Original subtitles

Meet Pio d'Emilia. an Italian journalist in Tokyo.

His story begins on 11 March 2011. the day of the earthquake, the tsunami

and the Fukushima Disaster

A 4 year investigation

Go to number two.

12/06/2013

Pio d'Emilia.

More than two years have gone by.

The negotiations in order to enter have been long...

and difficult.

And now that we are finally here, with tickets in our hands,

we all look a bit like children.

those with a photo camera or video camera must sit by the window.

Like those who used to come here

to admire the safety of Fukushima Daiichi's nuclear power plant.

and this will be the formal main ride

from the village to Fukushima daiichi,

which is 20 kilometers away from here.

Fukushima

a nuclear story

act I beyond imagination

They say you either embrace Japan or you reject it.

You either adapt, giving up your culture,

or you remain a stranger, a poor gaijin

I'm a journalist.

I've lived in Japan for more than 30 years.

I love and hate this country.

I know it, and I ignore it. I accept it, and I oppose it.

As if it were my own country.

I can happily sleep on a tatami,

but I cannot give up some of my old and healthy habits,

such as my coffee.

Above all, I will never get used to earthquakes.

I live on the sixth floor of an old building,

and every time there is one even a small one,

it makes me panic.

If I would have been at home,

at 2.46 p.m. on the 11th of March, 2011,

I would have panicked

a lot.

I'm in Tokyo's central city in Akasaka.

there is a very strong earthquake happening.

all the buildings are swaying.

look at the crane! look at how the crane over that building is swaying!

the earth hasn't stopped shaking yet.

they have broadcast a warning on television

telling people to get out in the streets,

but as you can see there is no commotion.

how strong is the earthquake?

7.9 on the Richter scale.

and the tsunami is coming.

where?

in Sendai. it's about 22 feet high.

back at home, I realized that we have survived the largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan.

9 degree on the Richter scale at the epicenter in the northeast of the country,

and felt as a magnitude of 7.4 in Tokyo.

then,

the tsunami arrives.

A tidal wave breaks over along 400 miles of the coast of Tohoku.

In some places, it exceeds 30 meters and reaches up to 6-7 kilometers inland.

A whole region. beautiful. with it's wooden, plastic, aluminum houses

gets invaded quickly and swallowed by water.

It's hard to believe the first death tolls report so few known victims.

It's hard to believe those who say that nuclear power plants are safe.

The most serious situation is a Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,

one of the 19 facilities existing in the country,

located 300 kilometers northeast of Tokyo.

It's owned by Tepco,

one of the 10 electricity companies of its kind.

With its six nuclear power reactors,

the power plant is one of the most important nuclear facilities in the world,

and considerable as the safest nuclear station in spite of his 40 years.

During the endless minutes of the earthquake,

the power reactors in operation 1, 2, 3, 5, 6

automatically stop

and the operators activate the security procedures.

The earthquake hits the plant hard.

The high voltage mast fall,

and the power station is isolated from the national electric supply.

Emergency diesel generators turn on automatically,

providing electricity to the cooling systems

which have the task of reducing heat inside the power reactors

once they have stopped working.

Barely an hour after the earthquake,

a wave of 14 meters devastates the nuclear power plant.

Crossing over the dam built for the protection of the nuclear plant

against waves of 6 meters maximum height.

In a few minutes, the water fills all of the technical rooms,

damaging the emergency generators located in the underground basement.

Two workers drown.

Without electricity all monitoring indicators are out of use.

Nobody knows what is happening inside the reactors.

The magnitude of the emergency is not clear.

tepco's top managers are abroad to promote Japanese nuclear technology,

and the news broadcast by television is too contradictory to be true.

I have to do something.

I call the manager, but the phone and the internet aren't working anymore.

To reactivate electricity in a control panels,

the plant's director Masao Yoshida

orders the workers to extract the batteries from their cars

and sends others to buy batteries in the nearest supermarket.

The workers succeed in restoring the electrical power of the panels in the control room,

but the internal pressure indicators of the reactors

reveal the situation in all its gravity.

If they don't act immediately, three reactors may explode.

In order to decrease pressure,

you need to release the radioactive gas

that has accumulated inside the reactors,

but in order to do so, Tepco must ask the Prime Minister for permission.

Naoto Kan, who is also an engineer, gives the green light.

The circuits do not have enough power to open the valves.

Manual opening seems to be the only option,

but the related procedures are not set out in the instruction manual.

Citizens that live within an area

less than two miles from the power plant

are advised to move away,

and those who live between two and six miles away

are advised to stay at home.

It's the first time that the Japanese government has declared a nuclear emergency

but we all remember the accident in the nuclear facility of Tokaimura

in the Ibaraki Prefecture in 1999,

where two workers were killed and about 100 people were contaminated.

Of course, I remember it.

