Explosion at Fukushima atomic plant:
Japan battles nuclear emergency
Japan: Japan battled a feared meltdown of two reactors at a
quake-hit nuclear plant Sunday, as the full horror of the disaster
emerged on the ravaged northeast coast with thousands feared dead.
An explosion at the ageing Fukushima atomic plant blew off the roof
and walls around one of its reactors Saturday, a day after the biggest
quake ever recorded in Japan unleashed a monster 10-metre (33-foot)
tsunami.
The atomic emergency widened Sunday as the cooling systems vital for
preventing overheating failed at a second reactor. In a nightmare
scenario, back-up generators were disabled by tsunami flooding.
Asked whether meltdowns had occurred, Japan’s top government
spokesman Yukio Edano said: “We are acting on the assumption that there
is a high possibility that one has occurred” in the plant’s number-one
reactor.
“As for the number-three reactor, we are acting on the assumption
that it is possible,” he said of the plant situated 250 kilometres (160
miles) northeast of Tokyo.
Edano said some radiation had escaped, but that the levels released
into the air had so far not reached levels high enough to affect human
health.
The colossal 8.9-magnitude tremor sent waves of mud and debris racing
over towns and farming land in Japan’s northeast, destroying all before
it and leaving the coast a swampy wasteland.
In the small port town of Minamisanriku alone some 10,000 people were
unaccounted for — more than half the population — public broadcaster NHK
reported.
As the world’s third-largest economy struggled to assess the full
extent of what Prime Minister Naoto Kan called an “unprecedented
national disaster”, groups of hundreds of bodies were being found along
the shattered coastline.
“We have received a preliminary report that more than 200 bodies were
found in the city of Higashimatsushima,” a National Police Agency
spokesman said in the latest find on Sunday.
Edano said at least 1,000 people were believed to have lost their
lives, and police said more than 215,000 people were huddled in
emergency shelters.
In the city of Fukushima, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of
the stricken plant, AFP reporters saw panic buying at supermarkets and
said petrol stations had run dry.
In Minamisoma town, which was virtually obliterated by the tsunami’s
black tide of mud and debris, an AFP reporter saw fire volunteers
collecting bodies found in the twisted wreckage of what had once been a
residential area.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said about 200,000 people had
so far been evacuated from the area around the two Fukushima plants that
house a total of 10 reactors.
Fukushima, Sunday, AFP |