1
00:00:21,220 --> 00:00:26,220
Meet Pio d'Emilia.
an Italian journalist in Tokyo.

2
00:00:26,920 --> 00:00:32,400
His story begins on 11 March 2011.
the day of  the earthquake, the tsunami

3
00:00:33,300 --> 00:00:36,300
and the Fukushima Disaster

4
00:00:37,300 --> 00:00:39,800
A 4 year investigation

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00:00:42,290 --> 00:00:43,100
Go to number two.{\pos(188,250)}

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00:00:58,693 --> 00:01:03,300
{\b0\fs16}12/06/2013{\pos(050,235)}

7
00:01:01,660 --> 00:01:03,320
Pio d'Emilia.{\pos(188,250)}

8
00:01:15,420 --> 00:01:17,020
More than two years have gone by.

9
00:01:22,450 --> 00:01:25,520
The negotiations in order to
enter have been long...

10
00:01:26,720 --> 00:01:27,890
and difficult.

11
00:01:29,720 --> 00:01:33,130
And now that we are finally here,
with tickets in our hands,

12
00:01:33,330 --> 00:01:35,150
we all look a bit like children.

13
00:01:37,530 --> 00:01:40,230
those with a photo camera or video camera
must sit by the window.{\pos(188,225)}

14
00:01:41,130 --> 00:01:42,580
Like those who used to
come here

15
00:01:42,900 --> 00:01:47,700
to admire the safety of Fukushima
Daiichi's nuclear power plant.

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00:01:47,900 --> 00:01:51,200
and this will be the formal main ride

17
00:01:51,900 --> 00:01:54,800
from the village to Fukushima daiichi,

18
00:01:55,000 --> 00:01:57,700
which is 20 kilometers away from here.

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00:03:21,600 --> 00:03:28,300
{\b\fs44}Fukushima{\pos(199,255)}

20
00:03:25,300 --> 00:03:28,300
{\b\fs34}a nuclear story{\pos(198,284)}

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00:03:36,300 --> 00:03:41,250
act I
beyond imagination{\pos(188,220)}

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00:03:59,550 --> 00:04:02,800
They say you either embrace Japan
or you reject it.

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00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:05,600
You either adapt, giving up your culture,

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00:04:05,650 --> 00:04:09,400
or you remain a stranger, a poor gaijin

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00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:15,100
I'm a journalist.

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00:04:15,300 --> 00:04:18,100
I've lived in Japan for more than 30 years.

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00:04:19,200 --> 00:04:20,770
I love and hate this country.

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

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00:04:25,960 --> 00:04:28,160
As if it were my own country.

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00:04:28,960 --> 00:04:31,300
I can happily sleep on a tatami,

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00:04:31,560 --> 00:04:35,200
but I cannot give up some
of my old and healthy habits,

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00:04:35,960 --> 00:04:37,460
such as my coffee.

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00:04:43,760 --> 00:04:47,760
Above all, I will never get
used to earthquakes.

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00:04:48,560 --> 00:04:50,760
I live on the sixth floor of
an old building,

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and every time there is one
even a small one,

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it makes me panic.

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00:05:08,300 --> 00:05:09,600
If I would have been
at home,

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

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00:05:15,450 --> 00:05:16,750
I would have panicked

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a lot.

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00:05:19,530 --> 00:05:22,300
I'm in Tokyo's central city in Akasaka.{\pos(188,250)}

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00:05:23,300 --> 00:05:25,120
there is
a very strong earthquake happening.{\pos(188,225)}

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00:05:25,220 --> 00:05:26,400
all the buildings are swaying.{\pos(188,250)}

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00:05:27,790 --> 00:05:32,400
look at the crane! look at how the crane
over that building is swaying!{\pos(188,240)}

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00:05:32,490 --> 00:05:35,800
the earth hasn't stopped shaking yet.{\pos(188,240)}

46
00:05:35,950 --> 00:05:37,850
they have broadcast a warning on television{\pos(188,240)}

47
00:05:37,950 --> 00:05:40,450
telling people to get out in the streets,{\pos(188,240)}

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00:05:40,600 --> 00:05:43,470
but as you can see
there is no commotion.{\pos(188,240)}

49
00:05:43,650 --> 00:05:44,670
how strong is the earthquake?{\pos(188,240)}

50
00:05:44,850 --> 00:05:47,650
7.9 on the Richter scale.{\pos(188,240)}

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00:05:48,550 --> 00:05:52,150
and the tsunami is coming.{\pos(188,240)}

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00:05:52,250 --> 00:05:53,400
where?{\pos(188,240)}

53
00:05:53,850 --> 00:06:00,200
in Sendai. it's about 22 feet high.{\pos(188,240)}

54
00:06:15,300 --> 00:06:21,000
back at home, I realized that we have survived
the largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan.

55
00:06:23,800 --> 00:06:28,400
9 degree on the Richter scale at the
epicenter in the northeast of the country,

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00:06:28,500 --> 00:06:32,900
and felt as a magnitude of 7.4 in Tokyo.

57
00:06:35,650 --> 00:06:36,800
then,

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the tsunami arrives.

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00:06:43,150 --> 00:06:47,800
A tidal wave breaks over along 400 miles
of the coast of Tohoku.

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

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00:06:55,100 --> 00:07:00,200
A whole region. beautiful. with it's
wooden, plastic, aluminum houses

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00:07:00,300 --> 00:07:03,500
gets invaded quickly
and swallowed by water.

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00:07:27,300 --> 00:07:32,700
It's hard to believe the first death tolls
report so few known victims.

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00:07:33,300 --> 00:07:37,800
It's hard to believe those who say that
nuclear power plants are safe.

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00:07:38,500 --> 00:07:43,100
The most serious situation is a Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant,

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one of the 19 facilities existing
in the country,

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located 300 kilometers northeast of Tokyo.

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It's owned by Tepco,

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one of the 10
electricity companies of its kind.

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00:07:54,300 --> 00:07:56,150
With its six nuclear power reactors,

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00:07:56,200 --> 00:07:59,950
the power plant is one of the most
important nuclear facilities in the world,

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00:07:59,960 --> 00:08:04,400
and considerable as the safest nuclear
station in spite of his 40 years.

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During the endless minutes of the
earthquake,

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00:08:07,650 --> 00:08:12,650
the power reactors in
operation 1, 2, 3, 5, 6

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00:08:12,655 --> 00:08:13,750
automatically stop

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00:08:13,850 --> 00:08:16,800
and the operators activate
the security procedures.

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The earthquake hits the plant hard.

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00:08:22,550 --> 00:08:24,500
The high voltage mast fall,

79
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and the power station is isolated from
the national electric supply.

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00:08:30,700 --> 00:08:33,800
Emergency diesel generators
turn on automatically,

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00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:36,300
providing electricity to the
cooling systems

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00:08:36,500 --> 00:08:39,800
which have the task of reducing
heat inside the power reactors

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00:08:39,900 --> 00:08:41,800
once they have stopped working.

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00:08:44,200 --> 00:08:46,250
Barely an hour after the earthquake,

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00:08:46,300 --> 00:08:50,450
a wave of 14 meters devastates
the nuclear power plant.

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00:08:50,800 --> 00:08:53,800
Crossing over the dam built for
the protection of the nuclear plant

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00:08:53,950 --> 00:08:57,400
against waves of 6 meters maximum height.

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00:08:59,600 --> 00:09:03,550
In a few minutes, the water fills all of
the technical rooms,

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00:09:03,800 --> 00:09:07,850
damaging the emergency generators
located in the underground basement.

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00:09:10,850 --> 00:09:12,450
Two workers drown.

91
00:09:15,350 --> 00:09:19,550
Without electricity all monitoring
indicators are out of use.

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00:09:20,250 --> 00:09:23,800
Nobody knows what is happening
inside the reactors.

93
00:09:26,820 --> 00:09:29,300
The magnitude of the emergency
is not clear.

94
00:09:29,900 --> 00:09:34,380
tepco's top managers are abroad to promote
Japanese nuclear technology,

95
00:09:34,400 --> 00:09:38,800
and the news broadcast by television is too
contradictory to be true.

96
00:09:39,200 --> 00:09:40,400
I have to do something.

97
00:09:40,800 --> 00:09:45,300
I call the manager, but the phone and
the internet aren't working anymore.

98
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To reactivate electricity in a control panels,

99
00:09:48,505 --> 00:09:50,850
the plant's director Masao Yoshida

100
00:09:50,860 --> 00:09:53,950
orders the workers to extract
the batteries from their cars

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00:09:54,020 --> 00:09:57,400
and sends others to buy batteries
in the nearest supermarket.

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

103
00:10:01,850 --> 00:10:04,380
but the internal pressure indicators
of the reactors

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00:10:04,385 --> 00:10:07,450
reveal the situation in all its gravity.

105
00:10:07,750 --> 00:10:11,350
If they don't act immediately,
three reactors may explode.

106
00:10:11,550 --> 00:10:13,350
In order to decrease pressure,

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you need to release the radioactive gas

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00:10:15,355 --> 00:10:17,900
that has accumulated inside
the reactors,

109
00:10:17,950 --> 00:10:22,100
but in order to do so, Tepco must ask the
Prime Minister for permission.

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00:10:23,000 --> 00:10:27,000
Naoto Kan, who is also an engineer,
gives the green light.

111
00:10:27,700 --> 00:10:30,750
The circuits do not have enough power to
open the valves.

112
00:10:30,950 --> 00:10:33,450
Manual opening seems to be
the only option,

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

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00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:43,300
Citizens that live within an area{\pos(188,250)}

115
00:10:43,500 --> 00:10:44,900
less than two miles
from the power plant{\pos(188,225)}

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00:10:45,050 --> 00:10:46,600
are advised to move away,{\pos(188,250)}

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00:10:46,700 --> 00:10:49,400
and those who live
between two and six miles away{\pos(188,225)}

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00:10:49,600 --> 00:10:51,300
are advised to stay at home.{\pos(188,250)}

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00:10:51,585 --> 00:10:55,800
It's the first time that the Japanese
government has declared a nuclear emergency

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

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00:10:59,401 --> 00:11:02,260
in the Ibaraki Prefecture in 1999,

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00:11:02,271 --> 00:11:06,155
where two workers were killed and about
100 people were contaminated.

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00:11:07,400 --> 00:11:08,990
Of course, I remember it.

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00:11:09,650 --> 00:11:11,000
Tokaimura,

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00:11:13,000 --> 00:11:15,993
they gave the news
of the accident three days later,

126
00:11:17,804 --> 00:11:21,450
and the death toll and
injured only ten days later.

127
00:11:25,410 --> 00:11:30,150
Here in Tokyo, there have been neither
significant damages nor any victims.

