video transcript

TV AND WEB RESTRICTIONS~**NO ACCESS JAPAN/CLEARED FOR INTERNET USE, EXCEPT BY JAPANESE WEBSITES /CNN & CNNI, BBC WORLD, NBC, CNBC MUST ON-SCREEN COURTESY 'TV TOKYO' IF PICTURES TO BE SHOWN ON CABLE, COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE IN JAPAN.~** Into the belly of the beast. Officials in Japan, including the country's environment minister, walk through the ruins of the Fukushima-Daiichi power plant - the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters ever. They visited the facility's number 4 reactor, which exploded last year when a devastating earthquake and tsunami rocked the Japanese coast. A mess of twisted steel and broken concrete, the building is still home to a massive amount of radioactive fuel. Activists say the site is a disaster in waiting while environment minister Goshi Hosono said the cleanup will take decades. (SOUNDBITE) (Japanese) JAPANESE ENVIRONMENT MINISTER, GOSHI HOSONO, SAYING: "Over the next 30-40 years we have a tough job ahead of us to sort all this out. During that time we will have to tackle the extremely tricky task of removing the spent fuel rods from the radioactive pools, and then removing them from the reactor." The government has said it could cost over 14 billion dollars to cleanup the site. Andrew Raven, Reuters