Based on a pooled dispatch from Martin Fackler of the New York Times
13 November 2011
About three dozen journalists sat on two buses. We wore protective suits, double gloves, double layers of clear plastic booties over shoes, hair covers, respirator masks, and carried radiation detectors. As we drove to the Fukushima plant, we passed through a police checkpoint, and saw three towns – Naraha, Tomioka, Okuma – empty of all inhabitants. Among the abandoned homes was a flower shop with plants, withered and dead, still on display. As we approached the plant, radiation readings rose: 0.7 microsieverts per hour in Naraha, near the edge of the restricted zone. As we approached Okuma: 2.7ms. Then 4.1. It was rising quickly, the warning buzzer was going constantly. In Okuma, where it registered 6.7, the bus stopped so we could put on respirator masks. Every inch of our skin was now covered. We turned on to the road to the plant: 15ms. At the plant gate: 20. The buzzer became insistent. The first things visible were six large cranes. Then we passed a field filled with blue tanks of contaminated water; then dozens of large, four-storey silver tanks of contaminated sea water. According to Tepco, which runs the plant, there are 90,000 tons of water stored here. Next, there came a cluster of large white tents surrounded by black sand bags, and we got our first look at the damaged reactor buildings. No 1 was covered by new superstructure. No 2 was intact. No 3 was in worst shape: it was a skeletal concrete frame, collapsed into a pile of rubble. As we passed, three cranes were – and this is seven months since the tsunami – cleaning up rubble. No 4 was also severely damaged; the building was intact, but it was buckled, and the entire south side was blown out. 
The reading here, about 500 metres from the reactors, was 50ms. The only signs of life were crows and dragonflies. Then we saw workers building water tanks, and, nearby, a rectangular concrete building used to store highly radioactive waste, including sludge. Workers in white hazmat suits busied about. Next, we drove down to the reactors. As we drove through the pine forest (it looked bucolic, but isn’t), we got our highest radiation reading of the trip: 1,000ms per hour. At the base of the reactor buildings, there were crumpled trucks, contorted metal girders and frames of buildings, a huge storage tank dented and bent, and pipes twisted by the forces of nature. The damage reached up to the second storey, attesting to the tsunami’s 14-metre size. A four metre-high sea wall has been built with rocks in black nets. Tepco said it was a makeshift defence against another tsunami. The reading here was 300ms. The base of the reactor buildings was filled with debris and metal warped into fantastic shapes. We saw three white cars crushed together. Trucks had been hurled into empty pools. Office buildings smashed by the tsunami stood, slowly decaying, and along the waterfront was a pile of disassembled cranes, looking like a child’s construction kit that had been abandoned mid-play. […] Tepco is pouring cooling water on to the three crippled reactors (1,2 and 3) to bring them to what’s called cold shutdown. But the company recently admitted that if this process stops, the fuel will heat up again and nuclear fission is a possibility. Greenpeace and other anti-nuke groups think cold shutdown is industry spin. Tepco’s strategy has left behind thousands of tons of contaminated water, which it is struggling to purify. Last month, to convince the public that the water is safe, a cabinet minister gulped down a glassful. […]
Inside the twisted remains of Fukushima nuclear plant