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00:11:30,830 --> 00:11:33,350
People aren't panicking and
they start getting ready to

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00:11:33,355 --> 00:11:37,770
spend the night in public
places, offices, at friends houses,

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00:11:37,790 --> 00:11:39,150
or in the open air.

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it's eight in the evening here.

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00:11:41,050 --> 00:11:44,150
there has never been this much
coming and going at this time of the day.

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00:11:44,350 --> 00:11:46,550
this is the working class district.

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00:11:46,750 --> 00:11:51,050
everyone is moving
towards the collection center

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00:11:51,250 --> 00:11:56,250
with their helmet
and a bag of things to eat.

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I don't know what to do.

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00:12:01,271 --> 00:12:05,410
I can stay in Tokyo, where I will probably
perceive more news.

138
00:12:06,660 --> 00:12:10,953
No, it's better to try
to get to Iwaki by car

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00:12:11,055 --> 00:12:13,600
to come close to the damaged
nuclear power plant.

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00:12:14,970 --> 00:12:15,810
Nothing

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00:12:16,350 --> 00:12:17,410
impossible.

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00:12:17,670 --> 00:12:21,970
The roads are blocked in the nuclear power
plant's direction and not vice versa.

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00:12:22,310 --> 00:12:24,743
Perhaps a lot of people
are trying to reach the north

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00:12:24,755 --> 00:12:26,771
to obtain news of their relatives.

145
00:12:28,210 --> 00:12:30,930
Even the railway network is interrupted.

146
00:12:31,350 --> 00:12:33,570
The country is split in two.

147
00:12:34,050 --> 00:12:37,550
I have to go back to Tokyo and try to
catch a plane to Akita.

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00:12:38,250 --> 00:12:42,030
The only way to get the Fukushima is from
the opposite side.

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00:12:49,330 --> 00:12:51,250
Alarmed by Tepco's long silence,

150
00:12:51,255 --> 00:12:55,110
Khan wants to understand clearly the
gravity of the situation.

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He arrives at the nuclear disaster site.

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

153
00:13:06,270 --> 00:13:09,700
Having evacuated the population within a
radius of three kilometers,

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00:13:10,031 --> 00:13:15,250
the controlled release of radioactive vapor
seems to be the acceptable solution.

155
00:13:15,255 --> 00:13:19,600
People start to believe that the worst
phase of the emergency is now over.

156
00:13:26,430 --> 00:13:31,331
But in order to understand what's happening,
I need to go back to my school days.

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

158
00:13:39,810 --> 00:13:45,008
Fukushima Daiichi's reactor
type General Electric Model of 1978,

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00:13:45,019 --> 00:13:48,510
when in operation is like
an enormous pressure saucepan.

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00:13:50,120 --> 00:13:53,090
The nucleus contains bars of fuel
made of uranium.

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00:13:53,210 --> 00:13:56,400
The fission of uranium nuclei produces
radioactive atoms,

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00:13:56,421 --> 00:14:00,990
which continue to generate residual heat
for days after the reactors are rest.

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00:14:01,010 --> 00:14:03,800
The heat in the reactor's core is
generated by nuclear fission.

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00:14:06,070 --> 00:14:07,700
Boiling water produces
steam,

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00:14:07,753 --> 00:14:12,300
which goes directly to the turbines
and rotates them to produce electricity.

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00:14:13,810 --> 00:14:17,250
The condensed steam then goes back into
the reactor.

167
00:14:18,280 --> 00:14:20,420
The extraction and replacement of the fuel

168
00:14:20,431 --> 00:14:23,400
is usually performed by means
of an overhead crane

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00:14:23,402 --> 00:14:26,700
acting between the reactor
pool and the adjacent one.

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00:14:27,170 --> 00:14:30,520
During this operation, the two pools are
completely flooded.

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00:14:31,310 --> 00:14:34,250
The transfer of fuel rods
is performed underwater

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00:14:34,310 --> 00:14:37,350
through a common gate
that works like a valve.

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Keeping the fuel isolated from the
environment

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and refrigerated at every stage

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00:14:43,855 --> 00:14:46,650
is therefore a matter of
fundamental security.

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And this is obtained
through different containment barriers

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00:14:50,531 --> 00:14:52,931
designed a bit like a matryoshka.

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00:14:53,510 --> 00:14:57,455
The first barrier is the capsule of iron,
the core of the reactor.

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00:14:58,940 --> 00:15:02,430
The second barrier is the shell of
reinforced concrete.

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00:15:03,130 --> 00:15:07,505
The walls of the building
are the last barrier between the reactor
and the atmosphere.

181
00:15:14,190 --> 00:15:16,700
At 3.46 p.m. on the 12th of March,

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00:15:16,720 --> 00:15:19,250
cameras document a huge explosion

183
00:15:19,255 --> 00:15:22,200
that shatters the top of reactor
building number one

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and seriously injures four workers.

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00:15:26,110 --> 00:15:30,300
Among the operators at Fukushima Daiichi
and the watching world,

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00:15:30,330 --> 00:15:31,850
panic escalates.

187
00:15:32,171 --> 00:15:34,600
Fortunately, the first reconnaissance shows

188
00:15:34,650 --> 00:15:37,050
only the top of the building has exploded,

189
00:15:37,051 --> 00:15:41,090
not the reactor, which seems to
be still intact.

190
00:15:43,730 --> 00:15:47,650
The radiation levels have not risen
when compared to their values

191
00:15:47,790 --> 00:15:50,290
before the explosion.

192
00:16:00,230 --> 00:16:03,300
All the radio channels are playing
funereal music,

193
00:16:03,310 --> 00:16:05,000
not a good sign.

194
00:16:05,390 --> 00:16:07,330
Even when Hirohito was dying,

195
00:16:07,332 --> 00:16:09,250
the music
was more cheerful.

196
00:16:12,530 --> 00:16:14,700
I drive without stopping until dawn

197
00:16:14,720 --> 00:16:18,200
when I
find myself in Kesennuma.

198
00:16:22,400 --> 00:16:23,250
my god!

199
00:16:25,920 --> 00:16:29,500
The tsunami is spared only a few
reinforced concrete buildings.

200
00:16:30,080 --> 00:16:36,681
The rest has been wiped out, run out and
regurgitated without any order or restraint.

201
00:16:37,561 --> 00:16:41,451
None of the authorities have arrived yet.
three days have passed....

202
00:16:42,441 --> 00:16:44,999
This is the situation of this...

203
00:16:51,771 --> 00:16:52,581
Hallo.

204
00:16:55,701 --> 00:16:56,501
Look...

205
00:16:58,761 --> 00:17:04,281
Kesennuma is a city of
about 60,000 inhabitants

206
00:17:04,721 --> 00:17:10,351
and it is one of the four capitals
of Japan's tuna fishing industry.

207
00:17:10,851 --> 00:17:13,871
- Now you see it's completely destroyed.
- Be careful.

208
00:17:14,841 --> 00:17:19,591
the tsunami is coming. be careful.

209
00:17:22,281 --> 00:17:23,671
is it coming now?

210
00:17:24,001 --> 00:17:26,241
Yes, the water level is rising.

211
00:17:27,320 --> 00:17:28,850
But she doesn't run away.

212
00:17:28,960 --> 00:17:30,060
She stays there.

213
00:17:30,070 --> 00:17:31,440
Her husband is sick.

214
00:17:31,460 --> 00:17:33,420
He isn't able to get out of bed

215
00:17:33,444 --> 00:17:36,400
and she has no intention of
abandoning him here.

216
00:17:36,600 --> 00:17:39,800
BANK OF KESENNUMA

217
00:17:39,970 --> 00:17:44,640
BANK CLOSED DUE TO TSUNAMI
WE APOLOGIZE FOR INCONVENIENCE

218
00:17:45,210 --> 00:17:46,600
Roma Olimpiade!

219
00:17:47,690 --> 00:17:50,360
Olympic Games in Rome?
The Olympic Games?

220
00:17:50,370 --> 00:17:51,500
50 years ago.

221
00:17:51,570 --> 00:17:53,700
Ah...it was in 1960.

222
00:17:54,210 --> 00:17:55,000
in 1960.

223
00:17:55,780 --> 00:17:57,300
He was an athlete, of what?

224
00:18:00,770 --> 00:18:03,960
Captain of eight rowing team.

225
00:18:04,410 --> 00:18:07,720
Where is your home?

226
00:18:08,130 --> 00:18:09,240
Where was your home?

227
00:18:09,530 --> 00:18:11,400
- There ... that one.
- That one.

228
00:18:23,410 --> 00:18:27,880
So, the Japanese Self-defense forces
have come to help.

229
00:18:28,050 --> 00:18:32,840
This is one of the first groups
of soldiers to receive orders

230
00:18:32,940 --> 00:18:35,000
as to how to organize themselves.

231
00:18:44,200 --> 00:18:45,500
No one is screaming.

232
00:18:47,420 --> 00:18:48,620
Nobody despairs.

233
00:18:50,630 --> 00:18:52,620
No one asks for help.

234
00:19:10,770 --> 00:19:13,520
Here we are between Kesennuma and Matsua.

235
00:19:14,210 --> 00:19:19,320
There is a never-ending line to buy
the last things left in the supermarket.

236
00:19:19,410 --> 00:19:23,600
The line is perfectly in order.
they have been here for six hours.

237
00:19:25,780 --> 00:19:28,428
Inhabiting seek to solve their problems

238
00:19:28,459 --> 00:19:31,521
rather than questioning
the nuclear emergency.

239
00:19:31,880 --> 00:19:35,650
Fukushima is still far away in every sense.

240
00:19:39,490 --> 00:19:42,290
The pressure in the reactors
increases again.

241
00:19:42,610 --> 00:19:47,130
They must be cooled and stabilized in
order to avoid the worst possible outcome.

242
00:19:47,280 --> 00:19:52,831
Due to the lack of fresh water, the use
of seawater seems to be the only solution.

243
00:19:53,310 --> 00:19:56,550
But it means the irreversible
damage of all reactors.

244
00:19:57,010 --> 00:20:00,227
Masao Yoshida, director
of the nuclear power plant,

245
00:20:00,228 --> 00:20:02,290
was the one to make the difficult decision.

246
00:20:02,320 --> 00:20:04,962
In direct violation of Tepco's orders,

247
00:20:05,031 --> 00:20:08,190
which were in favor of saving
the expensive reactors

248
00:20:08,200 --> 00:20:10,390
from the corrosive effects of salt.

249
00:20:13,840 --> 00:20:15,240
I didn't reach Fukushima.

250
00:20:18,470 --> 00:20:20,010
I came back here to Akita.

251
00:20:21,410 --> 00:20:24,200
And I'm afraid for the first time.

252
00:20:28,205 --> 00:20:29,310
Is it right to stay?

253
00:20:29,390 --> 00:20:30,930
I have a family in Italy.