Tokaimura,

they gave the news of the accident three days later,

and the death toll and injured only ten days later.

Here in Tokyo, there have been neither significant damages nor any victims.

People aren't panicking and they start getting ready to

spend the night in public places, offices, at friends houses,

or in the open air.

it's eight in the evening here.

there has never been this much coming and going at this time of the day.

this is the working class district.

everyone is moving towards the collection center

with their helmet and a bag of things to eat.

I don't know what to do.

I can stay in Tokyo, where I will probably perceive more news.

No, it's better to try to get to Iwaki by car

to come close to the damaged nuclear power plant.

Nothing

impossible.

The roads are blocked in the nuclear power plant's direction and not vice versa.

Perhaps a lot of people are trying to reach the north

to obtain news of their relatives.

Even the railway network is interrupted.

The country is split in two.

I have to go back to Tokyo and try to catch a plane to Akita.

The only way to get the Fukushima is from the opposite side.

Alarmed by Tepco's long silence,

Khan wants to understand clearly the gravity of the situation.

He arrives at the nuclear disaster site.

He takes charge, sending a team of workers to manually open the valves.

Having evacuated the population within a radius of three kilometers,

the controlled release of radioactive vapor seems to be the acceptable solution.

People start to believe that the worst phase of the emergency is now over.

But in order to understand what's happening, I need to go back to my school days.

Revisit some physics and the lessons on how nuclear power plant works.

Fukushima Daiichi's reactor type General Electric Model of 1978,

when in operation is like an enormous pressure saucepan.

The nucleus contains bars of fuel made of uranium.

The fission of uranium nuclei produces radioactive atoms,

which continue to generate residual heat for days after the reactors are rest.

The heat in the reactor's core is generated by nuclear fission.

Boiling water produces steam,

which goes directly to the turbines and rotates them to produce electricity.

The condensed steam then goes back into the reactor.

The extraction and replacement of the fuel

is usually performed by means of an overhead crane

acting between the reactor pool and the adjacent one.

During this operation, the two pools are completely flooded.

The transfer of fuel rods is performed underwater

through a common gate that works like a valve.

Keeping the fuel isolated from the environment

and refrigerated at every stage

is therefore a matter of fundamental security.

And this is obtained through different containment barriers

designed a bit like a matryoshka.

The first barrier is the capsule of iron, the core of the reactor.

The second barrier is the shell of reinforced concrete.

The walls of the building are the last barrier between the reactor and the atmosphere.

At 3.46 p.m. on the 12th of March,

cameras document a huge explosion

that shatters the top of reactor building number one

and seriously injures four workers.

Among the operators at Fukushima Daiichi and the watching world,

panic escalates.

Fortunately, the first reconnaissance shows

only the top of the building has exploded,

not the reactor, which seems to be still intact.

The radiation levels have not risen when compared to their values

before the explosion.

All the radio channels are playing funereal music,

not a good sign.

Even when Hirohito was dying,

the music was more cheerful.

I drive without stopping until dawn

when I find myself in Kesennuma.

my god!

The tsunami is spared only a few reinforced concrete buildings.

The rest has been wiped out, run out and regurgitated without any order or restraint.

None of the authorities have arrived yet. three days have passed....

This is the situation of this...

Hallo.

Look...

Kesennuma is a city of about 60,000 inhabitants

and it is one of the four capitals of Japan's tuna fishing industry.

- Now you see it's completely destroyed. - Be careful.

the tsunami is coming. be careful.

is it coming now?

Yes, the water level is rising.

But she doesn't run away.

She stays there.

Her husband is sick.

He isn't able to get out of bed

and she has no intention of abandoning him here.

BANK OF KESENNUMA

BANK CLOSED DUE TO TSUNAMI WE APOLOGIZE FOR INCONVENIENCE

Roma Olimpiade!

Olympic Games in Rome? The Olympic Games?

50 years ago.

Ah...it was in 1960.

in 1960.

He was an athlete, of what?

Captain of eight rowing team.

Where is your home?

Where was your home?

- There ... that one. - That one.

So, the Japanese Self-defense forces have come to help.

This is one of the first groups of soldiers to receive orders

as to how to organize themselves.

No one is screaming.

Nobody despairs.

No one asks for help.

Here we are between Kesennuma and Matsua.

There is a never-ending line to buy the last things left in the supermarket.

The line is perfectly in order. they have been here for six hours.

Inhabiting seek to solve their problems

rather than questioning the nuclear emergency.

Fukushima is still far away in every sense.

The pressure in the reactors increases again.

They must be cooled and stabilized in order to avoid the worst possible outcome.

Due to the lack of fresh water, the use of seawater seems to be the only solution.

But it means the irreversible damage of all reactors.

Masao Yoshida, director of the nuclear power plant,

was the one to make the difficult decision.

In direct violation of Tepco's orders,

which were in favor of saving the expensive reactors

from the corrosive effects of salt.

