Youtube | May 18, 2011

New video footage has been released by the operators of Japan's crippled nuclear power plant, which shows the scale of destruction and workers inside buildings. The Fukushima Dai-ichi complex was badly damaged during the earthquake and tsunami in March. Its operator, TEPCO, has been struggling to restore critical cooling systems knocked out by the disaster. The video released shows water pumping equipment being used at the plant and operators dressed in protective suits surveying the damage inside some of the buildings. Despite fresh data showing worse-than-expected damage inside three reactors, TEPCO still aims to bring the radiation-leaking plant to a stable cold shutdown within six to nine months, as originally planned. Recently repaired gauges show that it is likely that fuel rods in Unit 1 almost totally melted and fell to the bottom of the pressure vessel, in the hours after the quake and tsunami.