to go any further”. “In the beginning I felt lonely", says Naoto Matsumura, described as Japan’s most contaminated person. "But now I’m used to it”. The task of neutralising hundreds of tonnes of melted nuclear fuel turns out to be far greater than previously thought, and may never be fully remedied. Naoto Kan, Japan’s Prime Minister at the time of the crisis and an anti-nuclear convert, believes that "the accident took us to the brink of destruction".