Inside the eerie abandoned nuclear control room ‘frozen in time’ since disaster struck
An urban explorer who snuck into an abandoned nuclear control room in a Japanese ‘red zone’ found it ‘frozen in time’.
Lukka Ventures, 27, has been exploring abandoned buildings in the UK for four years, but ventured out to Ōkuma, Japan, after seeing a documentary on the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
‘Red zones’ refer to sites that have been closed off around the nuclear power plant for fears of radioactivity.
On March 11, 2011, a earthquake and tsunami initiated a nuclear incident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Three of the six nuclear reactors at the plant had severe damage and released hydrogen and radioactive materials, forcing residents within 30 km of the site were to evacuate.
Despite the dangers, Lukka, from Manchester, snooped around abandoned hospitals, malls and apartments in the red zone, which he said were untouched by time.
He said: ‘It was a very surreal experience. Everything had been left, there were calendars on the wall were fixed on the same date of the disaster.
‘You will walk into a building and there is stuff all over the floor. Animals have got in and tried to get food, you can see that the earthquake shook everything onto the floor.’
Lukka, spent four days in the Fukushima red zone, which stretches in Ōkuma this February and shared his findings on his YouTube channel.
He carried a Geiger counter – an electronic instrument used for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation – to make sure he wasn’t exposing himself.
Lukka added: ‘We were sneaking through rivers and fences. We had to be really careful of how radiated some of the areas were.
‘It was so so surreal. You would go into shopping centres and they would have food on the shelf. Everything has been left. Every building we went into was really weird.’
While exploring, Lukka also found a nuclear bunker in what he believes was a training centre.
‘We entered a big glass building which had a model of the reactor in the lobby. We were close to the power plant that exploded,’ he explained.
‘We walked around the building and there were rooms that had nuclear controllers in there.’
‘I have never explored an area and be scared but the hospital was really scary. Seeing all the stuff, like bags, coats and other belongings gets you upset.
‘I am not the type of guy to get upset but I did feel very sad walking around.
‘The whole experience will stay with me forever.’
Is the Fukushima plant still radioactive?
The Fukushima power plant consisted of six units, but was shut down permanently on April 19, 2012.
The accident was the most serious incident since Chernobyl, according to nuclear physicist Dr Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress.
The damaged reactors in the plant are still hot, and there is still a lot of melted nuclear fuel and debris inside them that require constant cooling.
Ground water and rainwater that falls on the affected reactors and turbines is also radioactive – though millions of tonnes of it will be treated and released into the ocean, sparking protests last year.
Currently stored in tanks, the water has been collected since the devastating earthquake in 2011 that caused a nuclear disaster at the plant.
How long will it be uninhabitable?
A large area around the Fukushima power plant will be unlivable for at least 100 years – a short time period compared to the estimated 20,000 years until Chernobyl is habitable again.
In 2020, one town nearby the exclusion zone for Fukushima reopened after residents fled the earthquake and tsunami nine years earlier.
Unrestricted access to the red zone is only allowed to a one-square-mile area near the main Futaba train station, which will reopened in 2020 to reconnect it with the rest of the region for the first time since the disaster.
More than 160,000 people fled when the disaster prompted the Japanese government to declare a 20-mile evacuation zone around the plant as huge amounts of radiation were spewed into the atmosphere.
But even as humans can’t survive in the exclusion zones of areas such as Chernobyl and Fukushima, wildlife could thrive.
Monkeys and other wildlife have been spotted in the abandoned areas by the nuclear reactor in Japan.
Chernobyl has similarly seen nature take over the ruins of Pripyat, the town which was left empty after the disaster.
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