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8.9 earthquake in Japan

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Japan hit by 8.9 magnitude earthquake; major tsunami damage

Mar. 10, 2011 02:57 AM

Associated Press

TOKYO - A powerful tsunami spawned by the largest earthquake in Japan's recorded history slammed the eastern coast Friday, sweeping away boats, cars, homes and people as widespread fires burned out of control. A local news report said at least 15 people were killed.

The magnitude 8.9 offshore quake was followed by at least 19 aftershocks, most of them of more than magnitude 6.0. Dozens of cities and villages along the 1,300-mile (2,100-kilometer) stretch of the country's eastern shore were shaken by violent tremors that reached as far away as Tokyo, hundreds of miles (kilometers) from the epicenter in the sea off the northeastern coast.

A tsunami warning was issued for the entire Pacific, including areas as far away as South America, the entire U.S. West Coast, Canada and Alaska.

Kyodo news agency said 15 people were killed. The government confirmed only five deaths.

"The earthquake has caused major damage in broad areas in northern Japan," Prime Minister Naoto Kan said at a news conference.

Even for a country used to earthquakes, this one was of horrific proportions.

Large fishing boats and other sea vessels rode high waves into the cities, slamming against overpasses. Upturned and partially submerged vehicles were seen bobbing in the water.

Waves of muddy waters swept over farmland near the city of Sendai, carrying buildings, some on fire, inland as cars attempted to drive away. Sendai airport, north of Tokyo, was inundated with cars, trucks, buses and thick mud deposited over its runways. Fires spread through a section of the city, public broadcaster NHK reported.

The tsunami roared over embankments, washing cars, houses and farm equipment inland before reversing directions and carrying them out to sea. Flames shot from some of the houses, probably because of burst gas pipes.

"Our initial assessment indicate that there has already been enormous damage," Chief government spokesman Yukio Edano said. "We will make maximum relief effort based on that assessment."

He said the Defense Ministry was sending troops to the quake-hit region. A utility aircraft and several helicopters were on the way.

A large fire erupted at the Cosmo oil refinery in Ichihara city in Chiba prefecture near Tokyo and was burning out of control with 100-foot (30 meter) -high flames whipping into the sky.

NHK showed footage of a large ship being swept away and ramming directly into a breakwater in Kesennuma city in Miyagi prefecture.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the 2:46 p.m. quake was a magnitude 8.9, the biggest earthquake to hit Japan since officials began keeping records in the late 1800s, according to NHK.

A tsunami warning was extended to a number of Pacific, Southeast Asian and Latin American nations, including Japan, Russia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Chile. In the Philippines, authorities said they expect a 3-foot (1-meter) high tsunami.

The quake struck at a depth of six miles (10 kilometers), about 80 miles (125 kilometers) off the eastern coast, the agency said. The area is 240 miles (380 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo.

In downtown Tokyo, large buildings shook violently and workers poured into the street for safety. TV footage showed a large building on fire and bellowing smoke in the Odaiba district of Tokyo. The tremor bent the upper tip of the iconic Tokyo Tower, a 333-meter (1,093-foot) steel structure inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Several nuclear plants along the coast were partially shut down, but there were no reports of any radioactive leakage.

In central Tokyo, trains were stopped and passengers walked along the tracks to platforms. NHK said more than 4 million buildings were without power in Tokyo and its suburbs.

A large numbers of people waited at Tokyo's Shinjuku station, the world's busiest train station, for service to resume so they could go home. TV announcers urged workers not to leave their offices to prevent injuries in case of more strong aftershocks.

Osamu Akiya, 46, was working in Tokyo at his office in a trading company when the quake hit.

It sent bookshelves and computers crashing to the floor, and cracks appeared in the walls.

"I've been through many earthquakes, but I've never felt anything like this," he said. "I don't know if we'll be able to get home tonight."

Footage on NHK from their Sendai office showed employees stumbling around and books and papers crashing from desks. It also showed a glass shelter at a bus stop in Tokyo completely smashed by the quake and a weeping woman nearby being comforted by another woman.

Several quakes had hit the same region in recent days, including a 7.3 magnitude one on Wednesday.

Thirty minutes after the main quake, tall buildings were still swaying in Tokyo and mobile phone networks were not working. Japan's Coast Guard set up a task force and officials were standing by for emergency contingencies, Coast Guard official Yosuke Oi said.

"I'm afraid we'll soon find out about damages, since the quake was so strong," he said.

Tokyo's main airport was closed. A large section of the ceiling at the 1-year-old airport at Ibaraki, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, fell to the floor with a powerful crash.

Dozens of fires were reported in northern prefectures of Fukushima, Sendai, Iwate and Ibaraki. Collapsed homes and landslides were also reported in Miyagi.

Japan's worst previous quake was in 1923 in Kanto, an 8.3-magnitude temblor that killed 143,000 people, according to USGS. A 7.2-magnitude quake in Kobe city in 1996 killed 6,400 people.

Japan lies on the "Ring of Fire" -- an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world's quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 nations. A magnitude-8.8 temblor that shook central Chile last February also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.

Japan quake causes emergencies at 5 nuke reactors

Mar. 11, 2011 05:16 PM

Associated Press

TOKYO - Japan declared states of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the units lost cooling ability in the aftermath of Friday's powerful earthquake. Thousands of residents were evacuated as workers struggled to get the reactors under control to prevent meltdowns.

A single reactor in northeastern Japan had been the focus of much of the concern in the initial hours after the 8.9 magnitude quake, but the government declared new states of emergency at four other reactors in the area Saturday morning.

The earthquake knocked out power at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and because a backup generator failed, the cooling system was unable to supply water to cool the 460-megawatt No. 1 reactor. Although a backup cooling system is being used, Japan's nuclear safety agency said pressure inside the reactor had risen to 1.5 times the level considered normal.

Authorities said radiation levels had jumped 1,000 times normal inside Unit 1 and were measured at eight times normal outside the plant. They expanded an earlier evacuation zone more than threefold, from 3 to 10 kilometers (2 miles to 6.2 miles). Some 3,000 people had been urged to leave their homes in the first announcement.

The government declared a state of emergency, its first ever at a nuclear plant. And plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. warned of power shortages and an "extremely challenging situation in power supply for a while."

The utility, which also operates reactors at the nearby Fukushima Daini plant, later confirmed that cooling ability had been lost at three of four reactors there, as well as a second Fukushima Daiichi unit. The government promptly declared a state of emergency there as well.

The reactor core remains hot even after a shutdown. If the outage persists, it could in a worst-case scenario cause a reactor meltdown, an official with Japan's nuclear safety agency said on condition of anonymity, citing sensitivity of the issue.

Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency official Ryohei Shiomi said radiation levels surged inside the control center at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 reactor, while a monitoring device at the front gate of the compound detected radiation that is eight times higher than normal.

The level outside the 40-year-old plant in Onahama city, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, is still considered very low compared to the annual exposure limit, Shiomi said. It would take 70 days of standing at the gate to reach the limit, he said.

Shiomi said radioactive vapor probably entered the control room because of lack of air flow control resulting from power outage. The control room is usually radiation free, protected by negative air pressure. If the condition persists or worsens, the plant is equipped with gas masks and other protective gear to protect workers from radiation exposure, he said.

Officials planned to release slightly radioactive vapor from the unit to lower the pressure in an effort to protect it from a possible meltdown, but the continuing power supply problem has delayed the process.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the amount of radioactive element in the vapor would be "very small" and would not affect the environment or human health. "With evacuation in place and the ocean-bound wind, we can ensure the safety," he said at a televised news conference early Saturday.

The agency said plant workers are scrambling to restore cooling water supply at the plant but there is no prospect for immediate success.

Another official at the nuclear safety agency, Yuji Kakizaki, said that plant workers were cooling the reactor with a secondary cooling system, which is not as effective as the regular cooling method. Kakizaki said officials have confirmed that the emergency cooling system -- the last-ditch cooling measure to prevent the reactor from the meltdown -- is intact and could kick in if needed.

"That's as a last resort, and we have not reached that stage yet," Kakizaki added.

Edano said both the state of emergency and evacuation order around the Fukushima Daiichi plant are precautionary measures.

"We launched the measure so we can be fully prepared for the worst scenario," he said. "We are using all our might to deal with the situation."

Defense Ministry official Ippo Maeyama said the ministry has dispatched dozens of troops trained for chemical disasters to the Fukushima plant in case of a radiation leak, along with four vehicles designed for use in atomic, biological and chemical warfare.

Pineville, La., resident Janie Eudy said her husband, Danny, was working at Fukushima No. 1 when the earthquake struck. After a harrowing evacuation, he called her several hours later from the parking lot of his quake-ravaged hotel.

He and other American plant workers are "waiting to be rescued, and they're in bad shape," she said in a telephone interview.

Danny Eudy, 52, a technician employed by Pasadena, Texas-based Atlantic Plant Maintenance, told his wife that the quake violently shook the plant building he was in. "Everything was falling from the ceiling," she said.

Eudy told his wife that he and other workers were evacuating the plant when the tsunami swept through the area, carrying away homes and vehicles. They retreated so they wouldn't get caught up in the raging water. "He walked through so much glass that his feet were cut. It slowed him down," she said.

After the water started to recede, Eudy and other workers drove to their hotel, only to find it in shambles.

"Most of the hotel was gone," she said. "He said the roads were torn up and everything was a mess."

His hotel room was demolished along with all of his belongings, so Eudy had to borrow a resident's phone to call his wife early Friday morning. The workers were waiting for daylight but contemplating seeking higher ground in case another big wave hit.

"He sounded like he was in shock. He was scared," Janie Eudy said. "They're totally on their own, trying to just make it."

Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said staff were trying to collect more information on what was happening.

At the Fukushima Daiichi site, "They are busy trying to get coolant to the core area," Sheehan said. "The big thing is trying to get power to the cooling systems."

Speaking at the White House, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also said U.S. Air Force planes were carrying "some really important coolant" to the site, but administration officials later said she misspoke. The U.S. offered such help but the Japanese said they didn't need it, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

High-pressure pumps can temporarily cool a reactor in this state with battery power, even when electricity is down, according to Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear engineer who used to work in the U.S. nuclear industry. Batteries would go dead within hours but could be replaced. The nuclear reactor was among 10 in Japan shut down because of the earthquake.

The Fukushima plant is just south of the worst-hit Miyagi prefecture, where a fire broke out at another nuclear plant. The blaze was in a turbine building at one of the Onagawa power plants. Smoke could be seen coming out of the building, which is separate from the plant's reactor, Tohoku Electric Power Co. said. The fire has since been extinguished.

Another reactor at Onagawa was experiencing a water leak.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the 2:46 p.m. quake was a magnitude 8.9, the biggest earthquake to hit Japan since officials began keeping records in the late 1800s.

A tsunami warning was issued for a number of Pacific, Southeast Asian and Latin American nations. At the two-reactor Diablo Canyon plant at Avila Beach, Calif., an "unusual event" -- the lowest level of alert -- was declared in connection with a West Coast tsunami warning. The plant remained stable, though, and kept running, according to the NRC.

Japan quake toll in hundreds; tsunami warnings across Pacific

by Malcolm Foster - Mar. 11, 2011 09:26 AM

Associated Press

TOKYO -- A ferocious tsunami spawned by one of the largest earthquakes on record slammed Japan's eastern coast Friday, killing hundreds of people as it swept away ships, cars and homes while widespread fires burned out of control.

Hours later, the tsunami hit Hawaii but did not cause major damage. Warnings blanketed the Pacific, putting areas on alert as far away as South America, Canada, Alaska and the entire U.S. West coast. In northeastern Japan, the area around a nuclear power plant was evacuated after the reactor's cooling system failed.

Police said 200 to 300 bodies were found in the northeastern coastal city of Sendai, the city in Miyagi prefecture, or state, closest to the epicenter. Another 137 were confirmed killed, with 531 people missing. Police also said 627 people were injured.

The magnitude-8.9 offshore quake unleashed a 23-foot (seven-meter) tsunami and was followed for hours by more than 50 aftershocks, many of them of more than magnitude 6.0.

Dozens of cities and villages along a 1,300-mile (2,100-kilometer) stretch of coastline were shaken by violent tremors that reached as far away as Tokyo, hundreds of miles (kilometers) from the epicenter. A large section of Kesennuma, a town of 70,000 people in Miyagi, burned furiously into the night with no apparent hope of being extinguished, public broadcaster NHK said.

"The earthquake has caused major damage in broad areas in northern Japan," Prime Minister Naoto Kan said at a news conference.

The quake was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that struck New Zealand late last month, devastating the city of Christchurch.

"The energy radiated by this quake is nearly equal to one month's worth of energy consumption" in the United States, U.S. Geological Survey Scientist Brian Atwater told The Associated Press.

The government ordered thousands of residents near a nuclear power plant in the city of Onahama to move back at least two miles (three kilometers) from the plant. The reactor was not leaking radiation but its core remained hot even after a shutdown. The plant is 170 miles (270 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo.

Trouble was reported at two other nuclear plants as well, but there was no radiation leak at either of them.

Japan's coast guard said it was searching for 80 dock workers on a ship that was swept away from a shipyard in Miyagi.

Even for a country used to earthquakes, this one was of horrific proportions because of the tsunami that crashed ashore, swallowing everything in its path as it surged several miles (kilometers) inland before retreating. The apocalyptic images on Japanese TV of powerful, debris-filled waves, uncontrolled fires and a ship caught in a massive whirlpool resembled scenes from a Hollywood disaster movie.

Large fishing boats and other vessels rode high waves ashore, slamming against overpasses or scraping under them and snapping power lines along the way. Upturned and partially submerged cars bobbed in the water. Ships anchored in ports crashed against each other.

The tsunami roared over embankments, washing anything in its path inland before reversing directions and carrying the cars, homes and other debris out to sea. Flames shot from some of the homes, probably because of burst gas pipes.

Waves of muddy waters flowed over farmland near Sendai, carrying buildings, some of them ablaze. Drivers attempted to flee. Sendai airport was inundated with thick, muddy debris that included cars, trucks, buses and even light planes.

Highways to the worst-hit coastal areas buckled. Telephone lines snapped. Train service in northeastern Japan and in Tokyo, which normally serve 10 million people a day, were suspended, leaving untold numbers stranded in stations or roaming the streets. Tokyo's Narita airport was closed indefinitely.

President Barack Obama said the U.S. "stands ready to help" Japan.

Jesse Johnson, a native of the U.S. state of Nevada who lives in Chiba, north of Tokyo, was eating at a sushi restaurant with his wife when the quake hit.

"At first it didn't feel unusual, but then it went on and on. So I got myself and my wife under the table," he told The Associated Press. "I've lived in Japan for 10 years, and I've never felt anything like this before. The aftershocks keep coming. It's gotten to the point where I don't know whether it's me shaking or an earthquake."

NHK said more than 4 million buildings were without power in Tokyo and its suburbs.

As night fell, Tokyo's streets were jammed with cars, buses and trucks trying to get around and out of the city. Pedestrians swarmed the sidewalks to walk home, or at least find a warm place to spend the night as the temperatures dropped.

Tomoko Suzuki and her elderly mother stood on a crowded downtown corner, unable to get to their 29th-floor condominium because the elevator wasn't working. They unsuccessfully tried to hail a taxi to a relative's house and couldn't find a hotel room.

"We are so cold," said Suzuki. "We really don't know what to do."

A large fire erupted at the Cosmo oil refinery in the city of Ichihara and burned out of control with 100-foot (30-meter) flames whipping into the sky.

"Our initial assessment indicates that there has already been enormous damage," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. "We will make maximum relief effort based on that assessment."

He said the Defense Ministry was sending troops to the hardest-hit region. A utility aircraft and several helicopters were on the way.

Also in Miyagi prefecture, a fire broke out in a turbine building of a nuclear power plant, but it was later extinguished, said Tohoku Electric Power Co.

A reactor area of a nearby plant was leaking water, the company said. But it was unclear if the leak was caused by the tsunami or something else. There were no reports of radioactive leaks at any of Japan's nuclear plants.

Jefferies International Ltd., a global investment banking group, estimated overall losses of about $10 billion.

Hiroshi Sato, a disaster management official in northern Iwate prefecture, said officials were having trouble getting an overall picture of the destruction.

"We don't even know the extent of damage. Roads were badly damaged and cut off as tsunami washed away debris, cars and many other things," he said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the 2:46 p.m. quake was magnitude 8.9, the biggest to hit Japan since record-keeping began in the late 1800s and one of the biggest ever recorded in the world.

The quake struck at a depth of six miles (10 kilometers), about 80 miles (125 kilometers) off the eastern coast, the agency said. The area is 240 miles (380 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo. Several quakes hit the same region in recent days, including one measured at magnitude 7.3 on Wednesday that caused no damage.

A tsunami warning was extended to a number of areas in the Pacific, Southeast Asia and Latin America, including Japan, Russia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Chile. In the Philippines, authorities ordered an evacuation of coastal communities, but no unusual waves were reported.

Thousands fled homes in Indonesia after officials warned of a tsunami up to 6 feet (2 meters) high, but waves of only 4 inches (10 centimeters) were measured. No big waves came to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, either.

The first waves hit Hawaii about 9 a.m. EST (1400 GMT). A tsunami about 7 feet (2.1 meters) high was recorded on Maui and a wave at least 3 feet (a meter) high was recorded on Oahu and Kauai. Officials warned that the waves would continue and could get larger.

Japan's worst previous quake was a magnitude 8.3 temblor in 1923 in Kanto that killed 143,000 people, according to USGS. A 7.2-magnitude quake in Kobe in 1996 killed 6,400 people.

Japan lies on the "Ring of Fire" -- an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world's quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 nations. A magnitude-8.8 temblor that shook central Chile in February 2010 also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.

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Associated Press writers Jay Alabaster, Mari Yamaguchi, Tomoko A. Hosaka and Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo; Jaymes Song in Honolulu and Mark Niesse in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Seth Borenstein in New York contributed to this report.

Quake hits wrong location?

Japan quake struck where scientists weren't expecting

by Joel Achenbach - Mar. 11, 2011 01:22 PM

Washington Post

This looks like the Big One for Japan - but it's in the wrong place, seismically and bureaucratically.

Japanese geologists have long forecast a huge earthquake along a major fault line southwest of Tokyo, and have poured enormous resources into monitoring the faint traces of strain building in that portion of the Earth's crust. They've predicted the amount of property damage and the number of landslides. They've even given the conjectured event a name: the Tokai Earthquake.

But now the largest recorded earthquake in Japan's history, measured at a stunning magnitude 8.9, has hit far to the north, some 231 miles northeast of Tokyo.

The epicenter is 80 miles off the coast of Sendai province on Honshu, Japan's largest island. It is beneath the sea floor near a major boundary between two plates of the Earth's crust. At the boundary is a subduction zone, a place where one plate dives beneath the other, forming a deep trench. Although subduction zones, including this one, are known to cause earthquakes - and there was a significant temblor of magnitude 7.9 just two days ago near today's event - there is no record of such a "mega-quake" along this portion of the fault.

Scientists today said the event has once again humbled them, reinforcing a growing sense that the field of seismology needs to ditch some of its presumptions about major earthquakes.

"It took place in a stretch of the coast of Japan that was not considered prone to mega-earthquakes," said Emile Okale, a Northwestern University geophysicist reached in Tahiti, where he was preparing to evacuate in advance of the tsunami generated by the Japan quake. He compared the Japan temblor to the huge Sumatra earthquake six years ago that generated the devastating tsunami along the rim of the Indian Ocean. That quake happened on what had been presumed to be a relatively quiescent stretch of a subduction zone.

"This is a continuation in a sense of the cold shower that we got in Sumatra-these mega-earthquakes take place in places we do not expect them. That means that on a global scale we should consider that all subduction zones are potential locations for such events," Okale said.

"It's really just a kind of guessing game, and mother nature never really puts up with those guessing games," said seismologist Dave Wald of the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.

Susan Hough, a USGS seismologist in Pasadena, Calif., noted that the recent 6.1 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, happened on an unmapped fault and caught scientists somewhat by surprise.

"We do tend to focus on the expected events. We're going to get blindsided by unusual events. Sumatra was not a common event. This one is not common. Christchurch was not common. But uncommon events happen," Hough said. "The analog that's worrisome is Boston. Put a 6.1 under Boston. You have all that unreinforced masonry."

Scientists develop hazard maps showing where earthquakes are most likely to occur, but the field remains fraught with controversy over the extent to which seismic events can be forecast. Seismic hazard maps for Japan, including one on the U.S. Geological Survey Web site, show a relatively modest earthquake hazard - by Japan's standards - for the region off the coast of Sendai.

Early indications are that the subduction zone there ruptured for several hundred miles. These are the most powerful types of earthquakes, and the 8.9-magnitude quake in Japan ranks as one of the strongest events in the history of seismology.

The sea floor in such earthquakes can suddenly rise, creating a mound of water that turns into a tsunami as it rolls onshore. That's what has happened in Japan as a wall of water has pummeled the coast.

This event could roil the geological community in Japan. Scientists in Japan had invested a great deal of energy in researching the Tokai Earthquake. They had placed strain meters throughout that region of Japan and closely monitored any signs of a precursor to a major event.

Bob Geller, a geologist at the University of Tokyo, said today by email, "The bottom line is that it's not possible to identify in detail which specific areas are particularly dangerous. Also, quakes are not in any sense periodic. Unfortunately some earth scientists, including some government officials in both Japan and the U.S., persist in making highly area-specific risk forecasts and also using models based on periodicity of quakes."

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Japan quake: Thousands roam Tokyo streets, stations

by Jay Alabaster - Mar. 11, 2011 09:45 AM

Associated Press

TOKYO - Japan's huge earthquake brought super-modern Tokyo to a standstill Friday, paralyzing trains that normally run like clockwork and stranding hordes of commuters carrying mobile phones rendered largely useless by widespread outages.

The magnitude-8.9 quake off Japan's northeastern coast shook buildings in the capital, left millions of homes across Japan without electricity, shut down the mobile phone network and severely disrupted landline telephone service. It brought the train system to a halt, choking a daily commuter flow of more than 10 million people.

"This is the kind of earthquake that hits once every 100 years," said restaurant worker Akira Tanaka, 54.

He gave up waiting for trains to resume and decided - for his first time ever - to set off on foot for his home 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of the capital. "I've been walking an hour and 10 minutes, still have about three hours to go," he said.

Tokyo prides itself on being an orderly, technologically savvy, even futuristic city. Residents have long daily commutes and usually can rely on a huge, criss-crossing network of train and subway lines. Tens of thousands of people milled at train stations and were preparing to spend the night at 24-hour cafes and hotels.

Phone lines were crammed, preventing some calls and text messages from getting through. Calls to northeastern Japan, where a 23-foot (7-meter) tsunami washed ashore after the quake, often failed to go through, with a recording saying the area's lines were busy.

Unable to rely on their mobile phones, lines of people formed at Tokyo's normally vacant public phone booths dotting the city.

Marketing company employee Koto Fujikawa, 28, was riding a monorail when the quake hit and had to later pick her way along narrow, elevated tracks to the nearest station.

"I thought I was going to die," Fujikawa said. "It felt like the whole structure was collapsing."

Japan's top telecommunications company Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. set up an emergency phone line and a special Internet site for people to leave messages for families and friends to inform them of their safety.

Up to 90 percent of calls were being restricted to protect telecom equipment from getting damaged from overload, NTT spokeswoman Mai Kariya said. The company was checking on damage to towers and cables, and details were not immediately available.

Tokyo commuter trains and subways, as well as the superfast bullet-trains, all shut down, according to East Japan Railway Co. A handful of subway lines resumed service were back up, but only after six hours.

Normally when Tokyo trains suffer rare problems, they are running again within an hour. But the railway company announced that services would not resume for the rest of the day, sending crowds that were milling at train stations pouring into the streets.

Government spokesman Yukio Edano advised commuters to stay where they were to avoid injuries.

The Tokyo suburb of Yokohama offered the community's main concert hall as an emergency place to stay overnight, and planned to offer blankets and other amenities, Yokohama Arena official Hideharu Terada said.

"There has never been a big earthquake like this, when all the railways stopped and so this is a first for us," Terada said. "People are trickling in. They are all calm."

Quake rocks Japan's economy

Quake rocks Japan's economy

Impact on business may be short-term; Phoenix-area companies assessing fallout

Mar. 11, 2011 03:48 PM

Staff and Wire reports

The earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on Friday forced multinational companies to close factories, fight fires and move workers, inflicting at least short-term damage on that nation's fragile economy.

Assessing the full economic impact was impossible in the hours after the magnitude-8.9 quake. But traffic clogged streets, trains stopped, flights were grounded and phone service was disrupted or cut off.

U.S. companies DuPont and Procter & Gamble said communications problems were making it hard for them to gauge the effect on their operations in Japan.

Still, the damage to Japan's economy, the world's third-largest, wasn't nearly as severe as it might have been. The devastated northeastern coastal region is far less developed than the Tokyo metro area.

"Something similar hitting Tokyo Bay would have been unimaginable," said Michael Smitka, an economist who specializes in Japan at Washington and Lee University.

No injuries were reported to the 6,000 employees working in Japan for Phoenix-based ON Semiconductor and Sanyo Semiconductor, which ON recently acquired.

"Initial reports are that no employees have been injured outside of the workplace," the company said in a statement.

The company said it was still assessing facility and customer impact.

One of the company's production facilities reported a power loss but limited damage. Two Sanyo plants had power and restored operations. One was evacuated for a time. Production at another facility was to be assessed when power and communications were restored.

Two administrative buildings were damaged during the earthquake, and an official inspection was under way, the company said.

Phoenix-based Avnet Inc., a worldwide distributor of electronics, said early indications were that 434 of its employees in a sales office outside Tokyo were safe and accounted for, a company spokeswoman said.

"Our facilities over there have not been impacted," Michelle Gorel said. "What we don't know is with transportation being interrupted, we don't know the impact to our business."

She said Friday afternoon that getting details about damage was difficult because it was the middle of a weekend night in Japan.

Freescale Semiconductor Inc., which has a large presence in the Phoenix area, said employees of a 6-inch wafer-fabrication plant in the city of Sendai evacuated safely. The company has an emergency task force in place and is monitoring the situation, spokesman Andy North said, adding that communication has been spotty.

"We do not have any information on the impact on the site itself until our teams are permitted back into the facility," North said.

Japanese automakers halted production at assembly plants in areas hit by the earthquake. One Honda worker died after being crushed by a collapsing wall. Thirty more were injured when walls and parts of a ceiling crumbled at a Honda Motor Co. research facility in northeastern Tochigi prefecture.

Toyota Motor Corp., the world's biggest automaker, shut down two assembly plants. There were no immediate reports of injuries among Honda workers, a spokeswoman said. Parts makers were also shut down.

Nissan Motor Co. stopped production at five of its plants in northeastern Japan and in the Yokohama area near Tokyo. It said two workers were slightly injured at its Tochigi plant and a technical center near Tokyo.

Air traffic was disrupted. Seven United flights and two Continental flights from the United States to Tokyo's Narita International Airport were diverted overnight, mostly to other airports in Asia. Delta canceled 29 flights into and out of Tokyo.

Japan is just weeks away from its peak tourism season: late March and early April, when cherry trees blossom, said Alastair Donnelly, co-founder of InsideJapan Tours, a British company that sends more than 5,000 tourists from the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Australia to Japan each year.

"I encourage people still to travel," Donnelly said. "Japan will need support from tourism."

In the long run, the disaster could boost the Japanese economy as reconstruction projects put people back to work, former White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers noted in an interview with CNBC.

Natural disasters "do eventually boost output," said David Hensley, an economist at JPMorgan Chase. The 1989 San Francisco earthquake and the 1994 Northridge quake outside Los Angeles, for example, ultimately helped the local California economies, he said.

The Japanese economy has been stagnant for more than a decade. It shrank at a 1.3 percent annual pace in the final three months of 2010.

James Shuck, an insurance-industry analyst for the investment bank Jefferies, estimates the insurance industry's losses in Japan at $10 billion. That would make it the costliest Japanese earthquake for insurers ever.

By comparison, the 1994 quake in Northridge, Calif., cost insurers about $15 billion.

Includes information from Republic reporter John Yantis and Associated Press.

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Japan quake toll in hundreds; tsunami warnings across Pacific

by Malcolm Foster - Mar. 11, 2011 05:53 PM

Associated Press

TOKYO -- Japan's northeastern coast was a swampy wasteland of broken houses, overturned cars, sludge and dirty water Saturday as the nation awoke to the devastating aftermath of one of its greatest disasters, a powerful tsunami created by one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded.

The death toll from Friday's massive magnitude 8.9 quake stood at more than 200, but an untold number of bodies were believed to be lying in the rubble and debris, and Japanese were bracing for more bad news as authorities tried to reach the hardest-hit areas.

Aerial footage showed military helicopters lifting people on rescue tethers from rooftops and partially submerged buildings surrounded by water and debris. At one school, a large white "SOS" had been spelled out in English.

The earthquake that struck off the northeastern shore was the biggest recorded quake ever to hit Japan. It ranked as the fifth-largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, last month, scientists said.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said an initial assessment found "enormous damage," adding that the Defense Ministry was sending troops to the hardest-hit region.

The official casualty toll was 236 dead, 725 missing and 1,028 injured, although police said 200-300 bodies were found along the coast in Sendai, the biggest city in the area. Authorities said they weren't able to reach the area because of damage to the roads.

Black smoke could still be seen in the skies around Sendai, presumably from gas pipes snapped by the quake or tsunami.

Early Saturday morning, Atsushi Koshi, a 24-year-old call center worker in the coastal city of Tagajo, about 10 miles east of Sendai, said his cousin remained trapped on the roof of a department store with about 200 to 300 other people awaiting rescue. The store wasn't far from the port of Sendai, where the tsunami had washed ashore.

The rest of his family was safe, but he wondered what to do, since the house he shares with his parents was tilting from the quake and a concrete block wall had fallen apart.

"If we clean up our house it might be livable, but we're discussing what to do next," he said.

The quake shook dozens of cities and villages along a 1,300-mile (2,100-kilometer) stretch of coast and tall buildings swayed in Tokyo, hundreds of miles from the epicenter. Minutes later, the earthquake unleashed a 23-foot (seven-meter) tsunami that washed far inland over fields and smashed towns.

The town of Rikuzentakada, population 24,700, in northern Iwate prefecture, looked largely submerged in muddy water, with hardly a trace of houses or buildings of any kind.

The entire Pacific had been put on alert -- including coastal areas of South America, Canada and Alaska -- but waves were not as bad as expected.

The U.S. Geological Survey said that after the initial huge quake, there were 123 aftershocks off Japan's main island of Honshu, 110 of them of magnitude 5.0 or higher.

President Barack Obama pledged U.S. assistance following what he called a potentially "catastrophic" disaster. He said one U.S. aircraft carrier is already in Japan and a second was on its way. A U.S. ship was also heading to the Marianas Islands to assist as needed, he added.

Japan also declared its first-ever states of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the units lost cooling ability in the aftermath of the earthquake, and workers struggled to prevent meltdowns.

The earthquake knocked out power at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and because a backup generator failed, the cooling system was unable to supply water to cool the 460-megawatt No. 1 reactor. Although a backup cooling system is being used, Japan's nuclear safety agency said pressure inside the reactor had risen to 1.5 times the level considered normal.

Authorities said radiation levels had jumped 1,000 times normal inside Unit 1 and were measured at eight times normal outside the plant. They expanded an earlier evacuation zone more than threefold, from 3 kilometers to 10 kilometers. About 3,000 people were urged to leave their homes in the first announcement.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. warned of power shortages and an "extremely challenging situation in power supply for a while."

