The darkness is broken only by the flashing torchlight of the heroes who stayed behind.

These first images of inside the stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant reveal the terrifying conditions under which the brave men work to save their nation from full nuclear meltdown.

The Fukushima Fifty – an anonymous band of lower and mid-level managers – have battled around the clock to cool overheating reactors and spent fuel rods since the disaster on March 11.

 

After the earthquake.

Fixed.

Another hero rescues porpoise.

A baby porpoise was rescued after surviving two weeks in a flooded paddy field.

The porpoise was dumped there by the 33ft tsunami that has devastated the east coast of Japan on March 11.

Pet-shop owner Ryo Taira, who has been rescuing animals abandoned after the catastrophe, said: ‘A man passing by said he had found the dolphin in the rice paddy and that we had to do something to save it.’

Taira, 32,  found the porpoise struggling in the shallow seawater and after failing to net it, waded in to the fieldto cradle the 4ft creature to safety.

‘It was pretty weak by then, which was probably the only reason we could catch it,’ he said.

He wrapped it in wet towels and drove it back to the sea, where he set it free. He said it appeared to perk up at the sight of the Pacific, he said.

‘I don’t know if it will live, but it’s certainly a lot better than dying in a rice paddy,’ Taira told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

Japan nuclear crisis: Fukushima Fifty pictures from inside nuclear power plant.