It has been 10 years since the Fukushima disaster, when a 15-metre-high wave destroyed 4 of the 6 reactors and most of the surrounding area at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant north of Tokyo. Since the disaster, the government and the site’s operator, Tepco, have been spearheading the decommissioning of the power plant. This includes decontamination, a job that must be completed within 30 to 40 years.

Kimoto Takahiro is the Assistant Field Inspector of the D&D Communications Center in Daiichi, Fukushima. “The most important thing was to cool the reactors, so we started with that and then we had to take up the bulk of the fuel pools,” he says.

The second stage of cleaning consists of removing the fuel contained in the reactor pools. This is expected to take another 10 years.

The third phase includes the removal of the wreckage, a long and delicate operation postponed due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Between 4,000 and 5,000 people work on the site every day, and many are unprotected thanks to efforts to disinfect the site.

Click on the media player above for more information on how the facility was deactivated and decontaminated.