The utility, which also operates reactors at the nearby Fukushima Daini plant, later confirmed that cooling ability had been lost at three of four reactors there, as well as a second Fukushima Daiichi unit. The government promptly declared a state of emergency there as well. Nearly 14,000 people living near the two power plants were ordered to evacuate.

The level outside the 40-year-old plant in Onahama, a city about 170 miles northeast of Tokyo, is still considered very low compared to the annual exposure limit, said Ryohei Shiomi, an official with the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. It would take 70 days of standing at the gate to reach the limit, he said.

The Defense Ministry said it had sent troops trained to deal with chemical disasters to the plants in case of a radiation leak.

A large fire erupted at the Cosmo oil refinery in the city of Ichihara and burned out of control with 100-foot (30-meter) flames whipping into the sky.

Most trains in Tokyo started running again Saturday after the city was brought to a near standstill Friday. Tens of thousands of people were stranded with the rail network down, and the streets were jammed with cars, buses and trucks trying to get out of the city.

The city set up 33 shelters in city hall, on university campuses and in government offices, but many planned to spend the night at 24-hour cafes, hotels and offices.

The quake struck at a depth of six miles, about 80 miles off Japan's east coast, the USGS said. The area is 240 miles northeast of Tokyo. Several quakes hit the same region in recent days, including one measured at magnitude 7.3 on Wednesday that caused no damage.

"The energy radiated by this quake is nearly equal to one month's worth of energy consumption" in the United States, USGS scientist Brian Atwater told The Associated Press.

Japan's worst previous quake was a magnitude 8.3 in Kanto that killed 143,000 people in 1923, according to the USGS. A magnitude 7.2 quake in Kobe killed 6,400 people in 1995.

Japan lies on the "Ring of Fire" -- an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world's quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 countries. A magnitude-8.8 temblor that shook central Chile in February 2010 also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.

------ Associated Press writers Jay Alabaster, Mari Yamaguchi, Tomoko A. Hosaka and Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo; Jaymes Song in Honolulu and Mark Niesse in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Seth Borenstein in New York contributed to this report.

Tsunami in California

Calif., Ore. sustained most damage from tsunami

Posted 3/11/2011 10:17 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print

By Jeff Barnard And Jaymes Song, Associated Press

CRESCENT CITY, Calif. — The warnings traveled quickly across the Pacific in the middle of the night: An 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan spawned a deadly tsunami, and it was racing east Friday as fast as a jetliner.

Sirens blared in Hawaii. The West Coast pulled back from the shoreline, fearing the worst. People were warned to stay away from the beaches. Fishermen took their boats out to sea and safety.

The alerts moved faster than the waves, giving millions of people across the Pacific Rim hours to prepare.

In the end, harbors and marinas in California and Oregon bore the brunt of the damage, estimated by authorities to be in the millions of dollars. Boats crashed into each other, some vessels were pulled out to sea and docks were ripped out. Rescue crews searched for a man who was swept out to sea while taking pictures.

None of the damage -- in the U.S., South America or Canada -- was anything like the devastation in Japan.

The warnings -- the second major one for the region in a year -- and the response showed how far the earthquake-prone Pacific Rim had come since a deadly tsunami caught much of Asia by surprise in 2004.

"That was a different era," said Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. "We got the warning out very quickly. It would not have been possible to do it that fast in 2004."

Within 10 minutes after Japan was shaken by its biggest earthquake in recorded history, the center had issued its warning. The offshore quake pushed water onto land, sometimes miles inland, sweeping away boats, cars, homes and people. Hundreds are dead.

As the tsunami raced across the Pacific at 500 mph, the first sirens began sounding across Hawaii late Thursday night.

Police went through the tourist mecca of Waikiki, warning of an approaching tsunami. Hotels moved tourists from lower floors to upper levels. Some tourists ended up spending the night in their cars.

Across the islands, people stocked up on bottled water, canned foods and toilet paper. Authorities opened buildings to people fleeing low-lying areas. Fishermen took their boats out to sea, away from harbors and marinas where the waves would be most intense.

Residents did the same last February, when an 8.8-magnitude quake in Chile prompted tsunami warnings. The waves did little damage then.

Early Friday, the tsunami waves reached Hawaii, tossing boats in Honolulu. The water covered beachfront roads and rushed into hotels on the Big Island. The waves carried a house out to sea. Seven-foot waves flooded low-lying areas in Maui.

As the sun rose, people breathed a sigh of relief.

"With everything that could have happened and did happen in Japan, we're just thankful that nothing else happened," said Sabrina Skiles, who along with her husband spent a sleepless night at his office in Maui. Their beachfront house was unscathed.

Many other Pacific islands also evacuated their shorelines for a time. In Guam, the waves broke two U.S. Navy submarines from their moorings, but tug boats brought them back to their pier.

In Oregon, the first swells to hit the U.S. mainland were barely noticeable.

Sirens pierced the air in Seaside, a popular tourist town near the Washington state line. Restaurants, gift shops and other beachfront businesses stayed shuttered. Some residents moved to the hills nearby, gathering behind a house.

Albert Wood said he and his wife decided to leave their home late Thursday night after watching news about the Japan quake -- the fifth-largest earthquake since 1900.

Wood was expecting the waves to get bigger and more intense than what he saw. Still, he shook his head as the cars lining the hills began to drive west, into the lowlands adjacent to the shore.

"Just if you ask me, they're being too bold," Wood said. "It's still early. They're just not being cautious."

Erik Bergman was back at the shore by 9:30 in the morning. Roughly 100 feet away was a man playing with his dog. Two small children chased seagulls.

"People aren't too nervous," Bergman said.

President Barack Obama said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was ready to come to the aid of any U.S. state or territory that needed help. Coast Guard cutters and aircraft were readied to respond as soon as conditions allowed.

Outside Brookings, Ore., just north of the California border, four people went to a beach to watch the waves and were swept into the sea. Two got out on their own, and the others were rescued, authorities said.

In Crescent City, Calif., miles to the south, the Coast Guard searched for a man who was swept out to sea. He was taking photos near the mouth of the Klamath River. Two people with him jumped in to rescue him. They were able to get back to land, authorities said.

Sheriff's deputies went door to door at dawn to urge residents to seek higher ground.

An 8-foot wave rushed into the harbor, destroying about 35 boats and ripping chunks off the wooden docks, as marina workers and fishermen scrambled between surges to secure property. Officials estimated millions of dollars in damage.

When the water returned, someone would yell "Here comes another one!" to clear the area.

Ted Scott, a retired mill worker who lived in the city when a 1964 tsunami killed 17 people on the West Coast, including 11 in Crescent City, watched the water pour into the harbor.

"This is just devastating. I never thought I'd see this again," he said. "I watched the docks bust apart. It buckled like a graham cracker."

The waves, however, had not made it over a 20-foot break wall protecting the rest of the city. No serious injuries were immediately reported.

On the central coast in Santa Cruz, loose fishing boats crashed into one another and docks broke away from the shore. The water rushed out as quickly as it poured in, leaving the boats tipped over in mud.

Some surfers ignored evacuation warnings and took advantage of the waves ahead of the tsunami.

"The tides are right, the swell is good, the weather is good, the tsunami is there," said William Hill, an off-duty California trooper. "We're going out."

Scientists warned that the first tsunami waves are not always the strongest. The threat can last for several hours and people should watch out for strong currents.

U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Ken Hudnut said residents along the coast should heed any calls for evacuation.

"Do the right thing," Hudnut said. "Be safe."

___

Associated Press writers contributing to this report include Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Janie McCauley on the Big Island, Denise Petski and Daisy Nguyen in Los Angeles, Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz, Calif., Garance Burke in San Francisco, Kathy McCarthy in Seattle, Nigel Duara in Seaside, Ore., Jeff Barnard in Crescent City, Calif., Tim Fought in Portland, Ore., Rob Gillies in Toronto, Alicia Chang in Pasadena, Calif., Terry Tang, Michelle Price and Carson Walker in Phoenix. Mark Niesse contributed from Ewa Beach, Hawaii. Song reported from Honolulu.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Tsunami in Hawaii

Tsunami swamps Hawaii beaches, brushes West Coast

Posted 3/11/2011 2:35 PM ET

By Jaymes Song And Mark Niesse, Associated Press

HONOLULU — Tsunami waves swamped Hawaii beaches and brushed the U.S. western coast Friday but didn't immediately cause major damage after devastating Japan and sparking evacuations throughout the Pacific.

Kauai was the first of the Hawaiian islands struck by the tsunami, which was caused by an earthquake in Japan. Water rushed ashore at least 11 feet high near Kealakekua Bay, on the west side of the Big Island, and reached the lobby of a hotel. Flooding was reported on Maui, and water washed up on roadways on the Big Island.

Scientists and officials warned that the first tsunami waves are not always the strongest and said residents along the coast should watch for strong currents and heed calls for evacuation.

"The tsunami warning is not over," said Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie. "We are seeing significant adverse activity, particularly on Maui and the Big Island. By no means are we clear in the rest of the state as well."

High waters reached the U.S. western coast by 11:30 a.m. EST Friday, after evacuations were ordered and beaches closed all along the coast.

Fishermen in Crescent City, Calif., -- where a tsunami in 1964 killed 11 people -- fired up their crab boats and left the harbor to ride out an expected swell.

Sirens sounded for hours before dawn up and down the coast, and in Hawaii, roadways and beaches were empty as the tsunami struck. As sirens sounded throughout the night, most residents cleared out from the coasts and low-lying areas.

"I'm waiting to see if I'll be working and if I can get to work," said Sabrina Skiles, who spent the night at her husband's office in downtown Kahului in Maui. Their home, across the street from the beach, was in a mandatory evacuation zone. "They're saying the worst is over right now but we keep hearing reports saying 'don't go anywhere. You don't want to go too soon.'"

The tsunami, spawned by an 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan, slammed the eastern coast of Japan, sweeping away boats, cars, homes and people as widespread fires burned out of control. It raced across the Pacific at 500 mph -- as fast as a jetliner -- although tsunami waves roll into shore at normal speeds.

President Barack Obama said the Federal Emergency Management Agency is ready to come to the aid of Hawaii and West Coast states as needed. Coast Guard cutter and aircraft crews were positioning themselves to be ready to conduct response and survey missions as soon as conditions allow.

It is the second time in a little over a year that Hawaii and the U.S. West coast faced the threat of a massive tsunami. A magnitude-8.8 earthquake in Chile spawned warnings on Feb. 27, 2010, but the waves were much smaller than predicted and almost no damage was reported.

Scientists acknowledged they overstated the threat but defended their actions, saying they took the proper steps and learned the lessons of the 2004 Indonesian tsunami that killed thousands of people who didn't get enough warning.

Many islands in the Pacific evacuated after the warnings were issued, but officials told residents to go home because the waves weren't as bad as expected.

In Guam, the waves broke two U.S. Navy submarines from their moorings, but tug boats corralled the subs and brought them back to their pier. No damage was reported to Navy ships in Hawaii.

The warnings issued by the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center covered an area stretching the entire western coast of the United States and Canada from the Mexican border to Chignik Bay in Alaska.

In the Canadian pacific coast province of British Columbia, authorities evacuated marinas, beaches and other areas.

In Alaska, a dozen small communities along the Aleutian Island chain were on alert, but there were no reports of damage from a wave just over 5 feet.

Officials in two coastal Washington counties used an automated phone alert system, phoning residents on the coast and in low-lying areas and asking them to move to higher ground.

"We certainly don't want to cry wolf," said Sheriff Scott Johnson of Washington's Pacific County. "We just have to hope we're doing the right thing based on our information. We don't want to be wrong and have people hurt or killed.

In Oregon, sirens blasted in some coastal communities and at least one hotel was evacuated in the northern part of the state. Restaurants, gift shops and other beachfront business stayed shuttered, and schools up and down the coast were closed.

Rockne Berge, owner of By The Sea Motel in Port Orford, on Oregon's southern coast, said he saw a band of wet sand about 50 yards wide -- an indication of a wave larger than usual. People found viewpoints on bluffs above the beach to watch the waves, he said.

"It looks like a mall parking lot at a Christmas sale," he said.

In Santa Cruz, Calif., retreating waves broke loose a couple of boats and a dock, but surfers who raced to the beach to catch the waves were undeterred.

"The tides are right, the swell is good, the weather is good, the tsunami is there. We're going out," said William Hill, an off-duty California trooper.

Latin American governments ordered islanders and coastal residents to head for higher ground. First affected would be Chile's Easter Island, in the remote South Pacific, about 2,175 miles west of the capital of Santiago, where people planned to evacuate the only town. Ecuador's President Rafael Correa declared a state of emergency and ordered people on the Galapagos Islands and the coast of the mainland to seek higher ground.

The tsunami warning was issued Friday at 3:31 a.m. EST. Sirens were sounded about 30 minutes later in Honolulu alerting people in coastal areas to evacuate. About 70 percent of Hawaii's 1.4 million population resides in Honolulu, and as many as 100,000 tourists are in the city on any given day.

On Friday, the Honolulu International Airport remained open but seven or eight jets bound for Hawaii have turned around, including some originating from Japan, the state Department of Transportation said. All harbors are closed and vessels were ordered to leave the harbor.

Honolulu's Department of Emergency Management has created refuge areas at community centers and schools, and authorities on Kauai island have opened 11 schools to serve as shelters for those who have left tsunami inundation zones.

A small 4.5-magnitude earthquake struck the Big Island just before 5 a.m. EST, but there were no reports of damages and the quakes weren't likely related, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey said.

Dennis Fujimoto said early Friday that the mood is calm but concerned on the island of Kauai while people readying for the tsunami.

Long lines formed at gas stations and people went to Wal-Mart to stock up on supplies.

"You got people walking out of there with wagonloads of water," he said.

The worst big wave to strike the U.S. was a 1946 tsunami caused by a magnitude of 8.1 earthquake near Unimak Islands, Alaska, that killed 165 people, mostly in Hawaii. In 1960, a magnitude 9.5 earthquake in southern Chile caused a tsunami that killed at least 1,716 people, including 61 people in Hilo. It also destroyed most of that city's downtown. On the U.S. mainland, a 1964 tsunami from a 9.2 magnitude earthquake in Prince William Sound, Alaska, struck Washington State, Oregon and California. It killed 128 people, including 11 in Crescent City, Calif.

Japan braces for nuclear meltdown

Japan braces for nuclear reactor meltdown after tsunami

Mar. 12, 2011 12:06 AM

Associated Press

SENDAI, Japan - Japan launched a massive military rescue operation Saturday after a giant, quake-fed tsunami killed hundreds of people and turned the northeastern coast into a swampy wasteland, while authorities braced for a possible meltdown at a nuclear reactor.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said 50,000 troops would join rescue and recovery efforts following Friday's 8.9-magnitude quake that unleashed one of the greatest disasters Japan has witnessed - a 23-foot (7-meter) tsunami that washed far inland over fields, smashing towns, airports and highways in its way.

The official death toll stood at 413, while 784 people were missing and 1,128 injured. In addition, police said between 200 and 300 bodies were found along the coast in Sendai, the biggest city in the area near the quake's epicenter. An untold number of bodies were also believed to be buried in the rubble and debris. Rescue workers had yet to reach the hardest-hit areas.

Adding to the worries was the damage at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, where two reactors had lost cooling ability. Because of the overheating, a meltdown was possible at one of the reactors, said Ryohei Shiomi, an official with Japan's nuclear safety commission.

But even if there was a meltdown, it wouldn't affect people outside a six-mile (10-kilometer) radius, he said. Most of the 51,000 residents living within the danger area had been evacuated, he said.

More than 215,000 people were living in 1,350 temporary shelters in five prefectures, or states, the national police agency said. Since the quake, more than 1 million households have not had water, mostly concentrated in northeast.

"Most of houses along the coastline were washed away, and fire broke out there," he said after inspecting the quake area in a helicopter. "I realized the extremely serious damage the tsunami caused."

The region continued to be jolted by tremors, even 24 hours later.

More than 125 aftershocks have occurred, many of them above magnitude 6.0, which even alone would be considered strong.

Technologically advanced Japan is well prepared for quakes and its buildings can withstand strong jolts, even a temblor like Friday's, which was the strongest the country has experienced since official records started in the late 1800s. What was beyond human control was the killer tsunami that followed.

It swept inland about six miles (10 kilometers) in some areas, swallowing boats, homes, cars, trees and even small airplanes.

"The tsunami was unbelievably fast," said Koichi Takairin, a 34-year-old truck driver who was inside his sturdy four-ton rig when the wave hit the port town of Sendai.

"Smaller cars were being swept around me," he said. All I could do was sit in my truck."

His rig ruined, he joined the steady flow of survivors who walked along the road away from the sea and back into the city on Saturday. Smoke from at least one large fire could be seen in the distance.

Smashed cars and small airplanes were jumbled up against buildings near the local airport, several miles (kilometers) from the shore. Felled trees and wooden debris lay everywhere as rescue workers coasted on boats through murky waters around flooded structures, nosing their way through a sea of debris.

Basic commodities were at a premium. Hundreds lined up outside of supermarkets, and gas stations were swamped with cars. The situation was similar in scores of other towns and cities along the 1,300-mile-long (2,100-kilometer-long) eastern coastline hit by the tsunami.

Also Saturday, operators at the Fukushima Daiichi plant's Unit 1 tried had to tamp down heat and pressure inside one of the reactors after the quake cut off electricity to the site and disabled emergency generators, knocking out the main cooling system. Authorities detected eight times the normal radiation levels outside the facility and 1,000 times normal inside Unit 1's control room.

The Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the six-reactor Daiichi site in northeastern Japan, said it had also lost cooling ability at a second reactor there and three units at its nearby Fukushima Daini site.

The government declared state of emergency at all those units.

Japan's nuclear safety agency said the situation was most dire at Fukushima Daiichi's Unit 1, where pressure had risen to twice what is consider the normal level. The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement that diesel generators that normally would have kept cooling systems running at Fukushima Daiichi had been disabled by tsunami flooding.

Japan gets about 30 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants. Authorities warned citizens to be prepared for severe power cuts. More than 1 million households across Japan, mostly in the northeast, still didn't have access to water.

In Sendai, as in many areas of the northeast, cell phone service was down, making it difficult for people to communicate with loved ones.

"I'm waiting for my son to come here. But I cannot tell him he should come over here because mobile phones aren't working," a woman in her 70s told Japanese TV at a shelter in the town of Rikuzentakada, which appeared to be largely destroyed by the tsunami.

"My husband is missing," she said. "Tsunami water was rising to my knees, and I told him I would go first. He is not here yet."

On Friday, the entire Pacific was put on alert - including coastal areas of South America, Canada and Alaska - but waves were not as bad as expected.

President Barack Obama pledged U.S. assistance following what he called a potentially "catastrophic" disaster. He said one U.S. aircraft carrier was already in Japan and a second was on its way. A U.S. ship was also heading to the Marianas Islands to assist as needed, he said.

Most trains in Tokyo started running again Saturday after the city had been brought to a near standstill the day before. Tens of thousands of people had been stranded with the rail network down, jamming the streets with cars, buses and trucks trying to get out of the city.

The city set up 33 shelters in city hall, on university campuses and in government offices, but many spent Friday night at 24-hour cafes, hotels and offices.

Japan's worst previous quake was a magnitude 8.3 temblor in Kanto that killed 143,000 people in 1923, according to the USGS. A magnitude 7.2 quake in Kobe killed 6,400 people in 1995.

Japan lies on the "Ring of Fire" - an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world's quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 countries. A magnitude-8.8 quake that shook central Chile in February 2010 also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.

Source

Japan quake: MLB players seek news from home

Mar. 12, 2011 12:00 AM Associated Press

Boston pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka tried to get in touch with his grandmother. Oakland slugger Hideki Matsui prayed for the victims. Mets reliever Ryota Igarashi stayed up all night to see the devastation.

All across spring training, Japanese ballplayers worried Friday about those at home. Hundreds of people were killed or missing after Japan was struck by its biggest recorded earthquake and a massive tsunami.

"It's a tough situation," Red Sox reliever Hideki Okajima said through a translator. "You can't control nature, but when something like this happens, you really realize the power of nature."

Matsuzaka said his parents in Tokyo were all right, but "I haven't been able to get in touch with my grandmother," he said.

At the Texas camp, pitcher Yoshinori Tateyama stood in front of a TV tuned to CNN. As he watched the pictures, he used his fingers to draw a map of Japan on a table, trying to show Rangers teammates Josh Hamilton and Mitch Moreland where the damage occurred.

Tateyama said he found out what happened in an e-mail from a friend after the morning workouts.

"At that time I realized how big it was," he said through a translator.

More than a dozen players from Japan played in the majors last season. Through his translator, Seattle star Ichiro Suzuki said he hadn't been able to reach his family with so many cellphone towers down.

"I am deeply concerned and affected by what is happening in Japan," Matsui said in a statement before his A's played the Dodgers. "I pray for the safety of all the people that have been affected and continue to be affected by this disaster."

Commissioner Bud Selig said his staff had been in contact with its office in Tokyo. In Japan, baseball games in Tokyo, Chiba and Yokohama were called off, as were all pro sports in the country.

"Major League Baseball will certainly provide aid with the relief efforts in the days and weeks ahead. We will do everything we can to help Japan," Selig said in a statement.

The New York Yankees donated $100,000 for relief and rescue efforts in Japan, splitting the total between the Salvation Army and Red Cross.

"We hope that the international community does everything in its power to support and assist the Japanese people in their time of need," managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner said in a statement.

The Oakland Athletics said they would help relief aid by adding a fundraising effort to the previously scheduled Japanese Heritage Day on April 3, when Ichiro and the Mariners visit Matsui and the A's at the Coliseum.

Beyond baseball, other athletes were affected by the magnitude-8.9 earthquake.

Golfer Ryo Ishikawa woke up and heard about the destruction. He managed to keep his focus and shot a 7-under 65 at the first round of the Cadillac Championship in Doral, Fla.

"I was able to communicate with my family," Ishikawa said. "If not for that, it would have been extremely difficult."

Jenson Button, the 2009 Formula One world champion, said he was relieved after reaching his girlfriend by Twitter. The driver said Japanese model Jessica Michibata had been in an underground photo shoot in Tokyo when tremors began to rock the building.

"She's fine, very shaken," Button said in Spain. "Right now, my thoughts go out to everybody in Japan, particularly in the worst-affected area of Sendai. My heart is with them."

The San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer will donate $1 for every fan who attends their home opener Saturday to victims in Japan.

At the Yankees' training complex in Tampa, minor league pitcher Kei Igawa was excused from workouts to return to his apartment and attempt to reach his family.

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said the team had given Igawa permission to return home if he wants.

Phoenix flights not impacted by Japan quake

Japan quake: Phoenix flights not impacted by disaster

1 comment by Dawn Gilbertson - Mar. 12, 2011 12:00 AM The Arizona Republic

Airlines canceled flights to and from Japan after the earthquake, stranding an estimated 20,000 travelers.

But the travel impact on Phoenix was minimal because the city does not have non-stop flights to Asia. Travelers usually catch a connecting flight in Los Angeles, San Francisco or other airline hubs with large international operations.

The U.S. State Department issued a travel alert, advising tourists to avoid travel to Japan due to the earthquake and tsunamis. It runs through April 1.

For travelers with upcoming trips to Japan, Delta, United, American and other major airlines are waiving change fees for those who want to postpone their trip. Passengers must still pay any fare difference if ticket prices have risen since they booked.

Early Friday, there were concerns that flights to Hawaii would be affected by the tsunami warnings there. But flights went out as scheduled from Phoenix on Friday, a relief to the throngs of spring-break travelers.

US Airways and Hawaiian Airlines each offer daily non-stop flights to Hawaii.

Tourists already in Hawaii were roused out of bed by the tsunami warnings but later able to return to their rooms.

Hawaii tourism officials said there was no major impact to Hawaii's six major islands.

The Hawaii Convention and Visitors Bureau issued a statement: "Travelers heading to Hawaii should continue to do so with confidence after checking with their airline carrier."

Japan quake: Wired world sees horror as it happens

by Scott Gold and Hector Becerra - Mar. 12, 2011 12:00 AM

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - After the quake, it took 45 minutes for the tsunami to reach the coast of Japan - 45 minutes of knowing, of waiting, of bracing.

When it came, they were all glued to their televisions - a Jesuit priest in New York, an engineering professor in rural Oregon, a geophysicist in San Diego. What unfolded had never been broadcast live before: a 13-foot wall of mud that belittled human achievement, folding houses inside out, propelling yachts across miles of rice fields, rupturing oil refineries, sweeping trains from their tracks and killing hundreds.

By now, we're versed in bearing witness to the aftermath of disaster: limbs jutting out from collapsed buildings in Haiti, survivors using laundry to spell out "help us" on their rooftops after Hurricane Katrina. This was different: a disaster unfolding in visceral, wrenching real time, for viewers who were alternately spellbound and tortured by their inability to do anything about it.

Japan's plight came on a sunny Friday afternoon; the magnitude-8.9 earthquake, the largest to strike the area in more than a millennium, hit at 2:46 p.m. local time. Japan is not only an advanced economy but one of the most wired nations on Earth. At one point Friday, there were 20 tweets a second coming out of Tokyo.

The nation, meanwhile, is a voracious consumer of information, and media outlets and government officials had plenty of time after the quake to get their cameras in place - as well as estimates of where the waves would hit and when, which proved quite accurate.

It was a confluence of events and circumstance that helped us watch, or forced us to watch, in a new way. When it was over, the images seemed to have bent both edges of the spectrum of comprehension: Scientists questioned the limits of science. And believers questioned the limits of faith.

Deepak Chopra, a spirituality and wellness author, said he was surprised to find that his first thoughts as he watched the disaster unfold were of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese cities leveled by American nuclear bombs at the end of World War II. Imagine, he thought, if Americans had watched those bombs explode on live television. "Would we be as tolerant as we are that we and many other countries are stockpiling nuclear weapons?" he asked.

"We are living in a very interesting time. What is emerging is that you cannot separate yourself emotionally or in any other way from what is happening anywhere in the world. We are a global community. We need to feel this pain. We need to act upon it. We need to realize that we are now entangled with everything that happens - everywhere."

Many said the only experience comparable to watching the tsunami was watching the destruction in Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. Indeed, some of the images on Friday cut close to the bone for Americans - in particular, the disturbing video of victims trapped in tall buildings, waving white shirts out of open windows in a desperate attempt to flag down rescuers, smoke curling around them.

"You are totally powerless against a memory like that," said J. Jon Bruno, the Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles. "It is embedded into your being."

Ken Reeves, director of forecasting operations at Accuweather .com, was captivated and horrified watching video of cars trying to steer clear of the debris field, with no high ground in sight. He watched a group of people standing on a bridge as rising, churning water sent boats lurching toward them. He said he couldn't help but think: "My God, get off the bridge!"

For years now, Americans have reveled in an unlikely and incongruous notion on television: "reality that is unreal," said Father Jim Martin, a Jesuit priest in New York City and the culture editor of America, a weekly Catholic magazine.

Here was something different: reality that was real, more gripping and terrible than anything even the most creative or cynical television producer could conjure. "It's the shock of seeing real reality instead of fake reality," Martin said. "It seems paradoxically unreal.

"A lot of these reality shows are based on watching people suffer - watching them suffer physically, watching them suffer financially. It's important to recognize that we don't have to create suffering in this world. There is suffering in this world."

Seafarers have long returned with tales, often dismissed as apocryphal, of the ocean abruptly reaching up and snatching at anything in its path. The 1883 explosion of the volcanic island Krakatoa unleashed waves that were estimated to have killed tens of thousands. "Some argue that there's even descriptions of tsunamis in the Bible," Reeves said.

These events, though, are extremely rare and occur only in low-lying areas with the requisite mix of geophysical conditions.

The 2004 tsunami event in the Indian Ocean, which killed 230,000 people in 14 nations, marked a dramatic turning point in awareness of the potential for titanic waves - in part because it was captured on cellphone videos and other devices - though nothing approaching this level of documentation. That episode also prodded many scientists to ratchet up their efforts to understand tsunamis and communicate their danger.

But that science is still very much in its infancy; so much so that researchers in the northwestern United States and British Columbia, another area thought to be prone to tsunamis, still rely in part on Native American word-of-mouth legend to understand the physics of past events there.

"You're talking about things that can occur 300 years apart," said Frank Vernon, a research geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. Vernon said that, as he watched the tsunami come ashore, he was unable to divorce the scientist in him from the humanist. "You want to reach out and help, and you can't do anything - except maybe better prepare for the next round," he said.

Indeed, scientists hope to seize on images of the tsunami to dramatically increase their understanding.

Currently, scientists are able to predict landfall - but only after a tsunami has begun offshore, and typically by using a relatively rudimentary system of buoys that measure fluctuations in wave levels. They know far less about how tsunamis are created, or why some offshore earthquakes create them and some don't, or how the waves will react once they reach land.

No tsunami has ever been documented to this degree. Harry Yeh, a professor of engineering at Oregon State University, was watching a cooking show with his wife on Japanese-language television when the live news reports broke into the broadcast. His heart broke for his native Japan, he said. But he instantly recognized that, within the small, tight-knit community of scientists who study tsunamis, "this was extremely intriguing and amazing."

Still, the scope of the disaster is a reminder of how much work lies ahead. "It's going to be hundreds of years before we get enough of a record," Vernon said. Indeed, the limits of science were at least as evident as the potential advances.

"The hubris of humanity makes us forget how powerful nature can be," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, Calif. He said this was "not an act of God." Then, he paused and added: "Well, I hope not. I could be wrong."

Theologians were left with ambiguities of their own.

Martin, the Jesuit priest, said that non-believers may well have an easier time digesting the disturbing images from Japan than believers because "the non-believer does not have to grapple with: How does a good God let this happen?

"Most people can make sense of what theologians call moral evil - evil that comes from human decisions," he said. "But natural disasters and catastrophic illnesses really test the believers' faith. There is no satisfactory answer for why there is such suffering in the world on a natural level."

Some faiths, Christianity in particular, are imbued with the notion that God is not impersonal and accompanies humans in their suffering, Martin said. "But no explanation can fully satisfy that question of why we suffer," he said. "And anyone who says they have the answer is either a fool or a liar."

Tokyo wasn't destroyed by quake

Japan’s Industrial Heart Escapes Heaviest Blows

By STEVE LOHR

Published: March 11, 2011

As bad as the toll might eventually be in lives and property from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, the fact that the disaster hit far from Japan’s industrial heartland will at least soften the economic blow, both at home and abroad.

The epicenter was in and around the coastal city of Sendai, nearly 200 miles northeast of Tokyo, the nation’s population center, and well north of Japan’s primary manufacturing region running from Nagoya to Osaka and farther south and west.

“If this had been a couple hundred miles to the south, the economic and human toll would have been almost incomprehensible,” said Marcus Noland, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “In that respect, Japan dodged an enormous bullet here.”

The disaster could prompt the Japanese government to pump more money into the economy, analysts say, and is very likely to result in increased public spending on buildings and roads.

And it could propel Japan’s already strong currency, the yen, even higher against the dollar and other global currencies, as Japanese money invested abroad returns to help in the rebuilding. In global currency trading on Friday, after the earthquake, the yen did edge higher.

Japan is a major exporter of cars, consumer electronics goods, and parts and sophisticated industrial machinery. In the wake of the disaster, some factories were shut down temporarily. Japanese ports were closed, and so were several airports, including Narita International Airport, which serves Tokyo.

The ripple effects, analysts say, are likely to be some delays in shipping goods, and possibly higher prices in certain products and components. But the impact is expected to be relatively modest and short-lived.