254
00:20:31,700 --> 00:20:32,750
Five children.

255
00:20:32,790 --> 00:20:34,410
Is it right to risk it?

256
00:20:34,430 --> 00:20:37,420
I trust this government and
especially the prime minister.

257
00:20:37,650 --> 00:20:42,500
But the problem is can this government
trust Tepco and the nuclear industry?

258
00:20:43,550 --> 00:20:45,303
Naoto was a simple and
honest person

259
00:20:45,314 --> 00:20:48,671
who would never allow the
contamination of his people.

260
00:20:48,870 --> 00:20:50,700
I decide to call him directly,

261
00:20:51,330 --> 00:20:53,900
taking advantage of our old friendship.

262
00:20:54,831 --> 00:20:56,030
But I can't reach him.

263
00:20:56,530 --> 00:21:00,470
When I cannot talk to him, or I have to
address a delicate matter.

264
00:21:00,890 --> 00:21:03,770
I get in contact with his wife, Nobuko.

265
00:21:04,090 --> 00:21:05,440
Hello, Kan speaking.

266
00:21:05,890 --> 00:21:07,200
Hi, it's Pio.

267
00:21:07,850 --> 00:21:10,240
Ah, Pio-San! How are you?

268
00:21:10,330 --> 00:21:14,840
Well, Worried. And I’m still working,

269
00:21:14,930 --> 00:21:17,720
but both the company and my wife
tell me to come back.

270
00:21:18,410 --> 00:21:23,120
Here everyone has fled.

271
00:21:23,490 --> 00:21:24,520
Yes, I understand.

272
00:21:24,930 --> 00:21:26,440
You know,

273
00:21:27,010 --> 00:21:28,840
I get that the foreigners are leaving.

274
00:21:28,930 --> 00:21:30,920
if I were a foreigner maybe I'd leave, too.

275
00:21:31,010 --> 00:21:34,000
I would go back home,
but this is our home.

276
00:21:34,090 --> 00:21:37,400
Where do you want us to go?
We have to have faith, and wait.

277
00:21:38,490 --> 00:21:39,240
Right...

278
00:21:39,450 --> 00:21:43,280
But the problem is knowing
if they are giving us

279
00:21:43,370 --> 00:21:46,880
the correct information,
if they telling us the truth.

280
00:21:46,970 --> 00:21:52,120
in other words,
if we can believe the Tepco authorities.

281
00:21:54,140 --> 00:21:56,500
At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant,

282
00:21:56,512 --> 00:22:01,500
they realize that the core of reactors 1,
2 and 3 have already been damaged.

283
00:22:02,120 --> 00:22:05,800
In a desperate move, the government sends
a team of specialized firemen

284
00:22:05,801 --> 00:22:08,700
in an attempt to curb the
most severe situation,

285
00:22:08,950 --> 00:22:10,920
the one in the third reactor.

286
00:22:11,860 --> 00:22:13,420
The men have hardly arrived,

287
00:22:13,920 --> 00:22:18,640
When a massive explosion destroys the
whole upper part of the building 3,

288
00:22:18,760 --> 00:22:20,900
also involving building 4.

289
00:22:26,190 --> 00:22:29,470
Some of the embassies are stoking fear
irresponsibly.

290
00:22:29,670 --> 00:22:33,221
Most of the foreign press exaggerates,
distorts, or myths,

291
00:22:33,231 --> 00:22:35,551
or often it invents fact.

292
00:22:38,540 --> 00:22:40,650
Americans minimize the accident,

293
00:22:40,660 --> 00:22:43,800
the French warn of inevitable apocalypse.

294
00:22:45,020 --> 00:22:47,900
The reactors that are used in Fukushima
and the rest of Japan

295
00:22:47,902 --> 00:22:49,750
are made in the United States,

296
00:22:50,017 --> 00:22:54,161
and the American industry intends
to continue with their business enterprise.

297
00:22:54,900 --> 00:22:58,340
On the other hand, France would like to
sell its state-of-the-art reactors,

298
00:22:58,740 --> 00:23:00,320
which they say are safe.

299
00:23:01,360 --> 00:23:06,320
The only official sources I know are the
Japanese National Agency for Nuclear Safety,

300
00:23:06,421 --> 00:23:09,120
that is more similar to a
censorship agency,

301
00:23:09,320 --> 00:23:15,460
and the International Agency for
Atomic Energy, for Atomic Energy.

302
00:23:15,840 --> 00:23:20,100
The only thing that can help me understand
is going directly to the power plant.

303
00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:31,740
Camera is revealed a third powerful
explosion in the building of reactor 2.

304
00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:36,500
The walls remain intact, but a part of the
reactor suffers serious damage.

305
00:23:37,020 --> 00:23:40,300
Tepco abandons all hope
of saving the situation,

306
00:23:40,305 --> 00:23:44,100
and considers the possibility of
evacuating all its employees.

307
00:23:44,280 --> 00:23:48,150
Naoto Kan decides to go personally to
the headquarters in Tokyo

308
00:23:48,181 --> 00:23:52,180
and forces the president Shimizu
not to abandon a ship.

309
00:23:53,260 --> 00:23:57,850
Doing so would imply the
uncontrolled meltdown of all reactors,

310
00:23:57,851 --> 00:24:01,680
thus putting the
very existence of Japan at risk.

311
00:24:22,450 --> 00:24:26,800
You know it, but you find it difficult to
maintain the consonant awareness

312
00:24:26,801 --> 00:24:31,690
that behind every broken window, every
destroyed car and every upturn boat,

313
00:24:32,180 --> 00:24:37,080
that lies the story of a person,
of a family, of an entire country.

314
00:24:37,170 --> 00:24:40,800
My parents are still here.

315
00:24:42,530 --> 00:24:47,440
My sister was found. my mother not yet.

316
00:24:48,340 --> 00:24:50,600
Here, you have no peace

317
00:24:50,601 --> 00:24:54,800
if you know that a loved one
was not accepted worthy in the after wold

318
00:24:54,801 --> 00:24:58,150
and still wanders in the
world which he is no longer part of.

319
00:25:00,895 --> 00:25:02,210
They watch over the bodies,

320
00:25:02,211 --> 00:25:04,850
wash them,
dress them with care,

321
00:25:05,350 --> 00:25:06,700
put makeup on them.

322
00:25:07,780 --> 00:25:10,800
After choosing no auspicious day for the
cremation,

323
00:25:11,352 --> 00:25:15,060
they get ready by placing their
most prized possessions next to them,

324
00:25:15,402 --> 00:25:18,800
finally proceeding to the right of shikotsu

325
00:25:19,241 --> 00:25:22,950
the delicate meticulous right of
collecting the bones in the urns.

326
00:25:24,380 --> 00:25:26,380
It's such an intense moment.

327
00:25:33,010 --> 00:25:34,280
I deliver this to you.

328
00:25:36,380 --> 00:25:39,840
The shikotsu ritual is celebrated also for
pets.

329
00:25:58,300 --> 00:26:02,650
But the tsunami also caused the suspension
of cremations for lack of fuel.

330
00:26:02,810 --> 00:26:03,950
So just two and half gallons?

331
00:26:04,410 --> 00:26:05,360
I give two.

332
00:26:05,375 --> 00:26:08,651
It was necessary to resort
to collective burials,

333
00:26:09,002 --> 00:26:12,400
which to the Japanese are
considered as sad and offensive.

334
00:26:41,990 --> 00:26:44,100
The tsunami swept everything away,

335
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:47,000
including the right to feel pain,

336
00:26:47,020 --> 00:26:49,260
to remember and
to mourn the dead.

337
00:27:03,201 --> 00:27:09,591
I'm very worried
about the situation at the nuclear plant,

338
00:27:10,201 --> 00:27:16,151
which is very dangerous and unpredictable.

339
00:27:17,840 --> 00:27:20,351
At lunchtime on the 16th of March,

340
00:27:20,352 --> 00:27:25,171
Emperor Akihito is speaking
with a live broadcast.

341
00:27:25,750 --> 00:27:30,881
It's the first time that an Emperor uses
television to speak directly to the people.

342
00:27:34,260 --> 00:27:36,255
There are those who remember
his father,

343
00:27:36,256 --> 00:27:38,900
Emperor Hirohito's dramatic speech
on the radio,

344
00:27:38,905 --> 00:27:40,750
announcing the end of the war.

345
00:27:40,930 --> 00:27:43,900
Now Japan is fighting for
the life of its people,

346
00:27:44,250 --> 00:27:45,700
as it did back then.

347
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:52,400
Tepco, pressured by the government,
takes its decision.

348
00:27:53,280 --> 00:27:56,750
About 50 men are left there to deal with
the situation.

349
00:27:56,870 --> 00:27:59,450
They operate in extreme conditions.

350
00:28:00,110 --> 00:28:03,750
Separated from the rest of the world,
contaminated by radiation,

351
00:28:03,755 --> 00:28:07,510
without any news from family
members affected by the tsunami,

352
00:28:07,551 --> 00:28:09,790
they fight to cool reactors,

353
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:12,470
restore electricity and security systems.

354
00:28:12,745 --> 00:28:15,070
Often, by means of luck.

355
00:28:19,590 --> 00:28:22,270
It's time to decide what to do,
and in a hurry.

356
00:28:22,740 --> 00:28:25,306
The majority of my Italian
and foreign colleagues

357
00:28:25,307 --> 00:28:27,690
have already left the country
and moved to the south.

358
00:28:28,410 --> 00:28:30,070
Even if I wanted to go back,

359
00:28:30,370 --> 00:28:32,970
Tokyo airports are now closed or clogged.

360
00:28:33,510 --> 00:28:36,950
In case the situation worsened,
I would feel safer here in the north,

361
00:28:37,580 --> 00:28:41,180
protected by a mountain
range rather than in Tokyo or Osaka,

362
00:28:41,281 --> 00:28:44,630
where the wind would
propel the radioactive cloud.

363
00:28:46,300 --> 00:28:48,130
As for a possible speedy escape,

364
00:28:48,350 --> 00:28:51,140
from Akita you can fly directly to Korea,

365
00:28:51,455 --> 00:28:54,550
or by car you can easily reach the island
of Hokkaido.

366
00:28:55,370 --> 00:28:59,150
from the capital city of Sapporo you
can get to the entire world.

367
00:29:01,430 --> 00:29:04,320
American drones during
the aerial reconnaissance

368
00:29:04,351 --> 00:29:09,350
discovered the water in the spent fuel pool
on top of reactor number four is evaporating

369
00:29:09,401 --> 00:29:13,201
and the spent fuel rods which have just
been extracted are still hot

370
00:29:13,252 --> 00:29:15,600
and are likely to
be exposed to the air.

371
00:29:16,550 --> 00:29:19,208
Naoto Kan orders the
army to use helicopters

372
00:29:19,259 --> 00:29:22,520
in order to dump water taken
directly from the sea.

