U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel visited a Fukushima coastal city to support the local fishing industry after China and South Korea raised the alarm over water discharge began from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Images taken by miniature drones from deep inside a badly damaged reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant show displaced control equipment and misshapen materials but leave many questions unanswered, underscoring the daunting task of decommissioning the plant. The 12 photos released by the plant's operator are the first from inside the main structural support called the pedestal in the hardest-hit No. 1 reactor's primary containment vessel, an area directly under the reactor's core. Officials had long hoped to reach the area to examine the core and melted nuclear fuel which dripped there when the plant's cooling systems were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Earlier attempts with robots were unable to reach the area.

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel visited a Fukushima coastal city to support the local fishing industry after China and South Korea raised the alarm over water discharge began from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. A drone small enough to fit in one's hand flew inside one of the damaged reactors at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Wednesday in hopes it can examine some of the molten fuel debris in areas where earlier robots failed to reach. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings also began releasing the fourth batch of the plant's treated and diluted radioactive wastewater into the sea Wednesday. The government and TEPCO, the plant's operator, say the water is safe and the process is being monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but the discharges have faced strong opposition by fishing groups and a Chinese ban on Japanese seafood. A magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami in March 2011 destroyed the plant's power supply and cooling systems, causing three reactors to melt down.

Wildlife is flourishing in the exclusion zone around the disabled Fukushima Daichii nuclear reactor in Japan, images from remotely-operated cameras have revealed. Researchers spotted more than 20 species in areas around the reactor, including wild boar, macaques and fox-like raccoon dogs. The findings help reveal how wildlife populations respond in the wake of catastrophic nuclear disaster like those that occurred at Fukushima and Chernobyl. Humans were evacuated from certain zones around the the Fukushima reactor following radiation leaks caused by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011. Wildlife ecologist James Beasley of the University of Georgia, in the US, and colleagues used a network of 106 remote cameras to capture images of the wildlife in the area around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant over a four-month period.

Contaminated water might have leaked from the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactors after erroneous settings on water gauges lowered groundwater levels nearby, according to the plant operator. Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said the settings on six of the dozens of wells around the reactors were 70 centimetres (three feet) below the requirement. Groundwater at one well briefly sank below the contaminated water inside in May, possibly causing radioactive water to leak into the soil. An underwater robot has captured images inside Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. The marine robot, is on a mission to study damage and find resources inside the devastated plant.