Japan PM: Nuke plant crisis grave

Tokyo - Japan's prime minister says the situation at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant remains "grave and serious".

In a televised address on Friday evening, Naoto Kan warned that "we are not in a position where we can be optimistic. We must treat every development with the utmost care".

He also apologised to farmers and business owners around the plant for damage caused.

Nuclear safety agency officials said on Friday they suspected a breach in the reactor core of one unit at the plant. The complex was damaged by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

That could mean more radioactive contamination in the environment.

The uncertain situation halted work at the plant, where dozens had been trying to stop the overheated plant from leaking dangerous radiation

Tokyo water 'unfit for babies' due to high radiation

Officials in Toyko say that radiation levels in the city's tap water make the water unfit for babies to drink.

Iodine levels in some areas are twice the recommended safe level.
The authorities have also imposed new restrictions on food from areas affected by leaks from the Fukushima nuclear plant.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States also announced restrictions on certain food imports.
Levels of radioactive iodine-131 in some areas of Tokyo is 210 becquerels per litre; the safe level for infants in 100 becquerels per litre.
People have been warned not to give the water to infants, although there is no immediate health risk to adults.
Workers at the Fukushima reactor 2 have halted work as radiation levels spiked; the UN atomic agency has said radiation is still leaking from the plant.
The confirmed death toll from the earthquake and tsunami is now 9,079, with 12,645 missing.
But the Japanese government now estimates that more than 21,000 people died.
The cost of damage caused by the disaster is estimated at about 16-25 trillion yen ($197bn-$308bn).
The Japanese Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, ordered the governors of Fukushima and neighbouring Ibaraki to halt shipments of a range of agriculture goods.
This included green leaf vegetables, broccoli, parsley and untreated milk after they showed radiation levels which were higher than normal.
The Japanese Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference that importers of Japanese foods should take a "logical stance".
A statement from the FDA said that all milk and milk products and fresh fruits and vegetables from four Japanese prefectures - Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma - will be stopped from entering the United States.
Food and fish retailers are increasingly worried about the effect the crisis will have on their livelihoods.

Continue reading the main story

 

Nuclear fight

The sudden halt to work at reactor 2 was a reminder of the challenges still facing emergency workers at the nuclear sites.

Lighting has been restored to the control centre of reactor 3, hours after power cables were connected to all six reactors for the first time.
The Fukushima Daiichi plant's operators, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), said engineers will try to power up water pumps to reactor 3 some time on Wednesday.
However, they said restoring power to all the reactor units could take weeks or even months.
On Tuesday, an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) senior official, James Lyons, said he could not confirm that the damaged reactors were "totally intact" or if they were cracked and leaking radiation.
"We continue to see radiation coming from the site... and the question is where exactly is that coming from," Mr Lyons told a news conference.
The government has evacuated tens of thousands of people within a 20km (12-mile) radius of the plant and told residents 10km beyond that to stay indoors. The US has recommended an 80km exclusion zone.
Tepco vice president Norio Tsuzumi has visited evacuation centres to meet those forced from their homes.
Bowing deeply, he said: "Since I have tried to manage this problem hand-in-hand with the government, my visit here to directly meet you was belated. For this I also apologise from the bottom of my heart."
Meanwhile, strong aftershocks are continuing to rattle the north-east of Japan, adding to the misery of more than 300,000 people still huddled in evacuation centres across 16 prefectures.
Tens of thousands of homes are still without power and more than two million people have no running water, officials say.

Work was interrupted for the second time in 24 hours after steam and smoke was emitted from two of the reactors.
Radiation levels spiked briefly, and engineers were told to leave the plant.
Meanwhile, the official death toll from the earthquake and tsunami has risen to more than 9,000, with 12,645 missing.
The work to restore power to the reactors restarted shortly after dawn.
Although power cables are reported to have been reattached to the various reactors, the authorities say they are still not in a position to get enough power to them to restart cooling systems and monitoring equipment.
Workers at the plant have been battling to cool reactors and spent fuel ponds to avoid a large-scale release of radiation, after the plant was crippled by fire and explosions following the 11 March quake and tsunami.

