In 2011, the most powerful earthquake in Japan's history occurred just off its eastern coast.

Such was its seismic force. It actually shifted the Earth from its axis by six and a half inches,

and caused a tsunami which flooded the Fukushima nuclear power station.

What then followed was the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl,

the nuclear fuel in three of the reactors overheated and led to partial meltdown.

An exclusion zone was created, expanding as radiation leaked from the plant,

forcing 150,000 people to evacuate the area.

Twelve years on, several towns remain off limits, and that exclusion zone is still in place.

But authorities there now have a new problem.

What to do with the contaminated water used to cool those cores?

They've been storing it in huge containers, which will soon reach capacity.

So the plan is to release that water gradually into the Pacific Ocean.

Scientists say entirely safely, others aren't so sure. Well,

let's take a look. Welcome to the Daily. I'm Neil Patterson. Helen Ann Smith is, of course,

Sky's Asia correspondent. She joins us once again on the Daily. Good to see Helen Ann. Look,

take us back to Fukushima 12 years ago. Remind us what exactly happened, because I was, I was at work that day,

and it was scary. It was very, very scary for a time. If you remember, a magnitude 9 earthquake

essentially struck just off the east coast of Japan, and, you know, that did enough damage by

itself, but the real

damage was caused by this absolutely huge, terrifying tsunami that just smashed into Japan's

East Coast, causing a huge, huge amount of damage to communities up and down the coast there,

but particularly in terms of that Fukushima nuclear plant, what happened is that three of the

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