Japan, for example, produces 40 percent of lightweight memory chips most commonly used for storage in digital music players, smart phones and tablet computers, estimated Jim Handy, an analyst at Objective Analysis, a research firm. But most of the plants that make such chips, and other electronics components, are south and west of Tokyo.

Still, a high-tech factory does not have to topple to halt production. A strong shaking, like that generated by the magnitude-8.9 earthquake — the most powerful ever recorded in Japan, and felt across much of the nation — can upset the delicate machinery used in production.

Recalibrating the machines, analyst say, can take a week or two, crimping supplies.

“We do expect some upward price pressure because of this,” said Dale Ford, an analyst at IHS iSuppli, a technology market research firm. But it is too soon, Mr. Ford noted, to predict how much prices might rise, though it should not have a long-term impact.

Because Japan occupies an unstable slice of the earth’s crust and tremors are a routine part of life, Japan’s government, scientists and industry are almost continually engaged in moderating the impact of earthquakes through innovative building designs, strict construction codes and advance planning.

Japan’s major automakers, for example, have long had contingency plans in place to keep supplies moving. Car companies on Friday did report damage to some factories and offices, and Honda said one employee was killed at a research center in Tochigi, north of Tokyo, when a cafeteria wall collapsed.

Toyota, Japan’s largest automaker, reported that its car assembly plants had resumed production after a brief stoppage — though four factories operated by Toyota subsidiaries remained closed while workers were evacuated to safer areas.

But most of Toyota’s Japanese production is done south of Tokyo, especially around Nagoya, including the Prius hybrid, which is built only in Japan.

And over the past two decades, the Japanese automakers have shifted a large portion of production of cars sold for the United States to American plants, while Japanese parts suppliers have set up shop in North America as well.

“Given their contingency plans for earthquakes, and all the production done abroad these days, I’d be amazed if this had a real impact on Toyota or other leading Japanese car companies,” said Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., a Japan expert and the president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a nonpartisan policy research group in Washington.

In 1995, after the devastating earthquake centered in Kobe, a port and industrial city, which killed more than 6,000 people and caused more than $100 billion in damage, the yen rose in value against the dollar 20 percent in the following two months. Some analysts predict that the yen will strengthen in the wake of this earthquake, too.

Why would a disaster cause a nation’s currency to gain in value? In Japan’s case, the answer lies partly in the country’s high savings rate and sizable investments abroad. “As households see their physical assets destroyed, need funds for reconstruction and become more risk averse,” Michael Hart, an analyst for Roubini Global Economics, wrote on Friday, “they are likely to repatriate their savings.”

In doing so, they would convert their foreign holdings back into yen, increasing the demand for the Japanese currency, thus driving up its value. Still, a strong yen could pose problems for Japanese exporters, by making their products relatively more expensive on the global market.

For Japanese consumers, spending to increase household inventories of food and other daily necessities will probably increase, but outlays for luxury goods and services, notably tourism, will fall sharply, Masaaki Kanno, a Tokyo-based economist for JPMorgan Securities, predicted in a note to clients.

Japan’s central bank announced on Friday that it would speed up its monetary policy meeting, to conclude on Monday instead of Tuesday. The bank, analysts say, is expected to add to the money supply, probably by expanding a program to buy government bonds and thus inject more funds into the economy.

The disaster, economists say, may well prod Japanese policy makers to increase government spending to stimulate the economy, despite adding to the nation’s sizable debt burden in the near term. And private investment on construction should increase as well.

“There should be some positive impact because of the rush to rebuild,” said Edward J. Lincoln, a Japan expert at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “Perversely, you may have an economic benefit from this over the next year or two.”

Nick Bunkley contributed reporting from Detroit, and Hiroko Tabuchi from San Francisco.

Explosion at nuclear plant

Japan quake: Explosion at nuclear plant as meltdown fears remain

Mar. 12, 2011 04:08 PM

Associated Press

IWAKI, Japan -- Cooling systems failed at another 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.

Japan's nuclear-safety agency then reported an emergency at another reactor unit, the third in the complex to have its cooling systems malfunction.

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.

Teams searched for the missing along hundreds of miles of the Japanese coast, and thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers that were cut off from rescuers and aid. At least a million households had gone without water since the quake struck. Large areas of the countryside were surrounded by water and unreachable.

The explosion at the nuclear plant, Fukushima Dai-ichi, 170 miles northeast of Tokyo, appeared to be a consequence of steps taken to prevent a meltdown after the quake and tsunami knocked out power to the plant, crippling the system used to cool fuel rods there.

The blast destroyed the building housing the reactor, but not the reactor itself, which is enveloped by stainless steel 6 inches thick.

Inside that superheated steel vessel, water being poured over the fuel rods to cool them formed hydrogen. When officials released some of the hydrogen gas to relieve pressure inside the reactor, the hydrogen apparently reacted with oxygen, either in the air or the cooling water, and caused the explosion.

"They are working furiously to find a solution to cool the core," said Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the Nuclear Policy Program for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Nuclear agency officials said Japan was injecting seawater into the core -- an indication, Hibbs said, of "how serious the problem is and how the Japanese had to resort to unusual and improvised solutions to cool the reactor core."

Officials declined to say what the temperature was inside the troubled reactor, Unit 1. At 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, the zirconium casings of the fuel rods can react with the cooling water and create hydrogen. At 4,000 F, the uranium fuel pellets inside the rods start to melt, the beginning of a meltdown.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said radiation around the plant had fallen, not risen, after the blast but did not offer an explanation. Virtually any increase in dispersed radiation can raise the risk of cancer, and authorities were planning to distribute iodine, which helps protect against thyroid cancer. Authorities moved 170,000 people out of the area within 12 miles of the reactor, said the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, citing information from Japanese officials.

It was the first time Japan had confronted the threat of a significant spread of radiation since the greatest nightmare in its history, a catastrophe exponentially worse: the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States, which resulted in more than 200,000 deaths from the explosions, fallout and radiation sickness.

Officials have said that radiation levels at Fukushima 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. The Japanese utility that runs the plant said four workers suffered fractures and bruises and were being treated at a hospital.

As Japan entered its second night since the magnitude-8.9 quake, there were grim signs that the death toll could soar. One report said no one could find four whole trains. Others said 9,500 people in one coastal town were unaccounted for and that at least 200 bodies had washed ashore elsewhere.

The government said 642 people were missing and 1,426 injured.

Atsushi Ito, an official in Miyagi prefecture, among the worst-hit states, could not confirm the figures, noting that with so little access to the area, thousands of people in scores of towns could not yet be reached. "Our estimates based on reported cases alone suggest that more than 1,000 people have lost their lives in the disaster," Edano said. "Unfortunately, the actual damage could far exceed that number considering the difficulty assessing the full extent of damage."

Japan, among the most technologically advanced countries in the world, is well-prepared for earthquakes. Its buildings are made to withstand strong jolts -- even Friday's, the strongest in Japan since official records began in the late 1800s. The tsunami that followed was beyond human control.

With waves 23 feet high and the speed of a jumbo jet, it raced inland as far as six miles (10 kilometers), swallowing homes, cars, trees, people and anything else in its path.

"The tsunami was unbelievably fast," said Koichi Takairin, a 34-year-old truck driver who was inside his sturdy, four-ton rig when the wave hit the port town of Sendai. "Smaller cars were being swept around me. All I could do was sit in my truck."

His rig ruined, he joined the steady flow of survivors who walked along the road away from the sea and back into the city Saturday.

Smashed cars and small airplanes were jumbled against buildings near the local airport, several miles from the shore. Felled trees and wooden debris lay everywhere as rescue workers in boats nosed through murky waters and around flooded structures.

The tsunami set off warnings across the Pacific Ocean, and waves sent boats crashing into one another and demolished docks on the U.S. West Coast. In Crescent City, California, near the Oregon state line, one person was swept out to sea and had not been found Saturday.

In Japan early Sunday, firefighters had yet to contain a large blaze at the Cosmo Oil refinery in the city of Ichihara. Four million households remained without power. The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported that Japan had asked for additional energy supplies from Russia.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said 50,000 troops had joined the rescue and recovery efforts, helped by boats and helicopters. Dozens of countries offered to pitch in. President Barack Obama said one American aircraft carrier was already off Japan and a second on its way.

Aid had just begun to trickle into many areas. More than 215,000 people were living in 1,350 temporary shelters in five prefectures, the Japanese national police agency said.

"All we have to eat are biscuits and rice balls," said Noboru Uehara, 24, a delivery truck driver who was wrapped in a blanket against the cold at a shelter in Iwake. "I'm worried that we will run out of food."

The transport ministry said all highways from Tokyo leading to quake-stricken areas were closed, except for emergency vehicles. Mobile communications were spotty and calls to the devastated areas were going unanswered.

One hospital in Miyagi prefecture was seen surrounded by water, and the staff had painted "SOS," in English, on its rooftop and were waving white flags.

Around the nuclear plant, where 51,000 people had previously been urged to leave, others struggled to get away.

"Everyone wants to get out of the town. But the roads are terrible," said Reiko Takagi, a middle-aged woman, standing outside a taxi company. "It is too dangerous to go anywhere. But we are afraid that winds may change and bring radiation toward us."

Although the government played down fears of radiation leak, Japanese nuclear agency spokesman Shinji Kinjo acknowledged there were still fears of a meltdown -- the collapse of a power plant's systems, rendering it unable regulate temperatures and keep the reactor fuel cool.

Yaroslov Shtrombakh, a Russian nuclear expert, said it was unlikely that the Japanese plant would suffer a meltdown like the one in 1986 at Chernobyl, when a reactor exploded and sent a cloud of radiation over much of Europe. That reactor, unlike the reactor at Fukushima, was not housed in a sealed container.

Source

Japan quake: Death toll soars, may rise into the thousands

Mar. 13, 2011 12:00 AM

Los Angeles Times

TOKYO - The number of missing and feared dead in Japan's epic earthquake soared to more than 2,000 by early Sunday as a reeling nation struggled to contain an unprecedented nuclear crisis, pluck people in tsunami-inundated areas to safety, quell raging blazes and provide relief to hundreds of thousands of frightened people left homeless and dazed.

As the second full post-quake day dawned today, authorities said about 400,000 people had been forced to flee the quake's giant swath of destruction - more than a quarter of them refugees from the area surrounding the Fukushima nuclear plant, 150 miles north of Tokyo. The crisis intensified as officials reported three of the Fukushima complex's six reactors were in trouble, and emergency measures were being taken to cool them.

Dozens of people were believed to have been exposed to elevated levels of radiation, and officials sought to reassure a frightened public that the radiation leak was under control. Cesium and iodine, byproducts of nuclear fission, were detected around the plant in what could rank as the worst atomic incident in Japan's roughly half-century of nuclear-power generation.

With punishing aftershocks continuing to jolt the quake zone, the Japanese military was mobilizing 50,000 of its personnel, together with ships and planes, to aid in a rescue effort that has swiftly turned into a deadly race against time. In a country where every modern convenience has long extended into even remote areas, the basics of daily survival - food, water, power - were unaccustomedly threatened.

Even in Tokyo, where quake damage was limited, the rhythms of a normally throbbing metropolis were stilled. In many central districts, the trademark neon blaze of illumination was absent on streets that were eerily deserted. The subway system was running again, if sporadically, but on a Saturday evening, when its jolting cars would normally be packed with passengers, some slid through stations all but empty, like ghost trains.

Even Tokyo Disneyland said it would be shuttered for at least 10 days.

As of early today, the confirmed death toll stood at about 800, the Kyodo news agency reported, citing police figures. That did not include another 200 to 300 unidentified corpses - mostly tsunami victims - that had been transported to Sendai, the hardest-hit large city.

"It is believed that more than 1,000 people have lost their lives," said Yukio Edano, the chief Cabinet secretary.

But assessments of the disaster were far from certain. Although the official missing tally stood at 650, in Miyagi prefecture north of Tokyo, officials said Saturday night that there had been no contact with about 10,000 people in the small town of Minamisanriku, more than half its population.

Some people decided to try to get more information about missing relatives on their own. When Tokyo office worker Yuki Ochiai, 25, heard that three-quarters of the 24,000 people living in the northern coastal town of Rikuzentakata were unaccounted for, he headed north to find out the fate of family living there. He rode his motorcycle because roads were impassable by car.

"This is crazy," he said as he stopped to buy water and gas outside of Fukushima, still far from his destination. "One place. The other 18,000 people, they don't know where they are?"

Japan's peacetime military, the Self-Defense Forces, was mobilizing a relief-and-rescue force of 50,000, the defense ministry said, including a special unit detailed to help nuclear evacuees. Nearly 200 aircraft and 45 ships were en route or in the tsunami zone, according to the ministry.

The U.S. military, whose bases are sometimes an irritant to local residents, was aiding in the relief effort as well.

The Americans said there were no injuries or serious damage at any of their bases, and Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said the U.S. 7th Fleet would be providing search-and-rescue help along Japan's northeastern Pacific coast.

The task was a daunting one. Whole communities were still under water in the wake of the massive tsunami unleashed by the 8.9-magnitude quake, the most powerful in Japan's recorded history. Those included Rikuzentakata and the smaller town of Miyako, both in Iwate prefecture.

Despite Japan's much-vaunted earthquake engineering, which saved countless lives, at least 3,400 buildings were known to have been destroyed by the quake and by blazes, Kyodo news agency said, citing the national fire agency. But that figure too could grow exponentially. In the town of Kesennuma, in hard-hit Miyagi prefecture, fires merged into a mega-blaze stretching for more than half a mile. The welfare ministry said 171 "welfare facilities," such as nursing homes, had suffered damage.

Lending critical urgency to the rescue effort, nearly 6 million homes were reported to be without electricity, and more than 1 million lacked water.

Quake survivors were further terrorized by aftershocks, one of which was measured at magnitude of 6.7.

The quake's economic jolt also has yet to be fully assessed. Manufacturing heavyweights such as Toyota, Nissan and Honda said production at plants well outside the quake zone were expected to be suspended on Monday because of the difficulty in obtaining parts.

Flights resumed at Tokyo's Narita airport, one of the world's busiest, but its usually bustling terminals were quiet, and hundreds of domestic flights were canceled. Piles of neatly stacked sleeping bags stood as testament to the long wait endured by many to either catch planes out or find a way into the city aboard slow-moving local trains instead of the usual speedy express. Service on the country's iconic shinkansen, or bullet train, remained sharply curtailed. Nine major expressways were shut down because of structural fears.

At the crippled nuclear plant in Fukushima, authorities were still were unable to explain why excess levels of radiation were detected outside the complex's grounds. An explosion was heard near the plant's No. 1 reactor about 3:30 p.m. Saturday, and plumes of white smoke could be seen.

Edano, the Cabinet secretary, said the blast was caused by a buildup of hydrogen in the cooling system and described the evacuation of more than 200,000 people across a 12-mile area as a "precaution."

Japan's nuclear and industrial safety agency said more than 70 people were believed to have been exposed to elevated radiation levels, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported. Most were waiting to be airlifted from a field at the local high school in the town of Futaba, near Fukushima.

Today, the cooling system at a third reactor at the Fukushima plant was reported to be malfunctioning as well. Edano said steam was being vented and water added, "and those measures should stabilize the situation."

The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said it was told by Japanese officials that they would distribute iodine tablets to residents nearby.

Iodine is known to protect against thyroid cancer that can develop from radiation poisoning.

The biggest concern about the plant is the possibility of the core overheating and nuclear material escaping from the containment vessel.

When the earthquake struck Friday afternoon, the reactors automatically shut down as they were supposed to, a safety measure built into the design. But cooling systems - which were supposed to remain on - apparently failed because of the low electrical power. Four backup diesel generators to supply emergency power also failed.

On Saturday, officials said that the plant's engineers used seawater in an attempt to cool the reactor. They released steam containing low levels of radiation as an emergency cooling measure.

Japan's heavy dependence on nuclear power - which supplies 30 percent of its energy - makes it even more vulnerable in an earthquake.

Partial meltdown 'highly possible'

In Japan plant, partial meltdown 'highly possible'

Mar. 13, 2011 01:10 AM

Associated Press

KORIYAMA, Japan -- Japanese officials were struggling Sunday with a growing nuclear crisis and the threat of multiple meltdowns, two days after the country's northeastern coast was savaged by a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.

A partial meltdown was already likely under way at one nuclear reactor, a top official said, and operators were frantically trying to keep temperatures down at the power plant's other units and prevent the disaster from growing even worse.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Sunday that a hydrogen explosion could occur at Unit 3 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, the reactor that could be melting down. That would follow a blast the day before in another unit at the same power plant, as operators attempted to prevent a meltdown by injecting sea water into it.

"At the risk of raising further public concern, we cannot rule out the possibility of an explosion," Edano said. "If there is an explosion, however, there would be no significant impact on human health."

More than 170,000 people had been evacuated as a precaution, though Edano said the radioactivity released so far into the environment was so small it didn't pose any health threats.

A complete meltdown -- the collapse of a power plant's systems and its ability to keep temperatures under control -- could release uranium and dangerous contaminants into the environment and pose major, widespread health risks.

Up to 160 people, including 60 elderly patients and medial staff who had been waiting for evacuation in the nearby town of Futabe, and 100 others evacuating by bus, might have been exposed to radiation, said Ryo Miyake, a spokesman from Japan's nuclear agency. The severity of their exposure, or if it had reached dangerous levels, was not clear. They were being taken to hospitals.

Edano told reporters that a partial meltdown in Unit 3 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant was "highly possible."

Asked whether a partial meltdown had occurred, Edano said that "because it's inside the reactor, we cannot directly check it but we are taking measures on the assumption" that it was.

Japan struggled with the nuclear crisis as it tried to determine the scale of the Friday disasters, when an 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the most powerful in the country's recorded history, was followed by a tsunami that savaged its northeastern coast with breathtaking speed and power.

At least 1,000 people were killed -- including some 200 bodies discovered Sunday along the coast -- and 678 were missing, according to officials, but police in one of the worst-hit areas estimated the toll there alone could eventually top 10,000.

The scale of the multiple disasters appeared to be outpacing the efforts of Japanese authorities to bring the situation under control more than two days after the initial quake.

Rescue teams were struggling to search hundreds of miles (kilometers) of devastated coastline, and thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers cut off from rescuers and aid.

At least a million households had gone without water since the quake, and food and gasoline were quickly running out across the region. Large areas of the countryside were surrounded by water and unreachable.

Some 2.5 million households were without electricity.

Japanese Trade Minister Banri Kaeda warned that the region was likely to face further blackouts, and that power would be rationed to ensure supplies to essential facilities.

The government doubled the number of troops pressed into rescue and recovery operations to about 100,000 from 51,000, as powerful aftershocks continued to rock the country, including one Sunday with a magnitude of 6.2 that originated in the sea, about 111 miles (179 kilometers) east of Tokyo. It swayed buildings in the capital, but there were no reports of injuries or damage.

Unit 3 at the Fukushima plant is one of the three reactors that had automatically shut down and lost cooling functions necessary to keep fuel rods working properly due to power outage from the quake. The facility's Unit 1 is also in trouble, but Unit 2 has been less affected.

On Saturday, an explosion destroyed the walls of Unit 1 as operators desperately tried to prevent it from overheating and melting down.

Without power, and without plant pipes and pumps that were destroyed in the explosion of the most-troubled reactor's containment building, authorities resorted to drawing seawater mixed with boron in an attempt to cool the overheated uranium fuel rods in Unit 1. Boron disrupts nuclear chain reactions.

The move likely renders the 40-year-old reactor unusable, said a foreign ministry official briefing reporters. Officials said the seawater will remain inside the unit, possibly for several months.

Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and former senior policy adviser to the U.S. secretary of energy, told reporters that the seawater was a desperate measure. "It's a Hail Mary pass," he said. He said that the success of using seawater and boron to cool the reactor will depend on the volume and rate of their distribution. He said the dousing would need to continue nonstop for days.

Another key, he said, was the restoration of electrical power, so that normal cooling systems can operate. Edano said the cooling operation at Unit 1 was going smoothly after the sea water was pumped in.

Operators released slightly radioactive air from Unit 3 on Sunday, while injecting water into it hoping to reduce pressure and temperature to prevent a possible meltdown, Edano said.

He said radiation levels just outside the plant briefly rose above legal limits, but since had declined significantly. Also, fuel rods were exposed briefly, he said, indicating that coolant water didn't cover the rods for some time. That would have contributed further to raising the temperature in the reactor vessel.

At an evacuation center in Koriyama, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) from the troubled reactors and 125 miles (190 kilometers) north of Tokyo, medical experts had checked about 1,500 people for radiation exposure in an emergency testing center, an official said.

On Sunday, a few dozen people waited to be tested in a collection of blue tents set up in a parking lot outside a local gymnasium. Fire engines surrounded the scene, with their lights flashing.

Many of the gym's windows were shattered by the quake, and glass shards littered the ground.

"First I was worried about the quake, now I'm worried about radiation. I live near the plants, so I came here to find out if I'm OK. I tested negative, but I don't know what to do next," said Kenji Koshiba, a construction worker.

A steady flow of people -- the elderly, schoolchildren and families with babies -- arrived at the center, where they were checked by officials wearing helmets, surgical masks and goggles.

Officials placed Dai-ichi Unit 1, and four other reactors, under states of emergency Friday after operators lost the ability to cool the reactors using usual procedures.

An additional reactor was added to the list early Sunday, for a total of six -- three at the Dai-ichi complex and three at another nearby complex. Local evacuations have been ordered at each location. Japan has a total of 55 reactors spread across 17 complexes nationwide.

What a 'nuclear meltdown' entails

What a 'nuclear meltdown' entails

Mar. 12, 2011 09:34 PM

Washington Post

A "nuclear meltdown" does not necessarily mean that the reactor core of a nuclear power plant has turned into a glob of metal and ceramic. A nuclear meltdown can be any event in which the core overheats and damages the apparatus. Such an event carries with it the danger of a release of radiation into the environment.

Radiation from nuclear plants poses a variety of health risks, ranging from severe toxic effects caused by high doses to long-term cancer risks that can be caused by lower doses, experts said.

A well-documented health effect is an increase in thyroid cancer, primarily among children, because of exposure to iodine-131. Japanese officials are giving the possible exposure victims potassium iodide pills, which block radioactive iodine from accumulating in the thyroid glands, which can cause thyroid cancer.

Source

Japanese spend 3rd day without water, electricity; quake-tsunami death toll likely over 10,000

JAY ALABASTER, TODD PITMAN Associated Press

7:02 a.m. CDT, March 13, 2011

TAGAJO, Japan (AP) — People across a devastated swath of Japan suffered for a third day Sunday without water, electricity and proper food, as the country grappled with the enormity of a massive earthquake and tsunami that left more than 10,000 people dead in one area alone.

Japan's prime minister called the crisis the most severe challenge the nation has faced since World War II, as the grim situation worsened. Friday's disasters damaged two nuclear reactors, potentially sending one through a partial meltdown and adding radiation contamination to the fears of an unsettled public.

Temperatures began sinking toward freezing, compounding the misery of survivors along hundreds of miles (kilometers) of the northeastern coast battered by the tsunami that smashed inland with breathtaking fury. Rescuers pulled bodies from mud-covered jumbles of wrecked houses, shattered tree trunks, twisted cars and tangled power lines while survivors examined the ruined remains.

In Rikusentakata, a port city of over 20,000 virtually wiped out by the tsunami, Etsuko Koyama escaped the water rushing through the third flood of her home but lost her grip on her daughter's hand and has not found her.

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"I haven't given up hope yet," Koyama told public broadcaster NHK, wiping tears from her eyes. "I saved myself, but I couldn't save my daughter."

To the south, in Miyagi prefecture, or state, the police chief told a gathering of disaster relief officials that his estimate for deaths was more than 10,000, police spokesman Go Sugawara told The Associated Press. Miyagi has a population of 2.3 million and is one of the three prefectures hardest hit in Friday's disaster. Only 379 people have officially been confirmed as dead in Miyagi.

According to officials, at least 1,200 people were killed — including 200 people whose bodies were found Sunday along the coast — and 739 were missing in the disasters.

For Japan, one of the leading economies with ultramodern infrastructure, the disasters made ordinary life unimaginably difficult.

Hundreds of thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers that were cut off from rescuers, aid and electricity. At least 1.4 million households had gone without water since the quake struck and some 1.9 million households were without electricity.

While the government doubled the number of soldiers deployed in the aid effort to 100,000 and sent 120,000 blankets, 120,000 bottles of water and 110,000 liters of gasoline plus food to the affected areas, Prime Minister Nato Kan said electricity would take days to restore. In the meantime, he said, electricity would be rationed with rolling blackouts to several cities, including Tokyo.

"This is Japan's most severe crisis since the war ended 65 years ago," Kan told reporters, adding that Japan's future would be decided by the response to this crisis.

In a rare piece of good news, the Defense Ministry said a military vessel on Sunday rescued a 60-year-old man floating off the coast of Fukushima on the roof of his house after being swept away in the tsunami. He was in good condition.

Large areas of the countryside remained surrounded by water and unreachable. Fuel stations were closed and people were running out of gasoline for their vehicles.

In the town of Minamisanrikucho, 10,000 people — nearly two-thirds of the population — have not been heard from since the tsunami wiped it out, a government spokesman said. NHK showed only a couple concrete structures still standing, and the bottom three floors of those buildings gutted. One of the few buildings standing was a hospital, and a worker told NHK hospital staff rescued about a third of the patients in the facility.

In Iwaki town, residents were leaving due to concerns over dwindling food and fuel supplies. The town had no electricity and all stores were closed. Local police took in about 90 people and gave them blankets and rice balls but there was no sign of government or military aid trucks.

At a large refinery on the outskirts of the hard-hit port city of Sendai, 100-foot (30-meter) -high bright orange flames rose in the air, spitting out dark plumes of smoke. The facility has been burning since Friday. The fire's road could be heard from afar, and a gaseous stench burned the eyes and throat.

"My water is cut off," said Kenji Fukuda, who lives in the rural town of Sukugawa. It "is a little bit rural and there is natural well water. We take it and put it through the water purifier and warm it up and use it in various ways," he said.

In the small town of Tagajo, near Sendai, dazed residents roamed streets cluttered with smashed cars, broken homes and twisted metal.

Residents said the water surged in and quickly rose higher than the first floor of buildings. At Sengen General Hospital the staff worked feverishly to haul bedridden patients up the stairs one at a time. With the halls now dark, those that can leave have gone to the local community center.

"There is still no water or power, and we've got some very sick people in here," said hospital official Ikuro Matsumoto.

One older neighborhood sits on low ground near a canal. The tsunami came in from the canal side and blasted through the frail wooden houses, coating the interiors with a thick layer of mud and spilling their contents out into the street on the other side.

"It's been two days, and all I've been given so far is a piece of bread and a rice ball," said Masashi Imai, 56.

Police cars drove slowly through the town and warned residents through loudspeakers to seek higher ground, but most simply stood by and watched them pass.

Dozens of countries have offered assistance. Two U.S. aircraft carrier groups were off Japan's coast and ready to provide assistance. Helicopters were flying from one of the carriers, the USS Ronald Reagan, delivering food and water in Miyagi.

Two other U.S. rescue teams of 72 personnel each and rescue dogs were scheduled to arrive later Sunday, as was a five-dog team from Singapore.

In Sendai, firefighters with wooden picks dug through a devastated neighborhood. One of them yelled: "A corpse." Inside a house, he had found the body of a gray-haired woman under a blanket.

A few minutes later, the firefighters spotted another — that of a man in black fleece jacket and pants, crumpled in a partial fetal position at the bottom of a wooden stairwell. From outside, the house seemed almost untouched, two cracks in the white walls the only signs of damage.

The man's neighbor, 24-year-old Ayumi Osuga, dug through the remains of her own house, her white mittens covered by dark mud.

Osuga said she had been playing origami, the Japanese art of folding paper into figures, with her three children when the quake stuck. She recalled her husband's shouted warning from outside: "'GET OUT OF THERE NOW!'"

She gathered her children — aged 2 to 6 — and fled in her car to higher ground with her husband. They spent the night huddled in a hilltop home belonging to her husband's family about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away.

"My family, my children. We are lucky to be alive," she said.

"I have come to realize what is important in life," Osuga said, nervously flicking ashes from a cigarette onto the rubble at her feet as a giant column of black smoke billowed in the distance.

___

Todd Pitman reported from Sendai. Associated Press writers Eric Talmadge and Kelly Olsen in Koriyama and Malcolm J. Foster, Mari Yamaguchi, Tomoko A. Hosaka and Shino Yuasa in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Japan earthquake shifted Earth on its axis

Japan earthquake shifted Earth on its axis

By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times

9:59 p.m. CST, March 12, 2011

Friday's magnitude 8.9 earthquake in Japan shifted Earth on its axis and shortened the length of a day by a hair. In the future, scientists said, it will provide an unusually precise view of how Earth is deformed during massive earthquakes at sites where one plate is sliding under another, including the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

The unusually rich detail comes from an extensive network of sensors that were placed at sites across Japan after that country's Kobe earthquake of 1995, a magnitude 6.8 quake that killed more than 6,000 people because its epicenter was near a major city.

"The Japanese have the best seismic information in the world," said Lucy Jones, chief scientist for the Multi-Hazards project at the U.S. Geological Survey, at a Saturday news conference at Caltech in Pasadena. "This is overwhelmingly the best-recorded great earthquake ever."

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Already, just over 36 hours after the quake, data-crunchers had determined that the temblor's force moved parts of eastern Japan as much as 12 feet closer to North America, scientists said — and that Japan has shifted downward about two feet.

Jones said that USGS had determined that the entire earthquake sequence — including associated foreshocks and aftershocks — had so far included 200 temblors of magnitude 5 or larger, 20 of which occurred before the big quake hit. She said the aftershocks were continuing at a rapid pace and decreasing in frequency although not in magnitude, all of which is to be expected.

Researchers have a laundry list of items they hope to gather data on.

Caltech geophysicist Mark Simons said that knowing how much the land had shifted during the quake and its aftershocks would help scientists understand future hazards in the region and allow them to plan accordingly.

A colleague of his, Caltech seismological engineer Tom Heaton, said the tragedy would provide unprecedented information about how buildings hold up under long periods of shaking — and thus how to build them better.

"We had very little information about that before now," he said. Though precise numbers are not yet available, he predicted that the data would show that buildings in Japan were subject to a full three minutes of shaking.

Many of the lessons, however, will apply to other parts of the world than California, because the state's fault topography is different than the one involved in the Japanese quake. The earthquake that struck the New Zealand city of Christchurch on Feb. 22 is probably more analogous to what is likely to occur in California, because it occurred along a fault running very close to an urban area.

The data from the Japanese temblor could help planners and engineers avert potential earthquake disasters around the world, the scientists said — including in the Pacific Northwest, where the Cascadia Subduction Zone extends 600 miles south from British Columbia.

Geological evidence as well as historical records of tsunami deaths in Japan — from giant waves believed, based on modern analysis, to have come from a Cascadia quake — suggest that the most recent large earthquake in the Pacific Northwest occurred in 1700. It was probably larger than Friday's earthquake in Japan.

Another massive quake in the Pacific Northwest is "inevitable," the USGS's Jones said, though it may not occur for hundreds of years.

"They have an opportunity," she said. "This will help the Pacific Northwest understand what they should be ready for. I wouldn't be sleepless in Seattle, but I'd be studious."

eryn.brown@latimes.com

Japan races to prevent nuke reactor meltdowns

Japan races to prevent nuke reactor meltdowns

by Eric Talmadge and Mari Yamaguchi - Mar. 13, 2011 12:40 PM

Associated Press

KORIYAMA, Japan - Japan's nuclear crisis intensified Sunday as authorities raced to combat the threat of multiple reactor meltdowns and more than 180,000 people evacuated the quake- and tsunami-savaged northeastern coast where fears spread over possible radioactive contamination.