I didn't reach Fukushima.

I came back here to Akita.

And I'm afraid for the first time.

Is it right to stay?

I have a family in Italy.

Five children.

Is it right to risk it?

I trust this government and especially the prime minister.

But the problem is can this government trust Tepco and the nuclear industry?

Naoto was a simple and honest person

who would never allow the contamination of his people.

I decide to call him directly,

taking advantage of our old friendship.

But I can't reach him.

When I cannot talk to him, or I have to address a delicate matter.

I get in contact with his wife, Nobuko.

Hello, Kan speaking.

Hi, it's Pio.

Ah, Pio-San! How are you?

Well, Worried. And I’m still working,

but both the company and my wife tell me to come back.

Here everyone has fled.

Yes, I understand.

You know,

I get that the foreigners are leaving.

if I were a foreigner maybe I'd leave, too.

I would go back home, but this is our home.

Where do you want us to go? We have to have faith, and wait.

Right...

But the problem is knowing if they are giving us

the correct information, if they telling us the truth.

in other words, if we can believe the Tepco authorities.

At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant,

they realize that the core of reactors 1, 2 and 3 have already been damaged.

In a desperate move, the government sends a team of specialized firemen

in an attempt to curb the most severe situation,

the one in the third reactor.

The men have hardly arrived,

When a massive explosion destroys the whole upper part of the building 3,

also involving building 4.

Some of the embassies are stoking fear irresponsibly.

Most of the foreign press exaggerates, distorts, or myths,

or often it invents fact.

Americans minimize the accident,

the French warn of inevitable apocalypse.

The reactors that are used in Fukushima and the rest of Japan

are made in the United States,

and the American industry intends to continue with their business enterprise.

On the other hand, France would like to sell its state-of-the-art reactors,

which they say are safe.

The only official sources I know are the Japanese National Agency for Nuclear Safety,

that is more similar to a censorship agency,

and the International Agency for Atomic Energy, for Atomic Energy.

The only thing that can help me understand is going directly to the power plant.

Camera is revealed a third powerful explosion in the building of reactor 2.

The walls remain intact, but a part of the reactor suffers serious damage.

Tepco abandons all hope of saving the situation,

and considers the possibility of evacuating all its employees.

Naoto Kan decides to go personally to the headquarters in Tokyo

and forces the president Shimizu not to abandon a ship.

Doing so would imply the uncontrolled meltdown of all reactors,

thus putting the very existence of Japan at risk.

You know it, but you find it difficult to maintain the consonant awareness

that behind every broken window, every destroyed car and every upturn boat,

that lies the story of a person, of a family, of an entire country.

My parents are still here.

My sister was found. my mother not yet.

Here, you have no peace

if you know that a loved one was not accepted worthy in the after wold

and still wanders in the world which he is no longer part of.

They watch over the bodies,

wash them, dress them with care,

put makeup on them.

After choosing no auspicious day for the cremation,

they get ready by placing their most prized possessions next to them,

finally proceeding to the right of shikotsu

the delicate meticulous right of collecting the bones in the urns.

It's such an intense moment.

I deliver this to you.

The shikotsu ritual is celebrated also for pets.

But the tsunami also caused the suspension of cremations for lack of fuel.

So just two and half gallons?

I give two.

It was necessary to resort to collective burials,

which to the Japanese are considered as sad and offensive.

The tsunami swept everything away,

including the right to feel pain,

to remember and to mourn the dead.

I'm very worried about the situation at the nuclear plant,

which is very dangerous and unpredictable.

At lunchtime on the 16th of March,

Emperor Akihito is speaking with a live broadcast.

It's the first time that an Emperor uses television to speak directly to the people.

There are those who remember his father,

Emperor Hirohito's dramatic speech on the radio,

announcing the end of the war.

Now Japan is fighting for the life of its people,

as it did back then.

Tepco, pressured by the government, takes its decision.

About 50 men are left there to deal with the situation.

They operate in extreme conditions.

Separated from the rest of the world, contaminated by radiation,

without any news from family members affected by the tsunami,

they fight to cool reactors,

restore electricity and security systems.

Often, by means of luck.

It's time to decide what to do, and in a hurry.

The majority of my Italian and foreign colleagues

have already left the country and moved to the south.

Even if I wanted to go back,

Tokyo airports are now closed or clogged.

In case the situation worsened, I would feel safer here in the north,

protected by a mountain range rather than in Tokyo or Osaka,

where the wind would propel the radioactive cloud.

As for a possible speedy escape,

from Akita you can fly directly to Korea,

or by car you can easily reach the island of Hokkaido.

from the capital city of Sapporo you can get to the entire world.

American drones during the aerial reconnaissance

discovered the water in the spent fuel pool on top of reactor number four is evaporating

and the spent fuel rods which have just been extracted are still hot

and are likely to be exposed to the air.

