The carcasses of the reactors themselves are exposed in places like autopsied remains, stained from the soot of the hydrogen explosions that resulted from the meltdown. It’s not just the throbbing danger of the unseen nuclear-fuel rods. Touring the site, I’m struck by how much of the damage remains. Commissioned in 1971, Fukushima Daiichi should have been retired or retrofitted long before a 46-ft. Japan took all of its other 48 nuclear power plants off-line after Fukushima, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to restart some of them despite public opposition. But even if this and other technological fixes succeed, the government estimates it will take at least 30 years to decommission Fukushima Daiichi and make the site safe from radiation. ![]() The latest plan by TEPCO, Japan’s largest power provider, is to build a wall of frozen earth around the damaged reactors and other highly radioactive areas to prevent radiation from seeping out of the site. There’s the question of what will happen when-not if-another major earthquake strikes this seismically cursed land. TEPCO said it was unlikely the water made its way into the ocean, but whistle-blower workers aren’t as sure. ![]() In February, water with a radiation level several million times higher than what’s safe gushed out from a storage tank near the coast on the Pacific Ocean. We wander past a forest of some 1,300 of these tanks, each filled with 1,000 tons of toxic water, some of which was used to cool the reactors. Every 2½ days, workers deploy a new giant storage tank to house radioactive water contaminated after passing through the damaged reactors. So much radiation still pulses inside the crippled reactor cores that no one has been able to get close enough to survey the full extent of the destruction. Some 6,000 workers, somehow going about their jobs despite the suffocating gear they must wear for hours at a time, struggle to contain the damage. Three and a half years after the most devastating nuclear accident in a generation, Fukushima Daiichi is still in crisis. A line from one song’s lyrics, tinkly and sweetened: “You’ve got a friend in Jesus.” Later, as I sit in a futuristic cubicle in the plant complex, undergoing a full-body internal radiation check, the soundtrack underscores TEPCO’s soothing message. The radiation levels in certain parts of the nuclear complex are actually lower than in some populated swaths of Fukushima prefecture. Not to worry, we are told by officials from Tokyo Electric Power Co. Two were in cold shutdown at the time of the accident another, which had been defueled, suffered an explosion.) As we lumber through the plant like clumsy B-movie extras, I’m reminded that our many layers don’t protect against every type of radiation. (The station has a total of six reactors. Three of the station’s nuclear-reactor cores overheated, sending plumes of radiation over a placid landscape of fishing villages, rice paddies and dairy farms. ![]() After the 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11, 2011, the aging plant on Japan’s northeastern coast suffered a total power failure, causing the cooling system to shut down. Dosimeters around our necks record the rising levels of radiation. Soon we approach the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant-ground zero of the worst atomic meltdown since Chernobyl. Dominic Nahr for TIME Hannah Beech (far right), TIME’s East Asia correspondent and China bureau chief, on an exclusive visit of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station
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