Nuclear plant operators were frantically trying to keep temperatures down in a series of nuclear reactors - including one where officials feared a partial meltdown could be happening Sunday - to prevent the disaster from growing worse.

But hours after officials announced the latest dangers to face the troubled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, including the possibility of a second explosion in two days, there were few details about what was being done to bring the situation under control.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Sunday that a hydrogen explosion could occur at the complex's Unit 3, the latest reactor to face a possible meltdown. That would follow a hydrogen blast Saturday in the plant's Unit 1, where operators attempted to prevent a meltdown by injecting sea water into it.

"At the risk of raising further public concern, we cannot rule out the possibility of an explosion," Edano said. "If there is an explosion, however, there would be no significant impact on human health."

More than 180,000 people have evacuated as a precaution, though Edano said the radioactivity released into the environment so far was so small it didn't pose any health threats.

Such statements, though, did little to ease public worries.

"First I was worried about the quake," said Kenji Koshiba, a construction worker who lives near the plant. "Now I'm worried about radiation." He spoke at an emergency center in Koriyama, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) from the troubled reactors and 125 miles (190 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

At the makeshift center set up in a gym, a steady flow of people - mostly the elderly, schoolchildren and families with babies - were met by officials wearing helmets, surgical masks and goggles.

About 1,500 people had been scanned for radiation exposure, officials said.

Up to 160 people, including 60 elderly patients and medical staff who had been waiting for evacuation in the nearby town of Futabe, and 100 others evacuating by bus, might have been exposed to radiation, said Ryo Miyake, a spokesman from Japan's nuclear agency. The severity of their exposure, or if it had reached dangerous levels, was not clear.

Edano said none of the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors was near the point of complete meltdown, and he was confident of escaping the worst scenarios.

Officials, though, have declared states of emergency at six reactors - three at Dai-ichi and three at another nearby complex - after operators lost the ability to cool the reactors using usual procedures. Local evacuations have been ordered at each location. The U.N. nuclear agency said a state of emergency was also declared Sunday at another complex after higher-than-permitted levels of radiation were measured there. It said Japan informed it that all three reactors there were under control.

A pump for the cooling system at yet another nuclear complex, the Tokai Dai-Ni plant, also failed after Friday's quake but a second pump operated normally as did the reactor, said the utility, the Japan Atomic Power Co. It did not explain why it reported the incident Sunday.

All of the reactors at the complexes shut down automatically when the earthquake shook the region.

But with backup power supplies also failing, shutting down the reactors is just the beginning of the problem, scientists said.

"You need to get rid of the heat," said Friedrich Steinhaeusler, a professor of physics and biophysics at Salzburg University and an adviser to the Austrian government on nuclear issues. "You are basically putting the lid down on a pot that is boiling."

"They have a window of opportunity where they can do a lot," he said, such as using sea water as an emergency coolant. But if the heat is not brought down, the cascading problems can eventually be impossible to control. "This isn't something that will happen in a few hours. It's days." Edano, for his part, denied there had been a meltdown in the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex, but other officials said the situation was not so clear.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior official of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, indicated the reactor core in Unit 3 had melted partially, telling a news conference, "I don't think the fuel rods themselves have been spared damage," according to the Kyodo News agency.

A complete meltdown - the collapse of a power plant's ability to keep temperatures under control - could release uranium and dangerous contaminants into the environment and pose major, widespread health risks.

Experts noted, however, that even a complete meltdown would probably be far less severe than the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl, where a reactor exploded and sent a cloud of radiation over much of Europe. That reactor, unlike the ones in Fukushima, was not housed in a sealed container.

The nuclear crisis was triggered by twin disasters on Friday, when an 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the most powerful in the country's recorded history, was followed by a tsunami that savaged its northeastern coast with breathtaking speed and power.

More than 1,400 people were killed and hundreds more were missing, according to officials, but police in one of the worst-hit areas estimated the toll there alone was more than 10,000.

The scale of the multiple disasters appeared to be outpacing the efforts of Japanese authorities to bring the situation under control.

Rescue teams were struggling to search hundreds of miles (kilometers) of devastated coastline, and hundreds of thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers cut off from rescuers and aid. At least 1.4 million households had gone without water since the quake, and food and gasoline were quickly running out across the region. Large areas of the countryside were surrounded by water and unreachable. Nearly 2 million households were without electricity.

Starting Monday, power will be rationed with rolling blackouts in several cities, including Tokyo.

The government doubled the number of troops pressed into rescue operations to about 100,000 from 51,000, as powerful aftershocks continued to rock the country. Hundreds have hit since the initial temblor.

On Saturday, an explosion destroyed the walls and ceiling of Fukushima Dai-ichi's Unit 1 as operators desperately tried to prevent it from overheating and melting down by releasing steam.

Officials were aware that the steam contained hydrogen and were risking an explosion by venting it, acknowledged Shinji Kinjo, spokesman for the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, but chose to do so because they needed to reduce the pressure.

Officials insisted there was no significant radioactive leak after the explosion.

Without power, and with its valves and pumps damaged by the tsunami, authorities resorted to drawing sea water mixed with boron in an attempt to cool the unit's overheated uranium fuel rods. Boron disrupts nuclear chain reactions.

Operators also began using sea water to cool the complex's Unit 3 reactor after earlier attempts to lower its temperature failed, the U.N. Nuclear Agency said.

The move likely renders the 40-year-old reactors unusable, said a foreign ministry official briefing reporters.

He said radiation levels outside the plant briefly rose above legal limits, but had since declined significantly.

Japan has a total of 55 reactors spread across 17 complexes nationwide.

--- Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writers Tomoko A. Hosaka in Tokyo, Tim Sullivan in Bangkok and Jeff Donn in Boston contributed to this report.

Tide of 1,000 bodies overwhelms quake-hit Japan

Tide of 1,000 bodies overwhelms quake-hit Japan

By JAY ALABASTER and TODD PITMAN, Associated Press Jay Alabaster And Todd Pitman, Associated Press

TAKAJO, Japan – A tide of bodies washed up along Japan's coastline, crematoriums were overwhelmed and rescue workers ran out of body bags as the nation faced the grim reality of a mounting humanitarian, economic and nuclear crisis Monday after a calamitous tsunami.

Millions of people were facing a fourth night without water, food or heating in near-freezing temperatures in the northeast devastated by an earthquake and the wave it spawned. Meanwhile, a third reactor at a nuclear power plant lost its cooling capacity and the fuel rods at another were at least briefly fully exposed, raising fears of a meltdown. The stock market plunged over the likelihood of huge losses by Japanese industries including big names such as Toyota and Honda.

A Japanese police official said 1,000 washed up bodies were found scattered Monday across the coastline of Miyagi prefecture. The official declined to be named, citing department policy.

The discovery raised the official death toll to about 2,800, but the Miyagi police chief has said that more than 10,000 people are estimated to have died in his province alone, which has a population of 2.3 million.

In one town in a neighboring prefecture, the crematorium was unable to handle the crush of bodies being brought in for funerals.

"We have already begun cremations, but we can only handle 18 bodies a day. We are overwhelmed and are asking other cites to help us deal with bodies. We only have one crematorium in town," Katsuhiko Abe, an official in Soma, told The Associated Press.

In Japan, most people opt to cremate their dead, a process that, like burial, requires permission first from local authorities. But the government took the rare step Monday of waiving that requirement to speed up funerals, said Health Ministry official Yukio Okuda.

"The current situation is so extraordinary, and it is very likely that crematoriums are running beyond capacity," said Okuda. "This is an emergency measure. We want to help quake-hit people as much as we can."

Friday's double tragedy has caused unimaginable deprivation for people of this industrialized country — Asia's richest — which hasn't seen such hardship since World War II. In many areas there is no running water, no power and four- to five-hour waits for gasoline. People are suppressing hunger with instant noodles or rice balls while dealing with the loss of loved ones and homes.

"People are surviving on little food and water. Things are simply not coming," said Hajime Sato, a government official in Iwate prefecture, one of the three hardest hit.

He said authorities were receiving just 10 percent of the food and other supplies they need. Body bags and coffins were running so short that the government may turn to foreign funeral homes for help, he said.

"We have requested funeral homes across the nation to send us many body bags and coffins. But we simply don't have enough," he told the AP. "We just did not expect such a thing to happen. It's just overwhelming."

The pulverized coast has been hit by hundreds of aftershocks since Friday, the latest one a 6.2 magnitude quake that was followed by a new tsunami scare Monday. As sirens wailed, soldiers abandoned their search operations and told residents of the devastated shoreline in Soma, the worst hit town in Fukushima prefecture, to run to higher ground.

They barked out orders: "Find high ground! Get out of here!" Several soldiers were seen leading an old woman up a muddy hillside. The warning turned out to be a false alarm.

Search parties arrived in Soma for the first time since Friday to dig out bodies. Ambulances stood by and body bags were laid out in an area cleared of debris, as firefighters used hand picks and chain saws to clear an indescribable jumble of broken timber, plastic sheets, roofs, sludge, twisted cars, tangled powerlines and household goods.

Helicopters buzzed overhead, surveying the destruction that spanned the horizon. Ships were flipped over near roads, a half-mile (a kilometer) inland. Officials said one-third of the city of 38,000 people was flooded and thousands were missing.

In addition to the more than 2,800 people who have been confirmed dead, more than 1,400 were missing. Another 1,900 were injured.

Japanese officials have refused to speculate on how high the death toll could rise, but experts who dealt with the 2004 Asian tsunami offered a dire outlook.

"It's a miracle really, if it turns out to be less than 10,000 (dead)," said Hery Harjono, a senior geologist with the Indonesian Science Institute, who was closely involved with the aftermath of the earlier disaster that killed 230,000 people — of which only 184,000 bodies were found.

He drew parallels between the two disasters — notably that many bodies in Japan may have been sucked out to sea or remain trapped beneath rubble as they did in Indonesia's hardest-hit Aceh province. But he also stressed that Japan's infrastructure, high-level of preparedness and city planning to keep houses away from the shore could mitigate their human losses.

The Japanese government has sent 100,000 troops to lead the aid effort. It has sent 120,000 blankets, 120,000 bottles of water and 29,000 gallons (110,000 liters) of gasoline plus food to the affected areas. However, electricity will take days to restore.

According to public broadcaster NHK, some 430,000 people are living in emergency shelters or with relatives. Another 24,000 people are stranded, it said.

One reason for the loss of power is the damage several nuclear reactors in the area. At one plant, Fukushima Dai-ichi, three reactors have lost the ability to cool down, the latest on Monday. Explosions have destroyed the containment buildings of the other two reactors. Fuel rods at the third were fully explosed, at least briefly, on Monday.

Operators were dumping sea water into all three reactors in a last-ditch attempt to cool their superheated containers that faced possible meltdown. If that happens, they could release radioactive material in the air.

But Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the inner containment vessel holding the nuclear fuel rods at the reactor that experienced an explosion Monday was intact, allaying some fears of the risk to the environment. The containment vessel of the first reactor is also safe, according to officials.

Still, people within a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius were ordered to stay inside homes following the blast. AP journalists felt Monday's explosion 25 miles (40 kilometers) away.

Military personnel on helicopters returning to ships with the U.S. 7th Fleet registered low-level of radioactive contamination Monday, but were cleared after a scrub-down. As a precaution, the ship shifted to a different area off the coast.

More than 180,000 people have evacuated the area around the plants in recent days.

Also, Tokyo Electric Power held off on imposing rolling blackouts planned for Monday, but called for people to try to limit electricity use.

Edano said the utility was still prepared to go ahead with power rationing if necessary. The decision reflected an understanding of the profound inconveniences many would experience.

Many regional train lines were suspended or operating on a limited schedule to help reduce the power load.

Japan's central bank injected 15 trillion yen (US$184 billion) into money markets Monday to stem worries about the world's third-largest economy.

Stocks fell Monday on the first business day after the disasters. The benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average shed nearly 634 points, or 6.2 percent, to 9,620.49, extending losses from Friday. Escalating concerns over the fallout of the disaster triggered a plunge that hit all sectors. The broader Topix index lost 7.5 percent.

Japan's economy has been ailing for 20 years, barely managing to eke out weak growth between slowdowns. It is saddled by a massive public debt that, at 200 percent of gross domestic product, is the biggest among industrialized nations.

Preliminary estimates put repair costs from the earthquake and tsunami in the tens of billions of dollars — a huge blow for an already fragile economy that lost its place as the world's No. 2 to China last year.

___

Pitman reported from Sendai. Associated Press writers Eric Talmadge in Soma, Kelly Olsen in Koriyama, Malcolm J. Foster, Mari Yamaguchi, Tomoko A. Hosaka and Shino Yuasa in Tokyo and Niniek Karmini in Jakarta contributed to this report.

Meltdown threat rises at nuclear plant

Japan quake: Meltdown threat rises at nuclear plant

by Eric Talmadge and Shino Yuasa - Mar. 14, 2011 09:06 AM

Associated Press

SOMA, Japan -- Water levels dropped precipitously Monday inside a stricken Japanese nuclear reactor, twice leaving the uranium fuel rods completely exposed and raising the threat of a meltdown, hours after a hydrogen explosion tore through the building housing a different reactor.

Water levels were restored after the first decrease but the rods remained exposed late Monday night after the second episode, increasing the risk of the spread of radiation and the potential for an eventual meltdown.

The cascading troubles in the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant compounded the immense challenges faced by the Tokyo government, already struggling to send relief to hundreds of thousands of people along the country's quake- and tsunami-ravaged coast where at least 10,000 people are believed to have died.

Later, a top Japanese official said the fuel rods in all three of the most troubled nuclear reactors appeared to be melting.

Of all these troubles, the drop in water levels at Unit 2 had officials the most worried.

"Units 1 and 3 are at least somewhat stabilized for the time being," said Nuclear and Industrial Agency official Ryohei Shiomi "Unit 2 now requires all our effort and attention."

In some ways, the explosion at Unit 3 was not as dire as it might seem.

The blast actually lessened pressure building inside the troubled reactor, and officials said the all-important containment shell -- thick concrete armor around the reactor -- had not been damaged. In addition, officials said radiation levels remained within legal limits, though anyone left within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the scene was ordered to remain indoors.

"We have no evidence of harmful radiation exposure," deputy Cabinet secretary Noriyuki Shikata told reporters.

On Saturday, a similar hydrogen blast destroyed the housing around the complex's Unit 1 reactor, leaving the shell intact but resulting in the mass evacuation of more than 185,000 people from the area.

So the worst case scenario still hung over the complex, and officials were clearly struggling to keep ahead of the crisis.

Late Monday, the chief government spokesman said there were signs that the fuel rods were melting in all three reactors, all of which had lost their cooling systems in the wake of Friday's massive earthquake and tsunami.

"Although we cannot directly check it, it's highly likely happening," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters.

Some experts would consider that a partial meltdown. Others, though, reserve that term for times when nuclear fuel melts through a reactor's innermost chamber but not through the outer containment shell.

By contrast, a complete reactor meltdown, where the uranium core melts through the containment shell, would release a wave of radiation and result in major, widespread health problems.

The Monday morning explosion at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant's Unit 3 injured 11 workers and came as authorities were trying to use sea water to cool the complex's three reactors.

While four Japanese nuclear complexes were damaged in the wake of Friday's twin disasters, the Dai-ichi complex, which sits just off the Pacific coast and was badly hammered by the tsunami, has been the focus of most of the worries over Japan's deepening nuclear crisis. All three of the operational reactors at the complex now have faced severe troubles.

Operators knew the sea water flooding would cause a pressure buildup in the reactor containment vessels -- and potentially lead to an explosion -- but felt they had no choice if they wanted to avoid complete meltdowns. Eventually, hydrogen in the released steam mixed with oxygen in the atmosphere and set off the two blasts.

Japan's meteorological agency did report one good sign. It said the prevailing wind in the area of the stricken plant was heading east into the Pacific, which experts said would help carry away any radiation.

Across the region, though, many residents expressed fear over the situation.

People in the port town of Soma had rushed to higher ground after a tsunami warning Monday -- a warning that turned out to be false alarm -- and then felt the earth shake from the explosion at the Fukushima reactor 25 miles (40 kilometers) away. Authorities there ordered everyone to go indoors to guard against possible radiation contamination.

"It's like a horror movie," said 49-year-old Kyoko Nambu as she stood on a hillside overlooking her ruined hometown. "Our house is gone and now they are telling us to stay indoors.

"We can see the damage to our houses, but radiation? ... We have no idea what is happening. I am so scared."

Meanwhile, 17 U.S. military personnel involved in helicopter relief missions were found to have been exposed to low levels of radiation after the flew back from the devastated coast to the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier about 100 miles (160 kilometers) offshore.

U.S. officials said the exposure level was roughly equal to one month's normal exposure to natural background radiation, and the 17 were declared contamination-free after scrubbing with soap and water.

As a precaution, the U.S. said the carrier and other 7th Fleet ships involved in relief efforts had shifted to another area.

While Japan has aggressively prepared for years for major earthquakes, reinforcing buildings and running drills, the impact of the tsunami -- which came so quickly that not many people managed to flee to higher ground -- was immense.

By Monday, officials were overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis, with millions of people facing a fourth night without electricity, water, food or heat in near-freezing temperatures.

International scientists say there are serious dangers but little risk of a catastrophe like the 1986 blast in Chernobyl, where there was no containment shells.

And, some analysts noted, the length of time since the nuclear crisis began indicates that the chemical reactions inside the reactor were not moving quickly toward a complete meltdown.

"We're now into the fourth day. Whatever is happening in that core is taking a long time to unfold," said Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the nuclear policy program for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "They've succeeded in prolonging the timeline of the accident sequence."

He noted, though, that Japanese officials appeared unable to figure out what was going on deep inside the reactor. In part, that was probably because of the damage done to the facility by the tsunami.

"The real question mark is what's going on inside the core," he said.

Overall, more than 1,500 people had been scanned for radiation exposure in the area, officials said.

------

Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writers Tim Sullivan in Bangkok contributed to this repo

Japan’s earthquake shifted balance of the planet

Mon Mar 14, 9:56 am ET

Japan’s earthquake shifted balance of the planet

By Liz Goodwin liz Goodwin – Mon Mar 14, 9:56 am ET

Last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan has actually moved the island closer to the United States and shifted the planet's axis.

The quake caused a rift 15 miles below the sea floor that stretched 186 miles long and 93 miles wide, according to the AP. The areas closest to the epicenter of the quake jumped a full 13 feet closer to the United States, geophysicist Ross Stein at the United States Geological Survey told The New York Times.

The world's fifth-largest, 8.9 magnitude quake was caused when the Pacific tectonic plate dove under the North American plate, which shifted Eastern Japan towards North America by about 13 feet (see NASA's before and after photos at right). The quake also shifted the earth's axis by 6.5 inches, shortened the day by 1.6 microseconds, and sank Japan downward by about two feet. As Japan's eastern coastline sunk, the tsunami's waves rolled in.

Why did the quake shorten the day? The earth's mass shifted towards the center, spurring the planet to spin a bit faster. Last year's massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile also shortened the day, but by an even smaller fraction of a second. The 2004 Sumatra quake knocked a whopping 6.8 micro-seconds off the day.

After the country's 1995 earthquake, Japan placed high-tech sensors around the country to observe even the slightest movements, which is why scientists are able to calculate the quake's impact down to the inch. "This is overwhelmingly the best-recorded great earthquake ever," Lucy Jones, chief scientist for the Multi-Hazards project at the U.S. Geological Survey, told The Los Angeles Times.

The tsunami's waves necessitated life-saving evacuations as far away as Chile. Fisherman off the coast of Mexico reported a banner fishing day Friday, and speculated that the tsunami knocked sealife in their direction.

Clay shovels the BS on Japan quake :)

Quake 102

Today we have, not surprisingly, a number of questions about the earthquake that struck Japan. The pictures and footage we see almost defy belief, don't they?

Let's get straight to them.

The earthquake in Japan moved the earth's axis 10 centimeters. How was this determined and what, if anything, does this mean for the environment? First of all, for those of us who are metrically challenged, 10 centimeters is just shy of 4 inches.

That big earthquake not only shifted Earth's axis, but it also moved Japan itself by about eight feet. That's something, isn't it? Astronomers determined the axis shift by measuring the distance between Earth and the moon. At least that's the only explanation I could come up with.

As far as the impact on Earth goes, four/ inches really doesn't amount to much in the great scheme of things. It will have the effect of shortening our days by a tiny fraction of a second or by about a second over the next 100 years.

What is the difference between an earthquake and an aftershock and a tremor?

Technically, I think tremor and earthquake mean the same thing, although tremor is often used to mean an aftershock. An aftershock is a smaller tremor that follows an earthquake. If it has a magnitude larger than the first quake, the first one is called a foreshock. Aftershocks are caused by the Earth adjusting itself to the changes brought on by the first earthquake.

What is a prefecture?

A prefecture is a unit of government governed by a prefect.

In Japan it is kind of the equivalent of a state in the U.S, although I suspect it's a bit more complicated than that. It comes from the Latin word “praefectus,” which means “public overseer.” Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarrepublic.com or 602-444-8612.

Fire at Japan nuclear reactor heightens radiation threat

Fire at Japan nuclear reactor heightens radiation threat

Reuters

By Shinichi Saoshiro and Chisa Fujioka Shinichi Saoshiro And Chisa Fujioka – 15 mins ago

TOKYO (Reuters) – Another fire broke out on Wednesday at an earthquake-crippled Japanese nuclear plant that has sent low levels of radiation wafting into Tokyo and triggered international alarm, suggesting that the crisis may be slipping out of control.

Academics and nuclear experts agree that the solutions being proposed to contain damage to the Daiichi reactors at Fukushima, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, are last-ditch efforts to stem what could well be remembered as one of the world's worst industrial disasters.

While public broadcaster NHK said flames were no longer visible at the building housing the No.4 reactor of the plant, Japanese TV pictures showed smoke rising from the facility at mid-morning (1000 local, 0100 GMT).

Experts say spent fuel rods in a cooling pool at the No. 4 reactor could be exposed by the fire and spew more radiation into the atmosphere. Operator Tokyo Electric Power said it was considering using a helicopter to dump boric acid, a fire retardant, on the facility.

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said two workers were missing after blasts at the facility a day earlier blew a hole in the building housing the No. 4 reactor.

In the first hint of international frustration at the pace of updates from Japan, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he wanted more timely and detailed information.

"We do not have all the details of the information so what we can do is limited," Amano told a news conference in Vienna. "I am trying to further improve the communication."

Several experts said that Japanese authorities were underplaying the severity of the incident, particular on a scale called INES used to rank nuclear incidents. The Japanese have so far rated the accident a four on a one-to-seven scale, but that rating was issued on Saturday and since then the situation has worsened dramatically.

"This is a slow-moving nightmare," said Dr Thomas Neff, a research affiliate at the Center for International Studies, which is part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "This could be a five or a six -- it's premature to say since this event is not over yet."

France's nuclear safety authority ASN said Tuesday it should be classed as a level-six incident.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Tuesday urged people within 30 km (18 miles) of the facility -- a population of 140,000 -- to remain indoors, as authorities grappled with the world's most serious nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986.

Officials in Tokyo said radiation in the capital was 10 times normal at one point but not a threat to human health in the sprawling high-tech city of 13 million people.

The best advice experts could give them was to stay indoors, close the windows and avoid breathing bad air -- steps very similar to those for handling a smog alert or avoiding influenza.

While these steps may sound inconsequential, experts said the danger in Tokyo, while worrisome, is slight -- at least for now.

"Everything I've seen so far suggests there have been nominal amounts of material released. Therefore, the risks are generally low to the population," Jerrold Bushberg, who directs programs in health physics at the University of California at Davis, said in a telephone interview.

Winds over the plant will blow from the north along the Pacific coast early on Wednesday and then from the northwest toward the ocean during the day, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Fears of transpacific nuclear fallout sent consumers scrambling for radiation antidotes in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and Canada. Authorities warned people would expose themselves to other medical problems by needlessly taking potassium iodide in the hope of protection from cancer.

The nuclear crisis and concerns about the economic impact from last week's earthquake and tsunami have hammered Japan's stock market.

The Nikkei index was up over 5 pct in early trading on Wednesday after ending down 10.6 percent on Tuesday and 6.2 percent the day before. The fall wiped some $620 billion off the market.

SCRAMBLE TO STOP WATER EVAPORATING

Authorities have spent days desperately trying to prevent the water which is designed to cool the radioactive cores of the reactors from evaporating, which would lead to overheating and the release of dangerous radioactive material into the atmosphere.

"The possibility of further radioactive leakage is heightening," a grim-faced Kan said in his address to the nation on Tuesday.

"We are making every effort to prevent the leak from spreading. I know that people are very worried but I would like to ask you to act calmly."

Levels of 400 millisieverts per hour had been recorded near the No. 4 reactor, the government said. Exposure to over 100 millisieverts a year is a level which can lead to cancer, according to the World Nuclear Association.

The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., pulled out 750 workers, leaving just 50, and a 30-km (19 mile) no-fly zone was imposed around the reactors. There have been no detailed updates on what levels the radiation reached inside the exclusion zone.

Despite pleas for calm, residents rushed to shops in Tokyo to stock up on supplies. Don Quixote, a multi-storey, 24-hour general store in Roppongi district, sold out of radios, flashlights, candles and sleeping bags.

Several embassies advised staff and citizens to leave affected areas in Japan. Tourists cut short vacations and multinational companies either urged staff to leave or said they were considering plans to move outside Tokyo.

German technology companies SAP and Infineon were among those moving staff to safety in the south. SAP said it was evacuating its offices in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya and had offered its 1,100 employees and their family members transport to the south, where the company has rented a hotel for staff to work online.

"Everyone is going out of the country today," said Gunta Brunner, a 25-year-old creative director from Argentina preparing to board a flight at Narita airport. "With the radiation, it's like you cannot escape and you can't see it."

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"

Japanese media have became more critical of Kan's handling of the disaster and criticized the government and the nuclear plant operator for their failure to provide enough information on the incident.

Kan himself lambasted the operator for taking so long to inform his office about one of the blasts on Tuesday, Kyodo news agency reported.

Kyodo said Kan had ordered TEPCO not to pull employees out of the plant. "The TV reported an explosion. But nothing was said to the premier's office for about an hour," a Kyodo reporter quoted Kan telling power company executives. "What the hell is going on?"

Nuclear radiation is an especially sensitive issue for Japanese following the country's worst human catastrophe -- the U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

There have been a total of four explosions at the plant since it was damaged in last Friday's massive quake and tsunami. The most recent were blasts at reactors Nos. 2 and 4.

Concern now centers on damage to a part of the No.4 reactor building where spent rods were being stored in pools of water outside the containment area, and also to part of the No.2 reactor that helps to cool and trap the majority of cesium, iodine and strontium in its water.

Before Tuesday's explosion the temperature in Number 4 reactor's cooling pool was 84 C, higher than normal due to a lack of electricity after the quake, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, chief spokesman of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Since then the temperature had been rising and there was a possibility that it was boiling, he said.

It would take 7-10 days for the water to boil away, leaving the spent fuel rods exposed to the air, said Kazuya Aoki, a director for safety examination. As long as the spent fuel rods were covered with water there should be no leak of radioactive material from them, he said.

VILLAGES AND TOWNS WIPED OFF THE MAP

The full extent of the destruction from last Friday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the tsunami that followed it was becoming clear as rescuers combed through the region north of Tokyo where officials say at least 10,000 people were killed.

Whole villages and towns have been wiped off the map by Friday's wall of water, triggering an international humanitarian effort of epic proportions. A 6.4-magnitude aftershock -- a significant earthquake in its own right on any other day -- shook buildings in Tokyo late on Tuesday but caused no damage.

About 850,000 households in the north were still without electricity in near-freezing weather, Tohuku Electric Power Co. said, and the government said at least 1.5 million households lack running water. Tens of thousands of people were missing.

Hiromichi Shirakawa, chief economist for Japan at Credit Suisse, said in a note to clients that the economic loss will likely be around 14-15 trillion yen ($171-183 billion) just to the region hit by the quake and tsunami.

"The earthquake could have great implications on the global economic front," said Andre Bakhos, director of market analytics at Lec Securities in New York. "If you shut down Japan, there could be a global recession."

(Additional reporting by Nathan Layne, Linda sieg, Risa Maeda, and Leika Kihara in Tokyo, Chris Meyers and Kim Kyung-hoon in Sendai, Taiga Uranaka and Ki Joon Kwon in Fukushima, Noel Randewich in San Francisco, and Miyoung Kim in Seoul; Writing by David Fox and Jason Szep; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and John Chalmers)

Fire erupts again at Fukushima Daiichi's No. 4 reactor

Fire erupts again at Fukushima Daiichi's No. 4 reactor; nuclear fuel rods damaged at other reactors

By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer

March 15, 2011, 5:31 p.m.

Another fire at Japan's stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex broke out early Wednesday and authorities said about 70% of another reactor's fuel rods had been damaged by the spate of accidents and breakdowns since Friday's earthquake and tsunami.

The ominous disclosure, after authorities insisted throughout the previous day that damage to the overheating reactors was negligible, compounded a sense of escalating hazards and fear five days after the disasters expected to take historic peacetime tolls on Japan's people and economy.

"An estimated 70 percent of the nuclear fuel rods have been damaged at the troubled No. 1 reactor of the Fukushima (Daiichi) No. 1 nuclear power plant, and 33 percent at the No. 2 reactor," Kyodo news agency reported Wednesday, quoting an unnamed official of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. that operates the stricken power complex.

The latest blaze thwarting containment efforts broke out in the No. 4 reactor earlier in the day. It was attributed to disaster responders having failed to fully extinguish a fire that struck the same reactor on Tuesday.

The reported partial meltdowns of the No. 1 and No. 2 reactor cores were thought to be responsible for the plume of radiation that escaped Tuesday, sending background radiation levels soaring to degrees that authorities conceded were harmful to anyone with prolonged exposure.

With the confirmed dead and known missing topping 10,000 and untold thousands of others suspected to still be buried in the sodden wreckage littering the northeast shores of Honshu island, Japan's mainland, government leaders urged calm and patience as hardships persisted four days after the worst earthquake in Japan's recorded history.

The devastating tsunami that followed inflicted most of the damage half an hour after Friday's magnitude 9.0 quake, and a terrifying spate of fires, explosions and missteps at the nuclear power complex in Fukushima prefecture has intensified fears of another calamity.

Radiation released from the six-reactor Fukushima Daiichi complex Tuesday caused a 400-fold increase in background levels outside the stricken plant and about 10 times the normal level in Tokyo, the usually thriving capital 150 miles south of the power facility. Those levels described by a top government official as hazardous to human health declined overnight, suggesting the situation might be stabilizing at the three reactors experiencing cooling problems in the nuclear fuel containment vessels, officials said.

The latest fire, reported by Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Hajimi Motujuku, compounded the woes besetting a skeleton crew of about 70 nuclear plant workers struggling to cool the damaged reactors and avert an uncontrolled release of radiation.

Radiation detected near the plant early Wednesday was insufficient to harm human health, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters. He said the levels had also dropped to about twice the usual level in Tokyo, a negligible level that posed no public hazard, he said.

Any risks posed by the emissions were eased by prevailing winds that carried the steam out to sea rather than over the populated inland, the national meteorological agency noted.

NHK television said 450,000 people remained in makeshift shelters outside the evacuated areas, down by about 100,000 from a day earlier as those made homeless by the earthquake and tsunami began making their way to less-affected areas to stay with relatives and friends.

But authorities still struggled to get food, blankets and other relief to the displaced amid continuing road blockages and idled transport between Japan's major cities and the hard-hit agricultural and fishing areas of the northeast.

