A cold eerie quietness envelops the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. There is no activity among the snow-dusted buildings, and reminders of the devastation caused by last year's Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami are everywhere.
A cold eerie quietness envelops the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. There is no activity among the snow-dusted buildings, and reminders of the devastation caused by last year's Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami are everywhere.
That was the scene that greeted an Asahi Shimbun team that flew to the site on a company helicopter on Feb. 25, the day the central government scaled back the no-fly zone from 20 kilometers to 3 kilometers.
The helicopter flew north over the coastline of Fukushima Prefecture, entering the 20-km zone shortly after 4 p.m. at an altitude of 300 meters. It got within 3.6 km of the crippled facility.
A radiation meter on board recorded the highest level that afternoon, 1.4 microsieverts per hour, near Okuma, one of two towns where the plant is located, some 4 to 5 km from the stricken facility.
The helicopter traveled further north to the evacuated town of Futaba, 3.6 km from the power plant. We saw the brown town hall building below. The area was blankleted with snow, and no trace of tire tracks remained.
Snow dusted the reactor buildings, whose roofs and walls were ripped off by hydrogen explosions last March.
Because it was the weekend, there was no activity. Not one plant worker could be seen and operational equipment lay idle.
On the coastal side of the complex, waves crashed onto a breakwater that was damaged by the March 11 tsunami. Heavy oil tanks still stood at an odd angle.
Toppled trees were everywhere. Only the foundations of homes could be seen in many places.
It was an eerie sight, made bleaker by the undisturbed thin carpet of snow covering the ground.
(This article was written by Takayuki Kihara and Jin Nishikawa.)