| Subject: | Multi-D News Explosion, radiation leak Spur nuclear fears in Japan (last updated Sat Mar 12 9:15 am EST |
|---|---|
| Date: | Sat, 12 Mar 2011 09:48:43 -0500 |
| From: | Lucky <luckypig@infionline.net> |
| Reply-To: | TheMulti-DimensionalNewsPortal@yahoogroups.com |
Last Updated: Saturday, March 12, 2011 9:15 AM
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An explosion sent white smoke rising above a nuclear plant where a massive earthquake and tsunami crippled cooling systems in northeastern Japan, the country's chief Cabinet secretary said Saturday.
Four workers were injured after the blast at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters. It was not immediately clear where the blast occurred inside the plant, or what caused it.
The roof of a reactor at the plant collapsed following the explosion around 3:30 p.m. (1:30 a.m. ET), Japan's Kyodo News Agency reported, citing Tokyo Electric Power Company.
One expert said the explosion was "clearly a serious situation," but may not be related to problems inside the plant's nuclear reactor.
Other effects of the tsunami may have caused the blast, said Malcolm Grimston, associate fellow for energy, environment and development at London's Chatham House.
"It's clearly a serious situation, but that in itself does not necessarily mean major (nuclear) contamination," he said.
Japanese public broadcaster NHK said the injured workers were in the process of cooling a nuclear reactor at the plant by injecting water into its core.
The Fukushima prefecture government said hourly radiation levels at the plant had reached levels allowable for ordinary people over the course of a year, Kyodo reported.
Earlier Saturday Japan's nuclear agency said workers were continuing efforts to cool fuel rods at the plant after a small amount of radioactive material escaped into the air.
The agency said there was a strong possibility that the radioactive cesium monitors detected was caused by the melting of a fuel rod at the plant, adding that engineers were continuing to cool the fuel rods by pumping water around them.
Cesium is a byproduct of the nuclear fission process that occurs in nuclear plants.
A spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Agency earlier said atomic material had seeped out of one of the five nuclear reactors at the Daiichi plant, located about 160 miles north of Tokyo.
Death toll grows
Rescuers plucked dazed survivors from collapsed homes, muddy waters and raging fires Saturday, a day after a powerful earthquake tore through northeastern Japan and unleashed waves that swallowed entire neighborhoods along the coast.
More than 900 were killed and about 700 were missing, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported. The number of dead is expected to go up as rescuers reach more hard-hit areas.
The 8.9-magnitude quake was centered about 80 miles from Sendai, a farming region already battling youth population losses to big cities, leaving aging residents struggling to keep up with the global economy.
In the nearby city of Shirakawa, rescuers dug through rubble with shovels to try and reach 13 neighbors trapped when the earth opened up and swallowed their homes.
The original quake struck Friday and was centered 230 miles northeast of Tokyo -- and left towns and villages along the northeastern coast devastated. Scores of aftershocks followed Saturday.
"The earth shook with such ferocity," said Andy Clark, who experienced the main earthquake at the airport outside Tokyo.
"I thought things were coming to an end ... it was simply terrifying."
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