A rare look at the Fukushima Daiichi no-go zone

(CBS News) - One year after the earthquake and tsunami, the scars are still fresh in Japan.

A 12-mile exclusion zone still surrounds the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where the building housing a nuclear reactor exploded and three of the reactors melted down. The area became a victim to a trifecta of disasters: earthquake, tsunami and radiation.

Plant operators say it will take decades to completely dismantle Fukushima, but there's no estimated time frame for when the area will come back to life. More than 70,000 people became nuclear refugees as a result of the Japanese disasters.

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A guard checks to make sure no unauthorized person enters the exclusion zone near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on March 12, 2012.

/ CBS

CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker traveled to the so-called no go zone for a rare look inside. The area is off-limits without a government pass, which is not usually handed out to journalists. Whitaker entered the area with volunteers pre-approved to monitor radiation levels.

Even though they were two miles away, Whitaker and those with him were asked to put on radiation suits. As they passed the security checkpoint into the no-go zone, the lack of life became apparent. The first town Whitaker passed, Odaka, used to have a population of 13,000. Now, it is home to zero.

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What's most unsettling is that at first glance everything looked normal. On closer inspection, all the stores on the once busy street have been abandoned. One store still had a "Let's Be Happy" sign painted on the side. It's was mark of better times.

Now, traffic lights flashed, but there was no traffic. Streets were full of houses left in haste. A few unfortunate cows roamed the empty streets. Big towns and small towns had become ghost towns. The only sound was the ticking of a Geiger counter.

About a mile away from the Fukushima nuclear plant, the Geiger counter goes crazy. Anything over 3.8 microsieverts is considered unsafe. At one point, the device read 30.8. Whitaker and his team decided to leave as quickly as possible. They were in and out of the area in less than 3 hours.

Before they returned to safety, Whitaker met Naoko and Susumu Ito, who were living 10 miles down the road from the nuclear power plant. Despite the threats of radiation and government warnings, they still refuse to leave. Ninety-four year old Susumu, who has Alzheimer's, told Naoko that she wants to die at home, and her daughter is respecting her last wish.

"Wherever you go in Japan there are nuclear power plants," Naoko told CBS News. "There are 54 in the country. Where is safe?"

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[Hadenoughuc]

they should ban and eliminate all nuke plants all it takes is one good quake and people for miles and miles will be dead or be pushed out of there homes.

[SL-Mania]

These pictures in the CBS Evening News makes me feel sad.It will take very long times to be able to live in this district. I can understand the old woman who wants to die at home.

[Hballen4]

In the intro to this story, Scott Pelley said that "water was cutoff" leading to the meltdown. As I understand it, the loss of water was the result of power failure. Please help me understand how the design of the plant didn't include a "fail-safe" backup power system. That's the real story and no news group is talking about it. And, how many other nuclear plants lack an adequate backup power system?

[SandMan1725]

The industry is in fact looking at that right now. In the US, there are many power sources. First you have power from the grid like everyone else. If that fails then you have power from your own generator (sometimes), then you have a minimum of 2 (usually 3 or more) independent backup diesel generators, and then finally you have multiple independent backup batteries. That's a pretty good line of defense. The problem is that all of that backup power is located right at the site. Newer plans call for having a backup generator in a different location that can be brought in. This is happening now.

[Daid132]

Why not send Scott Pelley? Why always the Black guy?

[Susan_Patricia]

The Japanese people are not happy.

Many realize a significant portion of Japanese soil is not suitable for habitation. Just last October a leaked Tepco documented indicated the total amount of plutonium and neptunium emitted from the plant. This stuff sticks around for millions of years...

If you haven't seen the dispersion maps for plutonium they are published here:

http://www.datapoke.org/blog/89/study-******************-npp-p-239-and-np-239-atmospheric-dispersion/

[SandMan1725]

That's not a dispersal map. It's a simulation of what datapoke thinks may have been possible. The fact is that datapoke has NO idea how much, if any, Pu and Np were released to the atmosphere. They even state that little to no Pu or Np readings have been found and so their work is entirely speculative. While datapokes "map" is a possibility, it's also a possibility that absolutely none of that material escaped the reactor site.

[raymailhot]

More people are displaced do to government policies than nuclear accidents (makes interesting reading). There were more deaths in Japan (~13) from auto accidents that day than from the nuclear accident (0). What is the goal of the article? To raise false concern? The time the area will be evacuated is going to be quickened when the people realize they are being used to promote bad policy!

[windrider160]

A nuclear death takes longer than an auto accident but you're still just as dead; it just takes longer to happen and there's more suffering involved. We have NO IDEA how many Japanese are going to sicken and die as a result of this nuclear disaster.

[SandMan1725]

Actually windrider, we do have SOME idea. There have been a few very credible studies that state that any deaths from Fukushima will be indeterminable. In other words, if there are any deaths, they will be so few in number that for all we know it was natural cancer. That's not saying that there will not be any deaths from Fukushima, even though that's possible, it's only saying that we will never know. And that is far better than the thousands of deaths each year from other energy sources.

[rnrstar]

And this is the solution for the US? Think people, think. If it can happen there, it can happen here.

[Megapril]

Anyone with a brain will tell you NOT to place a Nuclear plant just a few feet from an Ocean along the most volatile seismic zones ON EARTH!! Have you ever seen a seismic map of Japan?? You can barely see the country itself there is so much RED... Not so much in the USA.