The Taint of Nuclear Disaster Doesn’t Wash Away

The numbers were climbing on a radiation dosimeter as the minibus carried me deeper into the complex. Biohazard suits are no longer required in most parts of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant, but still, I’d been given a helmet, eyewear, an N95 mask, gloves, two pairs of socks, and rubber boots. At the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, you can never be too safe.

The road to the plant passes abandoned houses, convenience stores, and gas stations where forests of weeds sprout in the asphalt cracks. Inside, ironic signs, posted after the disaster, warn of tsunami risk. In March 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off Japan’s Pacific coast and flooded the plant, knocking out its emergency diesel generators and initiating the failure of cooling systems that led to a deadly triple-reactor meltdown.

Now, looking down from a high platform, I could see a crumpled roof where a hydrogen explosion had ripped through the Unit 1 reactor the day after the tsunami hit. The eerie stillness of the