SENDAI – An explosion at a Japanese nuclear plant triggered fears of a meltdown on Saturday, after a massive earthquake and tsunami left more than 1,000 dead and at least 10,000 unaccounted for.
As workers doused the stricken reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe, Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the chaos unleashed by Friday’s 8.9-magnitude quake was an unprecedented national disaster. The quake, one of the biggest ever recorded, unleashed a terrifying 10-metre (33-foot) wave that tore through towns and cities on Japan’s northeastern coast, destroying everything in its path.
In the small port town of Minamisanriku alone, some 10,000 people are unaccounted for – more than half the population – public broadcaster NHK reported. Even as Japan struggled to assess the full extent of the devastation, the nation faced an atomic emergency as cooling systems damaged by the quake failed at two nuclear reactors.
Smoke billowed from the Fukushima No 1 atomic plant about 250 kilometres northeast of Tokyo, after an explosion blew off the roof and walls of the structure around the reactor. Kyodo News agency cited the nuclear safety agency as saying that radioactive caesium had been detected near the ageing facility.
Kan’s top spokesman Yukio Edano said the plant’s operator had reported the reactor container was not damaged and that radiation levels had fallen after the blast, but indicated that work to bring it under control was ongoing. “We have decided to douse the (reactor) container with sea water in order to reduce risks as quickly as possible,” Edano told reporters.
Kyodo and Jiji reported before the explosion that the plant “may be experiencing nuclear meltdown”, while NHK quoted the safety agency as saying metal tubes that contain uranium fuel may have melted. Tens of thousands of residents were evacuated within a 20-kilometre radius of the stricken plant, and thousands more were shifted from another damaged plant, Fukushima No 2. Ron Chesser, director for the Center for Environmental Radiation Studies at Texas Tech University, said it was critical to cool the reactor core to avoid a meltdown that would result in “a large release of radiation”.
Some 50,000 military and other rescue personnel were spearheading a Herculean rescue and recovery effort with hundreds of ships, aircraft and vehicles headed to the Pacific coast area. Every wing of the Self Defence Forces was thrown into frantic service, with hundreds of ships, aircraft and vehicles headed to the Pacific coast area where at least 1,000 people were feared dead and entire neighbourhoods had vanished.
As emergency staff dug through rubble and plucked survivors off the roofs of submerged houses, Prime Minister Kan warned that day one after the catastrophe was a crucial window for survivors. “I realised the huge extent of the tsunami damage,” he said.
Some 300-400 bodies were recovered in the city of 23,000 people, NHK quoted the military as saying, while police reportedly said 200-300 bodies had been found in the city of Sendai. In the quake-hit areas, 5.6 million households had no power Saturday and more than one million households were without water.
