Reporters drive toward the radiation

L.A. Times Seoul bureau chief John Glionna, his driver, interpreter and another reporter rolled up the windows in an SUV, closed the vents and drove toward the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. They wore dosimeters that counted off the rising level of radiation and got as far as the main gate, where an old safety sign reads "the goal is zero disasters for this year." From Glionna's story:

We traveled to Fukushima with questions. What does it look like? Smell like? Would they let us inside? So far, the few pictures have come from aerial fly-bys that showed smoking reactors in a soulless industrial setting.

As we neared the coastal plant, we peered out the SUV windows, trying to create a lasting mental image of a place many say will one day be sealed off in concrete to protect against nuclear poisoning.

The best description of the scene: silence. We mostly stayed inside the vehicle, but once in a while, we opened a window, or briefly jumped out to take a picture. And we listened.

They say that following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the birds stopped singing. At Fukushima, we didn't hear birds, or anything else. No children shouting, no car horns honking, not even the waves on the too-distant shore. Just the wind.

Guards waved them away before they could see much, but they got a story out of it. Their radiation exposure was "equivalent to what we might get on a cross-country flight."