Naoto Kan orders the army to use helicopters

in order to dump water taken directly from the sea.

A high level of water in the pool must be maintained at any cost.

Unlike the reactor, there is no structure that can contain the fishing.

Flying over reactor number four,

the helicopters are exposed to excessive doses of radiation

and strong wind also prevents the drivers from performing their necessary maneuvers.

The only alternative is the use of powerful water cannons at broad range,

pointed directly at the pool,

a maneuver which is defined by many as a desperate one.

We decided to evacuate people who lived 12 miles away

from Fukushima Daiichi's plant.

You see here the sign says.

"danger beyond this point, 12 mile regulated traffic zone."

With this brief intrusion, I don't run any risk.

I just have to stay for a little while and not leave any part of my body uncovered.

This is a secondary internal route of Futaba.

the last town two and half miles away from the nuclear plant.

Nothing has changed since the people escaped.

Earthquake, tsunami, nuclear fallout,

This is the area that undergone all three of them.

the navigator is not going mad.

It indicates roads that no longer exist.

Now we are one mile away from Fukushima Daiichi.

the nuclear plant that is threatening japan and the rest of the world.

Here is the power plant station.

It's better for me to leave or these people will stop me soon.

The situation seems to improve.

The water level in the In the pool of reactor number four suddenly rises again,

and the level of radiation begins to fall.

The reactors remain unapproachable,

but the workers can go back to the control room without incurring any serious risks.

At the end of March 2011, seawater is substituted with distilled water.

However, the cooling circuit is no longer watertight.

The use of seawater, in addition to the fresh water, stabilizes the reactors.

But results also in the release of more than 11,000 tons

of radioactive water into the ocean,

causing great concern amongst the international community.

The accident is classified at the highest level of the INES scale.

Most of the national media begin accusing a prime minister

of managing the emergency irresponsibly.

Before the accident, Naoto was in favor of nuclear energy.

Now he has changed his point of view.

Well, changing ideas in politics comes with a very high price.

Not everyone wants to pay it.

Naoto Kan tendered his resignation from his position as Japan's prime minister,

following the agreement with the opposition.

And after having attained a series of incentives

for the development of renewable energy.

The director of Fukushima Daiichi's plant,

Masao Yoshida, has been forced to resign from his position

to be admitted to hospital and submitted to urgent medical treatments.

The manager will be replaced with the new director Takeshi Takahashi.

Japanese prime minister Yoshihiko Noda

declared to the nation that the reactor would reach the cold shutdown state.

Today, Japan closed down, officially, for a necessary emergency maintenance,

the last of its 54 still working nuclear reactors.

The new prime minister Shinzo Abe announces the intention of going back to nuclear.

The gradual reopening of the old power plants

and the resuming of work on those still under construction.

The government's decision causes various protests all over the country.

Follow me!

ACT II THE INVISIBLE ENEMY

FIRST FROM THE REGION. FROM YOUR HANDS. THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF JAPAN

Were you afraid to die?

As you know, on the morning of the 15th,

I personally went to Tepco's headquarters.

The situation was tragic.

and Tepco's executives were considering the option of evacuating the plant,

of leaving it to its destiny.

I was furious.

I told the executives that such a thing was unthinkable,

that the whole of Japan was at risk.

And that instead, we should hold up until the end

to avoid tragedy.

The future of Japan was at stake.

We could not run the risk of contamination

for who knows how long.

Something had to be done,

even if that meant putting our lives at risk.

And this meant everyone,

us politicians, Tepco's executives,

the army, the fire brigade, the police, everyone.

So this is the emergency control headquarters.

The dynamic of the meltdown was almost identical in all three damage reactors.

During the earthquake, the reactors shut down,

but in the absence of cooling, water evaporated in the core.

The fuel rods were then left exposed,

quickly reaching a temperature of about 3 ,000 degrees Celsius.

And thus melted, forming a kind of magma called corium,

releasing large quantities of hydrogen,

a highly explosive gas.

The pressure in the pool and the reactors' capsule thus rocketed.

And to prevent the reactors' explosion,

the technicians were forced to expel radioactive gas

into the atmosphere through the central chimney stack.

But the gas seeped into the center of the building

because of the many gaps caused by the earthquake.

The hydrogen reacted violently with the oxygen in the air,

and the explosion destroyed the top part of building 1, 3, and 4,

apparently without damaging the reactors.

During the explosion, there were large releases of radioactive materials

which carried by the wind settled on the sea,

lands and cities of the Fukushima district.

Thank you all for waiting.

I introduce to you Mr. Takeshi Takahashi, Fukushima Daiichi's plant director.

My name is Takeshi Takahashi,

I took on the role of plant director in December of 2011,

succeeding my predecessor, Mr. Masao Yoshida.

First of all, I want to apologize sincerely

to people around the world for the damage caused by this incident.

