#16 🇯🇵 원전 사고 후 14년, 후쿠시마 원전에 가보았다.

#16 🇯🇵 원전 사고 후 14년, 후쿠시마 원전에 가보았다.

This is the first earthquake I’ve ever felt, and the ground… The ground is literally shaking. I was just lying in my bed, watching a film, and suddenly it felt like something from mattress,
sort of jiggling. I thought, ‘What’s going on?’
And then… Ah, so this is an earthquake. This is what it feels like. It’s not too bad right now.
Just feeling a very slight tremor. Oh, that’s odd.
Interesting. It’s half six in the morning…
Exactly half six. My friend messaged he just woke up,
about five minutes ago, so he hasn’t come out yet.
Great. Today, we’re heading back towards the Tohoku region.
Taking the Joban Line. The infamous area for the Fukushima nuclear plant.
We’re going to Futaba Station. From here, I think it takes about 5 hours 40 minutes,
maybe less than six hours. I can’t wait to see what it’ll be like. After a solid five hours, the train enters
the radioactive contaminated zone. Ono Station, the one just announced, was one of the most severely contaminated stations on the Joban Line. The ambient radiation dose was a staggering
25 microsieverts per hour. For reference, Seoul is 0.12 microsieverts per hour,
so that’s roughly 200 times the level in Seoul. But now, as you can see out the window,
most of the buildings have been dismantled, and the decontamination work is in its final stages,
so the radiation levels have dropped considerably. And as we go a little further, you can see countless electricity pylons,
and with them, the very edge of the power plant. My friend took this photo.
I’m thinking I ought to buy a camera, but I don’t have the cash. -Got to check it out.
-Yeah. -We should check it out.
I saw there’s something round the back, too. -It said it’s a 27-minute walk or something.
A round trip is only an hour, -So it makes sense to get the train after three hours -Right, well, let’s have a think about that one. Ah, but perhaps because it’s such a symbolic station…
It’s just a rural station, but they’ve done it up really seriously. Look, there’s a community bus. Wait is that an AEON Mall? This place is some kind of museum, too Ah, this is the old station building. Right, this is it.
This is the old station, And this is inside the old station building. There’s a space like a waiting hall,
and it’s set up as a local tourist information centre and disaster recovery exhibition. Along with various pamphlets introducing this region, there’s also an area where visitors can put a sticker indicating their origin. Leaving the old station, where we’re headed now is
the Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum. It’s a museum on the coast of Futaba-machi,
about 2 kilometres from Futaba Station. -It’s just like any other village in the countryside, innit? -It is, just a normal rural village. -Yeah.
It’s just a rural village where the tragedy happened. You can tell it’s being rebuilt;
for such a rural spot, there are quite a few people about. Normally, when you come to a place like this,
you can’t see a single dude. -Which way is it?
-Maybe that way. I guess. -The museum is on the opposite side. -It’s on the right, huh? -Ah, the hospital isn’t open.
Or is it? -Surely it’s open?
-It looks a bit too derelict to be open, innit? -But you’d think it would have to be.
A big hospital like this… -That’s what I’m talking about -No, I don’t think it is.
Look at all the grasses growing out the front. I can’t see a single car. You’re right. It’s not open.
The hospital’s shut. -It’s connected to the underpass, so I assumed it would be open.
-I know. I bet there’s no need for a hospital this big in a town like this. It used to be a fairly large town tho Look at that, a nursing home. ‘Elderly’… what’s that? ‘Special Nursing Home Group’…
something like that. Futaba Public Academy -of Nursing -Nursing school, nursing school.
Healthcare Futaba. I feel awful. -It’s been ages since I’ve been somewhere
with literally no one around. -This place here isn’t fenced off.
Let’s go and see what’s happened to that vending machine. What a mess. -When d’you reckon this machine stopped?
-9th of Feb, 2023? Propane gas. -That’s just when the gas was refilled.
-Ah, gas refill. -Refilling the gas means it was working, to keep it cold.
-Exactly. -So, they were still in business here even after that? -Should we go a different way, then?
-1.009μSv. But this is the only path. -No, there are a few other options. -This is the main road, innit?
-No, the main road is one block over. -I see -Uh huh
-But won’t it take longer to cut across from here? -Still, they’ve dismantled all the houses. -What?
-They’ve pulled down all the houses. -Don’t know if they were pulled down by choice or by force.
-Had to be by force. -If you just looked at photos,
you’d think it was just a beautiful rural village. -I know. The road is wide open,
