Monday, March 14, 2011

Japan News Update: Nuclear Plant Faces New Threat; 10,000 May Die As a Result of Earthquake

Japan nuclear plant faces new threat

CHRIS MEYERS AND KIM KYUNG-HOON
SENDAI, JAPAN - Mar 13 2011 07:38

Japan faced a fresh radiation threat at an earthquake-crippled nuclear plant on Sunday after the cooling system failed at a second reactor in what could be the world's worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.

The previous day, thousands were evacuated following an explosion and leak from the facility's Number One reactor in Fukushima, 240km north of Tokyo.

Strong aftershocks continued to shake Japan's main island as the desperate search pressed on for survivors from Friday massive earthquake and tsunami and the death toll was expected to rise. Media reports say it is likely to exceed 1 800.

Nuclear plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said radiation levels around the Fukushima Daiichi plant had risen above the safety limit but it did not mean an "immediate threat" to human health.

It said earlier it was preparing to vent steam to relieve pressure in the Number Three reactor at the plant and the government had warned of a rise in radiation during the procedure.

Thousands spent another freezing night huddled over heaters in emergency shelters along the northeastern coast, a scene of devastation after the 8,9 magnitude quake sent a 10m wave surging through towns and cities in the Miyagi region, including its main coastal city of Sendai.

"It's hard to even imagine the scale of it," a resident said. "I came to Miyagi during the last earthquake as well to help, but once there is water involved, it becomes a whole different story. It's hard to think about."

Kyodo news agency, which said the number of dead or unaccounted was expected to exceed 1 800, reported that there had been no contact with around 10 000 people in one town, more than half its population.

The government had insisted radiation levels were low following Saturday's explosion, saying the blast had not affected the reactor core container. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Japan had told it that levels "have been observed to lessen in recent hours".

Officials said 22 people were known to have been exposed to radiation. A total of 190 had been within a 10km radius of the reactor.

Workers in protective clothing were scanning people arriving at evacuation centres for radioactive exposure.

"They are working on relieving pressure and pumping in water into the Number Three reactor," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news briefing.

"This will result in some radiation leakage, although at a level that won't affect peoples' health. It will help stabilise the situation." He also said radiation from the Number One reactor was "low enough not to affect people's health".

Officials ordered the evacuation of a 20km radius zone around the plant and 10km around another nuclear facility close by.

About 140 000 people had left the area, the IAEA said, while authorities prepared to distribute iodine to protect people from radioactive exposure.

"There is radiation leaking out, and since the possibility [of being expose] is high, it's quite scary," said Masanori Ono (17) standing in line on Saturday to be scanned for radiation at an evacuation centre in Fukushima prefecture.

Tepco has been pumping seawater into the Number One reactor to cool it down.

"The use of seawater means they have run out of options. If they had any other water they would have used it. It likely means the power for their pumps is gone. They must be pumping the seawater in," said David Lochbaum, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists Nuclear Safety Project.

Criticism

The government, in power less than two years and which had already been struggling to push policy through a deeply divided parliament, came under criticism for its handling of the crisis.

"Crisis management is incoherent," blared a headline in the Asahi newspaper, charging that information disclosure and instructions to expand the evacuation area around the troubled plant were too slow.

"Every time they repeated 'stay calm' without giving concrete data, anxiety increased," it quoted an unidentified veteran party lawmaker as saying.

There have been proposal of an extra budget to help pay for huge cost of recovery but the government says there is also a ¥200-billion ($2,4-billion) budget reserve for the current fiscal year which can be used.

In Europe, environmentalists seized on the accident to press for an end to nuclear power. Up to 60 000 protesters formed a 45km human chain in Germany to denounce the government's policy of extending the life of nuclear plants.

Before news of the problem with reactor Number Three, the nuclear safety agency said the plant accident was less serious than both the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

An official at the agency said it rated the incident a 4 according to the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). Three Mile Island was rated five while Chernobyl was rated seven on the one to seven scale.

Devastation

Along the north-east coast, rescue workers searched through the rubble of destroyed buildings, cars and boats, looking for survivors in hardest-hit areas such as Sendai, 300km north-east of Tokyo.

Aerial footage showed buildings, trains and even light aircraft strewn like children's toys after powerful walls of seawater swamped areas around Sendai.

In Iwanuma, not far from Sendai, nurses and doctors were rescued on Saturday after spelling SOS on the rooftop of a partially submerged hospital, one of many desperate scenes. In cities and towns, worried relatives checked information boards on survivors at evacuation centres.

Dazed residents hoarded water and huddled in makeshift shelters in near-freezing temperatures.

"All the shops are closed, this is one of the few still open. I came to buy and stock up on diapers, drinking water and food," Kunio Iwatsuki (68) told Reuters in Mito city, where residents queued outside a damaged supermarket for supplies.

Kyodo said about 300 000 people were evacuated nationwide, many seeking refuge in shelters, wrapped in blankets, some clutching each other sobbing.

It said 5,5-million people were without power, while 3 400 buildings had been destroyed or damaged. Four trains were unaccounted for after the tsunami.

In Tokyo, the usually bustling central districts were deserted on Saturday night, and the few in bars and restaurants were glued to television coverage of the disaster.

"Even in the bar we kept staring at the news," said Kasumi, a 26-year-old woman meeting a friend for a drink in the central district of Akasaka. "I looked at the tsunami swallowing houses and it seemed like a film." - Reuters

Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2011-03-13-japan-nuclear-plant-faces-new-threat


Japan death toll may top 10 000

JAY ALABASTER | TAGAJO, JAPAN
Mar 13 2011 11:57

The death toll in Japan's earthquake and tsunami will probably exceed 10 000 in one state alone, an official said on Sunday, as millions of survivors were left without drinking water, electricity and proper food along the pulverised northeastern coast.

