Rain fuels radiation fears in Japan

Disrupts rescue efforts:

Japan: Driving rain on Monday disrupted rescue efforts in Japan and compounded the misery of disaster survivors now fearing radioactive fallout from the smouldering wreck of a nuclear plant.

The bad weather forced Prime Minister Naoto Kan to call off a helicopter flight to the battered northeast coast including a trip to a football training centre about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the crippled Fukushima No 1 plant.

The centre is now a staging area for emergency personnel working to avert a disastrous radiation release from the atomic plant, whose reactors have been overheating after cooling systems were damaged by an earthquake and tsunami.

Engineers have laid an external electricity supply to reactor number two and may be able to restore power to its control room later Monday, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said.

Equipment likely to be switched back on includes temperature and pressure instruments as well as the air filtering system, which is designed to prevent radioactive substances entering the control room.

Kitakami , Monday, AFP