Title: Cameraman Toby Marshall talks about Japan’s quake and his visit at the nuclear plant in Fukushima
Source: Freytag Film
Author: Daniel Freytag
Date: Aug 8th 2012

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About one year later you were given access to the nuclear plant in Fukushima. How did you prepare both yourself and your camera to be safe?

I had been going up to the area quite often, and even sneaked into the 20 kilometer exclusion zone. What seems very scary at first eventually becomes quite routine. We were given a good contamination probe by our head office, so that we could check possible contamination of our equipment and ourselves whenever we came out of hot areas. When I was chosen to go into the plant, I was told that protective gear would be provided by Tepco. They suggested completely covering the camera with a rain cover, but I thought that might be a rather expensive proposition if it had to be discarded afterwards, and so bought a bunch of large, disposable clear garbage bags, thinking to generally cover the camera with one. When I got to the briefing room, I was frankly surprised at the level of protection with which we were being provided. For instance, we had protective TyVek suits, with full breathing masks, three pairs of gloves and three sets of shoe covers. We were told to be prepared to throw our clothes and shoes away if necessary.

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[W]hat I hadn’t realized was the level of ground contamination around the plant. Everything is hazardously contaminated, and whatever comes into contact with something outside has to be completely decontaminated or discarded before going into a clean environment.

Consider this: the normal background radiation level before the accident in that area was about 0.05 microsieverts/hour. When I arrived–at the main building at Fukushima Daiichi, I was seeing readings averaging 60 microsieverts/hour, so about 1200x normal background.

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[E]ach time we entered the bus after being outside, we had to stop and allow Tepco workers to carefully remove one set of covers before stepping up onto the bus. We were not allowed to let any part of our bodies but the bottoms of our feet touch anything outside. Several times, shooting full tele from my shoulder, I really wished to brace myself against a wall or a tree. Not possible.

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View some of Marshall’s  Fukushima preparations here