Inside Fukushima: Creepy drone footage reveals first-ever look at a melted nuclear reactor with 880 tons of radioactive fuel still inside – 13 years after the disaster

Creepy new drone footage has revealed for the first time the extent of damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant, 13 years after the meltdown.

The plant’s operators, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO, released 12 photos from inside the site. These are the first-ever images from inside the main structural support, called the pedestal, in the primary containment vessel of the hardest-hit reactor, an area directly beneath the reactor’s core.

Officials had long hoped to reach the area to examine the core and the molten fuel that dripped there when the plant’s cooling systems were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

The high-definition color images captured by the drones show brown objects of different shapes and sizes dangling at different locations in the pedestal.

Parts of the control rod drive mechanism, which controls the nuclear chain reaction, and other equipment attached to the core were detached by the drones.

TEPCO officials said they could not tell from the images whether the dangling clumps were melted fuel or melted equipment without obtaining other data such as radiation levels.

The drones did not carry dosimeters to measure the radiation, because they had to be light and maneuverable.

There are still approximately 880 tons of highly radioactive melted fuel in the three damaged reactors.

TEPCO is attempting to learn more about the site and its condition to facilitate its removal so that the plant can be decommissioned.

The drone cameras could not see the bottom of the reactor core, partly because of the darkness of the containment vessel, officials said.

Information from the probe could help future research into the melted debris, which is crucial for developing technologies and robots for its removal, they said.

But the large amount that remains unknown about the interior of the reactors indicates how difficult it will be. Critics say the target set by the government and TEPCO for cleaning up the factory over a period of 30 to 40 years is too optimistic.

The difficult decommissioning process has been delayed for years by technical obstacles and the lack of data.

The Fukushima disaster was one of the most devastating nuclear accidents in the world.

It followed a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off Japan’s east coast, one of the strongest ever recorded in Japan.

The earthquake was so powerful that it shifted the Earth off its axis and caused a huge tsunami that swept over Japan’s main island of Honshu.

The devastation caused by the tsunami alone killed 18,000 people.

The waters from the deadly tsunami easily overcame Fukushima’s coastal defenses and flooded the reactor, causing it to melt.

As more and more radiation leaked from the plant, more than 150,000 people were forced to evacuate the area.

To this day, the lockout remains in effect and almost all displaced residents have not yet returned.

Authorities in Japan believe it will take up to 40 years to decontaminate the area.

The nuclear disaster was classified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a level seven event, only the second since Chernobyl’s fourth reactor collapsed in 1986.