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Foxnews...
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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