Plot

The Prime Minister is informed that in a worst case scenario, a third of the country - including the Tokyo area - will become uninhabitable for decades.

The workers work relentlessly to pump water into unit 2 reactor. Since there are a smaller number of workers, the workload on the remaining workers has gone up drastically. Maejima returns to the control room to supervise operations on the reactors. Due to high radiation levels, the control room of unit 1 and 2 has also been evacuated and workers are allowed to work at the reactor for only a few minutes at a time. The fire trucks are inoperable as the remaining workers do not have enough knowledge on how to make them work.

Foreigners throng the international airports in Japan in order to catch any flight out of the country. The US Government issues an order for its citizens to leave Japan. Azuma consults the top nuclear expert in the country to understand the worst-case scenario of a meltdown. The expert says that if one reactor goes, all 6 will go since nobody will be able to approach them due to the radiation. An area in the radius of 170 Kms from the Daiichi power plant will be contaminated by radioactive fallout. Anybody staying within that radius will die, if not evacuated.

A further area between 170 Kms and 250 Kms radius should be evacuated as it will be contaminated with radioactive materials and will have high radiation levels for several decades. This entire area up to 250 Kms radius will be uninhabitable. 50 million people will be rendered homeless. Businesses will be disrupted, and Japanese economy will be dysfunctional for a few years. This represents 33% of Japan's land and will be unusable for decades.

Azuma brings in the military to drop water into the reactors from overhead. The radiation levels around the power plant are 247 MSV per hour.

March 15th, sunrise. White smoke is observed coming from the Unit 4 spent fuel rods pool. Yoshida is informed that the remaining water in the pool has started evaporating.

Azuma speaks to the US President to reconsider their order to US citizens, but the US President asks Azuma to disclose all information regarding Daiichi and offers to send experts to help decide what to do next. The fire engines are still not able to suck up sea water and there is no water going into Unit 2 reactor. The workers have been trying all night without any success. A team from the Daini Plant arrives at Daiichi, led by Mr Araki.

On the morning of the 15th, the military (SDF) starts helicopter operations to drop water on the reactors from top. One helicopter can only make one pass before taking on the annual safe dose of radiation of 100 MSV. Murukami arranges to send some construction trucks that are designed to pump liquid concrete to 15 floors height. These trucks can pump water into the fuel rod pool at unit 4, which is on the 5th floor of the building. The construction trucks start working and water is sprayed into the reactor buildings of Unit 1 and Unit 4 from the top.

The US provided a lot of assistance to the efforts at Daiichi. 7 ships including the USS Ronald Raegan arrived at Fukushima. They provided experts in nuclear power, 10,000 hazmat suits, 30,000 dosimeters, and massive amounts of other relief materials. Power is finally restored to the control room of Unit 1 and 2.

Yoshida survives the ordeal. The work on the cold shutdown of the reactors was still continuing in April. The workers on site had been working continuously without a break for an entire month. Most of them were passing blood in their urine. The Fukushima Daiichi power plant was commissioned in 1966 to meet the insatiable demand for power that the Japan's economy needed for growth. Now the plant was being decommissioned step by step. The process will take the next 30 to 40 years. The debris from the hydrogen explosions is very radioactive and creates obstacles for the workers. There is still unspent nuclear fuel inside the reactors. When the cooling systems broke down, the fuel melted and broke through the reactor and accumulated at the concrete floor of the reactors.

The radiation levels inside the reactors are at 70 Sieverts per hour in 2017. Not even cameras could go inside to have a look at the exact state of the reactors and the fuel. Nobody knows when the decommissioning process will come to an end. 117,000 people had to be evacuated. Entire forests were contaminated and had to be cut down. Yoshida was diagnosed with cancer, stage 3 and hard to treat. Yoshida passed away in 2013, 2 years after the accident.

The main reason for the accident remains unresolved and the decommissioning process continues to this day.