POST
PRODUCTION
SCRIPT
FOREIGN
CORRESPONDENT
2016
Japan
– Into the Zone
(Fukushima)
28
mins 55 secs
©2016
ABC
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Australia
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Précis |
It’s like a postcard of rural Japan... lush forests, waterfalls
and bubbling streams; quaint villages where pink cherry blossoms festoon the
streets. |
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But there’s a
grotesqueness here. Houses which rang with the sounds of life and
laughter are being swallowed by weeds and vines; inside they are choked by
cobwebs and dust. |
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This is the countryside of Fukushima. Five years after the nuclear
meltdown, it remains full of radiation, and virtually empty of people. |
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In the beginning I felt extremely lonely. But now I’m used to it. – Naoto Matsumura, a farmer who stayed put to care for abandoned
animals – and who is described as Japan’s most contaminated person. |
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In contrast the stricken Fukushima plant is thronging with
activity. About 6500 courageous workers toil to contain the radiation but, as
former Australian broadcasting Corporation Japan Correspondent Mark Willacy
reports, it could scarcely be said that they are winning. |
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|
Willacy was one of the first journalists on the scene after the
double headed tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011, and has reported on it
extensively since. Now he has been invited on a tour of the plant courtesy of
the operator TEPCO. |
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What’s happening? They don’t want to go any further .– Willacy with TEPCO guides as levels spike on the radiation meter
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What Willacy discovers is truly unsettling. |
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The task of neutralising and retrieving hundreds of tonnes of
melted nuclear fuel turns out to be far greater than previously thought. So
too might be the eventual cost, as well as the time that will be required to
remedy the site –that is, if it can ever be fully remedied. |
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There’s no playbook – they’re making it up as they go along. – former US chief nuclear watchdog Gregory Jaczko |
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Mark Willacy interviews Naoto Kan, Japan’s Prime Minister at the
time of the crisis. He is a convert to the anti-nuclear cause and – along
with Gregory Jaczko - a sceptic about whether the clean-up will succeed. |
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There was a risk that half or all of Japan could have been
destroyed. So in a way the accident took us to the brink of destruction. – Naoto Kan |
|
Earthquake vision montage |
|
00:00 |
Tsunami montage |
MARK
WILLACY: It was the seismic rupture that spawned a tsunami up to 40 metres
high, and the biggest nuclear crisis in a generation. |
00:04 |
Reactor building explodes |
|
00:14 |
Town post tsunami |
Five
years on, the fallout continues. |
04:18 |
Willacy walks through town |
Tonight,
we go on a journey into the heart of this ongoing crisis. |
00:21 |
Willacy to camera inside
nuclear plant |
MARK
WILLACY [TO CAMERA]: I’m just metres away from the main reactor buildings
here at the Fukushima nuclear plant. |
00:26 |
Willacy with workers |
MARK
WILLACY: What’s happening? Going high. They don’t want to go any further? |
00:32 |
Fukushima clean up |
MARK
WILLACY: ... and we reveal the frightening enormity of the clean-up job –
just how long it might take, how much it might cost and how dangerous it
still is. GREGORY
JACZKO, FORMER CHAIRMAN, US NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION: This really is
unchartered territory. |
00:37 |
Jaczko |
Nobody
really knows where the fuel is at this point, and this fuel is still very
