Blast at stricken Japan plant, new tsunami heads for coast

A hydrogen explosion rocked the earthquake-stricken nuclear plant in Japan where authorities have been working desperately to avert a meltdown, while media said a fresh tsunami was heading for the same coastline that was hit last week.

Japan’s nuclear agency confirmed there was an explosion at the No. 3 reactor of the Daiichi plant in Fukushima, and TV images showed smoke rising from the facility, 240 km north of Tokyo.
Officials said they could not immediately confirm whether the blast had caused a radioactive leak.
Operators had earlier halted injection of sea water into the reactor, resulting in a rise in radiation levels and pressure.
The government had warned that an explosion was possible because of the buildup of hydrogen in the building housing the reactor.
Japan battled through the weekend to prevent a nuclear catastrophe and to care for the millions without power or water in its worst crisis since World War Two, after a huge earthquake and tsunami that likely killed more than 10,000 people.
A badly wounded nation has seen whole villages and towns wiped off the map by a wall of water, leaving in its wake an international humanitarian effort of epic proportions.
Kyodo quoted authorities as saying the new tsunami could be up to a height of three metres and issued an alert for the country’s Pacific coast, including Fukushima prefecture.
As the country returned to work on Monday, markets began estimating the huge economic cost, with Japanese stocks plunging around 5 per cent and the yen falling against the dollar.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the situation at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant remained worrisome and that the authorities were doing their utmost to stop damage from spreading.
“The earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear incident have been the biggest crisis Japan has encountered in the 65 years since the end of World War Two,” a grim-faced Kan had told a news conference on Sunday.
“We’re under scrutiny on whether we, the Japanese people, can overcome this crisis.”
Officials confirmed on Sunday that three nuclear reactors north of Tokyo were at risk of overheating, raising fears of an uncontrolled radiation leak.
Engineers worked desperately to cool the fuel rods in the damaged reactors. If they fail, the containers that house the core could melt, or even explode, releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere.
The world’s third-biggest economy also faced rolling power blackouts to conserve energy, and Tokyo commuters reported long delays as train companies cut back services.

Death Toll “Above 10,000”

Broadcaster NHK, quoting a police official, said more than 10,000 people may have been killed as the wall of water triggered by Friday’s 8.9-magnitude quake surged across the coastline, reducing whole towns to rubble. It was the biggest to have hit the quake-prone country since it started keeping records 140 years ago.
“I would like to believe that there still are survivors,” said Masaru Kudo, a soldier dispatched to Rikuzentakata, a nearly flattened town of 24,500 people in far-northern Iwate prefecture.
Kyodo said 80,000 people had been evacuated from a 20-km radius around the stricken nuclear plant, joining more than 450,000 other evacuees from quake and tsunami-hit areas in the northeast of the main island Honshu.
Almost 2 million households were without power in the freezing north, the government said. There were about 1.4 million without running water.
“I am looking for my parents and my older brother,” Yuko Abe, 54, said in tears at an emergency centre in Rikuzentakata.
“Seeing the way the area is, I thought that perhaps they did not make it. I also cannot tell my siblings that live away that I am safe, as mobile phones and telephones are not working.”

Nuclear Crisis

The most urgent crisis centres on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, where authorities said they had been forced to vent radioactive steam into the air to relieve reactor pressure.
The complex was rocked by a first explosion on Saturday, which blew the roof off a reactor building. The government had said further blasts would not necessarily damage the reactor vessels.
Operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Monday it had reported a rise in radiation levels at the complex to the government. On Sunday the level had risen slightly above what one is exposed to for a stomach X-ray, the company said.
Authorities had been pouring sea water in two of the reactors at the complex to cool them down.
Nuclear experts said it was probably the first time in the industry’s 57-year history that sea water has been used in this way, a sign of how close Japan may be to a major accident.
“Injection of sea water into a core is an extreme measure,” Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.”

Source: Reuters