373
00:29:23,790 --> 00:29:27,990
A high level of water in the pool must be
maintained at any cost.

374
00:29:29,390 --> 00:29:33,550
Unlike the reactor, there is no structure
that can contain the fishing.

375
00:29:34,930 --> 00:29:36,950
Flying over reactor number four,

376
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:40,750
the helicopters are exposed to
excessive doses of radiation

377
00:29:40,771 --> 00:29:45,557
and strong wind also prevents the drivers
from performing their necessary maneuvers.

378
00:29:46,210 --> 00:29:50,490
The only alternative is the use of
powerful water cannons at broad range,

379
00:29:50,670 --> 00:29:52,500
pointed directly at the pool,

380
00:29:52,850 --> 00:29:56,650
a maneuver which is defined
by many as a desperate one.

381
00:29:59,361 --> 00:30:05,960
We decided to evacuate people
who lived 12 miles away

382
00:30:06,370 --> 00:30:12,351
from Fukushima Daiichi's plant.

383
00:30:17,041 --> 00:30:19,431
You see here the sign says.

384
00:30:20,881 --> 00:30:26,071
"danger beyond this point,
12 mile regulated traffic zone."

385
00:30:27,980 --> 00:30:31,710
With this brief intrusion, I don't run any
risk.

386
00:30:31,850 --> 00:30:36,610
I just have to stay for a little while and
not leave any part of my body uncovered.

387
00:31:04,170 --> 00:31:06,280
This is a secondary internal route
of Futaba.

388
00:31:06,330 --> 00:31:10,360
the last town two and half miles away
from the nuclear plant.

389
00:31:10,450 --> 00:31:17,240
Nothing has changed
since the people escaped.

390
00:31:24,450 --> 00:31:27,650
Earthquake, tsunami, nuclear fallout,

391
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:31,750
This is the area that undergone
all three of them.

392
00:31:35,630 --> 00:31:37,520
the navigator is not going mad.

393
00:31:37,531 --> 00:31:41,150
It indicates roads that no longer exist.

394
00:31:44,090 --> 00:31:50,760
Now we are one mile away
from Fukushima Daiichi.

395
00:31:51,490 --> 00:31:58,400
the nuclear plant that is threatening
japan and the rest of the world.

396
00:32:02,369 --> 00:32:03,720
Here is the power plant station.

397
00:32:04,490 --> 00:32:07,720
It's better for me to leave
or these people will stop me soon.

398
00:32:19,865 --> 00:32:21,990
The situation seems to improve.

399
00:32:22,450 --> 00:32:26,400
The water level in the In the pool of
reactor number four suddenly rises again,

400
00:32:26,755 --> 00:32:29,450
and the level of
radiation begins to fall.

401
00:32:30,390 --> 00:32:32,450
The reactors remain unapproachable,

402
00:32:32,541 --> 00:32:37,590
but the workers can go back to the control
room without incurring any serious risks.

403
00:32:38,490 --> 00:32:43,290
At the end of March 2011, seawater is
substituted with distilled water.

404
00:32:44,030 --> 00:32:46,890
However, the cooling circuit is no longer
watertight.

405
00:32:47,770 --> 00:32:52,470
The use of seawater, in addition to the
fresh water, stabilizes the reactors.

406
00:32:52,481 --> 00:32:57,000
But results also in the release of
more than 11,000 tons

407
00:32:57,002 --> 00:32:59,450
of radioactive water into the ocean,

408
00:33:00,151 --> 00:33:03,890
causing great concern amongst
the international community.

409
00:33:04,670 --> 00:33:09,190
The accident is classified at the highest
level of the INES scale.

410
00:33:10,130 --> 00:33:13,605
Most of the national media
begin accusing a prime minister

411
00:33:13,620 --> 00:33:16,290
of managing the
emergency irresponsibly.

412
00:33:22,950 --> 00:33:27,520
Before the accident, Naoto was in
favor of nuclear energy.

413
00:33:28,600 --> 00:33:30,700
Now he has changed his point of view.

414
00:33:31,500 --> 00:33:35,840
Well, changing ideas in politics comes
with a very high price.

415
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:40,840
Not everyone wants to pay it.

416
00:33:46,170 --> 00:33:50,480
Naoto Kan tendered his resignation from
his position as Japan's prime minister,

417
00:33:50,550 --> 00:33:52,420
following the agreement with the
opposition.

418
00:33:52,450 --> 00:33:55,124
And after having attained
a series of incentives

419
00:33:55,155 --> 00:33:57,201
for the development
of renewable energy.

420
00:33:57,680 --> 00:33:59,820
The director of Fukushima Daiichi's plant,

421
00:33:59,880 --> 00:34:03,140
Masao Yoshida, has been forced
to resign from his position

422
00:34:03,151 --> 00:34:06,776
to be admitted to hospital and
submitted to urgent medical treatments.

423
00:34:07,208 --> 00:34:10,990
The manager will be replaced with the new
director Takeshi Takahashi.

424
00:34:11,460 --> 00:34:13,750
Japanese prime minister Yoshihiko Noda

425
00:34:13,791 --> 00:34:17,660
declared to the nation that the reactor
would reach the cold shutdown state.

426
00:34:19,460 --> 00:34:23,500
Today, Japan closed down, officially,
for a necessary emergency maintenance,

427
00:34:23,680 --> 00:34:26,880
the last of its 54 still working nuclear
reactors.

428
00:34:27,820 --> 00:34:32,140
The new prime minister Shinzo Abe announces
the intention of going back to nuclear.

429
00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:34,754
The gradual reopening of
the old power plants

430
00:34:34,805 --> 00:34:37,600
and the resuming of work on those
still under construction.

431
00:34:37,951 --> 00:34:41,920
The government's decision causes various
protests all over the country.

432
00:35:47,690 --> 00:35:49,000
Follow me!

433
00:36:03,060 --> 00:36:08,920
ACT II
THE INVISIBLE ENEMY

434
00:37:20,730 --> 00:37:24,040
FIRST FROM THE REGION. FROM YOUR HANDS.
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF JAPAN

435
00:37:25,090 --> 00:37:29,600
Were you afraid to die?

436
00:37:33,130 --> 00:37:36,030
As you know, on the morning of the 15th,

437
00:37:36,050 --> 00:37:39,780
I personally went to Tepco's headquarters.

438
00:37:40,890 --> 00:37:42,490
The situation was tragic.

439
00:37:43,190 --> 00:37:49,190
and Tepco's executives were considering
the option of evacuating the plant,

440
00:37:49,270 --> 00:37:51,670
of leaving it to its destiny.

441
00:37:52,420 --> 00:37:53,970
I was furious.

442
00:37:54,210 --> 00:37:58,323
I told the executives
that such a thing was unthinkable,

443
00:37:58,584 --> 00:38:01,790
that the
whole of Japan was at risk.

444
00:38:01,910 --> 00:38:05,270
And that instead, we should hold up until
the end

445
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:07,250
to avoid tragedy.

446
00:38:07,630 --> 00:38:10,750
The future of Japan was at stake.

447
00:38:13,300 --> 00:38:16,250
We could not run the risk of contamination

448
00:38:16,890 --> 00:38:19,050
for who knows how long.

449
00:38:20,570 --> 00:38:21,800
Something had to be done,

450
00:38:22,450 --> 00:38:25,850
even if that
meant putting our lives at risk.

451
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:28,402
And this meant everyone,

452
00:38:28,882 --> 00:38:32,622
us politicians, Tepco's executives,

453
00:38:33,343 --> 00:38:38,430
the army, the fire brigade,
the police, everyone.

454
00:38:40,850 --> 00:38:45,250
So this is the emergency control
headquarters.

455
00:38:49,660 --> 00:38:55,170
The dynamic of the meltdown was almost
identical in all three damage reactors.

456
00:38:57,170 --> 00:38:59,550
During the earthquake, the
reactors shut down,

457
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:03,130
but in the absence of cooling,
water evaporated in the core.

458
00:39:03,830 --> 00:39:06,208
The fuel rods were then
left exposed,

459
00:39:06,220 --> 00:39:10,750
quickly reaching a temperature of about
3 ,000 degrees Celsius.

460
00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:14,756
And thus melted, forming a
kind of magma called corium,

461
00:39:14,766 --> 00:39:17,050
releasing large quantities of
hydrogen,

462
00:39:17,150 --> 00:39:19,300
a highly explosive gas.

463
00:39:19,710 --> 00:39:23,350
The pressure in the pool and the reactors'
capsule thus rocketed.

464
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:25,700
And to prevent the reactors' explosion,

465
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:29,200
the technicians were forced to expel
radioactive gas

466
00:39:29,251 --> 00:39:32,350
into the atmosphere
through the central chimney stack.

467
00:39:33,495 --> 00:39:36,001
But the gas seeped into
the center of the building

468
00:39:36,002 --> 00:39:38,751
because of the many gaps
caused by the earthquake.

469
00:39:39,630 --> 00:39:43,100
The hydrogen reacted violently with the
oxygen in the air,

470
00:39:43,251 --> 00:39:47,753
and the explosion destroyed the top part
of building 1, 3, and 4,

471
00:39:47,764 --> 00:39:50,551
apparently without
damaging the reactors.

472
00:39:52,085 --> 00:39:56,350
During the explosion, there were large
releases of radioactive materials

473
00:39:56,355 --> 00:39:59,150
which carried by the wind settled
on the sea,

474
00:39:59,155 --> 00:40:02,311
lands and cities of the Fukushima district.

475
00:40:04,921 --> 00:40:05,911
Thank you all for waiting.

476
00:40:06,003 --> 00:40:10,791
I introduce to you Mr. Takeshi Takahashi,
Fukushima Daiichi's plant director.

477
00:40:11,521 --> 00:40:14,551
My name is Takeshi Takahashi,

478
00:40:14,881 --> 00:40:19,911
I took on the role of plant director
in December of 2011,

479
00:40:20,001 --> 00:40:23,881
succeeding my predecessor,
Mr. Masao Yoshida.

480
00:40:25,450 --> 00:40:29,271
First of all,
I want to apologize sincerely

481
00:40:29,641 --> 00:40:32,111
to people around the world
for the damage caused by this incident.

482
00:40:33,650 --> 00:40:36,770
Apologies play an important role in
Japan's culture.

483
00:40:37,270 --> 00:40:41,348
Also, Tepco's president,
Shimizu, has apologized,

484
00:40:41,350 --> 00:40:43,971
but the apologies have
not been appreciated.

485
00:40:44,250 --> 00:40:46,452
As often as the case in Japan,

486
00:40:46,463 --> 00:40:50,500
it was just a formal apology and not
a taking of responsibility.