radioactive and will be for a long time. |
00:50 |
Fukushima montage |
There’s
no playbook - they’re making this up as they go along. |
00:56 |
Mountain waterfall,
Fukushima area. Super: |
Music
|
01:05 |
Cherry blossom |
MARK
WILLACY: It’s a stunning landscape of verdant forest, sheer mountains and
meandering streams, a side to Fukushima few outsiders get to experience, and
after the nuclear fallout drifted and settled here, few would now want to. |
01:20 |
Driving to Fukushima. Title: |
Music
|
01:44 |
|
MARK
WILLACY: Today, I have come back to check whether the much publicised
decontamination of this poisoned landscape has reached into Fukushima’s
remote mountains. Well,
we’re a few kilometres |
01:55 |
Willacy in car/Geiger
counter beeping |
into
the no-go zone here near the village of Namie, and the higher you climb up
into the mountains the higher the reading on the Geiger Counter. So it would
suggest that a lot of radiation is still in the mountains, in areas that are
very, very difficult to clean up. |
02:10 |
Aerial. Village |
Music
|
02:27 |
|
MARK
WILLACY: Nestled in the valleys, or hidden away in the mountains, are
hundreds of hamlets like this - irradiated, abandoned, |
02:30 |
Willacy walks in abandoned
homes |
and
now overgrown. It’s doubtful anyone will return, because there’s been no
attempt at decontamination here. It’s like a science-fiction movie, in which
everyone has simply vanished. |
02:39 |
Naoto shovelling hay |
But
the man I am on my way to visit doesn’t fear the fallout. Having refused to
leave his Fukushima farm just a few kilometres from the melted reactors,
Naoto Matsumura is often described as the most contaminated person in Japan. NAOTO
MATSUMURA: In the beginning I felt extremely lonely. |
03:03 |
Naoto |
But
now I’m used to it and I’m not lonely at all. |
03:26 |
Naoto shifting hay for
animals |
MARK
WILLACY: Helping Naoto Matsumura combat the loneliness is his collection of
stray animals. Today, like every day, he’s back inside the nuclear no-go zone
in the village of Tomioka to feed some abandoned cattle that can never be
sold or leave the zone. |
03:30 |
|
NAOTO
MATSUMURA: To be honest, I don’t know who most of these cows belong to. At
the time of the meltdowns their owners fled. |
03:52 |
Naoto walks through Tomioka |
Music
|
04:00 |
|
MARK
WILLACY: Tomioka is where Naoto Matsumura was born. The empty streets, the
abandoned shops, the train station to nowhere, none of it bothers him,
neither does the fact that nature is slowly reclaiming what people have left
behind. |
04:08 |
Driving to Yonamori |
It’s
spring, so Matsumura takes me to a nearby village once renowned for its
natural beauty. |
04:33 |
Cherry blossom |
Music
|
04:41 |
|
MARK
WILLACY: This is the village of Yonamori, inside the nuclear |
04:51 |
Willacy to camera |
no-go
zone. And this is its famous Sakura Dori – Cherry Blossom Street. These
blooms have come out five times since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and
it’s been five years since anyone has sat here to eat, drink, celebrate the
annual cherry blossoms. |
04:54 |
Cherry blossom |
[Loudspeaker] |
05:11 |
Willacy walks with Naoto |
While
we marvel at the blossoms, the loudspeakers in this empty village crackle
into life |
05:19 |
Safety affairs office
car/Town GVs |
with
a daily announcement from the safety affairs office. “In 30 minutes the no-go
zone will close, please leave the area immediately”, it says. |
05:24 |
Safety affairs office shuts
gate to town |
But
not even these abundant, beautiful blooms can distract from the truth of this
contaminated landscape. |
05:37 |
|
Music
|
05:48 |
Workers clean up soil into
bags/Aerial of bags |
MARK
WILLACY: All over the polluted zone,
thousands of workers are busy scraping up the topsoil into large black bags,
and only from the air can you appreciate the sheer scale of this operation.
So far more than ten million of these bags have been filled. They’re then
stacked at thousands of separate locations across the contamination zone.
