TO GO WITH Japan-disaster-anniversary-nuclear,FOCUS by Kyoko Hasegawa
This photo taken on March 6, 2013 shows members of the media wearing protective suits and masks being escorted by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) employees as they visit near the No.4 reactor (C) and the construction of a foundation (R) for storage of melted fuel rods at TEPCO’s tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in the town of Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, ahead of the second anniversary of the March 11, 2011 tsunami and earthquake. More than 100,000 people were forcibly evacuated from their homes in a 20-kilometre (12-mile) exclusion zone around the crippled plant in 2011. Tens of thousands more left a wider area, worried about the health dangers from radiation they could neither see nor smell. Full decommissioning of the reactors, where molten fuel ate through concrete casing, is expected to take at least three decades. AFP PHOTO / POOL / Issei KATO