FUKUSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - Radiation
leaked from a damaged Japanese nuclear reactor north of Tokyo on
Saturday, the government said, after an explosion blew the roof off
the facility in the wake of a massive earthquake.
The developments raised fears of a meltdown at the plant as
officials scrambled to contain what could be the worst nuclear
disaster since the Chernobyl explosion in 1986 that shocked the
world.
The Japanese plant was damaged by Friday's 8.9-magnitude
earthquake, which sent a 10-metre (33-foot) tsunami ripping through
towns and cities across the northeast coast. Japanese media
estimate that at least 1,300 people were killed.
"We are looking into the cause and the situation and we'll make
that public when we have further information," Chief Cabinet
Secretary Yukio Edano said after confirming the explosion and
radiation leak at the plant.
Edano said an evacuation radius of 10 km (6 miles) from the
stricken 40-year-old Daiichi 1 reactor plant in Fukushima prefecture was adequate, but an hour later the
boundary was extended to 20 km (13 miles). TV footage showed vapour
rising from the plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.
GRAPHIC:
-- Nuclear reactor at risk http://link.reuters.com/dyf58r
-- World's largest quakes http://link.reuters.com/maf58r
-- How tsunamis occur http://link.reuters.com/bec58r
-- How quakes happen http://link.reuters.com/xac58r
Along Japan's northeast coast, rescue workers searched through
the rubble of destroyed buildings, cars and boats, looking for
survivors in hardest-hit areas such as the city of Sendai, 300 km
(180 miles) northeast of Tokyo.
Dazed residents hoarded water and huddled in makeshift shelters
in near-freezing temperatures. Aerial footage showed buildings and
trains strewn over mudflats like children's toys.
"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.
Across the coastline, survivors clambered over nearly impassable
roads. In Iwanuma, not far from Sendai, people spelled S.O.S. out
on the roof of a hospital surrounded by water, one of many
desperate scenes.
The earthquake and tsunami, and now the radiation leak, present
Japan's government with its biggest challenge in a generation.
The explosion at Chernobyl's nuclear plant's fourth reactor in
1986 sent thousands of tonnes of toxic nuclear dust billowing
across the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. It
was the worst civil nuclear disaster.
The blast at the Japanese nuclear facility came as plant
operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) worked desperately to
reduce pressures in the core of the reactor.
The company has had a rocky past in an industry plagued by
scandal. In 2002, the president of the country's largest power
utility was forced to resign along with four other senior
executives, taking responsibility for suspected falsification of
nuclear plant safety records.
NHK television and Jiji news agency said the outer structure of
the reactor building that houses the reactor appeared to have blown
off, but nuclear experts said this did not necessarily mean the
nuclear reactor had been breached.
Earlier the operator released what it said was a tiny amount of
radioactive steam to reduce the pressure and the danger was minimal
because tens of thousands of people had already been evacuated from
the vicinity.
Reuters journalists were in Fukushima
prefecture, about 70 km (40 miles) from the plant. Other
media have reported police roadblocks in the area to prevent people
getting closer.
INTERNATIONAL RELIEF EFFORT
Friday's tremor was so huge that thousands fled their homes from
coastlines around the Pacific Rim, as far away as North and South
America, fearful of a tsunami.
Most appeared to have been spared anything more serious than
some high waves, unlike Japan's northeast coastline which was
hammered by the huge tsunami that turned houses and ships into
floating debris as it surged into cities and villages, sweeping
aside everything in its path.
"I thought I was going to die," said Wataru Fujimura, a
38-year-old sales representative in Koriyama, Fukushima, north of
Tokyo and close to the area worst hit by the quake.
"Our furniture and shelves had all fallen over and there were
cracks in the apartment building, so we spent the whole night in
the car ... Now we're back home trying to clean."
In one of the worst-hit residential areas, people buried under
rubble could be heard calling out for rescue, Kyodo news agency
reported earlier.
The international community started to send disaster relief
teams on Saturday to help Japan, with the
United Nations sending a group to help coordinate work.
The disaster struck as the world's third-largest economy had
been showing signs of reviving from an economic contraction in the
final quarter of last year. It raised the prospect of major
disruptions for many key businesses and a massive repair bill
running into tens of billions of dollars.
Toyota Motor Corp, the world's largest carmaker, said it would
suspend operations at all of its 12 factories in Japan on Monday to
confirm the safety of its employees.
Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said
the earth's axis shifted 25 cm as a result of the earthquake, and
the U.S. Geological Survey said the main island of Japan had
shifted 2.4 metres.
The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world in
the past century. It surpassed the Great Kant quake of Sept. 1,
1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000
people in the Tokyo area.
The 1995 Kobe quake caused $100 billion in damage and was the
most expensive natural disaster in history.