Despite the efforts so far, more than eleven hundred square kilometres of
Fukushima’s forests, mountains and villages remain uninhabitable. Dozens of
communities still haven’t been touched. More
than 160,000 people |
05:52 |
Willacy to camera. [To
aerial shot of town] |
were
forced to evacuate during and after the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns. Now,
five years on, 100,000 still have not returned. Some remain trapped in tiny
temporary apartments, while others say they’ll never return to these contaminated
communities. |
06:33 |
|
Music
|
06:53 |
Displaced people living in
temporary villages |
MARK
WILLACY: Most of those forced to flee
the radiation will forever remain nuclear refugees, according to the man who
was Prime Minister during the disaster, Naoto Kan. NAOTO
KAN, [Former Prime Minister, Japan]: There are mothers with small children |
07:00 |
Naoto Kan |
who
say they don’t want to return, because even after decontamination the level
of radiation is higher than before the accident. |
07:15 |
Azuma clipping hedge |
MARK
WILLACY: But a few have come back. AZUMA
HASHIMOTO: I believe I was the first to return to live here. |
07:27 |
Azuma |
I
wanted to come back first so that Naraha residents could follow me. |
07:41 |
Azuma clipping hedge. Yumiko
joins him |
MARK
WILLACY: It was nearly five years before Azuma and Yumiko Hashimoto were
allowed to return to their decontaminated home in Naraha town. |
07:51 |
Family photos |
Mrs.
Hashimoto’s family has lived in this house for eight generations, but that
looks like where the line will end because her daughter is refusing to return
with her one-year old son. |
08:02 |
Older people sitting on
bench |
In
fact, Naraha is now a village without children, because no-one with a family
wants to come back. YUMIKO
HASHIMOTO: It’s sad when you can’t hear the voices of children. |
08:15 |
Yumiko |
It’s
silent at night time. We eat dinner, take a bath and there is no conversation
so we just go to bed. |
08:31 |
Willacy with Hashimotos at
home |
MARK
WILLACY: The silence is particularly haunting for Azuma Hashimoto, because
for years he was in charge of disaster prevention at both of Fukushima’s
nuclear plants. |
08:42 |
Azuma |
AZUMA
HASHIMOTO: I never imagined that such a thing would happen. So now I feel the
towns that flourished from nuclear power have been betrayed. I can’t accept
that. |
08:56 |
Nuclear plant |
Music
|
09:20 |
|
MARK
WILLACY: Foreign Correspondent has been invited by the plant operator TEPCO
to spend a day touring the sprawling facility and to meet the man in charge
of decontaminating and decommissioning the Fukushima plant, Naohiro Masuda. |
09:23 |
Naohiro |
MARK
WILLACY: Has anything like this ever been attempted before? |
09:39 |
|
NAOHIRO
MASUDA, [CHIEF FUKUSHIMA DECOMMISSIONING OFFICER]: There has never been an
accident at a nuclear plant like the one at Fukushima |
09:41 |
Willacy and others in bus
into nuclear plant |
where
three reactors had meltdowns. We are currently working on a timetable to
decommission the reactors over the next 30 to 40 years. |
09:47 |
Willacy in office with Naoto
Kan |
MARK
WILLACY: The former prime minister, now a fierce opponent of nuclear power,
disagrees. |
09:56 |
Naoto |
NAOTO
KAN: I think it will take longer than that. This is a major accident, which
has never happened anywhere in the world. I think 40 years is an optimistic
view. |
10:02 |
Willacy and others alight
from bus in protection gear |
MARK
WILLACY: For the initial part of our tour of the nuclear plant we are kitted
out in light protection gear, and our first stop is a reminder of the
colossal task facing TEPCO. |
10:18 |
Willacy to camera at tank
area |
MARK
WILLACY: So this is the tank area; so here we’ve got over a thousand tanks on
this site. TEPCO is removing about 62 nuclear substances from the water. The
only one they can’t remove is tritium. But so far they’re taking at least 62
elements out, but still there’s about a thousand tanks on site that they’ve
got to deal with. Tritium
goes directly into the soft tissues and organs of |
10:31 |
No entry sign/Willacy
watching water cleanup |
the