487
00:40:51,290 --> 00:40:54,880
Indeed, Tepco deemed the incident
as sotagai

488
00:40:54,900 --> 00:40:56,750
which means unpredictable,

489
00:40:56,805 --> 00:41:02,050
because in their opinion, nobody could
have predicted a 14 meter high tsunami.

490
00:41:48,330 --> 00:41:53,700
How can you live in the fear that your
child might get cancer, leukemia?

491
00:41:54,470 --> 00:41:57,810
For example, because you bought an
affected milk carton.

492
00:41:58,530 --> 00:42:03,170
Japanese people left alone, organized
themselves alone.

493
00:42:04,070 --> 00:42:08,990
New associations, solidarity groups,
self-managed initiatives are soon born.

494
00:42:09,210 --> 00:42:13,890
Full body screening and food analysis are
carried out autonomously.

495
00:42:14,070 --> 00:42:18,300
In some private houses, domestic markets
are organized at the weekend.

496
00:42:18,530 --> 00:42:22,548
Moms from that area come together
to buy products from distant crops,

497
00:42:22,649 --> 00:42:25,990
from provinces
that are considered to be safe.

498
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:29,500
Also, because online commerce is
dramatically growing,

499
00:42:29,550 --> 00:42:31,830
and with it, scams.

500
00:42:36,420 --> 00:42:40,480
In a country where citizens were used to
leaving their goods unattended on the streets,

501
00:42:40,790 --> 00:42:43,330
where shoppers left money and
exchange for produce,

502
00:42:44,151 --> 00:42:46,000
people have lost their trust,

503
00:42:46,200 --> 00:42:48,250
especially in the authorities.

504
00:42:48,870 --> 00:42:51,520
This is the most serious
and hidden collateral damage

505
00:42:51,521 --> 00:42:53,801
produced by
Fukushima's accident.

506
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:59,790
The disappearance of that harmony,
that politeness and that equilibrium,

507
00:42:59,950 --> 00:43:02,830
that Japanese people call wa.

508
00:43:03,930 --> 00:43:08,310
Not to mention deaths caused by broken
hearts, by depression, by stress,

509
00:43:08,430 --> 00:43:13,530
and about suicide committed in the situation
of desperation or for mere calculation,

510
00:43:13,631 --> 00:43:19,201
because in Japan, insurance
pays and also well, in cases of suicide.

511
00:43:19,321 --> 00:43:22,791
Yesterday my husband asked me
if I had thought about leaving.

512
00:43:23,681 --> 00:43:25,151
He said to me.

513
00:43:25,241 --> 00:43:31,311
"I have to earn money for you,
I have to stay here to work,

514
00:43:32,161 --> 00:43:33,951
to allow you to live.

515
00:43:34,041 --> 00:43:40,391
This way you can leave."

516
00:43:42,561 --> 00:43:47,071
And I said, "And what are we going to do
about the mortgage?"

517
00:43:47,161 --> 00:43:48,951
And he answered,

518
00:43:49,641 --> 00:43:52,431
"I made some calculations,
if I die, the insurance company...

519
00:43:53,241 --> 00:43:55,711
will be there to pay."

520
00:44:00,160 --> 00:44:03,280
Fukushima is an entirely domestic tragedy.

521
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:05,400
It happened in a time of peace.

522
00:44:05,500 --> 00:44:10,650
While Hiroshima and Nagasaki were
tragedies caused by a foreign force,

523
00:44:10,655 --> 00:44:13,000
which put World War II to an end.

524
00:44:47,110 --> 00:44:50,362
The Japanese people
came out of the tragedy defeated,

525
00:44:50,366 --> 00:44:52,530
but strengthened in their spirit.

526
00:44:54,970 --> 00:44:58,328
Traditionally, the Japanese
respect winners,

527
00:44:58,459 --> 00:45:01,970
and do not seek revenge if victory
was obtained honestly.

528
00:45:03,860 --> 00:45:07,870
Whether they are forces of nature,
such as tsunamis or earthquakes,

529
00:45:08,230 --> 00:45:11,400
or whether they are valiant men like
General Douglas MacArthur,

530
00:45:11,421 --> 00:45:15,930
they try to imitate them and then,
if possible, to overcome them.

531
00:45:21,830 --> 00:45:25,250
But radiation has no form, has no smell,

532
00:45:25,350 --> 00:45:27,300
does not make any sound.

533
00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:30,900
It's an invisible, sneaky enemy,

534
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:34,650
and to fight it, will take
at least 40 years.

535
00:45:35,130 --> 00:45:37,720
There are many complicated procedures,

536
00:45:37,810 --> 00:45:40,280
the hardest one will be
the removal of the corium

537
00:45:40,370 --> 00:45:42,760
from the reactors
that were subjected to meltdown.

538
00:45:42,850 --> 00:45:49,240
It's an operation
that has never been attempted before.

539
00:45:51,290 --> 00:45:53,960
We are aware

540
00:45:54,050 --> 00:46:00,520
that one of the biggest problems
of this plant

541
00:46:01,090 --> 00:46:07,320
is the huge volume of contaminated water

542
00:46:07,490 --> 00:46:11,520
that contains large number
of radionuclides.

543
00:46:12,970 --> 00:46:18,360
In order to manage this growing quantity
of water we have built some tanks,

544
00:46:18,650 --> 00:46:25,320
and we are continuing to build new ones.

545
00:46:26,730 --> 00:46:30,200
Now let's talk about the removal
of the spent fuel.

546
00:46:30,890 --> 00:46:36,800
The pool inside still contains
more than 1,500 rods of spent fuel

547
00:46:37,730 --> 00:46:39,880
and this pool is in the top floor
of the building.

548
00:46:40,290 --> 00:46:47,040
Our plan is to enclose
the rods of spent fuel

549
00:46:47,130 --> 00:46:55,120
in a container
lowered directly into the pool.

550
00:46:55,690 --> 00:46:59,440
The container is then lifted vertically
by the crane

551
00:46:59,530 --> 00:47:03,160
and moved horizontally

552
00:47:03,530 --> 00:47:06,400
When it has reached the right position,

553
00:47:06,490 --> 00:47:09,440
the container is then lowered
to the ground.

554
00:47:10,010 --> 00:47:15,160
the container is then carried

555
00:47:15,410 --> 00:47:20,440
to the communal pool created
for depositing the spent rods.

556
00:47:20,890 --> 00:47:23,560
We will then to be able to continue
the general decommissioning

557
00:47:23,650 --> 00:47:25,440
with increased safety.

558
00:47:26,010 --> 00:47:30,640
We expect to complete this task
in about a year.

559
00:47:31,380 --> 00:47:33,900
And in eternity to dispose,

560
00:47:33,950 --> 00:47:37,600
they were talking about
this in Onkalo, in Finland.

561
00:47:37,680 --> 00:47:39,680
The Finnish government has decided to bury

562
00:47:39,688 --> 00:47:42,885
4,500 tons of nuclear waste,

563
00:47:42,887 --> 00:47:44,800
which comes from its nuclear plants

564
00:47:44,808 --> 00:47:47,604
in a complex system of
underground catacombs

565
00:47:47,605 --> 00:47:51,060
designed to last at least 100,000 years.

566
00:47:51,250 --> 00:47:53,240
Well do you know what the problem is now?

567
00:47:53,570 --> 00:47:58,200
It is deciding in what language
to write the notice

568
00:47:58,370 --> 00:48:00,080
at the entrance of this storage facility,

569
00:48:00,170 --> 00:48:04,040
considering that the languages
we use now

570
00:48:04,210 --> 00:48:06,160
will probably extinct in 100,000 years.

571
00:48:06,250 --> 00:48:09,480
Above all. the aim is
to avoid pointing out

572
00:48:09,570 --> 00:48:12,720
that radioactive cemetery,

573
00:48:12,890 --> 00:48:14,960
the most dangerous that ever existed,
lies below.

574
00:48:27,230 --> 00:48:30,570
There is another kind of repository
linked to nuclear energy.

575
00:48:30,620 --> 00:48:33,550
And it is an outdoor repository.

576
00:48:37,200 --> 00:48:41,510
It is the one for the Hinan-sha,
the nuclear power refugees.

577
00:48:42,090 --> 00:48:44,520
People living here are all from Odaka.

578
00:48:50,860 --> 00:48:53,060
There were supposed to be
a few hundred people,

579
00:48:53,070 --> 00:48:55,260
then thousands of people,

580
00:48:56,400 --> 00:48:58,500
then hundreds of thousands of people.

581
00:49:03,970 --> 00:49:06,703
There are people that
have had to abandon their homes,

582
00:49:06,706 --> 00:49:09,651
their land, their
roots, may be forever.

583
00:49:10,270 --> 00:49:13,263
And are forced to
live in these temporary houses,

584
00:49:13,273 --> 00:49:16,660
a nightmare almost worse than radiation.

585
00:49:22,630 --> 00:49:25,870
This is what happened to my friend Yoshida
and to his family.

586
00:49:25,970 --> 00:49:28,080
IDOKAWA

587
00:49:37,290 --> 00:49:40,680
The government would want us
to return to our houses.

588
00:49:41,450 --> 00:49:45,440
but we have to wait

589
00:49:46,410 --> 00:49:51,720
for the result of decontamination.

590
00:49:51,810 --> 00:49:54,320
Everything depends on this result.

591
00:50:50,330 --> 00:50:53,200
Can you hear me? One, two, three, check...
One, two, three, check...

592
00:50:53,720 --> 00:50:57,200
Asami is a young and brave freelance
journalist

593
00:50:57,331 --> 00:51:01,930
who from the very first days strive to
understand how the situation really was.

594
00:51:02,350 --> 00:51:06,570
She is the one who accompanied us more
than once in the no-go zone.

595
00:51:06,571 --> 00:51:09,550
And she is the one who introduces us to
Matsumoto,

596
00:51:09,561 --> 00:51:12,906
a local boss, who provides
workforce for Tepco

597
00:51:12,926 --> 00:51:14,886
and is agreed to hide us in his car

598
00:51:14,887 --> 00:51:17,850
to pass through the
ever -increasing controls.

599
00:51:17,970 --> 00:51:23,720
He is a very educated guy,
even if his past is questionable.

600
00:51:23,810 --> 00:51:25,760
He spent six years in prison.

601
00:51:25,850 --> 00:51:31,440
He is a member of the yakuza.

602
00:51:39,080 --> 00:51:41,004
If during the first
days of the emergency,

603
00:51:41,005 --> 00:51:43,501
entering the forbidden
zone was discouraged.

604
00:51:43,920 --> 00:51:48,040
Now, entering the exclusion zone is
severely prohibited.

605
00:51:49,180 --> 00:51:50,180
But we can't stop.

606
00:51:50,680 --> 00:51:53,360
We decide altogether to violate the ban.