and you can see the sea up ahead. Can’t tell if it’s the sea or just a horizon.
That’s not the sea up ahead, innit? -I think that is the sea.
-Isn’t it this way? Not the other side of the station? -No, this is the right way.
-The sea is this way. -Yeah. The sea is this way.
-Can’t be sure if that’s the sea in the distance, though. -I think I can slightly see the sea. -There used to be houses all along here.
-I know. People actually lived here. It’s just awful. -It’s really pretty,
when you just look at it like this. The sky is so clear. Lamenting the desolate view, with only empty plots left,
we arrive at the museum after a walk of just over 20 minutes. It’s just a straight walk from the station, so it’s not hard to find.
The entrance fee is 600 yen. As soon as you walk in, you see this huge, cylindrical wall. This wall is used as a screen to show a film about the disaster. Filming is prohibited during this part. It was an exhibition that really made me think a lot. You could really feel the horror of the disaster and the sorrow of those left behind. The seminar, where an actual survivor shared their experiences
and explained disaster response measures, was also very memorable. Recently, with the transition to the age of AI,
a stable power supply is becoming an increasingly salient concern. Because of this trend, phasing out nuclear power
is once again becoming a remote prospect. Therefore, what’s important is
figuring out how to stop this from ever happening again, analysing the accident and establishing future countermeasures.
That’s what I believe. But that aspect wasn’t really the focus of the museum’s memorial. Behind the museum, some sort of construction was in full swing. You can feel the persistent vitality of humankind,
rebuilding on abandoned land. -Isn’t that the road we came down earlier?
-Yeah. That’s the hospital, the welfare hospital. -Right, that ‘Youth and Women’s Centre’ or whatever it is.
The one that’s falling down. Is this place empty? The building.
Looks like it’s empty, innit? It is empty.
-But there’s all this post in the front. -Stuffed in there.
-That’ll just be unpaid electricity bills, I bet. -So that’s been stuffed there for 10 years? -Surely not.
Looks like they’re planning to pull this down, too. They’ve got no choice. It’ll all be contaminated, innit? -Shouldn’t walk through all those grasses.
-What was that thing that looked like a statue we saw earlier? -I think it was this, that digger.
-Did you mistake a digger for a statue? -Looks like it, doesn’t it?
-Yeah. -Look, it’s just the garden wall left standing. This is a foundation stone, look.
Or is it a boundary stone? A foundation stone? This is the very spot where the ‘Nuclear Power: Energy for a Bright Future’ slogan used to be. Compared to back then, many buildings have been dismantled
and the slogan is gone, so it’s not easy to recognise. Now we’re leaving Futaba and heading for Fukushima City. There’s almost no public transport from Hamadori, the coastal region of Fukushima, to Nakadori, the central part where Fukushima City is, so we have to take the Jōban Line up to Sendai,
and then head to Fukushima from there. As the crow flies, it would take a couple of hours,
but going this way, it’s a journey of over three hours. -But here, from the signs to everything, the whole vibe is just… Korean. -Seriously…
-I’ve never seen signs like this in Japan. -The back alleys in Seoul look exactly like this.
Even that block of flats over there. -You know those old-school, pre-redevelopment blocks of flats in Seoul?
They look exactly like that. It couldn’t be more Korean than this. It’s ridiculous. Mok-dong… there are neighbourhoods there just like this. When I lived in Mok-dong, if you go straight up from Mok-dong station towards the food alley, you come to another neighbourhood.
And that place looks exactly like this. Ah, I’ve figured it out. It’s because of these ginkgo trees. Japanese streets don’t have their trees lined up like this. The ginkgo trees… this whole thing looks just like Korea. -Ah, here it is.
-This is it? -Shall we hit there, then? -Let’s go. I mean, isn’t this just completely bizarre? -How is this possible?
-No, it’s ridiculous. A restaurant opposite the hotel.
For some reason, this also feels like a Korean baekban place. We both ordered the kaisendon.
The lady upgraded us a large portion for free. And this is a shikwasa sour.
I’m a big fan of shikwasa. So I tend to get it when I find it,
but you don’t find it very often outside of Okinawa.
What a shame. We found out later while we were eating and chatting, that the lady who runs it is also a singer. So if you look closely, there’s a poster to the left of the telly. That’s it for today’s video. Thanks for watching,
and I’ll see you later.

2011년 3월 12일, 후쿠시마 원전 사고 후 14년, 후타바마치는 과연 어떤 모습을 하고 있을까.