human body, potentially increasing the risk of cancer. The site has nearly
reached its capacity, with more than half a million tonnes of contaminated
water, much of it pumped in to keep the melted reactor fuel from heating up
again. NAOHIRO
MASUDA: If we leave it stored there’s a danger it will leak into the sea. |
10:54 |
Naohiro |
So
it’s important that we treat it. |
11:15 |
Willacy and others on bus |
MARK
WILLACY: But on top of that, every day 150 tonnes of groundwater flows into
the plant, and some believe this poses the biggest threat of all. GREGORY
JACZKO: What concerns me is the volume of water that exists at the site. |
11:18 |
Jaczko |
This
water contamination problem is not under control, and it’s not really
controllable. There really isn’t any way to stop it. |
11:35 |
Jaczko
working on computer |
MARK
WILLACY: Particle physicist Gregory Jaczko was the chairman of the United
States atomic watchdog, when Fukushima melted down. He was getting real-time
information as the disaster unfolded. |
11:42 |
Inside reactor buildings |
He
warns that the task of keeping three melted reactors stable and then cleaning
them up will take decades. GREGORY
JACZKO: It’s a very, very difficult situation. There is no simple solution,
there is no silver bullet that is going to put a stop to everything |
11:55 |
Jaczko |
and
make this just go away overnight. |
12:10 |
Inside reactor buildings.
Incinerator |
MARK
WILLACY: But there is one problem TEPCO can make go away, and that’s getting
rid of the millions of disposable protection suits and hazard masks used by
the workers on site. And to do that, the company has built an incinerator
several storeys high to begin burning the backlog - enough to fill 28 Olympic
swimming pools. |
12:12 |
Willacy to camera at
incinerator |
MARK
WILLACY: Okay. Well, the heat here’s really intense as you’d imagine because
this is the incinerator, the furnace, where they’re burning all this
irradiated protective gear. Now every day six and a half thousand workers are
on this site and sometimes they have multiple changes of clothing. So there’s
a lot of gear to burn, because a lot of it is unsafe, it’s irradiated. |
12:39 |
Workers changing clothes |
Music
|
12:58 |
|
MARK
WILLACY: Those six and a half thousand workers have come from all over Japan.
|
13:04 |
Workers inside plant |
Their
radiation exposure is closely monitored. But last year the allowable level
was more than doubled. The country’s nuclear watchdog said the step had to be
taken to allow workers to stay onsite longer, in a bid to keep the crisis at
Fukushima “containable”. |
13:09 |
Willacy to camera putting on
protective gear |
MARK
WILLACY: Well, we spent several hours around the plant already. But we’re
going closer to the reactor buildings now, which means we’ve got to put on
more heavy duty protective gear… |
13:31 |
Willacy zips up protective
suit and puts on footwear |
Music
|
13:40 |
|
MARK
WILLACY: We’re all set to go. |
13:55 |
Willacy touring plant with
minders |
For
this part of our tour we are accompanied by five minders, because we are
heading to the buildings housing the melted reactors and there are
restrictions. TEPCO is worried about possible nuclear terrorism, and won’t
allow us to film certain security sites. ‘Reactor
1, Reactor 2, Reactor 3 with all the rubble over there. Be very careful.’ The
radiation |
14:00 |
Geiger counter |
spikes
the closer we go to the reactors, |
14:30 |
Damaged reactor |
where
deep inside lies the melted nuclear fuel and TEPCO’s greatest challenge,
according to the man with possibly the toughest job in Japan, Decommissioning
Chief, Naohiro Masuda. |
14:3 |
Willacy and Masuda |
NAOHIRO
MASUDA: This is a job we’ve never done and there is no textbook. |
14:47 |
Masuda |
It’s
a huge challenge to balance carrying out the work while limiting the
radiation exposure for the workers. It’s the most difficult problem. |
14:50 |
Willacy to camera near
reactors |
MARK
WILLACY: I’m just metres away from the main reactor buildings here at the
Fukushima nuclear plant. Behind me, Reactor 3. Now, we saw what happened
there, there was a hydrogen explosion right after the nuclear fuel melted.
