IWAKI, Japan (AP) — Cooling systems failed at another nuclear reactor on Japan’s
devastated coast Sunday, hours after an explosion at a nearby unit
made leaking radiation, or even outright meltdown, the central threat
to the country following a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.
The Japanese government
said radiation emanating from the plant appeared to have decreased
after Saturday’s blast, which produced a cloud of white smoke that
obscured the complex. But the danger was grave enough that officials
pumped seawater into the reactor to avoid disaster and moved 170,000
people from the area.
Japan’s nuclear
safety agency then reported an emergency at another reactor unit, the
third in the complex to have its cooling systems malfunction. To try to
release pressure from the overheating reactor, authorities released
steam that likely contained small amounts of radiation, the government said.
Japan dealt with the nuclear
threat as it struggled to determine the scope of the earthquake, the
most powerful in its recorded history, and the tsunami that ravaged its
northeast Friday with breathtaking speed and power. The official count
of the dead was 686, but the government said the figure could far exceed 1,000.
Teams
searched for the missing along hundreds of miles (kilometers) of the
Japanese coast, and thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened
emergency centers that were cut off from rescuers and aid. At least a
million households had gone without water since the quake struck. Large
areas of the countryside were surrounded by water and unreachable.
The explosion at the nuclear
plant, Fukushima Dai-ichi, 170 miles (274 kilometers) northeast of
Tokyo, appeared to be a consequence of steps taken to prevent a
meltdown after the quake and tsunami knocked out power to the plant,
crippling the system used to cool fuel rods there.
The blast
destroyed the building housing the reactor, but not the reactor itself,
which is enveloped by stainless steel 6 inches (15 centimeters) thick.
Inside
that superheated steel vessel, water being poured over the fuel rods
to cool them formed hydrogen. When officials released some of the
hydrogen gas to relieve pressure inside the reactor, the hydrogen
apparently reacted with oxygen, either in the air or the cooling water,
and caused the explosion.
“They are working furiously to find a solution to cool the core,” said Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the Nuclear Policy Program for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Nuclear agency officials said Japan was injecting seawater into the core — an indication, Hibbs
said, of “how serious the problem is and how the Japanese had to
resort to unusual and improvised solutions to cool the reactor core.”
Officials
declined to say what the temperature was inside the troubled reactor,
Unit 1. At 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit (1,200 degrees Celsius), the
zirconium casings of the fuel rods can react with the cooling water and
create hydrogen. At 4,000 F (2,200 C), the uranium fuel pellets inside
the rods start to melt, the beginning of a meltdown.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano
said radiation around the plant had fallen, not risen, after the blast
but did not offer an explanation. Virtually any increase in dispersed
radiation can raise the risk of cancer, and authorities were planning
to distribute iodine, which helps protect against thyroid cancer.
Authorities ordered 210,000 people out of the area within 12 miles (20
kilometers) of the reactor.
It was the first time Japan
had confronted the threat of a significant spread of radiation since
the greatest nightmare in its history, a catastrophe exponentially
worse: the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United
States, which resulted in more than 200,000 deaths from the
explosions, fallout and radiation sickness.
Officials have said
that radiation levels at Fukushima were elevated before the blast: At
one point, the plant was releasing each hour the amount of radiation a
person normally absorbs from the environment each year.
The
Japanese utility that runs the plant said four workers suffered
fractures and bruises and were being treated at a hospital. Nine
residents of a town near the plant who later evacuated the area tested
positive for radiation exposure, though officials said they showed no
health problems.
As Japan
entered its second night since the magnitude-8.9 quake, there were
grim signs that the death toll could soar. One report said no one could
find four whole trains. Others said 9,500 people in one coastal town
were unaccounted for and that at least 200 bodies had washed ashore
elsewhere.
The government said 642 people were missing and 1,426 injured.
Atsushi
Ito, an official in Miyagi prefecture, among the worst-hit states,
could not confirm the figures, noting that with so little access to the
area, thousands of people in scores of towns could not yet be reached.