Three new earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 6.0 hit across a wide swath of Honshu on Tuesday, as well as more than a dozen that registered over magnitude 5.0, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

Search-and-rescue teams from around the world scoured the wreckage of residential areas where the tsunami dumped tons of debris along miles of coastline. But the operations have ground down into a body-retrieval exercise, with only two survivors reported to have been rescued by Tuesday.

The international outpouring of help for Japan brought in a response from 91 nations and at least a dozen multinational relief organizations, the Japanese Foreign Ministry reported. Most were concentrating on devastated Miyagi prefecture, deploying heavy-lifting equipment to pry loose cars, trucks, boats and other objects from the rubble of wood and metal churned and scattered by the tsunami.

In Sendai, the city of 1 million closest to the earthquake's offshore epicenter, sleet began pelting the ravaged area overnight, a precursor to the snow and falling temperatures forecast for the rest of the week.

As economists began estimating the cost of the disasters, predicting they would exceed those inflicted by Hurricane Katrina in both money and lives, Tokyo's Nikkei index plummeted for a second day, losing another 10% of its value.

Japanese plant poses little threat to US

Japanese plant poses little threat to US -- for now

Posted 3/16/2011 4:52 AM ET E-mail | Save | Print

By The Associated Press

It's a big ocean between northeastern Japan and the United States and thousands of miles from the crippled nuclear power plant to much of Asia.

Experts have said there's little chance that radiation from the shattered reactors could pose a serious threat to the wider world.

"Every mile of ocean it crosses, the more it disperses," said Peter Caracappa, a radiation safety officer and clinical assistant professor of nuclear engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

However, as crews who were trying to prevent a meltdown abandoned the plant to save their own lives, questions remained about just how much radiation levels would rise and where that toxic material would go.

All along, those at immediate risk were workers inside the plant and the people living closest to it.

If the water level in fuel storage ponds drops to the level of the fuel, a worker standing at the railing looking down on the pool would receive a lethal dose within seconds, according to a study by the Millstone nuclear plant in Connecticut.

Such intense radiation can prevent workers from approaching the reactor or turn their tasks "into suicide missions," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who heads the nuclear safety program of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Next in the line of danger would be those who live within a 20-mile radius. Areas around the plant have been evacuated for that reason, and the Japanese government has ordered some 140,000 people in the vicinity to stay indoors.

That should keep them relatively safe in the short-term, one expert said.

"The odds of someone outside the plant getting an acute injury -- sick in the next couple of weeks -- is close to zero," said John Moulder, a professor of radiation oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee who studies the effects of radiation exposure.

But he said the long-term cancer risk for nearby residents will depend on exposure and cleanup efforts. The radioactive particles probably contain materials linked to cancer in high doses, including cesium and iodine.

Many experts agreed that radiation would likely dissipate and pose far less danger to people farther away, especially those in other countries.

For one, radioactive cesium and iodine can combine with the salt in sea water to become sodium iodide and cesium chloride, which are common elements that would readily dilute in the wide expanse of the Pacific, according to Steven Reese, director of the Radiation Center at Oregon State.

Winds in the area are currently blowing toward the coast because of a winter storm. But that will change to a brisk wind blowing out to sea at least through Wednesday, he said.

Still, the forecast offered little comfort to those living in the area -- and in nearby countries such as Russia.

The Russian Emergencies Ministry said it was monitoring radiation levels and had recorded no increase.

Many Russians, however, distrust the reassurances, perhaps remembering the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago and how long it took the Soviet government to reveal the true dangers of the radiation.

"The mass media tells us that the wind is blowing the other way, that radiation poses no threat. But people are a mess," Valentina Chupina, a nanny in Vladivostok, said in a comment posted on the website of the newspaper Delovoi Peterburg. "They don't believe that if something happens we'll be warned."

The news portal Lenta said that in addition to potassium iodide and instruments used to measure radiation, people in the Far East also were stocking up on red wine and seaweed, which they believed would offer protection from radiation.

Even so, many experts here say that this emergency is still nowhere near the level of Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history.

For one, that reactor's core contained graphite that caught fire, which blasted radiation high into the air and into wind currents that carried it long distances. The Japanese core is metal and contains no graphite, experts said.

The Chernobyl plant also lacked a heavy shell around the reactor core. And the incident there happened quickly, with little time to warn nearby residents.

So far, the radiation released in Japan has not reached high altitudes, said Kathryn Higley, director of the Oregon State University Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics.

"In addition, radioactive material is sticky. It has a static charge," she said, so it will stick to the sides of buildings, and "rain is going to knock it down."

As a precaution, the World Meteorological Organization has activated specialized weather centers to monitor the situation. Those centers, in Beijing, Tokyo and Obninsk, Russia, will track any contaminants.

Japanese officals said that, early Wednesday, the level of radiation at the plant surged to 1,000 millisieverts before coming down to 800 to 600 millisieverts. Still, that was far more than the average.

Doctors say radiation sickness sets in at 1,000 millisieverts and includes nausea and vomiting.

Damage to blood cells can show up two to four weeks later, said Dr. Fred Mettler, a University of New Mexico radiologist and adviser to the United Nations on radiation safety. He led an international study of health effects after the Chernobyl disaster.

Levels are still likely to be lower away from the plant, said Kelly Classic, a radiation physicist at the Mayo Clinic and a representative for the Health Physics Society, an organization of radiation safety specialists.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says doses of less than 100 millisieverts, or 10 rems, over a year are not a health concern.

By comparison, most people receive about three-tenths of a rem every year from natural background radiation, according the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A chest X-ray delivers about .1 millisieverts, or .01 rem of radiation; a CT scan of the abdomen and pelvis is about 14 millisieverts, or 1.4 rems.

If a full meltdown occurs at the Japanese plant, the health risks become much greater -- with potential release of uranium and plutonium, said Dan Sprau, an environmental health professor and radiation safety expert at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C.

"If that escapes," Sprau said, "you've got a whole new ball game there."

Japan prepares to restart work at crippled nuclear plant

Japan prepares to restart work at crippled nuclear plant

By Gregory Bull, The Associated Press

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the workers, who had been dousing the reactors with seawater in a frantic effort to stabilize their temperatures, had no choice but to pull back from the most dangerous areas.

"The workers cannot carry out even minimal work at the plant now," he said Wednesday morning, as smoke billowed above the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex. "Because of the radiation risk we are on standby."

Later, an official with Tokyo Electric Power, which operates the plant, said the team had withdrawn about 500 yards (meters) from the complex, but were getting ready to go back in.

The nuclear crisis has triggered international alarm and partly overshadowed the human tragedy caused by Friday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the subsequent tsunami, a blast of black seawater that pulverized Japan's northeastern coastline. The quake was one of the strongest recorded in history.

Later Wednesday, national broadcaster NHK showed military helicopters lifting off to survey radiation levels above the complex, preparing to dump water onto the most troubled reactors in a desperate effort to cool them down.

But Edano has already warned that may not work.

"It's not so simple that everything will be resolved by pouring in water. We are trying to avoid creating other problems," he said.

"We are actually supplying water from the ground, but supplying water from above involves pumping lots of water and that involves risk. We also have to consider the safety of the helicopters above," he said.

Radiation levels had gone down by later Wednesday, but it was not immediately clear if the workers had been allowed back in, or how far away they had withdrawn. The workers at the forefront of the fight — a core team of about 180 — had been regularly rotated in and out of the danger zone to minimize their radiation exposure.

Meanwhile, officials in Ibaraki prefecture, just south of Fukushima, said radiation levels were about 300 times normal levels by late morning. While those levels are unhealthy for prolonged periods, they are far from fatal.

Days after Friday's twin disasters, millions of people were struggling along the coast with little food, water or heat, and already chilly temperatures turned to snow in many areas. Up to 450,000 people are staying in temporary shelters, often sleeping on the floor of school gymnasiums.

More than 11,000 people are officially listed as dead or missing, and most officials believe the final death toll will be well over 10,000 people.

In an extremely rare address to the nation, Emperor Akihito expressed his condolences and urged Japan not to give up.

"It is important that each of us shares the difficult days that lie ahead," said Akihito, 77, a figure deeply respected across the country. "I pray that we will all take care of each other and overcome this tragedy."

He also expressed his worries over the nuclear crisis, saying: "With the help of those involved I hope things will not get worse."

Since the quake and wave hit, authorities have been struggling to avert an environmental catastrophe at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex, 140 miles (220 kilometers) north of Tokyo. The tsunami knocked out the backup diesel generators needed to keep nuclear fuel cool, setting off the atomic crisis.

In the city of Fukushima, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) inland from the nuclear complex, hundreds of harried government workers, police officers and others struggled to stay on top of the situation in a makeshift command center.

An entire floor of one of the prefecture's office buildings had been taken over by people tracking evacuations, power needs, death tolls and food supplies.

In one room, uniformed soldiers evaluated radiation readings on maps posted across a wall. In another, senior officials were in meetings throughout the day, while nuclear power industry representatives held impromptu briefings before rows of media cameras.

Wednesday's radiation spike was apparently the result of a release of pressure that had built up in the complex's Unit 2 reactor, officials said. Steam and pressure build up in the reactors as workers try to cool the fuel rods, leading to controlled pressure releases through vents — as well as uncontrolled explosions.

John Price, an Australia-based nuclear safety expert, said he was surprised by how little information the Japanese were sharing.

"We don't know even the fundamentals of what's happening, what's wrong, what isn't working. We're all guessing," he said. "I would have thought they would put on a panel of experts every two hours."

Given the radiation levels, he saw few health risks for the general public so far, though he was concerned for the workers, who he said were almost certainly working in full body suits and breathing through respirators. Winds should push radiation out to sea

Strong, cold northwest winds behind a departing storm are forecast to blow across Japan both today and Thursday, which should push any potentially harmful radiation from the nuclear power plants out to sea.

Any radiation that's released would travel primarily east and northeast across the Pacific Ocean, eventually reaching North America somewhere between Alaska and California. However, because of the huge distance traveled, any harmful radiation would likely be dispersed into the atmosphere before reaching U.S. shores.

Time for radiation to cross the Pacific from Japan to the USA

Edano said the government expects to ask the U.S. military for help, though he did not elaborate. He said the government is still considering whether to accept offers of help from other countries.

The government has ordered some 140,000 people in the vicinity to stay indoors. A little radiation was also detected in Tokyo, triggering panic buying of food and water.

There are six reactors at the plant. Units 1, 2 and 3, which were operating last week, shut down automatically when the quake hit. Since then, all three have been rocked by explosions. Compounding the problems, on Tuesday a fire broke out in Unit 4's fuel storage pond, an area where used nuclear fuel is kept cool, causing radioactivity to be released into the atmosphere.

Units 4, 5 and 6 were shut at the time of the quake, but even offline reactors have nuclear fuel — either inside the reactors or in storage ponds — that need to be kept cool.

Meanwhile, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency estimated that 70% of the rods have been damaged at the No. 1 reactor.

Japan's national news agency, Kyodo, said that 33% of the fuel rods at the No. 2 reactor were damaged and that the cores of both reactors were believed to have partially melted.

"We don't know the nature of the damage," said Minoru Ohgoda, spokesman for the country's nuclear safety agency. "It could be either melting, or there might be some holes in them."

Meanwhile, the outer housing of the containment vessel at the No. 4 unit erupted in flames early Wednesday, said Hajimi Motujuku, a spokesman for the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Japan's nuclear safety agency said fire and smoke could no longer be seen at Unit 4, but that it was unable to confirm that the blaze had been put out.

Radiation spikes add to nuclear peril in Japan

Radiation spikes add to nuclear peril in Japan

By Mark Magnier, Barbara Demick and Laura King, Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 16, 2011, 2:40 a.m.

Reporting from Sendai and Tokyo, Japan A series of grim developments hit a shaken Japan on Wednesday, including reports that high-level radiation may have leaked from a second damaged nuclear reactor and that emergency workers were forced to temporarily scramble for safety.

The setbacks aggravated public fears that authorities might not be able to contain the expanding nuclear crisis.

Japan's chief Cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, said radioactive steam might have escaped from the containment unit of a second reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 (Daiichi) plant 150 miles north of Tokyo. The announcement followed unsettling news that a midmorning surge in radiation had forced emergency workers to halt their efforts to try to avert a meltdown of three other reactors at the plant, work that included the crucial task of keeping water on the reactors' overheated cores.

The burgeoning crisis has imposed a deepening isolation on the earthquake- and tsunami-battered country, with foreigners fleeing in growing numbers, rescue crews mindful of exit routes and international flights being diverted from the capital.

Another quake, centered off the coast near Tokyo and given a preliminary magnitude of 6, jolted the capital shortly after Edano's announcement, further fraying nerves.

In a rare televised address that reflected the worsening situation, Emperor Akihito told his people not to give up hope and offered his condolences to the victims of last week's natural disasters.

"I pray for the safety of as many people as possible," said the 77-year-old monarch, seated in a wood-paneled reception room at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

In the country's north, tens of thousands of residents within about a 20-mile radius of the Fukushima plant were essentially trapped indoors for a second day Wednesday, urged again by authorities to avoid going out unless it was an emergency. That confinement coincided with growing hardship across the quake zone, where temperatures have dropped and snow fell overnight.

"Yesterday, we ate a bit of rice and one egg," said Yoshiko Tsuzuki, 55, a homemaker waiting in a line outside a grocery store on the outskirts of the battered city of Sendai. "We're hungry. I want to buy water and anything to eat. We need everything."

It remained unclear why a nation renowned for its efficiency has been unable to marshal convoys of supply trucks into the disaster area, as China did after its 2008 earthquake. Though military vehicles were evident, few emergency supplies were seen on the major arteries from Tokyo into the hard-hit Tohuku region and other seriously affected areas.

Even in cities that lie well outside the quake zone, daily life was increasingly disrupted by rolling blackouts and the curtailment of Japan's much-vaunted transportation network, both of which will be key to restarting the engine of the world's third-largest economy.

Stock prices stabilized Wednesday after tumbling for two days, but there was deepening gloom over the long-term financial outlook after the worst earthquake in the country's recorded history, a concern even among people who have far more immediate and pressing fears.

"I'm worried in the long term about Japan's economy," said Yoshiko Konno, in her 60s, as she charged her cellphone at a community center in Sendai. "Just think of one example: oysters! Are Americans and Europeans going to want to import Japanese oysters if they think there is a danger of radioactive contamination?"

Five days later, the true scale of the disaster is still unknown. At least 10,000 people are feared dead, a tally that is expected to take weeks to finalize. About half a million others have been displaced by quake and tsunami damage or the evacuation triggered by the emergency at Fukushima, a once-obscure nuclear plant that is now the focus of worldwide attention.

The cause of a blaze that erupted earlier Wednesday at the Unit 4 reactor -- also the scene of a fire the day before -- was not immediately known. The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., known as Tepco, said radiation levels were too high for firefighters to get close.

Later, authorities said the blaze seemed to be subsiding on its own, as the previous one did. But hours later, public television broadcaster NHK showed live aerial video of a plume of white smoke rising from the reactor.

At the plant, desperate and improvisational measures have become the rule. Japanese Self-Defense Forces helicopters took off from a nearby base Wednesday afternoon carrying giant red buckets on a line used to scoop up seawater to douse the plant's Unit 3 reactor building. Tepco told nuclear safety officials they had no other way of cooling the reactor's fuel rods.

Nuclear safety officials had originally ruled out the possibility of using such a measure for Unit 4 because of the possibility of a hydrogen explosion like the ones that blew off the outer steel and concrete covering of Units 1 and 3. And Kyodo later reported that the helicopters were unable to drop water due to high levels of radiation

Earlier in the day, dozens of emergency workers had to take shelter in a concrete building on the complex after radiation soared to levels that could cause radiation sickness. It later subsided, and hours afterward the workers returned.

Tepco has been sharply criticized for its handling of the crisis at the plant, where three of the six reactors have been rocked by explosions caused by overheating in their core containment chambers. The quake and tsunami knocked out power to the cooling systems, triggering a series of breakdowns and missteps that exposed fuel rods to the air at one reactor and released dangerous levels of radiation outside the plant.

The company said an estimated 70% of the fuel rods had been damaged at the Unit 1 reactor and 33% at the Unit 2 reactor. Nuclear safety agency spokesman Shigekatsu Omukai said the utility reported the figures to the agency Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the fuel rods inside the Unit 2 reactor were at least partly exposed to air for more than two hours during two separate incidents, allowing them to heat up and causing a buildup of hydrogen gas that burst into flames.

Spent fuel at the complex is an increasing focus of concern. Tepco had moved all of the rods from the Unit 4 reactor to the spent-fuel pool sometime after Dec. 1 as part of routine maintenance, meaning the pool contained not only all of the rods accumulated from many years of service, but also all of those currently in use.

If the pool was jam-packed with rods, they would generate significant heat and, once the water stopped circulating after the tsunami, its temperature would begin rising, eventually reaching the boiling point. If the water boiled long enough without being replenished, it would expose the rods to the air.

In 2006, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report warning that a loss of cooling water or circulation could trigger a catastrophic fire in a spent-fuel pool that would result in large releases of radioactive material. If the rods become exposed to the air, their zirconium tubes begin to react with oxygen and heat up even more, a type of oxidation fire. At some point, the material inside the tubes melts and can release highly radioactive isotopes such as cesium-137 and iodine-131.

The report was prompted by concern about a potential terrorist attack, but the physics would be exactly the same in the case of a loss of coolant from a natural disaster, said Kevin Crowley, director of the nuclear and radiation studies board at the National Academies, who headed the study. The potential for a worst-case outcome in any kind of incident depends on how closely the rods are packed, the age of the rods, the size of the pool and how much fuel is in the pool, Crowley said.

"I think everybody should be worried about this situation," he said.

Uncertainty about the risks posed by the stricken plant caused nations coming to Japan's aid to pull back and reassess deployment of rescue personnel, relief supplies and transportation services. The U.S. aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, which steamed to the rescue over the weekend, pulled back from Japan's northeastern shore Tuesday after detecting elevated radiation levels in the atmosphere. Some international airlines that had resumed flying to Tokyo halted or rerouted service again Tuesday to guard against entering areas with heightened radiation. Germany's Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Air France-KLM and others -- European carriers still wary of radiation hazards 25 years after the Chernobyl disaster -- cited the risk of nuclear contamination and the persistent aftershocks in canceling or delaying flights.

In China, officials said safety experts would monitor planes and ships arriving at its ports for radioactivity. China also announced that it was evacuating its citizens from Japan's northeast, becoming the first nation to organize a massive relocation because of the radiation fears.

France recommended that its citizens leave the Japanese capital, and Austria announced that it was moving its embassy from Tokyo to Osaka to distance its diplomats from any worsening of the crisis.

The U.S. government has recommended that Americans cancel any nonessential travel to Japan and that those already in the country heed the advice and direction of Japanese officials.

The World Health Organization said there is no risk to human health to anyone outside the 20-mile evacuation zone around the nuclear complex.

Photos: Scenes of earthquake destruction

Magnier and Demick reported from Sendai, King from Tokyo.

Special correspondent Kenji Hall in Tokyo, Times staff writers Carol J. Williams, Ralph Vartabedian and Thomas H. Maugh II in Los Angeles and Times staff writer David Pierson in Beijing contributed to this report.

laura.king@latimes.com

mark.magnier@latimes.com

barbara.demick@latimes.com

Reactor May Have Ruptured With Radioactive Release

Japan Says 2nd Reactor May Have Ruptured With Radioactive Release

By HIROKO TABUCHI and KEITH BRADSHER

Published: March 16, 2011

TOKYO — Japan’s nuclear crisis intensified dramatically on Wednesday after the authorities announced that a second reactor unit at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan may have ruptured and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam.

Tokyo Electric Power, via Kyodo News, via Associated Press

At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, reactors No. 3, left, and No. 4, center, have been damaged.

The break, at the No. 3 reactor unit, worsened the already perilous conditions at the plant, a day after officials said the containment vessel in the No. 2 reactor had also cracked.

Such were the radiation levels above the plant, moreover, that the Japanese military put off a highly unusual plan to dump water from helicopters — a tactic normally used to combat forest fires — to lower temperatures in a pool containing spent fuel rods that was overheating dangerously.

At the same time, the reactor’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said it had been able to double the number of workers at the plant to 100 from 50. It was not immediately clear when the additional workers returned to the plant.

The vessel that possibly ruptured on Wednesday had been seen as the last fully intact line of defense against large-scale releases of radioactive material from the stricken reactor, but it was not clear how serious the possible breach might be. The implications of overheating in the fuel rod pool, which is also at the No. 3 reactor, seemed equally dire.

The developments were the latest in Japan’s swirling tragedy since an earthquake and tsunami struck the country with unbridled ferocity last Friday. Emperor Akihito told the nation on Wednesday he was “deeply worried” about the nuclear crisis.

The company operating the reactors had withdrawn most of its workers from the plant on Tuesday, leaving only a skeleton crew of 50 struggling to lower temperatures.

When those workers were forced to suspend cooling operations, the spent fuel rod pool began heating up dangerously.

Earlier, Japanese broadcasters showed live footage of thick plumes of steam rising above the plant.

Such is the growing international alarm about the nuclear crisis that France announced it was urging its citizens living in Tokyo to head to safer areas or to leave the country — apparently the most urgent instruction offered by foreign countries that so far had largely limited their advisories to simply avoid nonessential travel.

Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said the government believed the steam was coming from the No. 3 reactor, where an explosion on Monday blew out part of the building surrounding the containment vessel.

The reactor has three layers of protection: that building; the containment vessel; and the metal cladding around fuel rods, which are inside the reactor. The government has said that those rods at the No. 3 reactor were most likely already damaged.

A spike in radiation levels at the plant as the steam was rising forced some of the relatively few workers left at the plant to retreat indoors, suspending some critical efforts to pump water into several reactors to keep them cool.

Earlier in the morning, the company that runs the plant reported that a fire was burning at a different reactor, just hours after officials said flames that erupted Tuesday had been doused.

A government official at Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency soon after said that flames and smoke were no longer visible, but he cautioned that it was unclear if the fire, at the Reactor No. 4 building, had died out. He also was not clear if it was a new fire or if the fire Tuesday had never gone out.

There are a total of six reactors at the plant.

The developments are troubling reminders of the difficulties the company is having in bringing the plant, which has suffered multiple explosions since Saturday, under control.

The company, Tokyo Electric Power, says it cannot know for sure what is happening in many cases because it is too dangerous for workers to get close to some reactors.

The situation became especially dire on Tuesday, when releases of radiation led the company to pull most of its workers from the plant.

Among the authorities’ main concerns are pools for spent fuel rods at several reactors at the plant, including Reactor No. 4, where the pool has lost some of the water needed to keep the fuel rods stable. The rods are still radioactive and potentially as hot and dangerous as the fuel rods inside the reactors. Enlarge This Image NHK

Japanese television showed what appeared to be steam rising from reactor No. 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant about 10 a.m. Wednesday.

The explosion on Tuesday was caused by hydrogen gas bubbling up from chemical reactions set off by the fuel rods in the pool, Japanese officials said. Inspectors from the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission said they had been told by Japanese authorities that what was burning was lubricating oil from machinery near the pool.

Concern remained high about the storage pools at two other reactors, Nos. 5 and 6. None of those three reactors at the plant, 140 miles northeast of Tokyo, were operating on Friday afternoon when an offshore earthquake with a magnitude now estimated at 9.0 shook the site. A tsunami rolled into the northeast Japanese coastline minutes later, swamping the plant.

At least 750 workers were evacuated on Tuesday morning after a separate explosion ruptured the inner containment building at Reactor No. 2 at the Daiichi plant, which was crippled by Friday’s earthquake and tsunami. The closely spaced but apparently coincidental explosions at Reactors Nos. 2 and 4 together released a surge of radiation 800 times as intense as the recommended hourly exposure limit in Japan.

But 50 workers stayed behind, a crew no larger than would be stationed at the plant on a quiet spring day. Taking shelter when possible in the reactor’s control room, which is heavily shielded from radiation, they struggled through the morning and afternoon to keep hundreds of gallons of seawater a minute flowing through temporary fire pumps into the three stricken reactors, Nos. 1, 2 and 3, where overheated fuel rods continued to boil away the water at a brisk pace.

By early afternoon radiation levels had plunged, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Workers have released surges of radiation each time they bleed radioactive steam from the troubled reactors in an attempt to manage the pressure inside them, but the reactors are not yet releasing high levels of radiation on a sustained basis, Japanese officials said.

The United States military revised its plans as radiation from the plant worsened. Some American warships that had been expected to arrive at the tsunami-shattered northeast coast of Honshu Island were diverted to the west coast instead because of concerns about radiation, the Navy said.

The Navy also promised to continue relief missions even though several more helicopter crews were testing positive for low-level exposure to radiation, and even as American military personnel and their families at the Yokosuka and Atsugi bases were encouraged to take precautions against radiation exposure.

Mr. Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, urged people who live within about 18 miles of the plant to take precautions. “Please do not go outside, please stay indoors, please close windows and make your homes airtight,” he said. Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said at the organization’s Vienna headquarters that there was a “possibility of core damage” at reactor No. 2, but that the damage “is estimated to be less than 5 percent of the fuel.”

The sudden turn of events, after an explosion on Monday at one reactor and then an early-morning explosion on Tuesday at yet another — the third in four days at the plant — had already made the crisis at the plant the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl reactor disaster a quarter-century ago.

It had become impossible for workers to remain at many areas within the plant for extended periods, the agency said. In Tokyo, the metropolitan government said Tuesday that it had detected radiation levels 20 times above normal over the city, though it stressed that such levels posed no immediate health threat and that readings had dropped since then.

The explosion in Reactor No. 2, a little after 6 a.m. on Tuesday, particularly alarmed Japanese officials and nuclear power experts around the world because it was the first detonation at the plant that appeared to occur inside one of the primary containment vessels.

Those buildings are fortresslike structures of steel and reinforced concrete, designed to absorb the impact of a plane crash and minimize radiation leaks. After a series of conflicting reports about how much damage the reactor had sustained after that blast, Mr. Edano said, “There is a very high probability that a portion of the containment vessel was damaged.”

Japanese officials subsequently said that the explosion had damaged a doughnut-shaped steel container of water, known as a torus, that surrounds the base of the reactor vessel inside the primary containment building.

Ruptures in the torus are serious, said Michael Friedlander, a senior nuclear power plant operator for 13 years at three plants in the United States, including three years at a General Electric boiling water reactor very similar to the ones in trouble in Japan.

But the torus is not as important as the reactor vessel itself, which has 6.7-inch-thick steel walls and 8.4-inch-thick steel for its roof and floor. The vessel is designed to hold very high-pressure steam as well as the uranium fuel rods.

The reactor vessel has 20 safety valves that during a shutdown of the reactor inject steam into a million-gallon “suppression pool” of water in a steel torus immediately underneath it.

“Imagine if you had a big pressure cooker and you had a tube off the pressure cooker into a big tub of water — the suppression pool is the tub of water,” said Mr. Friedlander, a defender of nuclear power who is now a money manager in Hong Kong.

Steam vented into the suppression pool from the reactor vessel is not supposed to be radioactive. But it becomes radioactive, and potentially very radioactive, if the fuel rods in the reactor vessel above have begun to melt.

The atmosphere in the primary containment building, around the reactor vessel and above the suppression pool, is supposed to consist of inert nitrogen, with no oxygen at all. An inert atmosphere is used in the primary containment building to avoid the risk of oxygen explosions with hydrogen if the reactor starts producing much larger quantities of hydrogen gas than usual. Hydrogen gas is highly combustible with oxygen.

Elite Japan nuclear workers race to stop meltdown

Elite Japan nuclear workers race to stop meltdown

Mar. 16, 2011 12:01 PM

Associated Press

FUKUSHIMA, Japan - They risk explosions, fire and an invisible enemy -- radiation that could kill quickly or decades later -- as they race to avert disaster inside a dark, overheated nuclear plant.

The 180 emergency workers at Japan's crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi complex are emerging as public heroes in the wake of a disaster spawned by an earthquake and a tsunami.

Dubbed by some as modern-day samurai, the technicians were ordered back to work late Wednesday after a surge of radiation forced them to leave their posts for hours.

"I don't know any other way to say it, but this is like suicide fighters in a war," said Keiichi Nakagawa, associate professor of the Department of Radiology at the University of Tokyo Hospital.

Small teams of the still-anonymous emergency workers rush in and out for 10 to 15 minutes at a time to pump sea water into the plant's overheated reactors, monitor them and clear debris from explosions. Any longer would make their exposure to radioactivity too great.

Even at normal times, workers wear coveralls, full-face masks with filters, helmets and double-layer gloves when they enter areas with a possibility of radiation exposure. Some of them carry oxygen tanks so they don't have to inhale any radioactive particles into their lungs.

But the burst of radioactivity Wednesday led the government to order an evacuation of the Dai-ichi complex. "The workers cannot carry out even minimal work at the plant now," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said of the temporary pull out.

The highest reading among various locations that had to be accessed by the workers hit 600 millisieverts, equal to several years of daily exposure limit, according to statistics released by Tokyo Electric Power Company.

Millisieverts measure exposure to radiation, which can cause cancer and birth defects. Severe exposure can cause burns and radiation sickness -- nausea and vomiting and harm to blood cells.

A typical individual might absorb 6 millisieverts a year from natural and manmade sources such as X-rays. Small additional annual exposures of under 100 millisieverts are believed to produce no discernible harm but more carries health risks.

Tony Irwin, an Australian-based nuclear consultant, said the normal dose for a radiation worker is 20 millisieverts a year, averaged over five years, with a maximum of 50 millisieverts in any one year.

"So they would be trying to rotate people to make sure they're within that limit. Now many countries have an emergency limit of 100 msvs a year," he said. "They'll wear radiation monitors, so they can see exactly what they're getting on a real time basis."

Yet on Wednesday, Japan's Ministry of Health Labor and Welfare raised the maximum legal exposure for nuclear workers to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts. It described the move as "unavoidable due to the circumstances."

The workers' challenges this week have included struggling for hours to open a pressure-release valve and allow water to enter the reactors. When a worker left the scene for a short period, the water flow ceased and fuel for pumps bringing up the water ran out.

A building housing a spent fuel storage pool exploded at one point, making two huge holes on the upper side of the wall on the building. A plant worker spotted a fire shortly thereafter that was later put out.

The workers also have had to walk around the area to measure radioactivity in each place they were supposed to enter, and remove contaminated debris. They also struggle with broken equipment and a lack of electricity.

"Workers persevere amid fears of 400 millisieverts," read one headline in the nationally circulated Yomiuri newspaper.

The newspaper said one male worker who was opening a valve to let out built-up steam was hospitalized after complaining of nausea and exhaustion after being exposed for 10 minutes of radiation, despite wearing head-to-toe protective gear and a mask.

"The thing I've been concerned about right now are the workers. They are at a tremendous risk," said Don Milton, a doctor who specializes in occupational health and directs the Maryland Institute of Applied Environmental Health at the University of Maryland.

Milton noted reports that some workers have already shown signs of acute radiation sickness. That would be even worse than it sounds because "the sooner it comes on after exposure, the worse it is."

U.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High’

U.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High’ and Urges Deeper Caution in Japan

By DAVID E. SANGER and MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: March 16, 2011

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a significantly bleaker appraisal of the threat posed by Japan’s nuclear crisis than the Japanese government, saying on Wednesday that the damage at one crippled reactor was much more serious than Japanese officials had acknowledged and advising Americans to evacuate a wider area around the plant than the perimeter established by Japan.