Next to it, Reactor 2. It’s still a problem today. There was no hydrogen
explosion, but what happened inside there no-one really knows because the
radiation is so high no-one to this day has been able to get inside. And
there is Reactor 1, and it could present particular problems for TEPCO because
that is where probably the worst meltdown occurred. They don’t know where the
nuclear fuel is and it could take TEPCO several years to even work that out. |
15:04 |
Damaged reactors |
NAOHIRO
MASUDA: We haven’t actually seen where the melted fuel fell, so it’s
important to find it as soon as possible. |
15:41 |
|
MARK
WILLACY: For the first time, Foreign Correspondent can reveal just how vast
the amount of melted nuclear fuel is, the three molten blobs that lie
somewhere deep within each of these buildings. |
15:50 |
Masuda |
NAOHIRO
MASUDA: It’s estimated that 200 tonnes of debris lies within each unit so in
total about 600 tonnes of melted debris fuel and a mixture of concrete and
other metals are likely to be here. |
16:05 |
Employee runs Geiger counter
over Willacy |
TEPCO
EMPLOYEE: This area has very high exposure. MARK
WILLACY: Very high exposure? TEPCO
EMPLOYEE: Yeah. MARK
WILLACY: So it’s creeping up, the closer we get to the buildings - the
reactor buildings? We can’t stay here? Okay. |
16:15 |
Willacy and others leave
reactor site |
MARK
WILLACY: And the most daunting task – one the nuclear industry has never
faced - is getting the melted fuel out. TEPCO admits the technology it needs
hasn’t been invented yet. GREGORY
JACZKO, FORMER CHAIRMAN, US NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION: They’ve sent in
some robots. All the robots have been disabled because of the high radiation
fields. It may be possible that we’re never able |
16:27 |
Jaczko. Super: |
to
remove the fuel. You may just wind up having to leave it there and somehow
entomb it as it is. I mean that’s certainly a possibility. There is no
playbook, they’re making this up as they go along and that’s in a lot of ways
the best they can do. |
16:47 |
Willacy and others on bus to
Reactor 4 |
MARK
WILLACY: Back on the bus, we head closer to the base of the reactor
buildings. We hop off at Reactor 4 and start to move down the line.
Immediately the radiation level begins to rise. [Alarm
goes off] |
17:00 |
Willacy to camera Willacy and guides back to
bus |
MARK
WILLACY: What’s happening?... Okay, so we’re just between Reactor 4 and
Reactor 3, but the radiation level has gone up to a point where our TEPCO
guides are not comfortable going any further, so we’ll head back. After
a day inside the nuclear plant it is time to strip off our gear and submit to
routine testing. |
17:18 |
Workers and Willacy being
tested for radiation |
It’s
a process the workers here go through every day, and it’s a reminder of the
decades-long task ahead of TEPCO. |
17:44 |
|
NAOHIRO
MASUDA, [CHIEF FUKUSHIMA DECOMMISSIONING OFFICER]: We don’t believe TEPCO can
do this on its own. |
17:53 |
Masuda |
We
now have experts from around the world looking at the current status,
checking on what we are doing and making decisions with us. |
17:59 |
Willacy being tested for
radiation |
NAOTO
KAN: [FORMER PRIME MINISTER, JAPAN] So far the government is paying $70
billion to support TEPCO. |
18:10 |
Naoto Kan |
But
that is not enough. It will probably cost more than $240 billion. |
18:19 |
Willacy in car into no-go
zone |
MARK
WILLACY: For others, the cost of the disasters can never be measured in
dollar terms. MARK
WILLACY: Well, we’ve just crossed into the no-go zone just a couple of
kilometres north |
18:28 |
|
of
the nuclear plant. We’re heading to Norio Kimura’s house, or what remains off
it. His is one of the more tragic stories to come out of the tsunami. Not
only did he lose his father and his wife, but he also lost his little
daughter Yuna. And every now and then he comes back to Fukushima and he still
searches for her remains, because she’s the only person still listed as
missing from Okuma town just north of the plant. |
18:41 |
Norio and volunteers
searching debris on beach |
Music
|
19:07 |
|
MARK
WILLACY: I first met Norio Kimura
several years ago. Today he’s again out searching for any trace of little
Yuna. He and his volunteers are only allowed into the no-go zone for five
hours at a time. Soon Kimura is approached by some police who ask us not to
film them or what they have found. After a few minutes he returns with a bag.
