Japan to create nuclear meltdown to learn how to deal with disasters like Fukushima Nearly a year after the quake and tsunami that rocked the Fukushima nuclear disaster, evacuated residents tell how their lives have been changed. SCIENTISTS in Japan are planning to create a controlled reactor meltdown in a bid to learn how to deal with future disasters like that at Fukushima. In Fukushima, the radiation is still so bad it can be fatal within 20 minutes. Japanese media has also reported that the intensity of radiation levels in the nuclear powerplant devastated by the earthquake - and subsequent tidal waves - of March 2011 is now at its highest levels ever. The No. 1 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, is seen before and after an explosion that blew out the walls of the unit, in Okumamachi, Fukushima Prefecture in Japan in 2011. To combat this sort of disaster occurring again, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency said it was working on a project using a scaled-down version of a reactor which they would deliberately cause to malfunction at a research facility in Ibaraki, north of Tokyo. A satellite image of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex in Japan in 2009, and after the radiation leak in 2011. Picture: AP Source: News Limited "We want to study exactly how meltdowns happen and apply what we will learn to help improve ways to deal with severe accidents in the future," said a spokesman for the government-backed engineering agency. Smoke raises from Fukushima Daiichi power plant's Unit 1 in Okumamachi, Fukushima prefecture, Jin 2011. The meltdown project, which will begin some time in the fiscal year that starts in April, will use a small fuel rod that that will undergo a very rapid fission process, the spokesman said. He said it will be the first such experiment to be carried out by the Japanese agency, although similar projects have been done in major nations with atomic power such as the United States and France. Workers spraying resin on the ground near the reactor buildings to protect the spread of radioactive substances at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant at Okuma town in Fukushima in 2011. The Japanese public has become keenly aware of nuclear safety since a 9.0-magnitude earthquake in 2011 triggered a killer tsunami that swamped the cooling system at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Many have expressed their views against nuclear power by protesting in major cities such as Tokyo. Anti-nuclear protesters wearing protective suits carry a mock nuclear waste during a march as policemen stand guard near the Diet building in Tokyo Picture: AP Source: AP A blast at Fukushima's No.1 power plant was followed by a blaze at the No.4 reactor, meaning four out of six reactors at the site, 250km northeast of Tokyo, are now in trouble. The plant went through meltdowns and explosions, spewing radioactive materials over a vast farming region and making parts of the area unfit for human habitation for many decades. The planned experimental meltdown will not be designed to analyse how the Fukushima accident happened, the atomic energy agency's spokesman added. Brokers recruit and sell homeless people as workers to clear the site of Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant. Ruairidh Villar reports.