Although the government doubled the number of soldiers deployed in the aid effort to 100 000, it seemed overwhelmed by what's turning out to be a triple disaster: Friday's quake and tsunami damaged two nuclear reactors at a power plant on the coast, and at least one of them appeared to be going through a partial meltdown, raising fears of a radiation leak.

The police chief of Miyagi prefecture told a gathering of disaster relief officials that his estimate for deaths was more than 10 000, police spokesperson Go Sugawara told the Associated Press. Miyagi has a population of 2,3-million and is one of the three prefectures hardest hit in Friday's disaster. Only 379 people have officially been confirmed as dead in Miyagi.

The nuclear crisis posed fresh concerns for those who survived the earthquake and tsunami, which hit with breathtaking force and speed, breaking or sweeping away everything in its path.

"First I was worried about the quake, now I'm worried about radiation. I live near the plants, so I came here to find out if I'm OK. I tested negative, but I don't know what to do next," Kenji Koshiba, a construction worker, said at an emergency centre in Koriyama town near the power plant in Fukushima.

According to officials, at least 1 200 people were killed -- including 200 people whose bodies were found on Sunday along the coast -- and 739 were missing in the disasters.

In a rare piece of good news, the Defence Ministry said a military helicopter on Sunday rescued a 60-year-old man floating off the coast of Fukushima on the roof of his house after being swept away in the tsunami. He was in good condition.

The US Geological Survey calculated the initial quake to have a magnitude of 8,9, while Japanese officials raised their estimate on Sunday to 9,0. Either way it was the strongest quake recorded in Japan. It has been followed by more than 150 powerful aftershocks.

Teams searched for the missing along hundreds of kilometres of Japanese coastline, and hundreds of thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centres that were cut off from rescuers and aid. At least 1,4-million households had gone without water since the quake struck and about 2,5-million households were without electricity. Temperatures were to dip near freezing overnight.

Trade Minister Banri Kaeda said the region was likely to face further blackouts and that power would be rationed to ensure supplies go to essential needs.

Large areas of the countryside remained surrounded by water and unreachable. Fuel stations were closed and people were running out of petrol for their vehicles.

Public broadcaster NHK said about 380 000 people have been evacuated to emergency shelters, many of them without power.

In Iwaki town, residents were leaving due to concerns over dwindling food and fuel supplies. The town had no electricity and all stores were closed. Local police took in about 90 people and gave them blankets and rice balls but there was no sign of government or military aid trucks.

At a large refinery on the outskirts of the hard-hit port city of Sendai, 30m-high bright orange flames rose in the air, spitting out dark plumes of smoke. The facility has been burning since Friday. A reporter who approached the area could hear the roaring fire from afar, and after a few minutes the gaseous stench began burning the eyes and throat.

At a small park near the refinery, trees and large swaths of grass were covered in thick black crude oil. Two large tanker trucks were jammed sideways among the trees, their gas tanks crumpled.

Mayumi Yagoshi, an office worker at the refinery, said she had taken the day off Friday because she had slipped and hurt her back.

Smashed cars, broken homes

"I was lucky, but I feel really bad. My mobile phone doesn't work and I have no idea what happened to everyone else," she said.

In the small town of Tagajo, near Sendai, dazed residents roamed streets cluttered with smashed cars, broken homes and twisted metal.

Residents said the water surged in and quickly rose higher than the first floor of buildings. At Sengen General Hospital the staff worked feverishly to haul bedridden patients up the stairs one at a time. With the halls now dark, those that can leave have gone to the local community centre.

"There is still no water or power, and we've got some very sick people in here," said hospital official Ikuro Matsumoto.

One older neighbourhood sits on low ground near a canal. The tsunami came in from the canal side and blasted through the frail wooden houses, coating the interiors with a thick layer of mud and spilling their contents out into the street on the other side.

"It's been two days, and all I've been given so far is a piece of bread and a rice ball," said Masashi Imai (56).

Police cars drove slowly through the town and warned residents through loudspeakers to seek higher ground, but most simply stood by and watched them pass.

Dozens of countries have offered assistance. Two US aircraft carrier groups were off Japan's coast and ready to provide assistance. Helicopters were flying from one of the carriers, the USS Ronald Reagan, delivering food and water in Miyagi.

Corpses

Two other U.S. rescue teams of 72 personnel each and rescue dogs were scheduled to arrive later on Sunday, as was a five-dog team from Singapore.

In Sendai, firefighters with wooden picks dug through a devastated neighbourhood. One of them yelled: "A corpse." Inside a house, he had found the body of a gray-haired woman under a blanket.

A few minutes later, the firefighters spotted another -- that of a man in black fleece jacket and pants, crumpled in a partial foetal position at the bottom of a wooden stairwell. From outside, the house seemed almost untouched, two cracks in the white walls the only signs of damage.

The man's neighbour, 24-year-old Ayumi Osuga, dug through the completely destroyed remains of her own house, her white mittens covered by dark mud.

Osuga said she had been playing origami, the Japanese art of folding paper into figures, with her three children when the quake stuck. She recalled her husband's shouted warning from outside: "'GET OUT OF THERE NOW!"'

She gathered her children -- aged two and six -- and fled in her car to higher ground with her husband. They spent the night huddled in a hilltop home belonging to her husband's family about 20km away.

"My family, my children. We are lucky to be alive," she told the Associated Press.

"I have come to realise what is important in life," Osuga said, nervously flicking ashes from a cigarette on to the rubble at her feet as a giant column of black smoke billowed in the distance. - Sapa-AP

Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2011-03-13-japan-death-toll-may-top-10-000

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