The announcement marked a new and ominous chapter in the five-day long effort by Japanese engineers to bring four side-by-side reactors under control after their cooling systems were knocked out by an earthquake and tsunami last Friday. It also suggested a serious split between Washington and Tokyo, after American officials concluded that the Japanese warnings were insufficient, and that, deliberately or not, they had understated the potential threat of what is taking place inside the nuclear facility.

Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the commission, said in Congressional testimony that the commission believed that all the water in the spent fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station had boiled dry, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed and bleeding radiation. As a result, he said, “We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.”

If his analysis is accurate and Japanese workers have been unable to keep the spent fuel at that inoperative reactor properly cooled — it needs to remain covered with water at all times — radiation levels could make it difficult not only to fix the problem at reactor No. 4, but to keep workers at the Daiichi complex from servicing any of the other problem reactors at the plant.

Mr. Jaczko (the name is pronounced YAZZ-koe) said radiation levels may make it impossible to continue what he called the “backup backup” cooling functions that have so far helped check the fuel melting at the other reactors. Those efforts consist of using fire hoses to dump water on overheated fuel and then letting the radioactive steam vent into the atmosphere.

Those emergency measures, implemented by a small squad of workers and firemen, are the main steps Japan is taking at Daiichi to forestall a full blown fuel meltdown that would lead to much higher releases of radioactive material.

Mr. Jaczko’s testimony came as the American Embassy in Tokyo, on advice from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told Americans to evacuate a radius of “approximately 50 miles” from the Fukushima plant.

The advice represents a graver assessment of the risk in the immediate vicinity of Daiichi than the warnings made by the Japanese themselves, who have told everyone within 20 kilometers, about 12 miles, to evacuate, and those between 20 and 30 kilometers to take shelter.

Mr. Jaczko’s testimony, the most extended comments by a senior American official on Japan’s nuclear disaster, described what amounts to an agonizing choice for Japanese authorities: Send a small number of workers into an increasingly radioactive area in a last-ditch effort to cover the spent fuel, and the fuel in other reactors, — with water, or do more to protect the workers but risk letting the pools of water protecting the fuel boil away — and thus risk a broader meltdown.

The Japanese authorities have never been as specific as Mr. Jascko was in his testimony about the situation at reactor No. 4, where they have been battling fires for more than 24 hours. It is possible the authorities there disagree with Mr. Jascko’s conclusion about the exposure of the spent fuel, or that they have chosen not to discuss the matter for fear of panicking people.

Experts say workers at the plant probably could not approach a fuel pool that was dry, because radiation levels would be so high. In a normally operating pool, the water provides not only cooling but also shields workers from gamma radiation. A plan to dump water into the pool, and others like it, from helicopters was suspended because the crews would be flying right into a radioactive plume.

Mr. Jaczko’s analysis suggests that a potentially dangerous chain of events could unfold, as workers trying to cool the adjacent reactors at the facility could also be exposed to intolerable levels of radiation. If they, too, had to withdraw, the problem could worsen, as reactor cores were go uncooled and spent fuel pools run dry.

Earlier in the day, Japanese authorities announced a different escalation of the crisis at Daiichi when they said that a second reactor unit at the plant may have suffered damage to its primary containment structure and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam.

The break, at the No. 3 reactor unit, worsened the already perilous conditions at the plant, a day after officials said the containment vessel in the No. 2 reactor had also cracked.

The possibility of high radiation levels above the plant prompted the Japanese military to put off a highly unusual plan to dump water from helicopters — a tactic normally used to combat forest fires — to lower temperatures in a pool containing spent fuel rods that was dangerously overheating at the No. 4 reactor. The operation would have meant flying a helicopter into the steam rising from the plant.

But in one of a series of rapid and at times confusing pronouncements on the crisis, the authorities insisted that damage to the containment vessel at the No. 3 reactor — the main focus of concern earlier on Wednesday — was unlikely to be severe.

Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said the possibility that the No. 3 reactor had “suffered severe damage to its containment vessel is low.” Earlier he said only that the vessel might have been damaged; columns of steam were seen rising from it in live television coverage.

The reactor’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said it had been able to double the number of people battling the crisis at the plant to 100 from 50, but that was before the clouds of radioactive steam began billowing from the plant. On Tuesday, 750 workers were evacuated, leaving a skeleton crew of 50 struggling to reduce temperatures in the damaged facility. An increasing proportion of the people at the plant are soldiers, but the exact number is not known.

The Pentagon said Wednesday that American military forces in Japan were not allowed within 50 miles of the plant and that some flight crews who might take part in relief missions were being given potassium iodide to protect against the effects of radiation. Tokyo Electric said Wednesday that some of those at the plant had taken cover for 45 minutes on site, and left water pumps running at reactors Nos. 1, 2 and 3. There was no suspension of cooling operations, said Kazuo Yamanaka, an official at Tokyo Electric. The vessel that possibly ruptured on Wednesday had been seen as the last fully intact line of defense against large-scale releases of radioactive material from the stricken reactor, but it was not clear how serious the possible breach might be.

The possible rupture, five days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant, followed a series of explosions and other problems there that have resulted in the world’s worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

The head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, who is Japanese, said he would leave for Japan as soon as possible to assess the situation.

The revised official assessment of the severity of the damage at the No. 3 reactor may have been intended to reduce some concerns about the containment vessel, which encloses the core, but the implications of overheating in the fuel rod pool at No. 4 seemed potentially dire.

There are six reactors at the plant, all of which have pools holding spent fuel rods at the top level of the reactor building. Reactors 4, 5 and 6 were out of service when the earthquake and tsunami struck, and there were concerns about the pools at 5 and 6 as well, and possibly those at the other reactors.

At a hearing in Washington on Wednesday held by two subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, “We think there is a partial meltdown” at the plant.

“We are trying to monitor it very closely,” he said. “We hear conflicting reports about exactly what is happening in the several reactors now at risk. I would not want to speculate about what is happening.”

He said that his agency had sent 39 people to the American Embassy and to United States consulates in Japan “with the skills, expertise and equipment to help assess, survey and monitor areas.” The department has also shipped survey equipment that can measure radiation levels from the air, he said.

The developments were the latest in Japan’s swirling tragedy since the quake and tsunami struck the country with unbridled ferocity last Friday. Emperor Akihito made his first ever televised appearance on Wednesday to tell the nation he was “deeply worried” about the nuclear crisis.

International alarm about the nuclear crisis appeared to be growing, as several nations urged their citizens in Japan to head to safer areas in the south or leave the country. Prior advisories had largely been limited to simply avoiding nonessential travel. Germany urged its citizens to move to areas farther away from the stricken nuclear plant.

Earlier Wednesday morning, Tokyo Electric reported that a fire was burning at the No. 4 reactor building, just hours after officials said flames that erupted Tuesday had been doused.

A government official at Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency soon after said that flames and smoke were no longer visible, but he cautioned that it was unclear if the fire had died out. He also was not clear if it was a new fire or if the fire Tuesday had never gone out.

Japan begins air drop on stricken nuclear reactor

Japan begins air drop on stricken nuclear reactor

Mar. 16, 2011 08:05 PM

Associated Press

ZAO, Japan -- JJapanese military helicopters dumped loads of seawater onto a stricken nuclear reactor Thursday, trying to avoid full meltdowns as plant operators said they were close to finishing a new power line that could restore cooling systems and ease the crisis.

U.S. officials in Washington, meanwhile, warned that the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in northeastern Japan may be on the verge of spewing more radioactive material because water was gone from a storage pool that keeps spent nuclear fuel rods from overheating.

The troubles at several of the plant's reactors were set off when last week's earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and ruined backup generators needed for their cooling systems, adding a major nuclear crisis for Japan as it dealt with twin natural disasters that killed more than 10,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

A Japanese military CH-47 Chinook helicopter began dumping seawater on the damaged reactor of Unit 3 at the Fukushima complex at 9:48 a.m., said defense ministry spokeswoman Kazumi Toyama. The aircraft dumped at least four loads on the reactor, though much of the water appeared to be dispersed in the wind.

At least a dozen more loads were planned in the 40 minutes that each crew can operate before switching to limit radiation exposure, the ministry said.

The dumping was intended both to help cool the reactor and to replenish water in a pool holding spent fuel rods, Toyama said. The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said earlier that the pool was nearly empty, which might cause the rods to overheat.

The comments from U.S. officials indicated there were similar problems at another unit of the Dai-ichi complex.

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko said at a congressional hearing in Washington that all the water was gone from a separate spent fuel pool at the plant's Unit 4. Japanese officials expressed similar worries about that unit, but that it was impossible to be sure of its status.

Emergency workers were forced to retreat from the plant Wednesday when radiation levels soared, losing precious time. They resumed work after radiation levels dropped, but much of the monitoring equipment in the plant is inoperable, complicating efforts to assess the situation.

"We are afraid that the water level at unit 4 is the lowest," said Hikaru Kuroda, facilities management official at Tokyo Electric Power Co. But he added, "Because we cannot get near it, the only way to monitor the situation is visually from far away."

The storage pools need a constant source of cooling water. Even when removed from reactors, the rods retain radioactivity and must be cooled for months, possibly longer, to prevent them from posing a threat of meltdown.

Japanese officials raised hopes of easing the crisis earlier Thursday, saying that they may be close to bringing power back to the plant and restoring the reactors' cooling systems.

The new power line would revive electric-powered pumps, allowing the company to control the rising temperatures and pressure that have led to at least partial meltdowns in three reactors. The company is also trying to repair its existing disabled power line.

Tokyo Electric Power spokesman Naoki Tsunoda said the new power line to the plant is almost finished and that officials plan to try it "as soon as possible," but he could not say exactly when.

Reflecting the state of alarm over the issue, Japan's 77-year-old emperor expressed deep concern in a rare unexpected television broadcast on Wednesday, saying "I hope things will not get worse."

He urged the Japanese to care for each other and not give up hope. Millions of lives were disrupted by the magnitude 9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, which are believed to have killed more than 10,000 people.

Nearly a week after the disaster, police said more than 452,000 were staying in schools and other shelters, as supplies of fuel, medicine and other necessities ran short. Both victims and aid workers appealed for more help.

More than 4,300 people are officially listed as dead, but officials believe the toll will climb to well over 10,000.

"There is enough food, but no fuel or gasoline," said Yuko Niuma, 46, as she stood looking out over Ofunato harbor, where trawlers were flipped on their sides.

The threat of nuclear disaster only added to Japanese misery and frustration.

"The anxiety and anger being felt by people in Fukushima have reached a boiling point," the governor of Fukushima prefecture, Yuhei Sato, fumed in an interview with the Japanese television network NHK. He said evacuation preparations were inadequate, saying centers lacked enough hot meals and basic necessities.

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from a 20 kilometer (13 mile) radius around Fukushima Dai-ichi.

A Cabinet spokesman, Noriyuki Shikata, said the government had no plans to expand the evacuation plan. But the U.S. Embassy issued an advisory urging all Americans living within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the plant to leave the area or at least remain indoors.

The chief of the U.N. nuclear agency, Yukiya Amano, said he would go to Japan to assess what he called a "very serious" situation and urged Tokyo to provide better information to his organization.

Other countries have complained that Japan has been too slow and vague in releasing details about its rapidly evolving crisis at the complex of six reactors along Japan's northeastern coast.

The 180 emergency workers who were working in shifts to manually pump seawater into the overheating reactors to cool them and stave off complete meltdowns were emerging as heroes as they persevered in circumstances in which no radiation suit could completely protect them.

Japan's health ministry made what it called an "unavoidable" change Wednesday, more than doubling the amount of radiation to which the workers can be legally exposed.

"I don't know any other way to say it, but this is like suicide fighters in a war," said Keiichi Nakagawa, associate professor of the Department of Radiology at University of Tokyo Hospital.

The government asked special police units to bring in water cannons -- usually used to quell rioters -- to spray onto the spent fuel storage pool at unit 4.

"By deploying defense personnel and riot police, we're doing our best to tackle the situation by spraying water to cool down the reactors. We sincerely hope that this mission will go well," Shikata said.

Elevated levels of radiation were detected well outside the 20-mile (30-kilometer) emergency area around the plants. In Ibaraki prefecture, just south of Fukushima, officials said radiation levels were about 300 times normal levels by late Wednesday morning. It would take three years of constant exposure to these higher levels to raise a person's risk of cancer.

A little radiation has also been detected in Tokyo, triggering panic buying of food and water.

Japanese choppers dump water on stricken reactor

Japanese choppers dump water on stricken reactor

Posted 3/17/2011 11:23 AM ET

By Eric Talmadge And Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press

ZAO, Japan — Japan tried high-pressure water cannons, fire trucks and even helicopters that dropped batches of seawater in increasingly frantic attempts Thursday to cool an overheated nuclear complex as U.S. officials warned the situation was deteriorating.

The top U.S. nuclear regulatory official gave a far bleaker assessment of the crisis than the Japanese, and the U.S. ambassador warned U.S. citizens within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant on the northeast coast to leave the area or at least remain indoors.

The Japanese government said it had no plans to expand its mandatory, 12-mile (20-kilometer) exclusion zone around the plant along the northeastern coast, while also urging people within 20 miles (30 kilometers) to stay inside.

The troubles at the nuclear complex were set in motion by last week's 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and destroyed backup generators needed for the reactors' cooling systems. That added a nuclear crisis on top of twin natural disasters that likely killed well more than 10,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

Four of the plant's six reactors have faced serious crises involving fires, explosions, damage to the structures housing reactor cores, partial meltdowns or rising temperatures in the pools used to store spent nuclear fuel. Officials also recently announced that temperatures are rising in the spent fuel pools of the last two reactors.

Two Japanese military CH-47 Chinook helicopters began dumping seawater on the complex's damaged Unit 3 at 9:48 a.m. (0048 GMT, 8:48 p.m. EDT), defense ministry spokeswoman Kazumi Toyama said. The choppers dumped at least four loads on the reactor in just the first 10 minutes, though television footage showed much of it appearing to disperse in the wind.

Chopper crews flew missions of about 40 minutes each to limit their radiation exposure, passing over the reactor with loads of about 7,500 liters (about 2,000 gallons) of water.

The dousing is aimed at cooling the Unit 3 reactor, as well as replenishing water in that unit's cooling pool, where used fuel rods are stored, Toyama said. The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said earlier that pool was nearly empty, which would cause the rods to overheat and emit even more radiation.

Defense Minister Toshifumi Kitazawa told reporters that emergency workers had no choice but to try the water dumps before it was too late.

Along with the helicopter water drops, military vehicles designed to extinguish fires at plane crashes were being used to spray the crippled Unit 3, military spokesman Mitsuru Yamazaki said. The high-pressure sprayers were to allow emergency workers to get water into the damaged unit while staying safely back from areas deemed to have too much radiation.

But special police units trying to use water cannons -- normally used to quell rioters -- failed in their attempt to cool the unit when the water failed to reach its target from safe distances, said Yasuhiro Hashimoto, a spokesman for the Nuclear And Industrial Safety Agency.

Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the plant, said they believed they were making headway in staving off a catastrophe both with the spraying and with efforts to complete an emergency power line to restart the plant's own cooling systems.

The interim power line would be a temporary but "reliable" way to cool down the reactors and storage pools, said Teruaki Kobayashi, a facilities management official at Tepco. "This is a first step toward recovery," he said.

Crews were standing by to resume spraying Friday.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, said Unit 4 also was seriously at risk.

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko said at a congressional hearing in Washington that all the water was gone from that unit's spent fuel pool. Jaczko said anyone who gets close to the plant could face potentially lethal doses of radiation.

"We believe radiation levels are extremely high," he said.

Tokyo Electric executives said Thursday that they believed the rods in that pool were covered with water, but an official with Japan's nuclear safety agency later expressed skepticism about that and moved closer to the U.S. position.

"Considering the amount of radiation released in the area, the fuel rods are more likely to be exposed than to be covered," Yuichi Sato said.

Emergency workers were forced to temporarily retreat from the plant Wednesday when radiation levels soared, losing precious time. While the levels later dropped, they were still too high to let workers get close.

The storage pools need a constant source of cooling water. Even when removed from reactors, uranium rods are still extremely hot and must be cooled for months, possibly longer, to prevent them from heating up again and emitting radioactivity.

A core team of 180 emergency workers has been at the forefront of the struggle at the plant, rotating in and out of the complex to try to reduce their radiation exposure.

But experts said that anyone working close to the reactors was almost certainly being exposed to radiation levels that could, at least, give them much higher cancer risks.

"I don't know any other way to say it, but this is like suicide fighters in a war," said Keiichi Nakagawa, associate professor of the Department of Radiology at University of Tokyo Hospital.

Experts note, though, that radiation levels drop quickly with distance from the complex. While elevated radiation has been detected well outside the evacuation zone, experts say those levels are not dangerous.

U.S. officials were taking no chances, and Prime Minister Naoto Kan and U.S. President Barack Obama spoke about the crisis early Thursday.

In a statement, U.S. Ambassador John V. Roos made his evacuation recommendation "in response to the deteriorating situation" at the Fukushima complex. In Washington, the State Department warned U.S. citizens to consider leaving the country, and offered voluntary evacuation to family members of U.S. personnel in Tokyo, Yokohama and Nagoya.

Chartered planes also would be brought in for private American citizens who wished to leave, the State Department said.

While American officials have been careful not to criticize Japan's response, they have made clear it's difficult to ascertain what is going on.

"It's a very fluid and indeed it's a very confused situation," U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman told reporters Wednesday.

Nearly a week after the disaster, police said more than 452,000 people were staying in schools and other shelters, as supplies of fuel, medicine and other necessities ran short. Both victims and aid workers appealed for more help.

"There is enough food, but no fuel or gasoline," said Yuko Niuma, 46, as she stood looking out over Ofunato harbor, where trawlers were flipped on their sides.

Along the tsunami-savaged coast, people must stand in line for food, gasoline and kerosene to heat their homes. In the town of Kesennuma, they lined up to get into a supermarket after a delivery of key supplies, such as instant rice packets and diapers.

Each person was only allowed to buy 10 items, NHK television reported.

With diapers hard to find in many areas, an NHK program broadcast a how-to session on fashioning a diaper from a plastic shopping bag and a towel.

More than 5,300 people are officially listed as dead, but officials believe the toll will climb to well over 10,000.

Other countries have complained that Japan has been too slow and vague in releasing details about its rapidly evolving crisis at the complex of six reactors along Japan's northeastern coast.

___

Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writers Elaine Kurtenbach and Shino Yuasa in Tokyo contributed to this report

US authorizes American evacuations out of Japan

US authorizes American evacuations out of Japan

Posted 3/17/2011 11:19 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has authorized the first evacuations of Americans out of Japan, taking a tougher stand on the deepening nuclear crisis and warning U.S. citizens to defer all non-essential travel to any part of the country as unpredictable weather and wind conditions risked spreading radioactive contamination.

The U.S. is doing minute-by-minute analysis of the fast-moving situation, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday.

President Barack Obama placed a telephone call to Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Wednesday to discuss Japan's efforts to recover from last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami, and the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Dai-chi plant. Obama promised Kan that the U.S. would offer constant support for its close friend and ally, and "expressed his extraordinary admiration for the character and resolve of the Japanese people," the White House said.

But a hastily organized teleconference late Wednesday with officials from the State and Energy Departments underscored the administration's concerns. The travel warning extends to U.S. citizens already in the country and urges them to consider leaving. The authorized departure offers voluntary evacuation to family members and dependents of U.S. personnel in Tokyo, Yokohama and Nagoya and affects some 600 people.

Senior State Department official Patrick Kennedy said chartered planes will be brought in to help private American citizens wishing to leave. People face less risk in southern Japan, but changing weather and wind conditions could raise radiation levels elsewhere in the coming days, he said.

"This is a very serious problem with widespread ramifications," Clinton said during a visit to Tunisia. "There will be a continuing evaluation. This is ... a minute-by- minute analysis and we're doing everything we can to support the Japanese and their heroic efforts in dealing with this unfolding disaster."

Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said the military will coordinate departures for eligible Defense Department dependents.

The decision to begin evacuations mirrors moves by countries such as Australia and Germany, who also advised their citizens to consider leaving Tokyo and other earthquake-affected areas. Tokyo, which is about 170 miles from the stricken nuclear complex, has reported slightly elevated radiation levels, though Japanese officials have said the increase was too small to threaten the 39 million people in and around the capital.

Anxious to safeguard the U.S. relationship with its closest Asian ally, Obama told Kan Wednesday evening about the steps the U.S. was taking, shortly before the State Department announced the first evacuations.

But the alliance looked likely to be strained, with the U.S. taking more dramatic safety precautions than Japan and issuing dire warnings that contradicted Japan's more upbeat assessments.

Earlier Wednesday, the Obama administration urged the evacuation of Americans from a 50-mile radius of the stricken nuclear plant, raising questions about U.S. confidence in Tokyo's risk assessments. Japan's government was urging people within 20 miles to stay indoors if they could not evacuate.

White House spokesman Jay Carney sought to minimize any rift between the two allies, saying U.S. officials were making their recommendations based on their independent analysis of the data coming out of the region following Friday's massive earthquake and tsunami.

"I will not from here judge the Japanese evaluation of the data," Carney told reporters. "This is what we would do if this incident were happening in the United States."

Until Wednesday, the U.S. had advised its citizens to follow the recommendations of the Japanese government. As late as Tuesday, Carney had said those recommendations were "the same that we would take in the situation."

But conditions at the nuclear plant continued to deteriorate, with surging radiation forcing Japan to order workers to temporarily withdraw. Obama met at the White House with Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who recommended the wider evacuation zone.

During testimony on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Jaczko said anyone who gets close to the plant could face potentially lethal doses of radiation.

"We believe radiation levels are extremely high," he said.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. had consular personnel in the Miyagi and Ibaraki prefectures and was sending officials out to check on Americans.

"We have consular teams on the ground," Toner said. "Where they can, they are going door to door. They are going to hospitals. They are trying everything in their power to reach out and find American citizens."

The Pentagon said U.S. troops working on relief missions can get closer than 50 miles to the plant with approval. Lapan said the U.S. would review requests from the Japanese for assistance that would require troops to move within that radius, though no approval for such movement had been given since the stricter guidelines were enacted.

The Pentagon said troops are receiving anti-radiation pills before missions to areas where radiation exposure is likely.

"U.S. forces remain in Japan and the U.S. has full capability to fulfill our alliance commitments to defend Japan and maintain peace and security in the region," Lapan said.

With the arrival of three more ships to the massive humanitarian mission, there were 17,000 sailors and Marines afloat on 14 vessels in waters off Japan. Several thousand Army and Air Force service members already stationed at U.S. bases in Japan have also been mobilized for the relief efforts.

Airmen have been flying search and rescue missions and operating Global Hawk drones and U-2 reconnaissance planes to help the Japanese assess damage from the disasters. The operation is fraught with challenges -- mainly, figuring out how to continue to provide help amid some low-level releases of radiation from the facility, which officials fear could be facing a meltdown.

Weather also temporarily hampered some relief plans Wednesday. Pilots couldn't fly helicopters off the deck of aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan until late afternoon because of poor visibility. The 7th Fleet said 15 flights with relief supplies were launched from the eight-ship carrier group, about half as many as the 29 flights reported the previous day to deliver food, water, blankets and other supplies.

Several water pumps and hoses were being sent from U.S. bases around Japan to help at Fukushima, where technicians were dousing the overheating nuclear reactors with seawater in a frantic effort to cool them. The U.S. had already sent two fire trucks to the area to be operated by Japanese firefighters, said Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Helicopters, water cannons used in to cool reactor fuel

Japan uses helicopters, water cannons in desperate bid to cool reactor fuel

By Mark Magnier, Laura King and Kenji Hall, Los Angeles Times

March 17, 2011, 7:21 a.m.

Reporting from Sendai and Tokyo, Japan -- Japanese authorities made desperate new attempts to avert full-scale meltdowns at a quake-battered nuclear plant Thursday, dispatching helicopters to drop tons of water on the reactors and using water cannons to cool a spent-fuel pool that an American official said was responsible for "very significant radiation levels."

At the same time, public anger mounted over the government's lagging efforts to provide relief for the survivors of last week's earthquake and tsunami.

U.S. and Japanese officials appeared to disagree on the magnitude of the nuclear crisis, as the White House recommended Wednesday that American citizens remain at least 50 miles away from the stricken plant, much farther than the 12-mile evacuation radius given by the Japanese government.

Japan Self-Defense Forces fired 30 tons of water with cannons, normally used for crowd control, to douse the overheated and possibly dry spent-fuel pool at the No. 3 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, about 150 miles north of Tokyo. Without cooling, the spent rods could emit dangerous levels of radiation. Japan's defense minister said the U.S. military also was sending pumps to help inject water into the reactors.

The power company was racing to install a new power line to the plant. The failure of primary power systems and backup generators that were swamped by the tsunami six days earlier contributed to the escalating crisis.

At midmorning, military helicopters began dumping water on two of the damaged reactors, but after four flybys, the operation was suspended, public broadcaster NHK reported, citing defense officials. And on Wednesday, gusting winds and high radiation levels forced the military to scrap the water drops.

Confusion persisted as to what was actually happening inside the plant's six reactors.

Japan's Kyodo News service, citing government sources, reported that the U.S. military would deploy unmanned, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft to take images of the building that houses the No. 4 reactor to determine the status of its spent-fuel pool.

Unquestionably, the situation is dire. The units housing the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 reactors have all been hit by explosions, and their radioactive cores have begun to at least partially melt down, authorities have acknowledged. Fires broke out for two days running in the building housing the No. 4 reactor, and temperatures have been rising in Nos. 5 and 6.

In Washington, Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko said at a congressional hearing that all of the water had evaporated from the spent-fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor. Japanese officials contended Thursday that military spotters had confirmed from the air that there was still water in the pool.

Acting on Jaczko's advice, the White House made its recommendation that U.S. citizens keep 50 miles or more away.

Jaczko told lawmakers that the 50-mile evacuation radius was based largely on concerns about the spent-fuel pool, which is believed to be seriously damaged and responsible for "very significant radiation levels likely around the site." The pool, which contains an estimated 125 tons of uranium fuel pellets, is not enclosed in a containment vessel, and if the pellets start burning, radiation will escape directly into the environment.

If the backup efforts to cool the reactors were to fail, "it would be very difficult for the emergency workers to get near the reactors. The doses they could experience would potentially be lethal doses in a very short period of time," Jaczko said. "That is a very significant development."

The nuclear crisis is vastly complicating quake relief efforts as well as search-and-rescue operations, including those involving the American military. U.S. forces in Japan were also observing a 50-mile no-go zone around the damaged plant. Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan described the prohibition as a precaution and said exceptions could be made with authorization.

Inside the crippled plant, emergency workers, wearing protective gear and doing short shifts to limit their radiation exposure, have been pumping seawater into the reactors to try to cool them. The work is hard and perilous and, among many Japanese, the workers have taken on the status of folk heroes.

Since the magnitude 9 quake and the massive tsunami it spawned, damage and malfunctions at the Daiichi plant have spiraled rapidly. The situation at times has seemed to be spinning out of control. Many Japanese do not have confidence in their government either to solve the crisis or to be forthcoming about the danger to public health.

"I want to know that this nuclear situation is safe, and that it's solved quickly," said Toshiko Sugiyama, a 37-year-old businessman living near the affected area. Public alarm has grown by the day, spurred by the government's release of often-contradictory and vague information.

Frustrated over the lack of information, Yukiya Amano, chief of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, planned to arrive in Japan on Thursday to carry out an assessment.

In the mega-city of Tokyo, many people still go stoically about their morning commute, but few venture outside once arriving at the office. Slightly elevated radiation levels were detected in the city earlier this week, though not high enough to affect human health, authorities said.

Surgical masks, usually worn in Japan only by people suffering from colds and allergies, have become part of the workaday uniform, as much as drab business suits or prim dresses and pumps, even though they are of dubious value in protecting against radiation.

Mariko Yamada, who pulled down her mask to speak as she hurried along the sidewalk, said she felt it was her duty to continue reporting to work every day in a downtown hotel.

"I am a little frightened," she said. "But we all must face our fate."

USGS dubs Japan earthquake 'Tohoku'

USGS dubs Japan earthquake 'Tohoku'

By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times

March 16, 2011, 7:45 p.m.

U.S. Geological Survey officials have chosen a name for the 9.0 temblor that struck Japan last week. They're calling it the Tohoku earthquake — shortened from the original name used in Japan.

Tohoku is a region in the northern part of Honshu, Japan's largest island. Though the region — encompassing six of the island's northernmost prefectures — sits north of the massive quake's offshore epicenter, it became its namesake because it takes up much of the area shaken by the earthquake's approximately 250-mile-long rupture area.

The name comes from the Japanese words "Tohoku-Chiho Taiheiyo-Oki," said Brian Atwater, a geologist with USGS. Roughly translated, this means, "Pacific offshore Tohoku region."

Photos: Earthquake and nuclear crisis in Japan

Officials decided that "Tohoku" was the key phrase in the name.

"We could have used 'Northern Japan,' but that would have included Hokkaido," Atwater said. Hokkaido is the Japanese island just north of Honshu; its southern tip barely touches the rupture area.

Naming the earthquake after a point closer to the epicenter did not make sense either, Atwater said. In earthquakes such this one, the epicenter doesn't matter as much the areas affected.

"The point can be likened to a match in a house fire — the source for the heat, as it were," Atwater said. And fires, he pointed out, fires are named after the places they burn, not the matches that light them.

amina.khan@latimes.com

Radioactive Plume in Los Angeles by Friday

Of course the truth is that by the time the radioactive cloud gets to LA it won't be radioactive. Or the radiation will be so small it will be impossible to measure.

But who cares about the facts? The LA Times has newspapers to sell.

Source

UN: Radioactive Plume Could Come to SoCal By Friday

4:18 a.m. PDT, March 17, 2011

LOS ANGELES (KTLA) -- The United Nations projected Wednesday that the radioactive plume coming from failed Japanese reactors could come to across the Pacific by the end of the week.

The forecast explained that the plume will lose radioactive force as it travels and may not even be detectable by the time it reaches Southern California.

The projection, made by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna, is based on patterns of Pacific winds and gives no information about actual radiation levels. It is likely to change if the weather shifts over the next few days.

The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 also made its way to the West Coast in 10 days, but radiation levels were too low to register.

In the case that the plumes do make it ashore, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said it will deploy additional electronic monitors to measure radiation levels in the air.

The monitors, which detect gamma radiation and radioactive particles, will be set up in "parts of the Western U.S. and U.S. territories," the agency said in a statement.

But the agency is refusing to say exactly where those monitors will be placed.

The EPA has 124 air monitors, which provide hourly readings, already in place in its "Rad-Net" system to measure radiation.

There are already 12 stationed across California, including Los Angeles, Riverside, Anaheim, San Bernardino and San Diego.

Many of these sampling stations have been in place since the 1950s.

The monitoring system was upgraded in the wake of 9/11.

For a live look at a radiation monitor at the offices of Enviroreporter.com in Santa Monica log into www.enviroreporter.com

High Radiation Severely Hinders Emergency Work to Cool Japanese Plant

By NORIMITSU ONISHI, DAVID E. SANGER and MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: March 17, 2011

TOKYO — Amid widening alarm in the United States and elsewhere about Japan’s nuclear crisis, military fire trucks began spraying cooling water on spent fuel rods at the country’s stricken nuclear power station late Thursday after earlier efforts to cool the rods failed, Japanese officials said.

The development came as the authorities reached for ever more desperate and unconventional methods to cool damaged reactors, deploying helicopters and water cannons in a race to prevent perilous overheating in the spent rods of the No. 3 reactor.

Moments before the military began spraying, police officers in water cannon trucks were forced back by high levels of radiation in the same area. The police had been trying to get within 50 yards of the reactor, one of six at the plant.

