by: Terje Langeland and Brian Womack | Bloomberg Businessweek

Google Inc. (GOOG) released images taken by its Street View service from the town of Namie, Japan, inside the zone that was evacuated after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011.

Google, operator of the world’s biggest Web search engine, entered Namie this month at the invitation of the town’s mayor, Tamotsu Baba, and produced the 360-degree imagery for the Google Maps and Google Earth services, it said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.