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Japan Nuclear Agency Reports Emergency at Second Reactor as Hundreds of Thousands Flee
Published March 12, 2011

IWAKI, Japan –  Cooling systems failed at a second nuclear reactor on Japan’s devastated coast Sunday, hours after an explosion at a nearby unit made leaking radiation, or even outright meltdown, the central threat to the country following a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.

The Japanese government said radiation emanating from the plant appeared to have decreased after Saturday’s blast, which produced a cloud of white smoke that obscured the complex. But the danger was grave enough that officials pumped seawater into the reactor to avoid disaster and moved 170,000 people from the area.

“Evacuations around both affected nuclear plants have begun,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement to Reuters.

Sky News is reporting that up to 160 people may have suffered radiation exposure. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says people are being tested for radiation exposure.

Authorities have evacuated people from a 12-mile radius around the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactor.

Japan’s nuclear safety agency then reported an emergency at a second reactor unit when its cooling systems malfunctioned.

Aftershocks have hit near the troubled nuclear power plant, as 6.1 and 6.3-magnitude quakes rattled the area.
Japan dealt with the nuclear threat as it struggled to determine the scope of the earthquake, the most powerful in its recorded history, and the tsunami that ravaged its northeast Friday with breathtaking speed and power. The official count of the dead was 686, but the government said the figure could far exceed 1,000.

Devastation stretched hundreds of miles along the coast, where thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers cut off from rescuers and aid.

The scale of destruction was not yet known, but there were grim signs that the death toll could soar. One report said four whole trains along the coast had disappeared Friday and still not been located. The East Japan Railway Company says one of them, a bullet train, had 400 people on board,The Guardian U.K. reports.

Others said 9,500 people in one coastal town were unaccounted for and that at least 200 bodies had washed ashore elsewhere.

Continued aftershocks, some as high as magnitude 6.4, were hampering search efforts as strong waves batter the coastline.

More than 1,231 buildings have been destroyed and another 4,000 damaged, according to a United Nations report.

Atsushi Ito, an official in Miyagi prefecture, among the worst hit states, could not confirm those figures, noting that with so little access to the area, thousands of people in scores of town could not be contacted or accounted for.

“Our estimates based on reported cases alone suggest that more than 1,000 people have lost their lives in the disaster,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. “Unfortunately, the actual damage could far exceed that number considering the difficulty assessing the full extent of damage.”

Among the most worrying developments was the possible meltdown of a nuclear reactor near the quake’s epicenter. Edano said an explosion caused by vented hydrogen gas destroyed the exterior walls of the building where the reactor is, but not the actual metal housing enveloping the reactor.

Edano said the radiation around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant had not risen after the blast, but had in fact decreased. He did not say why that was so. He added that pressure decreased after the blast.

Still, virtually any increase in ambient radiation can raise long-term cancer rates, and authorities were planning to distribute iodine, which helps protect against thyroid cancer.

The explosion was caused by hydrogen interacting with oxygen outside the reactor. The hydrogen was formed when the superheated fuel rods came in contact with water being poured over it to prevent a meltdown.

“They are working furiously to find a solution to cool the core, and this afternoon in Europe we heard that they have begun to inject sea water into the core,” said Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the Nuclear Policy Program for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “That is an indication of how serious the problem is and how the Japanese had to resort to unusual and improvised solutions to cool the reactor core.”

Officials have said that radiation levels were elevated before the blast: At one point, the plant was releasing each hour the amount of radiation a person normally absorbs from the environment each year.

Read the full story at Foxnews


 
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