The five specially fitted military trucks sprayed water for an hour, but the full impact of the tactic was not immediately clear.

The Japanese efforts focused on a different part of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, 140 miles northeast of here, from the reactor — No. 4. — depicted in Washington on Wednesday as presenting a far bleaker threat than the Japanese government had offered.

The decision to focus on the No. 3 reactor appeared to suggest that Japanese officials believe it is a greater threat, since it is the only one at the site loaded with a mixed fuel known as mox, for mixed oxide, which includes reclaimed plutonium.

Western nuclear engineers have said that the release of mox into the atmosphere would produce a more dangerous radioactive plume than the dispersal of uranium fuel rods at the site. The Japanese authorities also expressed concern on Wednesday that the pressure in the No. 3 reactor had plunged and that either gauges were malfunctioning or a rupture had already occurred.

After the military’s effort to cool the spent fuel atop the reactor with fire trucks, Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said it was too early to assess the success of the attempt.

Mr. Nishiyama also said that radiation of about 250 millisievert an hour had been detected 100 feet above the plant. In the United States the limit for police officers, firefighters and other emergency workers engaged in life-saving activity as a once-in-a-lifetime exposure is equal to being exposed to 250 millisieverts for a full hour. The radiation figures provided by the Japanese Self-Defense Force may provide an indication of why a helicopter turned back on Wednesday from an attempt to dump cold water on a storage pool at the plant.

A White House statement late Wednesday said that President Obama had “briefed Prime Minister Kan on the additional support being provided by the U.S., including specialized military assets with expertise in nuclear response and consequence management.”

On Thursday a Pentagon spokesman, Col. David Lapan, said the military expertise made available to the Japanese included a nine-person assessment team that has or will shortly arrive there to work with the Japanese military and government.

The team members, Colonel Lapan said, will then recommend whether additional American military forces are needed to assist in the effort.

The American military is also gathering information on the damaged nuclear power plant. Officials said that a Global Hawk drone was flying missions over the reactor. In addition, U-2 spy planes were providing images to help the Japanese government map out its response to the quake and tsunami.Earlier Thursday Japanese military forces dumped seawater from a helicopter on Reactor No. 3, making four passes and dropping a total of about 8,000 gallons over it as a plume of white smoke billowed. The Japanese government said that the reactor typically needs 50 tons of water, or about 12,000 gallons, a day to keep from overheating.

The Japanese military later said the measure had little effect on reducing the temperature in the pool where the spent rods are stored.

It also announced that it had postponed plans to drop water on Reactor No. 4, which Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, on Wednesday pinpointed as a cause for serious alarm.

On Thursday afternoon, the Self-Defense Forces and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police had begun deploying eight water cannon trucks to Reactor No. 3. Before the radiation level drove them back, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police planned to use the trucks, which are usually used in riot control, to spray at least 12 tons of seawater into the reactor.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the reactors, was also working to restore the electricity needed to run the cooling systems, according to a senior Japanese nuclear industry executive.

Some of the maneuvers seemed at odds with the most startling assertion by Mr. Jaczko (pronounced YAZZ-koe) that there was little or no water in the pool storing spent nuclear fuel at the No. 4 reactor, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed and bleeding radiation into the atmosphere. His testimony before Congress was the first time the Obama administration had given its own assessment of the condition of the plant, apparently mixing information it had received from Japan with data it had collected independently. “We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures,” Mr. Jaczko said.

His statement was quickly but not definitively rebutted by officials of Tokyo Electric, the plant’s operator.

“We can’t get inside to check, but we’ve been carefully watching the building’s environs, and there has not been any particular problem,” Hajime Motojuku, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric, said Thursday morning in Japan.

Later, a spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Yoshitaka Nagayama, was more equivocal, saying, “Because we have been unable to go to the scene, we cannot confirm whether there is water left or not in the spent fuel pool at Reactor No. 4.”

At the same time, officials raised concerns about two other reactors where spent fuel rods were stored, Nos. 5 and 6, saying they had experienced a slight rise in temperature.

On Wednesday night, Mr. Jaczko reiterated his earlier statement and added that commission representatives in Tokyo had confirmed that the pool at No. 4 was empty. He said Tokyo Electric and other officials in Japan had confirmed that, and also emphasized that high radiation fields were going to make it very difficult to continue having people work at the plant.

If the American analysis is accurate and emergency crews at the plant have been unable to keep the spent fuel at that inoperative reactor properly cooled — it needs to remain covered with water at all times — radiation levels could make it difficult not only to fix the problem at No. 4, but also to keep servicing any of the other problem reactors at the plant. In the worst case, experts say, workers could be forced to vacate the plant altogether, and the fuel rods in reactors and spent fuel pools would be left to melt down, leading to much larger releases of radioactive materials.

While radiation levels at the plant have varied tremendously, Mr. Jaczko said that the peak levels reported there “would be lethal within a fairly short period of time.” He added that another spent fuel pool, at Reactor No. 3, might also be losing water and could soon be in the same condition.

On Wednesday, the American Embassy in Tokyo, on advice from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told Americans to evacuate a radius of “approximately 50 miles” from the Fukushima plant. South Korea, Australia and New Zealand followed suit in advice to their citizens, and Spanish authorities on Thursday recommended an either wider berth, about 75 miles, news agencies reported. The advice to Americans in Japan represents a graver assessment of the risk in the immediate vicinity of Daiichi than the warnings made by the Japanese themselves, who have told everyone within 20 kilometers, about 12 miles, to evacuate, and those within about 20 miles to take shelter.

While maps of the plume of radiation being given off by the plant show that an elongated cloud will stretch across the Pacific, American officials said it would be so dissipated by the time it reached the West Coast of the United States that it would not pose a health threat.

Close to the site, however, Mr. Jaczko said, “We would recommend an evacuation to a much larger radius than has currently been provided by Japan.” That assessment seems bound to embarrass, if not anger, Japanese officials, suggesting they have miscalculated the danger or deliberately played down the risks.

Late Wednesday night the State Department announced what it described as a “voluntary” evacuation of dependents of American government personnel in northeastern Japan, and down to Tokyo and Yokohama. The undersecretary of state for administration, Patrick Kennedy, said that no one would be ordered to leave, but that the government would provide charter flights for dependents who wanted to leave.

On Thursday evening the American Embassy in Tokyo began offering seats aboard chartered flights to Americans wishing to evacuate from Japan. Americans who show up at the two main airports serving Tokyo, Narita and Haneda, would be flown to still unspecified “safe haven locations” from where they would be expected to arrange onward travel on their own, said Karen Kelley, a spokeswoman for the embassy.

The American move followed advisory notices from several European countries urging their citizens to move away from Tokyo or leave Japan altogether.

American officials who have been dealing with their Japanese counterparts report that the country’s political and bureaucratic leadership has appeared frozen in place, unwilling to communicate clearly about the problem’s scope and, in some cases, unwilling to accept outside assistance. Two American officials said they believed that the Japanese government itself was not getting a clear picture from Tokyo Electric.

General Electric said it would send about 10 gas turbine generators to Japan to help replace lost power generating capacity. Michael Tetuan, a spokesman for the company, said that the operators of the damaged plant had requested generators, but he did not know what they would be used for. The units can produce roughly the same amount of power as the diesel generators at nuclear plants.

Though the plant’s reactors shut down automatically when the quake struck on Friday, the subsequent tsunami wiped out the backup electronic pumping and cooling system necessary to keep the fuel rods in the reactors and the storage pools for spent nuclear fuel covered with cool water.

Source

Long Pause for Japanese Industry Raises Concerns About Supply Chain

By DAVID JOLLY

Published: March 16, 2011

TOKYO — Japan’s vaunted “just in time” approach to business has become “wait and see.”

Much of Japan’s industry seemed to remain in a state of suspension Wednesday, as the devastation from an earthquake and tsunami, combined with fear and uncertainty over the nuclear calamity, made it difficult for corporate Japan to think about business as usual.

And that has left many overseas customers and trading partners in something of an information vacuum, unsure how soon the effects of any supply-chain disruptions would make themselves felt — and how long they might last.

Even General Motors, a company that might seem to benefit from disruptions to Japan’s auto industry, finds itself in a period of watchful waiting. For one thing, the new Chevrolet Volt plug-in-hybrid from G.M. — whose sales could conceivably benefit from any production snags in Toyota’s popular made-in-Japan Prius — depends on a transmission from Japan.

Mark L. Reuss, G.M.’s president for North American operations, said Wednesday that he did not yet know whether his company could count on an uninterrupted flow of that Volt component from Japan.

“We just don’t know from a supply standpoint; there’s so many great things that come out of Japan for the whole industry,” he said, speaking to reporters after a speech at the University of Detroit Mercy.

Here in Tokyo, Japan’s business capital, many companies — whether Japanese or foreign — were distracted Wednesday by plans for removing their employees from the potential path of radiation from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant 140 miles north. Telephone calls and e-mails to many corporate headquarters in Tokyo simply went unanswered.

Air Liquide, a French company that is the world’s biggest producer of industrial gases, has closed its head office in Tokyo and moved its operations 250 miles south to Osaka.

The German auto giant BMW, which has 800 employees in Tokyo, is sending its few dozen German employees home and offering local workers safer locations within Japan.

Even the America unit of the Japanese auto company Nissan has ordered any employees traveling in Japan on business to return home.

Within Japan, Nissan has suspended many of its manufacturing operations at least through the weekend because “it is still taking time to arrange delivery of parts from our suppliers,” the company said in a statement. Nissan’s engine plant in Iwaki, near the coast in the earthquake-stricken region, remained out of action, the company said.

Meanwhile, many American electronics companies remain uncertain — or decline to say — whether supplies of crucial components from Japan will hit air pockets. But Dallas-based Texas Instruments acknowledged that one of its Japanese factories would be at least partially out of action until July and would not resume shipping at full capacity until September.

The plant, in Miho, 40 miles north of Tokyo, suffered extensive damage from the quake. It primarily makes chips that convert analog and digital signals, which are used in a wide range of products, including cellphones, digital televisions, computer peripherals and medical equipment — and accounts for about 10 percent of Texas Instruments global output, by revenue. Kimberly Morgan, a company spokeswoman, declined to name any of the plant’s customers.

Technology analysts say the most persistent worry for digital device makers is the supply from Japan of so-called NAND flash — the lightweight storage chips used in smartphones, tablet computers, digital cameras and a variety of other components. Toshiba, the world’s second-largest maker of the chips behind Samsung of South Korea, has closed some production lines.

SanDisk, the third-largest maker of NAND flash, which owns two factories in Japan jointly with Toshiba, said those factories were operating. But the company, based in Milpitas, Calif., said it was concerned about the reliability of Japan’s transportation and electricity networks.

“It will probably be many days or perhaps many weeks before we can assess the entire situation,” said Mike Wong, a SanDisk spokesman.

The tsunami caused extensive damage to seaports along the northeast coast of Honshu, Japan’s largest island. And while only one — Sendai-Shiogama — ranks among the country’s largest ports, all play a role in receiving goods from abroad and serving as feeders to the nation’s major seaports farther south.

“The situation is quite bad” for the northeastern ports, said Yoshiaki Higuchi, director of planning for the Japan Port and Harbor Association, “but at the moment we aren’t even certain about the extent of the damage.”

A reporter who visited two other small port towns, Minamisanriku and Ofunato, found that the docks and port facilities were almost completely destroyed. In Ofunato, many of the materials that had been stacked on the docks, like lumber, were carried by the waves into the town, where they crashed into homes and added to the destruction, residents said.

Sendai-Shiogama has particular importance for some companies, including the electronics makers Sony, Canon and Pioneer and the brewer Kirin. It ranks about 13th among Japanese ports in container shipments, Mr. Higuchi said. Together, the 10 most affected ports make up about 10 percent of Japan’s container trade, he said.

Mr. Higuchi said it would probably be six months to a year before the Sendai port was again functioning fully, because a gantry crane that handles containers had fallen and the sea wall appeared to have been damaged.

Mario Moreno, an economist who analyzes seaborne trade data for Piers Global Intelligence Solutions, said it was too early to tell how the crisis in Japan would affect trade with the United States long term. Short term, however, “trade is going to weaken in the months ahead,” he said.

Air freight companies, too, have experienced disruptions because of damage to airports in the northeast and the cascading effect on traffic to and from other airports farther south. The American giant FedEx, for example, shut service to much of eastern Japan, including Tokyo, after the quake.

FedEx said Tuesday that it hoped soon to resume its pickup and delivery in eastern Japan, excluding Fukushima, Miyagi and parts of Ibaraki prefectures, but it warned that delays could continue.

Various companies trying to ship their products into Japan are also facing problems.

All last weekend, Brian Terasawa, the regional director of Asia-Pacific operations for Commodity Forwarders, a freight-forwarding company based in Los Angeles that specializes in perishable products, and his colleagues worked on the telephone with air carriers to get their customers’ shipments through to Japan.

Air transport has resumed, but only at a fraction of the normal pace. Before, his company was shipping 80 tons a day to Japan, including radicchio, Mexican asparagus, tomatoes and chilled or frozen pork. On Wednesday, only about 10 to 20 tons went through.

The problem, Mr. Terasawa said, is the embargo airlines are putting on goods flown to Japan, particularly Narita International Airport near Tokyo. Mainly, only mail and relief supplies are making it through, with a little room left over.

“Domestically, they don’t have food and vegetables in Japan — they don’t have enough and they are afraid about keeping the shelves stocked,” he said.

“We’ve been trying to explain to the airlines that the perishables that we are trying to send through them are relief items. But that’s not clicking with them.”

Source

U.S. nuclear officials suspect Japanese plant has a dire breach

By Ralph Vartabedian, Barbara Demick and Laura King, Los Angeles Times

March 18, 2011, 1:50 a.m.

Reporting from Los Angeles, Kesennuma and Tokyo— U.S. government nuclear experts believe a spent fuel pool at Japan's crippled Fukushima reactor complex has a breach in the wall or floor, a situation that creates a major obstacle to refilling the pool with cooling water and keeping dangerous levels of radiation from escaping.

That assessment by U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials is based on the sequence of events since the earthquake and information provided by key American contractors who were in the plant at the time, said government officials familiar with the evaluation. It was compelling evidence, they said, that the wall of the No. 4 reactor pool has a significant hole or crack.

Unlike the reactor itself, the spent fuel pool does not have its own containment vessel, and any radioactive particles and gases can more easily spew into the environment if the uranium fuel begins to burn. In addition, the pool, which contains 130 tons of uranium fuel, is housed in a building that Japanese authorities say appears to have been damaged by fire or explosions.

A breach in the pool would leave engineers with a problem that has no precedent or ready-made solution, said Edwin Lyman, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"My intuition is that this is a terrible situation and it is only going to get worse," he said. "There may not be any way to deal with it."

The struggle to cool down stricken nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools in northern Japan entered a second week Friday, with fluctuating radiation levels and blustery winds hampering efforts to douse the most damaged installations with water from military helicopters and firetrucks with high-powered hoses.

Military firetrucks repeated the spraying operations of the day before, but the Defense Ministry said the use of helicopters again Friday was unlikely. Workers also hoped to hook at least two of the reactors up to the electrical grid in the course of the day, which would aid in cooling efforts.

In a sign of the worsening crisis at the complex 150 miles north of Tokyo, Japan said Friday that it would accept American assistance in stemming the cascade of nuclear woes.

Yukiya Amano, head of the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Japan Friday with a monitoring team and called the situation at the Fukushima plant "grave and serious," Reuters reported.

With some devastated stretches of coastline still untouched by recovery teams, the official toll of dead and missing in last Friday's magnitude 9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami topped 15,000, as hundreds of thousands of stranded survivors coped with freezing temperatures and shortages of fuel, food and other basic necessities.

Post-quake deaths, particularly among the frail, ill and elderly, were on the rise in sometimes primitive shelters. As of early Friday, the official death toll stood at 5,692, according to the National Police Agency, and 9,522 were unaccounted for and feared dead.

Radioactive levels at the plant had fallen by midday Friday and were not at levels that would affect human health, Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. The army and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the plant, were still trying to assess the success of the previous day's efforts, he said.

"Information from the front line is emerging in fragments," he said, adding that wind, rain, snow and topography were all factors.

The exodus of foreigners from Japan gathered momentum, with several governments advising their nationals to not only leave the quake zone but also depart from the capital or the country altogether. In Washington, the State Department reported the first evacuation flights of U.S. citizens, though the American advisory is narrower than that of other Western nations, including Britain and France.

As many Japanese sought refuge within their homeland, they put more distance between themselves and the nuclear complex, packing aboard trains headed south. The national fear is of a full-scale meltdown at the reactors in Fukushima prefecture, although prevailing winds would probably disperse much of a massive radiation release over the Pacific Ocean.

President Obama has assured Americans that the crisis did not pose a risk to U.S. territory.

The crisis was roiling financial markets worldwide. Of particular concern in Japan was the yen hitting record highs against the dollar as currency traders bet that Japanese companies and investors will sell foreign assets to pay for rebuilding.

Estimates of quake losses run to $200 billion, and a flow of money back into the country would boost demand for the yen, putting even more upward pressure on the currency, in turn making Japan's exports more expensive for foreign buyers.

In a highly unusual move, finance ministers of the world's wealthiest economies agreed to act together to stop the yen from rising, hoping to avert more damage to the Japanese economy.

The situation at the Fukushima reactors continued to be a major concern. Fuel rods at the core of at least three of the six reactors there are believed to have at least partially melted. Plant operators have had to vent radioactive gases, but no major release has been confirmed.

Japanese public statements, however, did not describe the No. 4 reactor as the most urgent task confronting emergency workers. "Cooling the No. 3 reactor is still our top priority," Edano said in a briefing on national television.

But outside nuclear experts say the spent fuel pool may be the most serious long-term problem.

Nuclear fuel in the No. 4 reactor was moved to the spent fuel pool in December 2010, while the unit was being serviced, and that fuel remains highly radioactive. When a fire or explosion — officials aren't sure which — left a hole in the secondary containment building this week, most experts concluded that the spent fuel pool had somehow lost water, exposing the fuel rods.

An exposed fuel rod can interact with air and steam, allowing the zirconium cladding to oxidize and produce highly flammable hydrogen gas.

It's not clear how the rods became exposed to air in the first place. Scientists say the cooling water may have sloshed out of the pool during the earthquake, boiled away because of built-up heat or leaked from a crack in the pool.

Nuclear plant experts interviewed by The Times on Thursday said it was unlikely that the quake could have caused a significant amount of water in the 45-foot-deep pool to slosh out and drain away, exposing the 15-foot rods. They also doubted that heat from the fuel rods could boil away that much water in just a few days, especially because steam was not seen coming from the reactor building.

Instead, U.S. officials believe that the pool's wall was cracked either by the intense shaking of the earthquake or by a large piece of equipment falling into it.

Employees of a consortium of General Electric and Hitachi were in the reactor building at the time of the quake, according to company and government sources. The GE employees have returned home, though some Hitachi employees are continuing to offer assistance to Tokyo Electric.

Nuclear experts say they can't be positive that a breach has occurred without looking at the pool, but the area around the pool is so radioactive that a close inspection still isn't possible.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, said this week that his agency believed the spent fuel pool was empty, triggering alarms and a rebuttal by Japanese authorities. His spokesman, Scott Burnell, said Jaczko's statements were "based on a variety of sources that represented the best available information."

Electricity supplies across much of Japan have become a worrying element of the multi-pronged crisis. A massive threatened blackout was averted Thursday, but rolling power cuts and voluntary conservation areas are still leaving a shortfall. In the quake zone, Japanese officials said tens of thousands were still without power in unseasonably cold weather. An additional 1.6 million households still do not have running water.

The shortage of gasoline has forced businesses far from the disaster zone to close down and has slowed deliveries of urgently needed humanitarian aid to earthquake and tsunami victims.

As snow fell over Sendai, one of the quake zone's largest cities, people under umbrellas waited in long lines that snaked around blocks to enter the few supermarkets that were open. Gas lines stretched more than a mile.

"This is the biggest disaster since World War II, and they are totally paralyzed," said Kit Miyamoto, a Japanese American structural engineer who was inspecting damage in tsunami-ravaged Kesennuma.

One shortage often spawned another; people staying in shelters could not get food because they could not drive around looking for it. People used up gas looking for gas.

"The refugees in the sports center are lacking food. If they had the gasoline, they could drive somewhere to get food, but they are stuck here," said Muneo Saijo, a shopkeeper who was helping evacuees in Kesennuma.

Even a week after the start of the crisis, many struggled to comprehend the level of privation in wealthy Japan.

"We're an affluent country," said Masahiko Nagaska, a 32-year-old Panasonic employee in Yamagata, in the heart of the earthquake zone. "But there's no food on the shelves."

ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com

barbara.demick@latimes.com

laura.king@latimes.com

Vartabedian reported from Los Angeles, Demick from Kesennuma and King from Tokyo. Special correspondent Kenji Hall in Tokyo and Times staff writers Mark Magnier in Takajo, Japan, Tom Petruno in Los Angeles and David Pierson in Beijing contributed to this report.

What did you expect from the government? Do you think they were going to tell you something useful?

Of course this is the message the Japanese government is telling it's citizens after the March 2011 9.0 earthquake in northern Japan which damaged several nuclear power plants releasing radiation into the atmosphere.

Source

Winds, fluctuating radiation levels hamper efforts to control Japan nuclear plant

By Barbara Demick, Laura King and Kenji Hall, Los Angeles Times

March 17, 2011, 6:59 p.m.

Reporting from Tokyo and Kesennuma, Japan— There was no obvious sign of progress in the battle to take control of the dangerously stricken Fukushima No. 1 (Daiichi) nuclear power plant early Friday, as blustery winds and fluctuating radiation levels hampered efforts to douse hot nuclear equipment with water from helicopters and firetrucks.

"We know that the damage to the nuclear reactors in Fukushima Daiichi plant poses a substantial risk to people who are nearby," President Obama said Thursday.

The risk was that hot nuclear reactors and spent-fuel pools would heat up without water to cool them down. An uncontrolled heat-up of the nuclear equipment could result in dangerous bursts of radiation into the atmosphere, which is why officials have evacuated the area closest to the power plant.

With some devastated stretches of coastline still untouched by recovery teams, the official toll of dead and missing in last Friday's massive earthquake and tsunami topped 15,000, as hundreds of thousands of stranded survivors coped with punishing hardships brought on by subfreezing temperatures and shortages of fuel, food and other basic necessities.

Post-quake deaths, particularly among the frail, ill and elderly, were on the rise in sometimes-primitive shelters, some of which lacked heat even as temperatures fell to 21 degrees Fahrenheit overnight.

As of Friday, the official death toll stood at 5,692, according to the National Police Agency, and 9,522 were unaccounted for and feared dead.

Authorities hoped to augment improvised water-spraying tactics on the power plant 150 miles north of Tokyo later Friday or early Saturday with power from a makeshift cable to try to restart pumps that would help cool some of the nuclear equipment.

On Thursday, authorities desperately tried to spray water on the facility by helicopter, but only four loads, totaling about 30 tons, were tossed on the plant before high radiation levels forced them to stop. Most of the water missed the reactors.

The bursts of radiation at the plant also meant that workers will have to be quickly rotated out, and some could rapidly reach their annual exposure limit to radiation. Disaster officials faced a grim choice of scaling back containment efforts or allow workers to face radiation levels that could increase their risk for cancer.

The exodus of foreigners from Japan gathered momentum, with several governments advising their nationals to not only leave the quake zone but also depart from the capital.

In Washington, the State Department reported the first voluntary evacuation flight of U.S. citizens from Japan to Taipei, wire services reported. American officials authorized the voluntary departures of family members and dependents of U.S. government personnel from northeastern Japan.

As many Japanese sought refuge within their homeland, they put more distance between themselves and the crippled nuclear complex, packing aboard trains headed south. The national nightmare is one that envisions a full-scale meltdown at the reactors in Fukushima prefecture, although prevailing winds would probably disperse much of a massive radiation release over the Pacific Ocean.

Obama has assured Americans that the radiation did not pose a risk to U.S. territory.

The Japanese head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency was expected to arrive in Japan on Friday, accompanied by international experts. The agency's Graham Andrew said there had been "no significant worsening" of the situation, but neither was any major progress being reported.

The crisis was roiling financial markets worldwide, and officials from the world's wealthiest economies planned talks Friday aimed at calming the situation.

Estimates of quake losses could run to $200 billion.

Electricity supplies have become a worrying element of the multipronged crisis. A massive threatened blackout was averted Thursday, but rolling power cuts and voluntary conservation areas are still leaving a shortfall. In the quake zone, Japanese officials said tens of thousands were still without power in unseasonably cold weather. An additional 1.6 million households still do not have running water.

The shortage of gasoline has forced businesses far from the disaster zone to close down and has slowed deliveries of urgently needed humanitarian aid to earthquake and tsunami victims. Hospitals reported running low on medicine.

As snow fell over Sendai, one of the quake zone's largest cities, people under umbrellas waited in long lines that snaked around blocks to enter the few supermarkets that were open. Gas lines stretched more than a mile.

"This is the biggest disaster since World War II, and they are totally paralyzed,'' said Kit Miyamoto, a Japanese American structural engineer who was inspecting damage in tsunami-ravaged Kesennuma.

One shortage often spawned another; people staying in shelters could not get food because they could not drive around looking for it. People used up gas looking for gas.

"The refugees in the sports center are lacking food. If they had the gasoline, they could drive somewhere to get food, but they are stuck here,'' said Muneo Saijo, a shopkeeper who was helping evacuees in Kesennuma.

Even a week after the start of the crisis, many struggled to comprehend the level of privation in wealthy Japan.

"We're an affluent country," said Masahiko Nagaska, a 32-year-old Panasonic employee in Yamagata, in the heart of the earthquake zone. "But there's no food on the shelves."

In Tokyo, trappings of modern life were in disarray. As aftershocks continue rumbling through the capital, ATMs stopped producing cash, and some trains were canceled and neighborhoods were dimmed to conserve energy.

In Washington, officials said the nuclear crisis showed no signs of diminishing. "This is something that will likely take some time to work through, possibly weeks," said Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Higher-than-normal levels of radiation were detected on the clothes of airline passengers from Japan in South Korea and Taiwan, but at levels that did not affect health. Customs officials have detected elements of radiation on cargo containers on flights from Japan that landed in Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth, but determined that the cargo and passengers aboard were not at risk, the Chicago Tribune reported.

barbara.demick@latimes.com

laura.king@latimes.com

Demick reported from Kesennuma and King from Tokyo. Special correspondent Hall reported from Tokyo. Times staff writer Mark Magnier in Takajo, Japan, Ken Dilanian of the Washington bureau, and Rong-Gong Lin II, Thomas H. Maugh II, and Alan Zarembo in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Greater Danger Lies in Spent Fuel Than in Reactors

Greater Danger Lies in Spent Fuel Than in Reactors

By KEITH BRADSHER and HIROKO TABUCHI

Published: March 17, 2011

Years of procrastination in deciding on long-term disposal of highly radioactive fuel rods from nuclear reactors are now coming back to haunt Japanese authorities as they try to control fires and explosions at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

Some countries have tried to limit the number of spent fuel rods that accumulate at nuclear power plants: Germany stores them in costly casks, for example, while China sends them to a desert storage compound in the western province of Gansu. But Japan, like the United States, has kept ever-larger numbers of spent fuel rods in temporary storage pools at the power plants, where they can be guarded with the same security provided for the plants.

Figures provided by Tokyo Electric Power on Thursday show that most of the dangerous uranium at the power plant is actually in the spent fuel rods, not the reactor cores themselves.

The electric utility said that a total of 11,125 spent fuel rod assemblies were stored at the site. That is about four times as much radioactive material as in the reactor cores combined.

Now those temporary pools are proving the power plant’s Achilles’ heel, with the water in the pools either boiling away or leaking out of their containments, and efforts to add more water having gone awry. While spent fuel rods generate significantly less heat than newer ones do, there are strong indications that some fuel rods have begun to melt and release extremely high levels of radiation. Japanese workers struggled on Thursday to add more water to the storage pool at Reactor No. 3.

Helicopters dropped water, only to have it scattered by strong breezes. Water cannons mounted on police trucks — equipment designed to disperse rioters — were then deployed to spray water on the pools. It is unclear if that effort worked.

Richard T. Lahey Jr., a retired nuclear engineer who oversaw General Electric’s safety research in the early 1970s for the kind of nuclear reactors used in Fukushima, said that the zirconium cladding on the fuel rods could burst into flames if exposed to air for hours when a storage pool lost its water.

Zirconium, once ignited, burns extremely hot and is difficult to extinguish, added Mr. Lahey, who helped write a classified report for the United States government several years ago on the vulnerabilities of storage pools at American nuclear reactors.

Very high levels of radiation above the storage pools suggest that the water has drained in the 39-foot-deep pools to the point that the 13-foot-high fuel rod assemblies have been exposed to air for hours and are starting to melt, said Robert Albrecht, a longtime nuclear engineer who worked as a consultant to the Japanese nuclear reactor manufacturing industry in the 1980s. Under normal conditions, the rods are kept covered with 26 feet of water that is circulated to prevent it from growing too warm.

Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, made the startling assertion on Wednesday that there was little or no water left in another storage pool, the one on top of Reactor No. 4, and expressed grave concern about the radiation that would be released as a result.

The 1,479 spent fuel rod assemblies there include 548 that were removed from the reactor only in November and December to prepare the reactor for maintenance, and these may be emitting more heat than the older assemblies in other storage pools.

Even without recirculating water, it should take many days for the water in a storage pool to evaporate, nuclear engineers said. So the rapid evaporation and even boiling of water in the storage pools now is a mystery, raising the question of whether the pools may also be leaking.

Michael Friedlander, a former senior nuclear power plant operator who worked 13 years at three American reactors, said that storage pools typically had a liner of stainless steel three-eighths of an inch thick, and that they rested on reinforced concrete bases. So even if the liner ruptured, “unless the concrete was torn apart, there’s no place for the water to go,” he said.

Mr. Lahey said that much of the water may have sloshed out during the earthquake. Much smaller earthquakes in California have produced heavy water losses from sloshing at storage pools there, partly because the pools are located high in reactor buildings.

“It’s like being at the top of a flagpole, and once you start ground motion, you can easily slosh it,” he said.

When the water in a storage pool disappears, the fuel rods’ uranium continues to heat the rods’ zirconium cladding. This causes the zirconium to oxidize, or rust, and even catch fire. The spent fuel rods have little radioactive iodine, which has a half-life of eight days and has mostly disappeared through radioactive decay once fission stopped when the rods left the reactor cores. But the spent fuel rods are still loaded with cesium and strontium that can start to escape if the fuel rods burn.

One factor that might determine how serious the situation becomes is whether the uranium oxide pellets in the rods stay vertical even if the cladding burns off. This is possible because pellets sometimes become fused together while in the reactor. If the pellets stay standing up, then even with the water and zirconium gone, nuclear fission will not take place, Mr. Albrecht said.

But Tokyo Electric said this week that there was a chance of “recriticality” in the storage pools — that is, the uranium in the fuel rods could resume the fission that previously took place inside the reactor, spewing out radioactive byproducts.

Mr. Albrecht said this was very unlikely, but could happen if the stacks of pellets slumped over and became jumbled together on the floor of the storage pool.

Plant workers would then need to add water with lots of boron because the boron absorbs neutrons and interrupts nuclear chain reactions.

If a lot of fission occurs, which may happen only in an extreme case, the uranium would melt through anything underneath it. If it encounters water as it descends, a steam explosion could then scatter the molten uranium.

At Daiichi, each assembly has either 64 large fuel rods or 81 slightly smaller fuel rods. A typical fuel rod assembly has roughly 380 pounds of uranium.

