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Japan, March 11th, 2011, 2:46 p.m. A massive earthquake measuring nine on the Richter scale rocks the country. It moves Japan's main island more than 8 ft east and sends a giant tsunami hurtling towards the coast at 500 miles an hour. Directly in the path of the 30-ft high wave is the Fukushima nuclear power plant. It flooded the reactors and basically shut down the cooling processes. The result was a core meltdown followed by a hydrogen explosion that blew the building open. Within a matter of minutes, Fukushima becomes one of the most dangerous places on the planet.
It's a nightmare scenario. 300 million cubic feet of radioactive waste is scattered across an area the size of Ohio. It is the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. There's a panic because no one knows how far this radiation is going to spread. Time is of the essence. You have to flee immediately or you're going to get sick. Fukushima scientists place the nuclear power station in immediate lockdown. CCTV cameras monitor the radiation exclusion zone.
These cameras are running 24/7 and people can tune in at any point and watch them live. For 3 years, the cameras keep watch on the abandoned plant. Then, in July 2014, a camera scanning reactor 4 picks up movement. A glowing entity in the heart of the no-go zone. Is it alive? We don't know, but it's moving and it's moving in ways that are unexpected and not like anything we've seen before. This is in a radioactive zone where nothing should be whatsoever, certainly nothing living. This is one of the world's few nuclear reactor disasters, so what would we expect to see in this video that we might not have seen anywhere else before?
Investigators consider the plant's leaking radiation has created a mutant atomic monster. One of the things the radiation will do is they will damage DNA. That will cause mutations and that will cause small changes in an organism. Is it causing some kind of mutation? Is it creating some kind of monster? Radiation is an extremely powerful beast and when it's on your side, it can do amazing things, but if it turns on you, yeah, you better watch out. Two atom bombs have shown the Japanese the bizarre and horrific effects of nuclear radiation. Their fears are reflected in their movies.
Godzilla was born out of radioactive fire and comes onto land to ravage Tokyo. The idea that there's a radiation monster that comes from some sort of radiological event is ingrained in Japanese culture. We've had so many films where some terrible radiation event and that creates a new life form, a monster. And oh my god, here is our worst night actually coming true before our eyes. Experts investigate if a camera has captured a mutant entity in the fallout zone of a nuclear disaster. They examine levels of radiation leaking from reactor four.
There are toxically high levels of radiation there. That results in radiation poisoning and death. That does not result in horrific mutations. Radiation levels inside the Fukushima reactors are high enough to kill a human in 3 minutes. All explorations of the core are undertaken by robots. But even the robots struggle. The robots that are actually sent into the reactor chamber actually have quite limited lifetimes because of the intensity of the radiation. In parts of the reactor, the radiation is so high the robots survive only a few hours.
Radiation will completely fry electronics, but they'll go in, they'll be able to do enough things that it makes it worthwhile, then they die in place. It leads some to suggest the strange apparition on the surveillance tape could be the result of radiation damage to the CCTV camera's electronics. What are the chances that this camera, which is operating day and night in this kind of environment, maybe it's suffering from some degradation.
Analysis of footage from the Fukushima robots reveals what radiation does to a recorded image. The radiation particles go through the lens and they hit the photosensitive layers of the camera. And typically what this causes is a little spark, is a release of energy. And so, what you see in the image is you see a little flash. But certainly not these kinds of wavy patterns or anything like that. Optics specialist Robert Fisher believes that the position of the reactor four camera may offer a clue. The CCTV camera observing the scene is outdoors and it's subject to all the normal outdoor stuff, rain and mist. So,
the water can build up in front of the lens. Fisher proposes the strange entity could be caused by a rare combination of wind, light, and water. He tests his theory in the lab. Okay, so we've got a little bit of water on the screen. You can see the strange little sparkle patterns. Fisher uses a desk fan to simulate the wind and a torch to represent Fukushima's security floodlights. You can see the little sparkly effects. If the light were on a pole moving around a little bit in the breeze, you can see that the lighting
patterns are changing. I think there's a pretty good chance that what's causing the things that we see in the video are just a little bit water, a little bit wind, little bit of changing lighting, maybe. But analysts if this is merely an effect of wind and rain. Why has such an image never been captured before? The camera has been operating for 3 years and it has rained many times at the site. At the end you end up at where you think is your best guess as to what the observation really is. It could take 30 years before reactor 4 is safe for humans to enter. Until then, scientists are unable to establish what's happened as the result of the nuclear fallout.
All they can do is send in more robots and monitor the surveillance cameras.