Apologies play an important role in Japan's culture.

Also, Tepco's president, Shimizu, has apologized,

but the apologies have not been appreciated.

As often as the case in Japan,

it was just a formal apology and not a taking of responsibility.

Indeed, Tepco deemed the incident as sotagai

which means unpredictable,

because in their opinion, nobody could have predicted a 14 meter high tsunami.

How can you live in the fear that your child might get cancer, leukemia?

For example, because you bought an affected milk carton.

Japanese people left alone, organized themselves alone.

New associations, solidarity groups, self-managed initiatives are soon born.

Full body screening and food analysis are carried out autonomously.

In some private houses, domestic markets are organized at the weekend.

Moms from that area come together to buy products from distant crops,

from provinces that are considered to be safe.

Also, because online commerce is dramatically growing,

and with it, scams.

In a country where citizens were used to leaving their goods unattended on the streets,

where shoppers left money and exchange for produce,

people have lost their trust,

especially in the authorities.

This is the most serious and hidden collateral damage

produced by Fukushima's accident.

The disappearance of that harmony, that politeness and that equilibrium,

that Japanese people call wa.

Not to mention deaths caused by broken hearts, by depression, by stress,

and about suicide committed in the situation of desperation or for mere calculation,

because in Japan, insurance pays and also well, in cases of suicide.

Yesterday my husband asked me if I had thought about leaving.

He said to me.

"I have to earn money for you, I have to stay here to work,

to allow you to live.

This way you can leave."

And I said, "And what are we going to do about the mortgage?"

And he answered,

"I made some calculations, if I die, the insurance company...

will be there to pay."

Fukushima is an entirely domestic tragedy.

It happened in a time of peace.

While Hiroshima and Nagasaki were tragedies caused by a foreign force,

which put World War II to an end.

The Japanese people came out of the tragedy defeated,

but strengthened in their spirit.

Traditionally, the Japanese respect winners,

and do not seek revenge if victory was obtained honestly.

Whether they are forces of nature, such as tsunamis or earthquakes,

or whether they are valiant men like General Douglas MacArthur,

they try to imitate them and then, if possible, to overcome them.

But radiation has no form, has no smell,

does not make any sound.

It's an invisible, sneaky enemy,

and to fight it, will take at least 40 years.

There are many complicated procedures,

the hardest one will be the removal of the corium

from the reactors that were subjected to meltdown.

It's an operation that has never been attempted before.

We are aware

that one of the biggest problems of this plant

is the huge volume of contaminated water

that contains large number of radionuclides.

In order to manage this growing quantity of water we have built some tanks,

and we are continuing to build new ones.

Now let's talk about the removal of the spent fuel.

The pool inside still contains more than 1,500 rods of spent fuel

and this pool is in the top floor of the building.

Our plan is to enclose the rods of spent fuel

in a container lowered directly into the pool.

The container is then lifted vertically by the crane

and moved horizontally

When it has reached the right position,

the container is then lowered to the ground.

the container is then carried

to the communal pool created for depositing the spent rods.

We will then to be able to continue the general decommissioning

with increased safety.

We expect to complete this task in about a year.

And in eternity to dispose,

they were talking about this in Onkalo, in Finland.

The Finnish government has decided to bury

4,500 tons of nuclear waste,

which comes from its nuclear plants

in a complex system of underground catacombs

designed to last at least 100,000 years.

Well do you know what the problem is now?

It is deciding in what language to write the notice

at the entrance of this storage facility,

considering that the languages we use now

will probably extinct in 100,000 years.

Above all. the aim is to avoid pointing out

that radioactive cemetery,

the most dangerous that ever existed, lies below.

There is another kind of repository linked to nuclear energy.

And it is an outdoor repository.

It is the one for the Hinan-sha, the nuclear power refugees.

People living here are all from Odaka.

There were supposed to be a few hundred people,

then thousands of people,

then hundreds of thousands of people.

There are people that have had to abandon their homes,

their land, their roots, may be forever.

And are forced to live in these temporary houses,

a nightmare almost worse than radiation.

This is what happened to my friend Yoshida and to his family.

IDOKAWA

The government would want us to return to our houses.

but we have to wait

for the result of decontamination.

Everything depends on this result.

Can you hear me? One, two, three, check... One, two, three, check...

Asami is a young and brave freelance journalist

who from the very first days strive to understand how the situation really was.

She is the one who accompanied us more than once in the no-go zone.

And she is the one who introduces us to Matsumoto,

a local boss, who provides workforce for Tepco

and is agreed to hide us in his car

to pass through the ever -increasing controls.

He is a very educated guy, even if his past is questionable.

He spent six years in prison.

He is a member of the yakuza.

If during the first days of the emergency,

entering the forbidden zone was discouraged.

Now, entering the exclusion zone is severely prohibited.