Analysis

Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

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Technicians at the Fukushima plant are now battling with damage inflicted to electrical systems by the tsunami - and possibly by the earthquake that preceded it, and the gas explosions that subsequently rocked some of the reactor buildings.
Mains electricity has now arrived at three buildings, and at least in one it has been successfully connected to water pumps.
Some of the circuitry that distributes power around the site has been damaged, and it may be some days before all pumps and all instruments can be connected.
Some key information - such as the water temperature in some of the spent fuel ponds - is still missing, perhaps because instruments were destroyed by fire.
Nevertheless, the power station is undeniably more stable than at any time last week, and for the first time the International Atomic Energy Agency says it 'has no doubt' that the crisis will be overcome.

Police say the death toll from the earthquake and tsunami is now 9,079.

More than 350,000 people are still living in evacuation centres in northern and eastern Japan, many of them short of food and water.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said a new government committee would meet regularly to co-ordinate with social agencies and ensure the evacuees were getting the support they need.
Some aid from foreign countries has started to arrive, and the government has started the process of finding temporary housing in other parts of the country for those made homeless.
Workers in north-east Japan have begun building temporary homes for the displaced. The prefabricated metal boxes with wooden floors were put up on the hillside near the devastated town of Rikuzentakata.
The government has also relaxed stockpiling rules on fuel wholesalers in a bid to get more fuel to the affected areas.
Power rationing has resumed across Japan because of shortages caused by the nuclear shutdown.
Food shipments halted
Twenty-four hours ago, the Japanese authorities were more upbeat about the operation to stabilise the Fukushima plant.
The head of the UN atomic agency (IAEA) said he had no doubt the crisis would be" effectively overcome".
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) - whose staff are in Tokyo conferring with the Japanese government and industry officials - has said the Japanese nuclear crisis appeared to be stabilising.
The NRC said that reactors 1, 2 and 3 had some core damage but their containment was not currently breached.

FUKUSHIMA UPDATE

• Reactor 1: Damage to the core from cooling problems. Building holed by gas explosion. Power lines attached.
• Reactor 2: Damage to the core from cooling problems. Building holed by gas blast; containment damage suspected. Power lines attached.
• Reactor 3: Damage to the core from cooling problems. Building holed by gas blast; containment damage possible. Spent fuel pond partly refilled with water after running low.
• Reactor 4: Reactor shut down prior to earthquake. Fires and explosion in spent fuel pond; water level partly restored. Power lines attached.
• Reactors 5 & 6: Reactors shut down. Temperature of spent fuel pools now lowered after rising high. Power lines attached.

But Industry Minister Banri Kaieda told a news conference on Tuesday that the situation was "extremely tough" and that it was "difficult to say that things are showing progress".

White vapour and smoke are still rising from reactors 2 and 3 but radiation levels remain stable.
Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said he believes the smoke rising from the No 2 reactor is vapour caused by water-discharging operations, and the smoke at No 3 was from rubble that had caught fire following a rise in temperature.
Amounts of radiation many times the legal limit have been detected in seawater near the plant. The plant's operator Tepco is investigating.
On Monday, the government ordered a halt to some food shipments from four prefectures around the Fukushima nuclear plant, as concern increases about radioactive traces in vegetables and water supplies.
Villagers living near the plant have been told not to drink tap water because of higher levels of radioactive iodine.
The suspension - which the government said was just a precaution - applies to spinach from the prefectures of Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma, as well as milk from Fukushima.
Tepco will have to compensate farmers for losses caused by the nuclear radiation leaking from its power plants, the Japan authorities have said.
The firm will have to take responsibility, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano at a press conference.
The World Health Organization said it had no evidence of contaminated food reaching other countries. However, China, Taiwan and South Korea have announced plans to toughen checks of Japanese imports

Japan: Evacuees Speak Of Sense Of Betrayal

In the evacuation centre inside Yamagata stadium, every new arrival is scanned for exposure to radiation with a Geiger counter.

 

Only then are they given a new home on the hard wooden floors of the basketball court.
The stadium is a small city of refugees, many of whom have fled the 12-mile exclusion zone that surrounds the Fukushima nuclear plant.
As Japan's nuclear crisis has worsened, the authorities have gradually extended the compulsory evacuation area from an initial 1.8-mile radius to six miles, and now the present limit.
Beyond that, the Japanese government insists there is no threat to human health.