607
00:51:53,540 --> 00:51:58,100
We are convinced that in such cases,
the journalists not only have a right to,

608
00:51:58,660 --> 00:51:59,840
but must do so.

609
00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:06,940
Also, because the forbidden zone exerts a
special, almost perverse attraction.

610
00:52:08,100 --> 00:52:13,040
There is still the presence of life,
but a life that smells of death.

611
00:52:27,270 --> 00:52:31,640
In the first days of May,
after two months of guilty forgetfulness,

612
00:52:31,641 --> 00:52:34,320
the government has issued its cruel verdict.

613
00:52:34,670 --> 00:52:39,210
For first class domestic animals,
cats, dogs, rabbits, hamsters

614
00:52:39,690 --> 00:52:42,710
The owners can now decide
to go and get them.

615
00:52:44,030 --> 00:52:47,810
And if they have survived,
take them to specialized centers

616
00:52:47,811 --> 00:52:50,710
where they will be checked
before being given back,

617
00:52:50,735 --> 00:52:53,390
who knows when, to their rightful owners.

618
00:52:55,290 --> 00:52:59,640
Okuma Machi, a few miles
from Fukushima nuclear energy plant.

619
00:52:59,730 --> 00:53:01,560
A city which has now become a ghost town

620
00:53:02,290 --> 00:53:06,320
and where only some dogs and cats survived.

621
00:53:06,610 --> 00:53:12,320
A group of Japanese people
comes now and again to feed them.

622
00:53:20,630 --> 00:53:24,922
For all the other animals,
pigs, cows, poultry, sheep, horses,

623
00:53:25,523 --> 00:53:28,600
there is what Japanese media
call inaccurately

624
00:53:28,605 --> 00:53:30,030
Sweet death.

625
00:53:32,810 --> 00:53:36,730
The government has decided that they
should be given lethal injections.

626
00:53:36,970 --> 00:53:40,000
But before someone decides
who will perform this task,

627
00:53:40,150 --> 00:53:43,150
these poor animals,
by now abandoned,

628
00:53:43,162 --> 00:53:45,732
dying one after the other of starvation,

629
00:53:45,783 --> 00:53:48,551
amidst excruciating suffering.

630
00:53:49,190 --> 00:53:53,500
And they become useless compost
for now useless land.

631
00:53:53,530 --> 00:53:57,040
Look, this is a museum of terrors.

632
00:53:57,770 --> 00:54:01,000
The carcasses of cows still lie here,
after two or three months.

633
00:54:01,890 --> 00:54:07,520
In the back of this group
that is desperately trying to survive,

634
00:54:08,520 --> 00:54:14,920
eating who knows what rubbish.

635
00:54:16,210 --> 00:54:18,480
There is also dead bodies of pigs.

636
00:54:20,290 --> 00:54:22,040
pigs which eat each one another.

637
00:54:33,550 --> 00:54:36,522
The government has decided
that places which show values

638
00:54:36,533 --> 00:54:38,900
above one microsievert per hour

639
00:54:38,990 --> 00:54:41,260
are unfit for habitation.

640
00:54:41,300 --> 00:54:44,450
This is the limit that sets the boundary
of the no-go zone,

641
00:54:44,650 --> 00:54:47,600
which previously corresponded to an area

642
00:54:47,602 --> 00:54:50,960
of a 20 kilometer radius
from the nuclear plant.

643
00:54:51,760 --> 00:54:56,450
In a second moment, the boundaries were
reset based on contamination levels.

644
00:54:58,025 --> 00:55:00,850
But without taking hotspots into account,

645
00:55:02,401 --> 00:55:06,753
they are spread all over even beyond
the limit of 20 kilometers,

646
00:55:06,755 --> 00:55:08,850
and they often mark very high values,

647
00:55:09,405 --> 00:55:11,990
which are incompatible with human life.

648
00:55:12,890 --> 00:55:17,560
Three, two, one, zero... Look! Over!

649
00:55:19,850 --> 00:55:23,600
The radiation here is over
the dosimeters capacity,

650
00:55:23,690 --> 00:55:26,400
which is one millisievert.

651
00:55:27,570 --> 00:55:29,640
Maybe it's better if we leave immediately.

652
00:56:24,090 --> 00:56:30,640
These are people who lived in the area.

653
00:56:39,650 --> 00:56:42,240
They have only an hour.
They do not have time.

654
00:56:45,890 --> 00:56:49,240
Good morning.

655
00:56:49,940 --> 00:56:52,150
They are some of the displaced persons,

656
00:56:52,350 --> 00:56:53,600
the house owners,

657
00:56:53,621 --> 00:56:56,080
The government has granted them one hour

658
00:56:56,200 --> 00:56:58,250
in which they are allowed
to enter their house

659
00:56:58,255 --> 00:57:01,211
and fetch their most
important treasure possessions

660
00:57:01,312 --> 00:57:04,380
which they have left behind
in the emergency escape.

661
00:57:11,570 --> 00:57:14,800
Also, the hospital in Futaba was quickly
abandoned.

662
00:57:15,850 --> 00:57:21,560
Why are there so many beds outside,
so many wheelchairs?

663
00:57:22,210 --> 00:57:27,560
Because for some days the patients
were left alone,after some days

664
00:57:27,650 --> 00:57:34,600
the patients were carried out
here with their beds.

665
00:57:35,170 --> 00:57:41,880
Unfortunately, it is said that during
the transportation some of them died,

666
00:57:42,570 --> 00:57:46,040
if I remember correctly, 14 of them died.

667
00:57:55,000 --> 00:57:58,560
Not everyone is obeyed the order to
abandon the forbidden zone.

668
00:57:58,935 --> 00:58:01,534
Some, like Naoko Takahara

669
00:58:01,555 --> 00:58:05,050
and his family have decided to stay
in their home in Naraba.

670
00:58:05,410 --> 00:58:07,570
His mother is 94 years old.

671
00:58:08,090 --> 00:58:11,129
She is very fragile
and has not left her bed.

672
00:58:11,130 --> 00:58:12,040
My mother.

673
00:58:12,930 --> 00:58:13,840
Good morning.

674
00:58:13,930 --> 00:58:17,640
He's a guest.

675
00:58:18,770 --> 00:58:19,640
Good morning.

676
00:58:19,730 --> 00:58:22,760
His name is Pio. And he said good morning.

677
00:58:23,210 --> 00:58:25,480
I come from Italy.

678
00:58:25,570 --> 00:58:28,440
He comes from Italy.

679
00:58:30,190 --> 00:58:32,407
Transporting her to another place

680
00:58:32,428 --> 00:58:35,571
would properly have caused her to
die from broken heart.

681
00:58:35,670 --> 00:58:38,630
This happens to often,
among the displaced.

682
00:58:41,410 --> 00:58:46,000
Unfortunately, in this last period
the situation has gone worse.

683
00:58:46,090 --> 00:58:47,960
It's not like the first days

684
00:58:48,050 --> 00:58:50,640
when we talked about the honesty
of Japanese people.

685
00:58:50,730 --> 00:58:53,840
In addition to burglaries in houses,

686
00:58:53,930 --> 00:58:58,960
they are starting to rob cash machines.

687
00:58:59,050 --> 00:59:02,120
Right now we are
inside one of the supermarkets

688
00:59:02,290 --> 00:59:04,080
that was open 24 hours a day.

689
00:59:04,170 --> 00:59:11,160
Look, this is the cash machine,
you can see it's ransacked.

690
00:59:11,570 --> 00:59:13,840
Totally ransacked.

691
00:59:23,690 --> 00:59:26,120
Could you see the sea from here before?

692
00:59:27,210 --> 00:59:28,840
No, you could not.

693
00:59:33,250 --> 00:59:38,840
My great-grandfather was buried here,
dad is there.

694
00:59:43,690 --> 00:59:45,480
Here lies the grandfather
of my grandfather.

695
00:59:49,610 --> 00:59:51,600
Here lies my grandfather
and here my great-grandfather.

696
00:59:51,690 --> 00:59:53,120
He died three days before my birth.

697
01:00:22,400 --> 01:00:27,350
Masao Yoshida fukushima's nuclear
power plant brave director dies,

698
01:00:27,425 --> 01:00:29,600
worn out by an incurable illness

699
01:00:30,400 --> 01:00:35,600
with his decision to disobey tepco by
injecting sea water into the reactor

700
01:00:35,720 --> 01:00:37,990
He is de facto save the country.

701
01:00:54,490 --> 01:01:01,480
NUCLEAR ENERGY ENLIGHTENS OUR FUTURE

702
01:01:08,990 --> 01:01:14,480
ACT III
THE MIRACLE

703
01:01:31,460 --> 01:01:37,100
In 1954, when the rivalry with the former
Soviet Union was becoming increasingly strong,

704
01:01:37,151 --> 01:01:39,310
and the world was divided into two blocks,

705
01:01:39,320 --> 01:01:43,710
the United States Department of Defense
secretly carried out an experiment,

706
01:01:43,721 --> 01:01:46,521
its codename being Castle Bravo.

707
01:01:47,930 --> 01:01:49,991
This experiment was a nuclear test,

708
01:01:49,999 --> 01:01:53,071
consisting in the explosion of a hydrogen bomb.

709
01:01:56,760 --> 01:02:00,350
American scientists made a mistake
in their calculations,

710
01:02:00,355 --> 01:02:02,750
underestimating the power of the explosion,

711
01:02:02,760 --> 01:02:05,730
which was three times
stronger than expected.

712
01:02:05,760 --> 01:02:10,320
The Japanese fishing vessel, Daigo
Fukuryu Maru, was in the surrounding waters

713
01:02:10,341 --> 01:02:12,810
and was hit by the radioactive
fallout.

714
01:02:17,620 --> 01:02:21,420
The 23 fishermen had to be hospitalized
immediately.

715
01:02:22,360 --> 01:02:25,822
Kuboyama Aikichi, the Marconi
operator aboard the vessel,

716
01:02:25,823 --> 01:02:29,320
died a few months later from
Acute radiation syndrome.

717
01:02:30,380 --> 01:02:34,610
Radio and television interrupted their
broadcast to spread the news.

718
01:02:34,800 --> 01:02:38,980
Traces of radioactivity were found in
tuna, fish in the Pacific Ocean,

719
01:02:39,160 --> 01:02:43,500
and this forced the culprit to come out in
the open and confess the truth.

720
01:02:45,300 --> 01:02:49,170
In little time because of fear of
radiation, panic spread.

721
01:02:49,660 --> 01:02:51,432
From that moment on, the people of Japan

722
01:02:51,453 --> 01:02:55,100
have been totally forthright
in rejecting nuclear energy.