But we can't stop.

We decide altogether to violate the ban.

We are convinced that in such cases, the journalists not only have a right to,

but must do so.

Also, because the forbidden zone exerts a special, almost perverse attraction.

There is still the presence of life, but a life that smells of death.

In the first days of May, after two months of guilty forgetfulness,

the government has issued its cruel verdict.

For first class domestic animals, cats, dogs, rabbits, hamsters

The owners can now decide to go and get them.

And if they have survived, take them to specialized centers

where they will be checked before being given back,

who knows when, to their rightful owners.

Okuma Machi, a few miles from Fukushima nuclear energy plant.

A city which has now become a ghost town

and where only some dogs and cats survived.

A group of Japanese people comes now and again to feed them.

For all the other animals, pigs, cows, poultry, sheep, horses,

there is what Japanese media call inaccurately

Sweet death.

The government has decided that they should be given lethal injections.

But before someone decides who will perform this task,

these poor animals, by now abandoned,

dying one after the other of starvation,

amidst excruciating suffering.

And they become useless compost for now useless land.

Look, this is a museum of terrors.

The carcasses of cows still lie here, after two or three months.

In the back of this group that is desperately trying to survive,

eating who knows what rubbish.

There is also dead bodies of pigs.

pigs which eat each one another.

The government has decided that places which show values

above one microsievert per hour

are unfit for habitation.

This is the limit that sets the boundary of the no-go zone,

which previously corresponded to an area

of a 20 kilometer radius from the nuclear plant.

In a second moment, the boundaries were reset based on contamination levels.

But without taking hotspots into account,

they are spread all over even beyond the limit of 20 kilometers,

and they often mark very high values,

which are incompatible with human life.

Three, two, one, zero... Look! Over!

The radiation here is over the dosimeters capacity,

which is one millisievert.

Maybe it's better if we leave immediately.

These are people who lived in the area.

They have only an hour. They do not have time.

Good morning.

They are some of the displaced persons,

the house owners,

The government has granted them one hour

in which they are allowed to enter their house

and fetch their most important treasure possessions

which they have left behind in the emergency escape.

Also, the hospital in Futaba was quickly abandoned.

Why are there so many beds outside, so many wheelchairs?

Because for some days the patients were left alone,after some days

the patients were carried out here with their beds.

Unfortunately, it is said that during the transportation some of them died,

if I remember correctly, 14 of them died.

Not everyone is obeyed the order to abandon the forbidden zone.

Some, like Naoko Takahara

and his family have decided to stay in their home in Naraba.

His mother is 94 years old.

She is very fragile and has not left her bed.

My mother.

Good morning.

He's a guest.

Good morning.

His name is Pio. And he said good morning.

I come from Italy.

He comes from Italy.

Transporting her to another place

would properly have caused her to die from broken heart.

This happens to often, among the displaced.

Unfortunately, in this last period the situation has gone worse.

It's not like the first days

when we talked about the honesty of Japanese people.

In addition to burglaries in houses,

they are starting to rob cash machines.

Right now we are inside one of the supermarkets

that was open 24 hours a day.

Look, this is the cash machine, you can see it's ransacked.

Totally ransacked.

Could you see the sea from here before?

No, you could not.

My great-grandfather was buried here, dad is there.

Here lies the grandfather of my grandfather.

Here lies my grandfather and here my great-grandfather.

He died three days before my birth.

Masao Yoshida fukushima's nuclear power plant brave director dies,

worn out by an incurable illness

with his decision to disobey tepco by injecting sea water into the reactor

He is de facto save the country.

NUCLEAR ENERGY ENLIGHTENS OUR FUTURE

ACT III THE MIRACLE

In 1954, when the rivalry with the former Soviet Union was becoming increasingly strong,

and the world was divided into two blocks,

the United States Department of Defense secretly carried out an experiment,

its codename being Castle Bravo.

This experiment was a nuclear test,

consisting in the explosion of a hydrogen bomb.

American scientists made a mistake in their calculations,

underestimating the power of the explosion,

which was three times stronger than expected.

The Japanese fishing vessel, Daigo Fukuryu Maru, was in the surrounding waters

and was hit by the radioactive fallout.

The 23 fishermen had to be hospitalized immediately.

Kuboyama Aikichi, the Marconi operator aboard the vessel,

died a few months later from Acute radiation syndrome.

Radio and television interrupted their broadcast to spread the news.

Traces of radioactivity were found in tuna, fish in the Pacific Ocean,

and this forced the culprit to come out in the open and confess the truth.

In little time because of fear of radiation, panic spread.

From that moment on, the people of Japan

have been totally forthright in rejecting nuclear energy.

The American government concerned about the spread of anti-American

and anti-nuclear sentiment in Japan,

a country it considered a military and economic base of great importance,

took appropriate measures, by involving all Japanese communications media

using words such as peace, justice and security

for the promotion of nuclear energy.