The camp is kept meticulously clean; there are orderly queues for food and other supplies.
But as Fukushima's reactors continue to overheat, many must question whether they will ever be able to return to their normal lives.
Across town in a local primary school, the classrooms have also been turned over to refugees.
One of them is two-week-old Sakura Ko.
In her short existence she's already lived through a deadly earthquake and the ensuing tsunami.

Now she and her mother have fled their home, just 15 miles from the nuclear plant.
"If it had just been me, perhaps I would have stayed," said her mother Shoko Yasukawa. "But as things got worse I thought I should leave for the sake of the baby."
Others in the camp give an insight into how profoundly the nuclear crisis has shaken Japan.
"I'm shocked," said Hiroshi Monma, who fled his home inside the exclusion zone. "They didn't tell us what was happening, so I'm very angry with the people who are running the plant. It's a joke."

He is not alone in his rage.
Though Japan's government continues to urge calm, the country's media has reported that privately Prime Minister Naoto Kan is furious with Tepco, the company that manages the six reactors in Fukushima.
But one evacuee in Yamagata said anger with the company involved was pointless.
Instead, in an unusual display of emotion, 65-year-old Mitsuru Fujita, wept as he described his sense of betrayal.
"The government told us it was safe," he said. "Now I feel angry with myself for ever having believed them."
:: The official toll of people dead or missing stands at 14,650.

Concern Grows As Japan Cools Nuclear Plant

International energy authorities have voiced concerns over the deteriorating situation at tsunami-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant as anger mounts over the handling of the crisis.


Workers at the stricken plant are desperately trying to prevent the fuel rods of several damaged reactors from overheating and ultimately melting down.
Japanese military helicopters have been dumping seawater on the stricken Reactor 3 to cool down the fuel rods inside the core.
The plant operator has said getting water to this reactor is a priority because of the smoke or steam which has been escaping, indicating water is evaporating from the cooling pool.
The head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, said he believes the situation is more serious than the Japanese government is letting on



Mr Jaczko warned that water in Reactor 4's cooling pool may have run dry and a second reactor could be leaking - something experts say could accelerate the release of radiation.
"We believe that around the reactor site there are high levels of radiation," he said.
"It would be very difficult for emergency workers to get near the reactors.
The doses they could experience would potentially be lethal doses in a very short period of time


But Japan's nuclear safety agency and Tokyo Electric Power Co, which operates the six-unit Fukushima complex, denied Mr Jaczko's statement that the water is gone from the pool.
Utility spokesman Hajime Motojuku said Reactor 4's condition is "stable".
The International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) said two of the facility's staff members remain missing after an explosion earlier this week.
Meanwhile, thousands of people have been cleared from their homes, and thousands more have chosen to move away from the region surrounding the Fukushima plant which is 150 miles (240km) north of Tokyo.
The US has warned citizens living within 50 miles (80km) to evacuate.


But Japan's nuclear safety agency and Tokyo Electric Power Co, which operates the six-unit Fukushima complex, denied Mr Jaczko's statement that the water is gone from the pool.
Utility spokesman Hajime Motojuku said Reactor 4's condition is "stable".
The International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) said two of the facility's staff members remain missing after an explosion earlier this week.
Meanwhile, thousands of people have been cleared from their homes, and thousands more have chosen to move away from the region surrounding the Fukushima plant which is 150 miles (240km) north of Tokyo.
The US has warned citizens living within 50 miles (80km) to evacuate.

The rapidly-changing situation has also led Britain, Germany, France, Austria and Australia to urge its citizens to leave the country's capital.
The UK government is chartering flights from Tokyo to Hong Kong to supplement commercially available options for those wishing to leave.
Asian and European airlines have begun diverting Tokyo flights to Osaka or cancelling them altogether.

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog is to travel to Japan today to assess what he called a "very serious" situation and urged the Japanese government to provide better information to his organisation.
Finance ministers of the leading G7 economies will also discuss today how to help Japan with the financial impact of the disaster.
The nuclear crisis has diverted attention from the tens of thousands affected by Friday's earthquake and subsequent tsunami.
Around 850,000 households in the north are without electricity in near-freezing weather.
The official death toll currently stands at 5,178 with a further 8,606 people missing.