723
01:02:55,920 --> 01:02:59,500
The American government concerned about
the spread of anti-American

724
01:02:59,521 --> 01:03:01,550
and anti-nuclear sentiment in Japan,

725
01:03:01,560 --> 01:03:06,050
a country it considered a military and
economic base of great importance,

726
01:03:06,081 --> 01:03:10,350
took appropriate measures, by involving
all Japanese communications media

727
01:03:10,451 --> 01:03:13,700
using words such as peace,
justice and security

728
01:03:13,751 --> 01:03:15,999
for the promotion of nuclear energy.

729
01:03:20,450 --> 01:03:24,690
Shoriki Matsutaro, a war criminal suddenly
reinstated by the Americans

730
01:03:24,701 --> 01:03:28,704
and who in the meantime had become
a powerful lobbyist and media tycoon

731
01:03:28,725 --> 01:03:30,710
played a very important role.

732
01:03:32,730 --> 01:03:35,400
He was a great admirer of American culture

733
01:03:35,420 --> 01:03:38,850
and he was convinced that
the nation's economic prosperity

734
01:03:38,851 --> 01:03:41,430
depended on the friendship with the U.S.

735
01:03:42,610 --> 01:03:45,450
From the columns of the newspaper Yomiuri
Shimbun

736
01:03:45,460 --> 01:03:48,750
and from his own private TV channel, Nippon
Television,

737
01:03:48,761 --> 01:03:52,383
he launched a powerful and
effective pro-nuclear campaign.

738
01:03:52,690 --> 01:03:57,310
In a few years, he succeeded in defeating
the anti-nuclear movement in his country

739
01:03:57,360 --> 01:04:01,610
and in persuading the majority of citizens
that embracing nuclear power

740
01:04:01,711 --> 01:04:05,690
was not only a wise, but rather
an indispensable choice.

741
01:04:06,150 --> 01:04:11,130
In 1954, U.S. President Eisenhower carried
out the program atoms for peace

742
01:04:11,146 --> 01:04:13,950
to sweep away the
memory of the bombing of Japan.

743
01:04:14,170 --> 01:04:18,180
And after only two years following the
Daigo Fukuryu Maru incident

744
01:04:18,200 --> 01:04:21,250
a symposium on nuclear energy for
civil purposes

745
01:04:21,260 --> 01:04:24,950
was organized and took place
Symbolically in Hiroshima.

746
01:04:25,950 --> 01:04:30,120
Matsutaro was chosen as the president
for the new commission for nuclear energy.

747
01:04:31,570 --> 01:04:36,110
the construction of the country's first
nuclear power plant was soon announced.

748
01:04:37,955 --> 01:04:42,300
Thus, it was that the country which would
probably have been the last in the world

749
01:04:42,311 --> 01:04:44,205
to espouse nuclear energy,

750
01:04:44,226 --> 01:04:48,451
became one of it's main and
most convinced supporters.

751
01:04:56,370 --> 01:05:00,200
How long have you been working
at Fukushima daiichi?

752
01:05:00,370 --> 01:05:02,280
Twelve, thirteen years.

753
01:05:02,450 --> 01:05:04,960
When you start,

754
01:05:05,530 --> 01:05:09,600
Were you in favor of nuclear energy?

755
01:05:09,770 --> 01:05:10,680
Yes, I was.

756
01:05:11,290 --> 01:05:12,440
And now?

757
01:05:12,610 --> 01:05:17,440
I changed my mind.

758
01:05:17,850 --> 01:05:21,801
The nuclear gypsies, the nuclear power
plant's seasonal workers,

759
01:05:21,851 --> 01:05:25,720
number in the thousands,
and they are immediately recognizable.

760
01:05:26,190 --> 01:05:30,330
They seem distracted almost absent,
but in reality, they are looking at you.

761
01:05:30,510 --> 01:05:34,200
They make you perceive that they have
something to say, and they do

762
01:05:34,220 --> 01:05:38,800
If you go to visit them in small taverns in
the neighborhood of the nuclear power plant.

763
01:05:40,231 --> 01:05:44,400
they are paid three or four hundred
dollars a day to be contaminated.

764
01:05:44,470 --> 01:05:47,671
Although, after the agency
and the contractors get their part

765
01:05:47,672 --> 01:05:49,910
very little ends up in their own pockets.

766
01:05:50,710 --> 01:05:54,441
In Fukushima, they represent
almost 90% of the workforce,

767
01:05:54,442 --> 01:05:57,501
and they withstand most of the radiation.

768
01:05:57,830 --> 01:06:00,200
There are those who, in
order to earn more,

769
01:06:00,355 --> 01:06:04,810
fake the dosimeters, or take up double
shifts using different names.

770
01:06:05,200 --> 01:06:07,321
A sacrifice prompted by despair,

771
01:06:07,451 --> 01:06:11,251
by necessity of making
ends meet at any cost.

772
01:06:11,420 --> 01:06:13,350
Apparently, it's a tradition.

773
01:06:13,710 --> 01:06:16,520
I was told about it by
Kenji Higuchi,

774
01:06:16,522 --> 01:06:20,720
a photographer who became famous
in the 70s for his reportages

775
01:06:20,722 --> 01:06:22,920
inside Japanese nuclear power plants.

776
01:06:23,290 --> 01:06:28,280
I never tolerated the idea that to produce
energy you had to damage humans.

777
01:06:28,810 --> 01:06:30,680
contaminate them forever.

778
01:06:31,490 --> 01:06:35,360
clean energy, they said: a total lie.

779
01:06:35,530 --> 01:06:38,360
Well, the former president Kan
had decided to abandon nuclear energy,

780
01:06:38,530 --> 01:06:44,960
but then Abe announced that he wanted
to start the reactors again

781
01:06:45,130 --> 01:06:46,840
Terrible, it's more than irresponsible

782
01:06:47,010 --> 01:06:51,960
The situation is this: we can't build
nuclear power plants anymore.

783
01:06:52,770 --> 01:06:55,600
And now what do we do?
We sell our technology to other countries.

784
01:06:56,250 --> 01:07:00,600
It's an irresponsible thing.

785
01:07:00,890 --> 01:07:03,080
Here it's not about producing energy.

786
01:07:03,810 --> 01:07:05,400
It's only about making money.

787
01:07:07,680 --> 01:07:12,600
In the middle of the night,
I called my boss at GE and I said,

788
01:07:13,450 --> 01:07:19,020
my recommendation is that
we tell the U.S. utilities

789
01:07:19,030 --> 01:07:23,400
that GE cannot support the
continued operation of these plants.

790
01:07:23,900 --> 01:07:29,530
And my boss said to me, "well, it can't be
that bad, Dale.

791
01:07:30,250 --> 01:07:36,250
And keep in mind that if we have to shut
down all of these Mark 1 plants,

792
01:07:36,670 --> 01:07:42,170
it will probably mean the end of GE's
nuclear business forever."

793
01:07:46,240 --> 01:07:48,850
Please never open the windows.

794
01:07:49,360 --> 01:07:54,680
just, please don't take
any photograph on the film.

795
01:07:54,761 --> 01:08:00,050
this building almost all the window
glasses were shattered

796
01:08:00,560 --> 01:08:04,590
by their hydrogen explosion
of the unit number one.

797
01:08:05,020 --> 01:08:08,140
And the rest of the building is
heavily damaged,

798
01:08:08,200 --> 01:08:12,200
So there is a covering over the building.

799
01:08:12,490 --> 01:08:16,480
I wonder how the triple nuclear meltdown
at Fukushima daiichi could remain hidden

800
01:08:17,410 --> 01:08:23,760
for more than two months,
which is long for a country such as Japan.

801
01:08:27,180 --> 01:08:32,640
I am convinced that experts,
the real insiders knew it.

802
01:08:34,200 --> 01:08:39,700
But no one, especially Tepco, wanted to
use the word meltdown.

803
01:08:42,100 --> 01:08:43,850
Damage to the reactors,

804
01:08:43,855 --> 01:08:46,580
well, they played with words,

805
01:08:47,550 --> 01:08:50,230
played for two months.

806
01:08:52,200 --> 01:08:57,120
Then finally, in May, they used
the right one.

807
01:08:59,240 --> 01:09:02,285
Reactor two's building is the
only one still in one piece,

808
01:09:02,286 --> 01:09:05,580
but it's the source of the most
dangerous radioactive leakage.

809
01:09:09,420 --> 01:09:13,440
The explosion that happened inside the
building damaged the base of the reactor,

810
01:09:13,560 --> 01:09:17,540
causing the flood of various rooms in
underground conduits.

811
01:09:18,860 --> 01:09:24,280
Every day, hundreds of tons of radioactive
waters spill into the ocean.

812
01:09:24,410 --> 01:09:29,800
What is the opinion of Kan?
Does he have the idea?

813
01:09:29,890 --> 01:09:34,120
Where is the core? Nobody knows,
not even the robots manage to get near.

814
01:09:34,210 --> 01:09:36,720
At what stage is the meltdown?

815
01:09:36,890 --> 01:09:40,440
Tepco doesn't know,
the media doesn't know...

816
01:09:41,450 --> 01:09:46,880
What is the opinion of Kan?
Does he have an idea?

817
01:09:46,970 --> 01:09:50,440
What is the opinion of Kan,
Kan "the engineer"?

818
01:09:53,360 --> 01:09:55,307
We now know for sure

819
01:09:55,310 --> 01:09:59,757
that the core made a hole in the
metallic base of the cylinder

820
01:09:59,758 --> 01:10:02,380
and came out completely.

821
01:10:05,840 --> 01:10:11,160
Everything is written here, in the report
from the government investigation committee.

822
01:10:12,500 --> 01:10:16,320
Because of the radiation, no one,
not even the robots,

823
01:10:16,341 --> 01:10:20,723
can approach close enough to understand
how much concrete separates

824
01:10:20,724 --> 01:10:23,740
the corium from the
ground and the aquiferous.

825
01:10:43,900 --> 01:10:46,833
The cisterns that collect the
hundreds of thousands of tons

826
01:10:46,834 --> 01:10:49,680
of radioactive liquids,
are no longer sufficient.

827
01:10:52,300 --> 01:10:54,940
Leaks everywhere infiltrate the ground.

828
01:10:55,980 --> 01:10:59,280
Some argue that it would be best
to throw everything overboard

829
01:10:59,281 --> 01:11:02,280
because fishing in the area
has already been compromised

830
01:11:02,288 --> 01:11:04,440
and the Pacific Ocean is so big.

831
01:11:09,000 --> 01:11:13,040
But nobody really knows what
the real long-term effects will be.

832
01:11:13,220 --> 01:11:16,884
The radioactive substances
infiltrate the food chain

833
01:11:16,965 --> 01:11:20,950
and polarize on the top where we stand

834
01:11:21,400 --> 01:11:23,680
with our debates and our fears.

835
01:11:25,560 --> 01:11:30,232
The machines and the vehicles
and the tanks

836
01:11:30,233 --> 01:11:33,900
that washed away
are still left in this area.

