Excerpt
JEFFREY BROWN: And next to Japan, where the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been leaking contaminated underground water into the sea more than two years after the earthquake and tsunami.
Today, officials at Tokyo Electric Power admitted they delayed releasing that information, saying they didn't want to worry the public. Meanwhile, the area around the plant remains deserted.
But Alex Thomson of Independent Television News got brief and rare access.
ALEX THOMSON: Few people ever get in to the Fukushima exclusion zone. Nobody gets in without protective equipment and screening.
Here's the radio to keep in contact, she's telling us. Monitoring equipment for radioactivity comes next, then off, out to the final police checkpoint. And we pull in just inside the exclusion zone to suit up.
It's becoming a way of life around here. TEPCO, the company that runs the stricken plant, have given us five hours in the zone with a radio to keep in contact with us, let us know when our time's up. The regalia in which I'm now standing, including this, a dosimeter which will give my accumulated radiation dose across the time that we're inside the exclusion zone.
We have come here with Anthony Ballard, who used to live in Futaba, the town which houses the giant nuclear plant, as did his friend and fellow English teacher Philip Jellyman. Rubble from the quake stays just where it fell, fringed now with weeds. The clock on the main street stopped at 2:46, the second the first tremors shattered this region on March the 11th, 2011.
The town shrine lurches after the quake. Someone's been back at some point to try and save it with ropes. Good luck messages to the gods for the unluckiest of towns after a quake, a tsunami, and radiation.
MAN: The students who were at the school that day have never seen their houses.
No comments:
Post a Comment