|
19:25 |
Norio shows contents of bag |
It
contains some family photos the police have found in the piles of debris, and
for Kimura something else far more precious. |
19:55 |
Norio shows T-shirt |
NORIO
KIMURA: This is Yuna’s T-shirt from her kindergarten. MARK
WILLACY: How do you feel when you see Yuna’s shirt like this? |
20:05 |
|
NORIO
KIMURA: Yuna is not really here, but it’s proof of her existence and that she
was here. To feel that is the biggest joy for me now. It’s a happy moment. |
20:20 |
Norio takes items to temple |
Music
|
20:39 |
|
MARK
WILLACY: We take the photos and Yuna’s top to a nearby temple where Norio
Kimura keeps everything he has found belonging to his dead family. |
20:46 |
Family photos |
His
father’s body was found inland not long after the tsunami. His wife’s remains
were found floating off the Fukushima coast weeks later. |
21:00 |
Norio places items |
At
this shrine he adds the latest finds, including Yuna’s kindergarten top. Deep
down, he knows his youngest daughter will never be found. |
21:14 |
Photo. Yuna |
NORIO
KIMURA: The probability of finding her is quite low and very difficult. I
know that. |
21:27 |
Norio |
But
if I stop searching, Yuna will never be found. I can’t say that there is no
hope, so I will continue on. |
31.36 |
Norio places flowers on
graves |
MARK
WILLACY: Norio Kimura’s community inside the fall-out zone will never be
rebuilt. In fact, it’s destined to be the site of a dump for contaminated
waste and soil. |
21:50 |
Aerial. Rikuzentakata |
But
further north, outside the zone, there’s hope. |
22:04 |
Tsunami footage. Willacy in
2011 |
I’ve
retuned to Rikuzentakata, which was wiped out by a 13-metre high tsunami. I
arrived here in 2011 right after the waves to be greeted by scenes of
devastation and death. |
22:10 |
Body retrieval after tsunami |
No
survivors are being pulled out of here, just hundreds and hundreds of bodies.
|
22:31 |
Willacy to camera back at Rikuzentakata |
MARK
WILLACY: Five years on I’m back in this exact same spot. And in the end, one
in every ten of Rikuzentakata’s residents would die in the tsunami. The
debris is all gone now, |
22:39 |
Rebuilding |
replaced
by five million cubic tonnes of earth, scraped off a nearby mountain and put
in the city centre. That’s in the hope that this community can be raised by
up to 13 metres to protect itself from future tsunamis. |
22:52 |
Fishing boats |
Music
|
23:10 |
Rikuzentakata
GV |
MARK
WILLACY: Rikuzentakata is a fishing town, |
23:16 |
Willacy greets Yoshiharu/
Yoshiharu on boat |
and
Yoshiharu Yoshida is one of its shrewdest sea dogs. And when the earth
shuddered five years ago, the fisherman was one of those who jumped on their
boats and headed straight out into the Pacific, riding over the tsunami as it
rolled towards the coast. |
23:19 |
Boat heading out to sea |
Music
|
23:40 |
|
YOSHIHARU
YOSHIDA, [FISHERMAN]: After one night out on the boat I came back after dawn.