“Our estimates based on reported cases alone suggest that more than 1,000 people have lost their lives in the disaster,” Edano
said. “Unfortunately, the actual damage could far exceed that number
considering the difficulty assessing the full extent of damage.”
Japan,
among the most technologically advanced countries in the world, is
well-prepared for earthquakes. Its buildings are made to withstand
strong jolts — even Friday’s, the strongest in Japan since official records began in the late 1800s. The tsunami that followed was beyond human control.
With
waves 23 feet (7 meters) high and the speed of a jumbo jet, it raced
inland as far as six miles (10 kilometers), swallowing homes, cars,
trees, people and anything else in its path.
“The tsunami was
unbelievably fast,” said Koichi Takairin, a 34-year-old truck driver
who was inside his sturdy, four-ton rig when the wave hit the port town
of Sendai. “Smaller cars were being swept around me. All I could do
was sit in my truck.”
His rig ruined, he joined the steady flow
of survivors who walked along the road away from the sea and back into
the city Saturday.
Smashed cars and small airplanes were jumbled
against buildings near the local airport, several miles (kilometers)
from the shore. Felled trees and wooden debris lay everywhere as rescue
workers in boats nosed through murky waters and around flooded
structures.
The tsunami set off warnings across the Pacific
Ocean, and waves sent boats crashing into one another and demolished
docks on the U.S. West Coast. In Crescent City, California, near the
Oregon state line, one person was swept out to sea and had not been
found Saturday.
In Japan
early Sunday, firefighters had yet to contain a large blaze at the
Cosmo Oil refinery in the city of Ichihara. Four million households
remained without power. The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported
that Japan had asked for additional energy supplies from Russia.
Prime
Minister Naoto Kan said 50,000 troops had joined the rescue and
recovery efforts, helped by boats and helicopters. Dozens of countries
offered to pitch in. President Barack Obama said one American aircraft
carrier was already off Japan and a second on its way.
Aid
had just begun to trickle into many areas. More than 215,000 people
were living in 1,350 temporary shelters in five prefectures, the
Japanese national police agency said.
“All we have to eat are
biscuits and rice balls,” said Noboru Uehara, 24, a delivery truck
driver who was wrapped in a blanket against the cold at a shelter in
Iwake. “I’m worried that we will run out of food.”
The transport
ministry said all highways from Tokyo leading to quake-stricken areas
were closed, except for emergency vehicles. Mobile communications were
spotty and calls to the devastated areas were going unanswered.
One
hospital in Miyagi prefecture was seen surrounded by water, and the
staff had painted “SOS,” in English, on its rooftop and were waving
white flags.
Around the nuclear plant, where 51,000 people had previously been urged to leave, others struggled to get away.
“Everyone
wants to get out of the town. But the roads are terrible,” said Reiko
Takagi, a middle-aged woman, standing outside a taxi company. “It is
too dangerous to go anywhere. But we are afraid that winds may change
and bring radiation toward us.”
Although the government played down fears of radiation leak, Japanese nuclear
agency spokesman Shinji Kinjo acknowledged there were still fears of a
meltdown — the collapse of a power plant’s systems, rendering it
unable regulate temperatures and keep the reactor fuel cool.
Yaroslov Shtrombakh, a Russian nuclear
expert, said it was unlikely that the Japanese plant would suffer a
meltdown like the one in 1986 at Chernobyl, when a reactor exploded and
sent a cloud of radiation over much of Europe. That reactor, unlike the
reactor at Fukushima, was not housed in a sealed container.
___
Kageyama
reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writers Malcolm J. Foster, Mari
Yamaguchi, Tomoko A. Hosaka and Shino Yuasa in Tokyo, Jay Alabaster in
Sendai, Sylvia Hui in London, David Nowak in Moscow, and Margie Mason
in Hanoi also contributed. (c) The Washington Times.
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