Shoriki Matsutaro, a war criminal suddenly reinstated by the Americans

and who in the meantime had become a powerful lobbyist and media tycoon

played a very important role.

He was a great admirer of American culture

and he was convinced that the nation's economic prosperity

depended on the friendship with the U.S.

From the columns of the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun

and from his own private TV channel, Nippon Television,

he launched a powerful and effective pro-nuclear campaign.

In a few years, he succeeded in defeating the anti-nuclear movement in his country

and in persuading the majority of citizens that embracing nuclear power

was not only a wise, but rather an indispensable choice.

In 1954, U.S. President Eisenhower carried out the program atoms for peace

to sweep away the memory of the bombing of Japan.

And after only two years following the Daigo Fukuryu Maru incident

a symposium on nuclear energy for civil purposes

was organized and took place Symbolically in Hiroshima.

Matsutaro was chosen as the president for the new commission for nuclear energy.

the construction of the country's first nuclear power plant was soon announced.

Thus, it was that the country which would probably have been the last in the world

to espouse nuclear energy,

became one of it's main and most convinced supporters.

How long have you been working at Fukushima daiichi?

Twelve, thirteen years.

When you start,

Were you in favor of nuclear energy?

Yes, I was.

And now?

I changed my mind.

The nuclear gypsies, the nuclear power plant's seasonal workers,

number in the thousands, and they are immediately recognizable.

They seem distracted almost absent, but in reality, they are looking at you.

They make you perceive that they have something to say, and they do

If you go to visit them in small taverns in the neighborhood of the nuclear power plant.

they are paid three or four hundred dollars a day to be contaminated.

Although, after the agency and the contractors get their part

very little ends up in their own pockets.

In Fukushima, they represent almost 90% of the workforce,

and they withstand most of the radiation.

There are those who, in order to earn more,

fake the dosimeters, or take up double shifts using different names.

A sacrifice prompted by despair,

by necessity of making ends meet at any cost.

Apparently, it's a tradition.

I was told about it by Kenji Higuchi,

a photographer who became famous in the 70s for his reportages

inside Japanese nuclear power plants.

I never tolerated the idea that to produce energy you had to damage humans.

contaminate them forever.

clean energy, they said: a total lie.

Well, the former president Kan had decided to abandon nuclear energy,

but then Abe announced that he wanted to start the reactors again

Terrible, it's more than irresponsible

The situation is this: we can't build nuclear power plants anymore.

And now what do we do? We sell our technology to other countries.

It's an irresponsible thing.

Here it's not about producing energy.

It's only about making money.

In the middle of the night, I called my boss at GE and I said,

my recommendation is that we tell the U.S. utilities

that GE cannot support the continued operation of these plants.

And my boss said to me, "well, it can't be that bad, Dale.

And keep in mind that if we have to shut down all of these Mark 1 plants,

it will probably mean the end of GE's nuclear business forever."

Please never open the windows.

just, please don't take any photograph on the film.

this building almost all the window glasses were shattered

by their hydrogen explosion of the unit number one.

And the rest of the building is heavily damaged,

So there is a covering over the building.

I wonder how the triple nuclear meltdown at Fukushima daiichi could remain hidden

for more than two months, which is long for a country such as Japan.

I am convinced that experts, the real insiders knew it.

But no one, especially Tepco, wanted to use the word meltdown.

Damage to the reactors,

well, they played with words,

played for two months.

Then finally, in May, they used the right one.

Reactor two's building is the only one still in one piece,

but it's the source of the most dangerous radioactive leakage.

The explosion that happened inside the building damaged the base of the reactor,

causing the flood of various rooms in underground conduits.

Every day, hundreds of tons of radioactive waters spill into the ocean.

What is the opinion of Kan? Does he have the idea?

Where is the core? Nobody knows, not even the robots manage to get near.

At what stage is the meltdown?

Tepco doesn't know, the media doesn't know...

What is the opinion of Kan? Does he have an idea?

What is the opinion of Kan, Kan "the engineer"?

We now know for sure

that the core made a hole in the metallic base of the cylinder

and came out completely.

Everything is written here, in the report from the government investigation committee.

Because of the radiation, no one, not even the robots,

can approach close enough to understand how much concrete separates

the corium from the ground and the aquiferous.

The cisterns that collect the hundreds of thousands of tons

of radioactive liquids, are no longer sufficient.

Leaks everywhere infiltrate the ground.

Some argue that it would be best to throw everything overboard

because fishing in the area has already been compromised

and the Pacific Ocean is so big.

But nobody really knows what the real long-term effects will be.

The radioactive substances infiltrate the food chain

and polarize on the top where we stand

with our debates and our fears.

The machines and the vehicles and the tanks

that washed away are still left in this area.

And on the time of the earthquake, the tsunami height

in this area was a 15 meter high.