|
23:46 |
Yoshiharu |
The
sea was full of debris. I came back here, but it was so full of rubble I
couldn’t get in. So I went back out. |
23:52 |
Building of seawall |
MARK
WILLACY: As well as the earthworks to raise the town, authorities are
building towering seawalls, some more than five storeys high. They’re part of
a 400 kilometre chain of gigantic tsunami defences being built along the
coast of north east Japan. But fisherman Yoshiharu Yoshida scoffs at the idea
that concrete walls can repel the raw power of a tsunami. |
24:01 |
Willacy walks with Yoshiharu
by seawall |
YOSHIHARU
YOSHIDA: It probably won’t be able to prevent it if a tsunami like the last
one comes. In another town the people questioned why the sea wall had to be
so high, |
24:33 |
Yoshiharu |
because
they couldn’t see the sea at all. In fact, it may cause fear. |
24:50 |
Empty street/houses in no-go
zone |
Music
|
25:00 |
Willacy walks along street |
MARK
WILLACY: While some communities outside the zone rebuild, others in the
contaminated areas continue to crumble and wither. |
25:10 |
|
Music
|
25:20 |
Ukedo
Primary School/Willacy walks through school |
MARK
WILLACY: Few spots symbolise both the natural and nuclear disasters of 2011
better than the Ukedo Primary School. Here, the tsunami smashed through the
bottom floor, while the top floor remained untouched, except by the
radioactive fall-out from the nuclear plant just a few kilometres away. The
80 children of this school survived the waves, but they’ve never been back.
Some former supporters of atomic energy now believe the risks are just too
great, including those who had to deal directly with the fall-out at the
time. |
25:26 |
|
NAOTO
KAN [FORMER PRIME MINISTER, JAPAN]: It’s become clear that nuclear power is
more dangerous than other energy sources. |
26:12 |
Naoto Kan |
In
the past, they said it was cheap - but it was only cheap if the cost of
accidents, or the cost of disposing of spent fuel and nuclear waste was not
included. |
26:20 |
|
MARK
WILLACY: You were the Prime Minister of Japan at the time. How close did this
country come to all-out disaster? |
26:38 |
|
NAOTO
KAN: We were extremely close. |
26:42 |
Reactor exploding |
If
all the reactors had had a meltdown, there was a risk that half or all of
Japan could have been destroyed. |
26:48 |
Naoto Kan |
So
in a way, the accident took us to the brink of destruction. |
26:59 |
Bags filled with toxic soil |
GREGORY
JACZKO, FORMER CHAIRMAN, US NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION: You have to now
accept that at all nuclear power plants, wherever they are in the world, that
there’s a chance you can have this kind |
27:08 |
Jaczko. Super: |
of
a very catastrophic accident and you can release a significant amount of
radiation and have a decade-long clean-up effort on your hands. And that’s
the reality of nuclear power. |
27:14 |
Aerial over clean up
operation to beach |
Music |
27:25 |
|
MARK
WILLACY: My journey ends on a beach I first visited after the disasters. |
27:32 |
Willacy on beach
in radiation kit with Japanese police |
Then
I went in with police in radiation protection gear to search this area for
bodies left behind by the tsunami. |
27:37 |
Drone following Willacy
walking down beach |
The
beach is empty now, silent except for the waves. |
27:47 |
Willacy walking along beach.
|
But
just down the shore, hidden behind this outcrop, is the Fukushima nuclear
plant, |
27:55 |
Fukushima
nuclear plant, in distance |
its
stacks visible in the distance. |
28:01 |
Willacy walking down beach/Nuclear
plant |
The
waves that crashed over this coast five years ago caused the costliest
natural disaster in human history, but the nuclear drama continues to play
out inside this secluded facility, and will do for decades to come. |
28:05 |
|
Reporter - Mark Willacy Executive
Producer – Marianne Leitch abc.net.au/foreign |
28:55 |