Review of the Netflix Docudrama The Days Rating *****
This is a Japanese film with Japanese actors dubbed in English. You may find it distracting for all of five minutes. Once the earthquake hits, you won’t even think about the dubbed English dialogue. The story will draw you in.
The explosions, radioactive leaks, and possible nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan made worldwide news back in 2011. The news media did not overhype the danger. Had one or two things gone differently, 1/3 of Japan would still be uninhabitable.
While Chernobyl happened largely due to human error and arrogance, the Fukushima accident was all thanks to mother nature, and perhaps the poor design and location of the backup diesel generators. The eight-part docudrama series The Days lays out all that went wrong and the efforts to prevent an environmental catastrophe. The world came very close to the nuclear meltdown of not one but six nuclear reactors.
The Fukushima story has nonstop conflict. Besides the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, there were aftershocks, hydrogen explosions, and a loss of power that hampered efforts to understand all that was happening and what steps needed to be taken to avoid disaster.
A lot of the film takes place in low-light situations or hazy, dust-and smoke-filled locations outside the plant. As in the real-life incident, those conditions added to the difficulty of trying to stop the containment vessels from exploding and releasing large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. Like Chernobyl, getting water inside the reactor to help cool it down was one of the major tasks that had to be accomplished. Another task was to open valves to allow venting and the lowering of the pressure building up inside the reactors. The lack of power hampered those efforts.
This is one to add to your que.