The building on the right-hand side of was heavily damaged by the tsunami.

And when the earthquake occurs, we do not have that temporary sea wall.

So this area has a direct hit by the tsunami.

Quite a lot is going on inside the bus.

Tepco's men aren't allowing us to film,

they interrupt all the time, they talk with a loud speaker...

It is not clear what their problem is

since there is no longer a functioning power plant,

there is no danger of terrorism.

there is a danger of information.

The information later supplied by workers confessed by the executives

and then confirmed through concrete examples

In the 641 pages of the Kurokawa report,

talks about a man-caused catastrophe.

Everything but sotagai.

So where is this reactor?

What?

The new construction, where is it?

300 feet away from here.

It's what we would like to see...

We are going by foot... isn't that enough?

If you don't want to comply with my orders you can just leave... understood?

Wait, I am just asking, I an asking a question for information...

Then let's go! Please walk along this side.

Please stay on the left side of the street.

We are going on foot to see the building next to reactor number four.

We managed to convince them,

they didn't want to let us at first, but now we are going.

stay on the left side of the street.

you do not move to the right.

Here they are all a bit nervous, hysterical...

The Kurokawa report shows that the direct causes of the accident

were all foreseeable prior to March 11, 2011.

Tepco was too quick to cite the tsunami as the cause of the nuclear accident

and deny that the earthquake caused any damage.

The direct intervention by the Kantei,

including Prime Minister Kan's visit to the Fukushima Daiichi plant,

disrupted the chain of command and brought disorder

to an already dire situation at the site.

The accident was the result of collusion between the government,

the regulators and Tepco and the lack of governance by said parties.

With their behavior, they have betrayed the right of Japan

to be safe from nuclear risks.

You human beings just like us, we're the same, do you have a heart?

Are you hiding behind doors? Don't you want to be serious?

It has become a weekly appointment.

This is already the fourth time that Japanese people in Tokyo gather here.

They meet in front the Parliament, outside the Prime Minister's residence

to express non-violently, and ever more creatively,

their opposition to nuclear power,

and most of all to the reopening and reactivation of the nuclear plants

already established by the Japanese government.

but not yet carried out...

I wonder how it is possible that as of today,

there hasn't been any indictments for trial.

Let alone a conviction.

All the criminal investigations that have been started have already been closed.

We shall no longer prosecute.

Everybody is guilty, no one is guilty, as in war.

If there is no guilt, there is no responsibility,

and there is no sin, if there is no repentance.

So this place is good enough,

so please stay closer to each other.

Finally we are in front of the reactor number four.

Here the radiation levels are still very high,

more than 1,500 microsieverts per hour...

Is it true that if something goes wrong we are truly in danger of an apocalypse?

meanwhile the real risk is to leave these rods

where they are now, on the roof of a building.

Right before the incident, a routine maintenance,

which consists of the replacement of the spent fuel,

was taking place at reactor 4.

To perform this maintenance, you have to flood the room above the reactor

so that water level is even with that of the pool

that contains the new fuel.

When the cooling system stopped working,

in the room above the reactor 4, there was only water.

while in the beside pool there are all the fuel rods incandescent

which made water in the pool boil.

if the fuel had been left uncovered,

there would be yet another meltdown occurring, but this time, outdoors.

Have did happen, the consequences would have been devastating.

Tokyo would have been totally destroyed.

The reason why this meltdown didn't actually happen

has remained a mystery for a long time.

It was only after several months that we got to understand it

thanks to work of the commission of inquiry.

Due to pressure increase in the reactor pool,

the gate valve that separates the reactor pool from the fuel storage pool

broke down, causing the water to pour out into the adjacent fuel storage pool.

Had the gate not broken, the pool water would have continued to evaporate

thereby causing the meltdown within a very short time.

Tokyo is safe by chance.

The myth of nuclear energy of it being economic,

safe and clean has been swept away.

This disaster has forced Japan to face up to a question

that many other countries have already dealt with.

Nobuko was right.

In the face of Fukushima, we are all Japanese.

Don't film me...

This indicates that we are currently producing

nine kilowatts and we are selling it to Tepco.

The increasing global energy demand is saying

that the path to renewable energy is important,

but it is not enough in itself.

While the dream of nuclear fusion of an infinite energy,

clean energy for all is still there waiting for us

At the other side of history, Fukushima's heroes were not enough.

A bigger disaster has been avoided because a gate valve broke.

We have been spared because miraculously

something in the country of technology

did not work.

On August 26th 2014, for the first time a Court ruled that Tepco is responsible for the suicide of a woman who became depressed after the accident and it must pay $472,000 in compensation.

Five years after the incident, and despite public promises to return to full fledged production the government has managed to restart only 2 reactors among the 52 available in the country.

In the meantime public opinion, once strongly in favour of nuclear energy, has now turned against it.