837
01:11:34,300 --> 01:11:38,441
And on the time of the
earthquake, the tsunami height

838
01:11:38,442 --> 01:11:41,420
in this area was a
15 meter high.

839
01:11:43,180 --> 01:11:49,320
The building on the right-hand side of
was heavily damaged by the tsunami.

840
01:11:49,321 --> 01:11:54,580
And when the earthquake occurs,
we do not have that temporary sea wall.

841
01:11:55,020 --> 01:11:59,200
So this area has a direct hit by the
tsunami.

842
01:12:00,770 --> 01:12:03,520
Quite a lot is going on inside the bus.

843
01:12:03,610 --> 01:12:06,800
Tepco's men aren't allowing us to film,

844
01:12:06,890 --> 01:12:09,480
they interrupt all the time,
they talk with a loud speaker...

845
01:12:09,570 --> 01:12:12,240
It is not clear what their problem is

846
01:12:12,330 --> 01:12:14,960
since there is no longer
a functioning power plant,

847
01:12:15,050 --> 01:12:17,120
there is no danger of terrorism.

848
01:12:17,210 --> 01:12:19,320
there is a danger of information.

849
01:12:21,150 --> 01:12:25,700
The information later supplied by workers
confessed by the executives

850
01:12:25,801 --> 01:12:28,450
and then confirmed through
concrete examples

851
01:12:28,480 --> 01:12:32,000
In the 641 pages of the
Kurokawa report,

852
01:12:32,020 --> 01:12:34,990
talks about a man-caused catastrophe.

853
01:12:35,805 --> 01:12:37,860
Everything but sotagai.

854
01:12:41,530 --> 01:12:44,280
So where is this reactor?

855
01:12:44,370 --> 01:12:45,240
What?

856
01:12:45,330 --> 01:12:47,800
The new construction, where is it?

857
01:12:47,890 --> 01:12:48,960
300 feet away from here.

858
01:12:49,650 --> 01:12:51,000
It's what we would like to see...

859
01:12:51,410 --> 01:12:55,520
We are going by foot... isn't that enough?

860
01:12:55,610 --> 01:12:59,240
If you don't want to comply with my orders
you can just leave... understood?

861
01:12:59,330 --> 01:13:05,560
Wait, I am just asking,
I an asking a question for information...

862
01:13:08,370 --> 01:13:11,680
Then let's go!
Please walk along this side.

863
01:13:16,300 --> 01:13:21,150
Please stay on the left side of the street.

864
01:13:22,290 --> 01:13:29,000
We are going on foot to see the building
next to reactor number four.

865
01:13:29,090 --> 01:13:30,840
We managed to convince them,

866
01:13:30,930 --> 01:13:34,200
they didn't want to let us at first,
but now we are going.

867
01:13:35,250 --> 01:13:37,550
stay on the left side of the street.

868
01:13:37,800 --> 01:13:39,800
you do not move to the right.

869
01:13:40,810 --> 01:13:44,080
Here they are all
a bit nervous, hysterical...

870
01:13:45,145 --> 01:13:48,850
The Kurokawa report shows that the
direct causes of the accident

871
01:13:48,852 --> 01:13:53,050
were all foreseeable prior
to March 11, 2011.

872
01:13:54,060 --> 01:13:58,350
Tepco was too quick to cite the tsunami
as the cause of the nuclear accident

873
01:13:58,352 --> 01:14:01,280
and deny that the earthquake
caused any damage.

874
01:14:02,090 --> 01:14:04,199
The direct intervention by the Kantei,

875
01:14:04,201 --> 01:14:08,800
including Prime Minister Kan's visit to
the Fukushima Daiichi plant,

876
01:14:08,881 --> 01:14:11,800
disrupted the chain of command
and brought disorder

877
01:14:11,802 --> 01:14:14,720
to an already dire situation
at the site.

878
01:14:16,510 --> 01:14:19,820
The accident was the result of collusion
between the government,

879
01:14:19,830 --> 01:14:24,040
the regulators and Tepco and the lack of
governance by said parties.

880
01:14:27,530 --> 01:14:30,256
With their behavior,
they have betrayed the right of Japan

881
01:14:30,258 --> 01:14:32,440
to be safe from nuclear risks.

882
01:14:33,450 --> 01:14:38,480
You human beings just like us,
we're the same, do you have a heart?

883
01:14:38,570 --> 01:14:44,440
Are you hiding behind doors?
Don't you want to be serious?

884
01:15:14,450 --> 01:15:17,840
It has become a weekly appointment.

885
01:15:18,010 --> 01:15:22,680
This is already the fourth time
that Japanese people in Tokyo gather here.

886
01:15:22,770 --> 01:15:26,640
They meet in front the Parliament,
outside the Prime Minister's residence

887
01:15:26,810 --> 01:15:31,360
to express non-violently,
and ever more creatively,

888
01:15:31,450 --> 01:15:34,680
their opposition to nuclear power,

889
01:15:34,850 --> 01:15:39,920
and most of all to the reopening
and reactivation of the nuclear plants

890
01:15:40,010 --> 01:15:41,960
already established
by the Japanese government.

891
01:15:42,050 --> 01:15:45,360
but not yet carried out...

892
01:15:49,830 --> 01:15:52,351
I wonder how it is
possible that as of today,

893
01:15:52,582 --> 01:15:54,991
there hasn't been any
indictments for trial.

894
01:15:55,300 --> 01:15:57,150
Let alone a conviction.

895
01:15:57,460 --> 01:16:01,820
All the criminal investigations that have
been started have already been closed.

896
01:16:02,320 --> 01:16:04,460
We shall no longer prosecute.

897
01:16:05,230 --> 01:16:09,640
Everybody is guilty, no one is guilty,
as in war.

898
01:16:09,850 --> 01:16:13,260
If there is no guilt,
there is no responsibility,

899
01:16:13,300 --> 01:16:16,850
and there is no sin,
if there is no repentance.

900
01:16:17,170 --> 01:16:19,700
So this place is good enough,

901
01:16:20,350 --> 01:16:22,920
so please stay closer to each other.

902
01:16:22,930 --> 01:16:26,920
Finally we are in front
of the reactor number four.

903
01:16:27,010 --> 01:16:29,600
Here the radiation levels
are still very high,

904
01:16:29,690 --> 01:16:33,040
more than 1,500 microsieverts per hour...

905
01:16:33,130 --> 01:16:36,600
Is it true that if something goes wrong
we are truly in danger of an apocalypse?

906
01:16:40,100 --> 01:16:44,500
meanwhile the real risk is
to leave these rods

907
01:16:44,550 --> 01:16:47,300
where they are now,
on the roof of a building.

908
01:16:47,501 --> 01:16:51,100
Right before the incident,
a routine maintenance,

909
01:16:51,151 --> 01:16:55,430
which consists of the replacement
of the spent fuel,

910
01:16:55,440 --> 01:16:58,080
was taking place at reactor 4.

911
01:16:58,260 --> 01:17:03,160
To perform this maintenance, you have to
flood the room above the reactor

912
01:17:03,425 --> 01:17:08,010
so that water level is even with
that of the pool

913
01:17:08,020 --> 01:17:10,220
that contains the new fuel.

914
01:17:11,700 --> 01:17:14,140
When the cooling system stopped working,

915
01:17:14,150 --> 01:17:17,600
in the room above the reactor 4,
there was only water.

916
01:17:18,000 --> 01:17:23,325
while in the beside pool there are
all the fuel rods incandescent

917
01:17:24,120 --> 01:17:27,400
which made water in the pool boil.

918
01:17:27,850 --> 01:17:30,480
if the fuel had been left uncovered,

919
01:17:31,200 --> 01:17:36,980
there would be yet another meltdown
occurring, but this time, outdoors.

920
01:17:37,820 --> 01:17:41,700
Have did happen, the consequences
would have been devastating.

921
01:17:42,600 --> 01:17:45,950
Tokyo would have been totally destroyed.

922
01:18:25,000 --> 01:18:29,324
The reason why this
meltdown didn't actually happen

923
01:18:29,355 --> 01:18:32,181
has remained a
mystery for a long time.

924
01:18:32,380 --> 01:18:37,104
It was only after several
months that we got to understand it

925
01:18:37,145 --> 01:18:40,620
thanks to work
of the commission of inquiry.

926
01:18:40,721 --> 01:18:44,200
Due to pressure increase in the reactor
pool,

927
01:18:44,220 --> 01:18:50,210
the gate valve that separates the reactor
pool from the fuel storage pool

928
01:18:50,227 --> 01:18:56,300
broke down, causing the water to pour out
into the adjacent fuel storage pool.

929
01:18:57,001 --> 01:19:03,110
Had the gate not broken, the pool water
would have continued to evaporate

930
01:19:03,153 --> 01:19:06,620
thereby causing the meltdown
within a very short time.

931
01:19:08,501 --> 01:19:11,280
Tokyo is safe by chance.

932
01:20:19,190 --> 01:20:22,801
The myth of nuclear energy of it being
economic,

933
01:20:22,821 --> 01:20:25,851
safe and clean has been swept away.

934
01:20:27,330 --> 01:20:30,600
This disaster has forced
Japan to face up to a question

935
01:20:30,604 --> 01:20:33,620
that many other countries
have already dealt with.

936
01:20:39,010 --> 01:20:40,480
Nobuko was right.

937
01:20:40,860 --> 01:20:44,720
In the face of Fukushima, we are all
Japanese.

938
01:20:45,690 --> 01:20:47,520
Don't film me...

939
01:20:48,130 --> 01:20:50,960
This indicates that we are
currently producing

940
01:20:51,130 --> 01:20:55,720
nine kilowatts
and we are selling it to Tepco.

941
01:21:01,480 --> 01:21:04,080
The increasing global energy demand
is saying

942
01:21:04,082 --> 01:21:07,310
that the path to renewable energy
is important,

943
01:21:07,381 --> 01:21:09,540
but it is not enough in itself.

944
01:21:15,410 --> 01:21:19,310
While the dream of nuclear fusion
of an infinite energy,

945
01:21:19,321 --> 01:21:22,620
clean energy for all is
still there waiting for us

946
01:21:23,030 --> 01:21:27,511
At the other side of history,
Fukushima's heroes were not enough.

947
01:21:30,440 --> 01:21:34,970
A bigger disaster has been avoided
because a gate valve broke.

948
01:21:36,765 --> 01:21:39,169
We have been spared because miraculously

949
01:21:39,800 --> 01:21:42,651
something in the country of technology

950
01:21:43,431 --> 01:21:44,631
did not work.

951
01:21:53,001 --> 01:22:01,831
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.

952
01:22:02,700 --> 01:22:11,831
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.

953
01:22:13,581 --> 01:22:18,051
In the meantime public opinion,
once strongly in favour of nuclear energy,
has now turned against it.