One big worry for Japanese officials is that Reactor No. 3, the main target of the helicopters and water cannons on Thursday, uses a new and different fuel. It uses mixed oxides, or mox, which contains a mixture of uranium and plutonium, and can produce a more dangerous radioactive plume if scattered by fire or explosions. According to Tokyo Electric, 32 of the 514 fuel rod assemblies in the storage pond at Reactor No. 3 contain mox.

Japan had hoped to solve the spent fuel buildup with a large-scale plan to recycle the rods into fuel that would go back into its nuclear program. But even before Friday’s quake, that plan had hit setbacks.

Central to Japan’s plans is a $28 billion reprocessing facility in Rokkasho village, north of the quake zone, which would extract uranium and plutonium from the rods for use in making mox fuel. After countless construction delays, test runs began in 2006, and the plant’s operator, Japan Nuclear Fuel, said operations would begin in 2010. But in late 2010, its opening was delayed by two years.

To close the nuclear fuel recycling process, Japan also built the Monju, a fast breeder reactor, which started running in full in 1994. But a year later, a fire caused by a sodium leak shut down the plant.

Despite revelations that the operator, the quasi-governmental Japan Atomic Energy Agency, had covered up the seriousness of the accident, Monju again started operating at a reduced capacity.

Another nuclear reprocessing facility in Tokaimura has been shut down since 1999, when an accident at an experimental fast breeder showered hundreds in the vicinity with radiation, and two workers were killed.

Many of these facilities were hit by Friday’s earthquake. A spent fuel pool at Rokkasho spilled over, and power at the plant was lost, triggering backup generators, Japan Nuclear Fuel said.

According to the Citizens Nuclear Information Center, an anti-nuclear group, about 3,000 tons of fuel are stored at Rokkasho. But the plant, about 180 feet above sea level, escaped the tsunami. Grid power was restored on Monday, the company said.

Radiation seeping into food chain in Japan

Radiation seeping into food chain in Japan

by Shino Yuasa and Eric Talmadge - Mar. 19, 2011 12:35 PM

Associated Press

FUKUSHIMA, Japan - In the first sign that contamination from Japan's stricken nuclear complex had seeped into the food chain, officials said Saturday that radiation levels in spinach and milk from farms near the tsunami-crippled facility exceeded government safety limits.

Minuscule amounts of radioactive iodine also were found in tap water Friday in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan - although experts said none of those tests showed any health risks. The Health Ministry also said that radioactive iodine slightly above government safety limits was found in drinking water at one point Thursday in a sampling from Fukushima prefecture, the site of the nuclear plant, but later tests showed the level had fallen again.

Six workers trying to bring the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant back under control were exposed to more than 100 millisieverts of radiation - Japan's normal limit for those involved in emergency operations, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the complex. The government raised that limit to 250 millisieverts on Tuesday as the crisis escalated.

Officials said the crisis at the plant appeared to be stabilizing, with near-constant dousing of dangerously overheated reactors and uranium fuel, but the situation was still far from resolved.

"We more or less do not expect to see anything worse than what we are seeing now," said Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Japan has been grappling with a cascade of disasters unleashed by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake on March 11. The quake spawned a tsunami that ravaged Japan's northeastern coast, killing more than 7,600 people and knocking out cooling systems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, causing the complex to leak radiation.

More than 11,000 people are still missing, and more than 452,000 are living in shelters.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, meanwhile, insisted the contaminated foods "pose no immediate health risk."

The tainted milk was found 20 miles from the plant, a local official said. The spinach was collected from six farms between 60 miles and 75 miles to the south of the reactors.

Those areas are rich farm country known for melons, rice and peaches, so the contamination could affect food supplies for large parts of Japan.

More tests was being done on other foods, Edano said, and if they show further contamination, then food shipments from the area would be halted.

Officials said it was too early to know if the nuclear crisis caused the contamination, but Edano said air sampling done near the dairy showed higher-than-normal radiation levels.

Iodine levels in the spinach exceeded safety limits by three to seven times, a food safety official said. Tests on the milk done Wednesday detected small amounts of iodine-131 and cesium-137, the latter being a longer-lasting element that can cause more types of cancer. But only iodine was detected Thursday and Friday, a Health Ministry official said.

After the announcements, Japanese officials immediately tried to calm an already-jittery public, saying the amounts detected were so small that people would have to consume unimaginable amounts to endanger their health.

"Can you imagine eating one kilogram of spinach every day for one year?" said State Secretary of Health Minister Yoko Komiyama. One kilogram is a little over two pounds.

Edano said someone drinking the tainted milk for one year would consume as much radiation as in a CT scan; for the spinach, it would be one-fifth of a CT scan. A CT scan is a compressed series of X-rays used for medical tests.

The Health Ministry said iodine levels slightly above the safety limit were discovered Thursday in drinking water samples from Fukushima prefecture. On Friday, levels were about half that benchmark; by Saturday, they had fallen further.

Drinking one liter of water with the iodine at Thursday's levels is the equivalent of receiving one-eighty-eighth of the radiation from a chest X-ray, said Kazuma Yokota, a spokesman for the prefecture's disaster response headquarters.

The trace amounts of iodine were found in Tokyo's water on Friday, the first day since the government ordered nationwide daily sampling due to the nuclear crisis, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology said. A ministry statement said the amounts found did not exceed government safety limits. But tests on water, which for decades were only done once a year, usually show no iodine.

At the Fukushima plant, emergency workers have been struggling to cool the reactors and the pools used to store used nuclear fuel, as well as to put the facility back on the electricity grid.

A replacement power line reached the complex Friday, but workers needed to methodically work through badly damaged and deeply complex electrical systems to make the final linkups without setting off a spark and potentially an explosion. Company officials hoped to be able to switch on the cooling systems Sunday.

Once the power is reconnected, it is not clear if the cooling systems will still work.

A fire truck with a high-pressure cannon pumped water directly from the ocean into one of the most troubled areas of the complex - the cooling pool for used fuel rods at the plant's Unit 3. Because of high radiation levels, firefighters only went to the truck every three hours to refuel it.

Holes were also punched in the roofs of units 5 and 6 to vent buildups of hydrogen gas, and the temperature in Unit 5's fuel storage pool dropped after new water was pumped in, according to officials with Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the complex.

More workers were thrown into the effort - bringing the total at the complex to 500 - and the safety threshold for their radiation exposure was raised 2 1/2 times so they could keep working.

Officials insisted that would cause no health damage.

Edano said conditions at the reactors in Units 1, 2 and 3 - all of which have been rocked by explosions in the past eight days - had "stabilized."

The reactors and the storage pools both need constant sources of cooling water. Even when they are taken from reactors, uranium rods remain very hot and must be cooled for months, possibly longer, to prevent them from heating up again and emitting radioactivity.

Low levels of radiation have been detected well beyond Tokyo, which is 140 miles (220 kilometers) south of the plant, but hazardous levels have been limited to the plant itself.

People evacuated from around the plant, along with some emergency workers, have tested positive for radiation exposure. Three firefighters needed to be decontaminated with showers, while among the 18 plant workers who tested positive, one absorbed about one-tenth of the amount that could induce radiation poisoning.

Outside the bustling disaster response center in the city of Fukushima, 40 miles (60 kilometers) northwest of the plant, government nuclear specialist Kazuya Konno was able to take only a three-minute break for his first meeting since the quake with his wife, Junko, and their children.

"It's very nerve-racking. We really don't know what is going to become of our city," said Junko Konno, 35. "Like most other people, we have been staying indoors unless we have to go out."

She brought her husband a small backpack with a change of clothes and snacks. The girls - aged 4 and 6 and wearing pink surgical masks decorated with Mickey Mouse - gave their father hugs.

The government conceded Friday that it was slow to respond to the crisis and welcomed ever-growing help from the U.S. in hopes of preventing a complete meltdown.

Nishiyama, of the nuclear safety agency, also said backup power systems at the plant had been improperly protected, leaving them vulnerable to the tsunami.

The failure of Fukushima's backup power systems, which were supposed to keep cooling systems going in the aftermath of the earthquake, let uranium fuel overheat and were a "main cause" of the crisis, Nishiyama said.

"I cannot say whether it was a human error, but we should examine the case closely," he told reporters.

A spokesman for Tokyo Electric said that while the generators were not directly exposed to the waves, some electrical support equipment was outside. The complex was protected against tsunamis of up to 16 feet, he said. Media reports say the tsunami was at least 6 meters (20 feet) high when it struck Fukushima.

Spokesman Motoyasu Tamaki also acknowledged that the complex was old, and might not have been as well-equipped as newer facilities.

The crisis has led to power shortages and factory closures, and triggered a plunge in Japanese stock prices.

On Saturday evening, Japan was rattled by 6.1-magnitude aftershock, with an epicenter just south of the troubled nuclear plants. The temblor, centered 90 miles northeast of Tokyo, shook buildings in the capital.

Japan disaster death toll to top 18,000

Police: Japan disaster death toll to top 18,000

Mar. 20, 2011 07:40 PM

Associated Press

TOKYO - The toll of Japan's triple disaster came into clearer focus Monday after police estimates showed more than 18,000 people died, the World Bank said rebuilding may cost $235 billion and more cases of radiation-tainted vegetables and tap water turned up.

Japanese officials reported progress over the weekend in their battle to gain control over a nuclear complex that began leaking radiation after suffering quake and tsunami damage, though the crisis was far from over, with a dangerous new surge in pressure reported in one of the plant's six reactors.

The announcement by Japan's Health Ministry late Sunday that tests had detected excess amounts of radioactive elements on canola and chrysanthemum greens marked a low moment in a day that had been peppered with bits of positive news: First, a teenager and his grandmother were found alive nine days after being trapped in their earthquake-shattered home. Then, the operator of the overheated nuclear plant said two of the six reactor units were safely cooled down.

"We consider that now we have come to a situation where we are very close to getting the situation under control," Deputy Cabinet Secretary Tetsuro Fukuyama said.

Still, serious problems remained at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex. Pressure unexpectedly rose in a third unit's reactor, meaning plant operators may need to deliberately release radioactive steam. That has only added to public anxiety over radiation that began leaking from the plant after a monstrous earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan on March 11 and left the plant unstable. As day broke Monday, Japan's military resumed dousing of the complex's troubled Unit 4.

The World Bank said in report Monday that Japan may need five years to rebuild from the catastrophic disasters, which caused up to $235 billion in damage, saying the cost to private insurers will be up to $33 billion and that the government will spend $12 billion on reconstruction in the current national budget and much more later.

The safety of food and water was of particular concern. The government halted shipments of spinach from one area and raw milk from another near the nuclear plant after tests found iodine exceeded safety limits. Tokyo's tap water, where iodine turned up Friday, now has cesium. Rain and dust are also tainted.

Early Monday, the Health Ministry advised Iitate, a village of 6,000 people about 19 miles northwest of the Fukushima plant, not to drink tap water due to elevated levels of iodine. Ministry spokesman Takayuki Matsuda said iodine three times the normal level was detected there -- about one twenty-sixth of the level of a chest X-ray in one liter of water.

In all cases, the government said the radiation levels were too small to pose an immediate health risk. But Tsugumi Hasegawa was skeptical as she cared for her 4-year-old daughter at a shelter in a gymnasium crammed with 1,400 people about 50 miles from the plant.

"I still have no idea what the numbers they are giving about radiation levels mean. It's all so confusing," said Hasegawa, 29, from the small town of Futuba in the shadow of the nuclear complex. "And I wonder if they aren't playing down the dangers to keep us from panicking. I don't know who to trust."

All six of the nuclear complex's reactor units saw trouble after the disasters knocked out cooling systems. In a small advance, the plant's operator declared Units 5 and 6 -- the least troublesome -- under control after their nuclear fuel storage pools cooled to safe levels. Progress was made to reconnect two other units to the electric grid and in pumping seawater to cool another reactor and replenish it and a sixth reactor's storage pools.

But the buildup in pressure inside the vessel holding Unit 3's reactor presented some danger, forcing officials to consider venting. The tactic produced explosions of radioactive gas during the early days of the crisis.

"Even if certain things go smoothly, there would be twists and turns," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters. "At the moment, we are not so optimistic that there will be a breakthrough."

Growing concerns about radiation add to the overwhelming chain of disasters Japan has struggled with since the 9.0-magnitude quake. The resulting tsunami ravaged the northeastern coast. All told, police estimates show more than about 18,400 died. More than 15,000 deaths are likely in Miyagi, the prefecture that took the full impact of the wave, said a police spokesman.

"It is very distressing as we recover more bodies day by days," said Hitoshi Sugawara, the spokesman.

Police in other parts of the disaster area declined to provide estimates, but confirmed about 3,400 deaths. Nationwide, official figures show the disasters killing more than 8,600 people, and leaving more than 12,800 people missing, but those two lists may have some overlap.

The disasters have displaced another 452,000, who are living in shelters.

Fuel, food and water remain scarce. The government in recent days acknowledged being caught ill-prepared by an enormous disaster that the prime minister has called the worst crisis since World War II.

Bodies are piling up in some of the devastated communities and badly decomposing even amid chilly rain and snow.

"The recent bodies -- we can't show them to the families. The faces have been purple, which means they are starting to decompose," says Shuji Horaguchi, a disaster relief official setting up a center to process the dead in Natori, on the outskirts of the tsunami-flattened city of Sendai. "Some we're finding now have been in the water for a long time, they're not in good shape. Crabs and fish have eaten parts."

Contamination of food and water compounds the government's difficulties, heightening the broader public's sense of dread about safety. Consumers in markets snapped up bottled water, shunned spinach from Ibaraki -- the prefecture where the tainted spinach was found -- and overall expressed concern about food safety.

Experts have said the amounts of iodine detected in milk, spinach and water pose no discernible risks to public health unless consumed in enormous quantities over a long time. Iodine breaks down quickly, after eight days, minimizing its harmfulness, unlike other radioactive isotopes such as cesium-137 or uranium-238, which remain in the environment for decades or longer.

High levels of iodine are linked to thyroid cancer, one of the least deadly cancers if treated. Cesium is a longer-lasting element that affects the whole body and raises cancer risk.

Rain forecast for the Fukushima area also could further localize the contamination, bringing the radiation to the ground closer to the plant.

Edano tried to reassure the public for a second day in a row. "If you eat it once, or twice, or even for several days, it's not just that it's not an immediate threat to health, it's that even in the future it is not a risk," Edano said. "Experts say there is no threat to human health."

No contamination has been reported in Japan's main food export -- seafood -- worth about $1.6 billion a year and less than 0.3 percent of its total exports.

Amid the anxiety, there were moments of joy on Sunday. An 80-year-old woman and her teenage grandson were rescued from their flattened two-story house after nine days, when the teen pulled himself to the roof and shouted to police for help.

Other survivors enjoyed smaller victories. Kiyoshi Hiratsuka and his family managed to pull his beloved Harley Davidson motorcycle from the rubble in their hometown of Onagawa. The 37-year-old mechanic said he knows it will never work anymore. "But I want to keep it as a memorial."

Tokyo tap water not safe for infants

Tokyo tap water not safe for infants, officials warn

Julie Makinen reporting from Tokyo, Japan

March 23, 2011, 4:59 a.m.

Infants in Tokyo and five surrounding cities should not be allowed to consume tap water, the city's government said Wednesday after elevated levels of radioactive iodine from a crippled nuclear plant were detected at a water treatment plant.

Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan urged consumers to not eat a dozen types of contaminated vegetables from the region surrounding the nuclear facility 150 miles northeast of the capital and also expanded a shipment ban.

Water tests in Tokyo found levels of radioactive iodine 131 at 210 becquerels per liter Tuesday and 190 becquerels per liter on Wednesday morning, about double the level of 100 becquerels per liter deemed safe for children under the age of 1. A level of 300 becquerels per liter is considered safe for adults.

Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said the city's water was safe for "non-potable" use and urged residents to remain calm. But some convenience stores were sold out of bottled water late Wednesday.

Workers continued their struggle to gain control over the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Dark smoke at the No. 3 reactor forced officials to evacuate the facility Wednesday afternoon.

Earlier, high temperatures at Reactor No. 1 and high radiation at Reactor No. 2 were reported, the government's nuclear agency said, dashing hopes that reestablishing power to the entire plant on Tuesday would quickly help stabilize it.

The national government said damage from the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident could reach 25 trillion yen or nearly $310 billion, significantly more than the World Bank's recent estimate of $235 billion. The disaster could shrink Japan's gross domestic product by 0.5% in fiscal year 2011, which begins April 1, the government said.

As relief officials and evacuees continued to battle subfreezing temperatures on the 12th day after the quake, the National Police agency said the death toll had risen to 9,452 and the number of missing jumped by nearly 1,000 to 14,700.

In Yamada city, in Iwate prefecture, UCLA pediatric critical care doctor Kozue Shimabukuro said snow was falling as evacuees at Yamada South elementary school lined up for food. Residents' mobility was improving after days in which residents were only able to get around by foot, she said, thanks in part to Japanese Self-Defense Force troops clearing massive amounts of debris. A gas shortage also has eased, and Shimabukuro's school now has electricity and running water, but many evacuees are suffering from diarrhea, upper respiratory problems, and nausea.

"A portable shower was set up today, so it was a good day," said Shimabukuro, 34, a native of Okinawa, who is volunteering with relief efforts.

Some 500 people are staying at the school, she said, many of them seniors and children who seem to have lost their families. While some of the children are still too young to realize what has happened, others are starting to comprehend the reality.

"One girl today, she was about 7, she kept saying that she feels like her legs are shaking, like she can't walk anymore," Shimabukuro said, pausing while another aftershock rocked the school. "Neurologically she's fine, but I told her she's probably dehydrated, needs to drink water.

"She just started to cry, big tears. She said, 'I want my dad to carry me on his back again. A piggyback ride from daddy.' I just felt so bad I couldn't do that for her."

At the nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said two workers were hospitalized after being injured Tuesday in the effort to reconnect power, although they were not exposed to radiation.

Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano said the source of the smoke Wednesday afternoon at Reactor No. 3 was unclear. But radiation levels 1 kilometer west of the plant had not changed, officials said.

In Fukushima prefecture, tap water with levels exceeding 300 becquerels has been found.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday banned the importation of milk, milk products and fresh fruits and vegetables from four areas near the plant.

Tepco has asked banks for about $18 billion in emergency loans to cope with the crisis at the power plant and the resulting power shortages in a wider area. Economy Minister Kaoru Yosano said ongoing power shortages would pose the biggest problem for Japan's economy.

Insurers are tabulating their losses. Munich Re said Tuesday that it estimated its claims in Japan would amount to about 1.5 billion euros, or about $2.1 billion, and that its profit forecast for the year could not be maintained.

Quake becomes world's costliest natural disaster

Japan quake becomes world's costliest natural disaster

5:48 a.m. CDT, March 23, 2011

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese government on Wednesday estimated the direct damage from a deadly earthquake and tsunami that struck the country's northeast this month at as much as $310 billion, making it the world's costliest natural disaster.

The first official damage estimates will serve to map out disaster relief plans and emergency budgets to fund recovery costs.

Tokyo said the estimate covered damage to roads, homes, factories and other infrastructure, and eclipses the losses incurred by other natural disasters such as the 1995 Kobe quake and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The figure could go even higher, as the estimate does not include losses in economic activity from planned power outages or the broader impact of a crisis at a stricken nuclear power plant in Fukushima, which economists say pose the biggest risks to the economy.

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"The impact from the planned power outages is likely to be significant," Fumihira Nishizaki, director of macroeconomic analysis at the Cabinet Office told reporters.

The upper end of the 16-25 trillion yen ($197-308 billion) estimate range would amount to about 6 percent of Japan's gross domestic product.

"This quake will cause the condition of Japan's economy and output to be severe," Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa told a parliamentary committee.

Speaking separately, central bank board member Ryuzo Miyao repeated the bank's pledge to take appropriate policy action if needed to support the world's third-largest economy.

"We need to be mindful that the quake's negative impact on the economy, at least on the supply side, may be bigger than the Kobe quake 16 years ago, and be prolonged," he added.

In its initial response to the disaster, the central bank doubled the funds earmarked for purchases of a range of assets and started pumping record amounts of cash into the money market to prevent it from seizing up.

It later followed up by joining forces with other G7 central banks in a rare coordinated move to keep a rallying yen from inflicting further damage to the economy.

SPENDING PLAN NEXT

With interest rates near zero and banks' cash balances at records above levels seen in 2001-2006 when the BOJ sought to flood the banking system with cash to spur lending, there is not much more the central bank can do to help the economy.

"The ball is in the government's court," said Yasunari Ueno, chief market economist at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo. "Currency intervention was one thing. The next thing it needs to do is to come up with a credible fiscal spending plan."

Officials from the ruling coalition have said that at least two and perhaps more emergency budgets would be needed to pay for the reconstruction, with the first focused on immediate disaster relief, possible in April or May.

The government has yet to decide how it will finance those budgets, which some analysts say may exceed $100 billion and most certainly will require new borrowing.

Yet with its debt already twice the size of its $5 trillion economy -- the highest among industrialized nations -- Japan should not rush to borrow to pay for the reconstruction, Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said.

"With our public finances in a severe situation, we'll closely watch how it (the quake) could affect tax revenues," Noda was quoted by a government official as telling a cabinet meeting. "As for financial resources for reconstruction, we need to ensure market confidence and should not rely too readily on debt issuance," he said.

Economists and rating agencies say Tokyo should have little trouble raising extra funds, but some analysts say there is a risk that additional supply of government bonds could push up Tokyo's borrowing costs.

BLACKOUTS RISK

While economists expect Japan's biggest reconstruction push since the post-World War Two period to give the hard-hit economy a badly needed lift in the second half of the year, they warn that power shortages are the greatest risk to such a scenario.

The 9.0 magnitude quake that struck on March 11 unleashed a deadly tsunami that wiped out whole communities, leaving nearly 23,000 people dead or missing and 350,000 homeless, and crippling the biggest power utility in Japan and Asia.

Tokyo Electric Power Co, which serves Tokyo and the surrounding area that accounts for 40 percent of Japan's economic output, lost about 20 percent of its operating thermal and nuclear power generation and is unlikely to get enough back online to meet peak summer demand.

The utility is unable to get much surplus power from operators in the undamaged western part of the country because they operate with a different power frequency.

Toyota Motor Co, the world's top automaker, could be losing about $74 million of profit for every day its 12 assembly plants remain shut, Goldman Sachs estimated, and it is just one of dozens, if not hundreds, of Japanese manufacturers facing disruptions.

Many analysts see a ripple effect from the disaster with disruption to production, both inside Japan and abroad, and the impact of fears of radiation and food contamination hurting business and consumer sentiment worldwide. ($1 = 81.065 Japanese Yen)

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Dangerous breach suspected at Japanese nuke plant

Posted 3/25/2011 7:22 AM ET

By Shino Yuasa And Jay Alabaster, Associated Press

TOKYO — A suspected breach in the reactor core at one unit of a stricken Fukushima nuclear plant could mean more serious radioactive contamination,Japanese officials said Friday, revealing what may prove a major setback in the mission to bring the leaking plant under control.

The uncertain situation halted work at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, where dozens had been working feverishly to stop the overheated plant from leaking dangerous radiation, officials said. The plant has leaked some low levels of radiation, but a breach could mean a much larger release of contaminants.

Officials are also grappling with a humanitarian crisis, with much of the frigid northeast still a scene of despair and devastation as Japan struggles to feed and house hundreds of thousands of homeless survivors, clear away debris and bury the dead.

Police said the official death toll jumped past 10,000 on Friday. With the cleanup and recovery operations continuing and more than 17,400 listed as missing, the final number of dead was expected to surpass 18,000.

In the devastated coastal town of Onagawa, Shintaro Kamihara and his small troop from Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force searched a debris-strewn beach long enough to serve as an impromptu coffin.

The corpse they found lay off to the side of the road beneath a wet, yellow blanket. Just beyond, a station wagon perched precariously on the roof of a hollowed-out, two-story hotel.

In the early days, he said his troops delivered goods to coastal towns with no access, but now roads have been repaired. A large boat nearby had hot water so people could take baths onboard.

Tomohiko Abe, 45, a machinist at the local atomic plant, was in Onagawa to salvage what he could from his car, which was parked in a lot near the water when the waves came crashing onshore.

"We finally got electricity a day or two ago, but water is still a problem," he said.

He said he has not had a bath or shower since the quake two weeks ago.

"It's still like I'm in a dream," he said. "People say it's like a movie, but it's been worse than any movie I've ever seen."

In Fukushima, the confusion at the nuclear plant was yet another setback to the urgent task of gaining control of the facility 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo.

Suspicions of a possible breach were raised when two workers waded into water 10,000 times more radioactive than is typical and suffered skin burns, the Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency said.

However, though damage cannot be ruled out, the cause remained unclear, spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama told reporters.

"It is possible there may be damage somewhere in the reactor," he said, adding that a leak in the plumbing or the vents could also be to blame.

Elevated levels of radiation have already turned up in raw milk, seawater and 11 kinds of vegetables, including broccoli, cauliflower and turnips. Tap water in several areas of Japan -- including Tokyo -- also tested with radiation levels considered unsafe for infants, who are particularly vulnerable to cancer-causing radioactive iodine, officials said.

The scare caused a run on bottled water in the capital, and prompted officials to distribute bottled water to families with babies.

Previous radioactive emissions have come from intentional efforts to vent small amounts of steam through valves to prevent the core from bursting. However, releases from a breach could allow uncontrolled quantities of radioactive contaminants to escape into the surrounding ground or air.

Government spokesman Yukio Edano said Thursday's accident showed "safety measures may not be adequate" and warned that may contribute to rising anxiety among people about how the disaster is being managed.

"We have to make sure that safety is secured for the people working in that area. We truly believe that is incumbent upon us," the chief Cabinet secretary told reporters Friday, adding that plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., was ordered to ensure workers' safety.

Meanwhile, damage to factories was taking its toll on the world's third-largest economy and creating a ripple effect felt worldwide.

Nissan Motor Co. said it may move part of its engine production line to the United States because of damage to a plant.

The quake and tsunami are emerging as the world's most expensive natural disasters on record, wreaking up to $310 billion in damages, the government said.

"There is no doubt that we have immense economic and financial damage," Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said. "It will be our task how to recover from the damage."

At Sendai's port, brand new Toyota cars lay crushed in piles. At the airport, flooded by the tsunami on March 11, U.S. Marines used bulldozers and shovels to shift wrecked cars that lay scattered like discarded toys.

With fuel at a premium, the line of cars waiting for gasoline stretched down the street -- and those patient enough to make it to the pump were restricted to 4,000-yen (about $40) worth of fuel.

Still, there were examples resilience, patience and fortitude across the region.

In Soma, a hard-hit town along the Fukushima prefecture coast, rubble covered the block where Hiroshi Suzuki's home once stood. He watched as soldiers dug into mounds of timber had been neighbors' homes in search of bodies. Just three bodies have been pulled out.

"I never expected to have to live through anything like this," he said, mournfully. Suzuki is one of Soma's lucky, but the tsunami washed away the shop where he sold fish and seaweed.

"My business is gone. I don't think I will ever be able to recover," said Suzuki, 59.

Still, he managed to find a bright side. "The one good thing is the way everyone is pulling together and helping each other. No one is stealing or looting," he said.

"It makes me feel proud to be Japanese."

___

Alabaster reported from Onagawa. Associated Press writers Tomoko A. Hosaka, Jean H. Lee and Jeff Donn in Tokyo, Eric Talmadge in Soma and Johnson Lai in Sendai contributed to this report.

Source

Japan Quietly Evacuating a Wider Radius From Reactors

By DAVID JOLLY, HIROKO TABUCHI and KEITH BRADSHER

Published: March 25, 2011

TOKYO — Japanese officials began quietly encouraging people to evacuate a larger swath of territory around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Friday, a sign that they hold little hope that the crippled facility will soon be brought under control.

The authorities said they would now assist people who want to leave the area from 12 to 19 miles outside the crippled plant and said they were now encouraging “voluntary evacuation” from the area. Those people had been advised March 15 to remain indoors, while those within a 12-mile radius of the plant had been ordered to evacuate.

The United States has recommended that its citizens stay at least 50 miles away from the plant.

Speaking to a national audience at a news conference Friday night to mark the two weeks since the magnitude 9.0 quake and the devastating tsunami that followed it, Prime Minister Naoto Kan dodged a reporter’s question about whether the government was ordering a full evacuation, saying officials were simply following the recommendation of the Japan Nuclear Safety Commission.

In the latest setback to the effort to contain the nuclear crisis, evidence emerged that the reactor vessel of the No. 3 unit may have been damaged, an official said Friday. The development, described at a news conference by Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, raises the possibility that radiation from the mox fuel in the reactor — a combination of uranium and plutonium — could be released.

One sign that a breach may have occurred in the reactor vessel, Mr. Nishiyama said, took place on Thursday when three workers who were trying to connect an electrical cable to a pump in a turbine building next to the reactor were injured when they stepped into water that was found to be significantly more radioactive than normal in a reactor.

The No. 3 unit, the only one of the six reactors at the site that uses the mox fuel, was damaged by a hydrogen explosion on March 14. Workers have been seeking to keep it cool by spraying it with seawater along with a more recent effort to restart the reactor’s cooling system. A broken vessel is not the only possible explanation, he said. The water might have leaked from another part of the facility.

The news Friday and the discovery this week of a radioactive isotope in the water supplies of Tokyo and neighboring prefectures has punctured the mood of optimism with which the week began, leaving a sense that the battle to fix the damaged plant will be a long one.

“The situation still requires caution,” Mr. Kan, grave and tired-looking, told the nation. “Our measures are aimed at preventing the circumstances from getting worse.”

Mr. Kan also apologized to the businesses and farmers whose livelihoods have been endangered by the plant. He acknowledged the assistance of the United States and thanked the many people — utility workers, military personnel, policemen and firefighters — who are risking their lives in an effort to restore the cooling functions of the plant and stop the harmful release of radiation.

“Let us take courage, and walk together to rebuild,” he added. “The nation united, as one, to overcome the crisis.”

No one is being ordered to evacuate the second zone around the troubled plant, officials said, and people may choose to remain, but many have already left of their own accord, tiring of the anxiety and tedium of remaining cooped up as the nuclear crisis simmers just a few miles away. Many are said to be virtual prisoners, with no access to shopping and immobilized by a lack of gasoline.

“What we’ve been finding is that in that area life has become quite difficult,” Noriyuki Shikata, deputy cabinet secretary for Prime Minister Naoto Kan, said in a telephone interview. “People don’t want to go into the zone to make deliveries.”

Mr. Shikata said the question of where those who chose to leave would go was still under consideration.

NHK, the Japanese public broadcaster, quoted a Land Self Defense Force official as saying, “We’re trying to quickly locate everyone who remains, so that we can rapidly help in case the nuclear plant situation worsens.”

Officials continue to be dogged by suspicions that they are not telling the entire story about the radiation leaks. Shunichi Tanaka, former acting chairman of the country’s Atomic Energy Commission, told The Japan Times in an interview published Friday that the government was being irresponsible in forcing people from their homes around the damaged plant without explaining the risks they were facing.

“The government has not yet said in concrete terms why evacuation is necessary to the people who have evacuated,” he said.

The National Police Agency said Friday that the official death toll from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami had passed 10,000, with nearly 17,500 others listed as missing.

There was some good news. Levels of the radioactive isotope found in Tokyo’s water supply fell Friday for a second day, officials said, dropping to 51 becquerels per liter, well below the country’s stringent maximum for infants.

On Wednesday, Tokyo area stores were cleaned out of bottled water after the Tokyo authorities said the isotope, iodine 131, had been detected in the city’s water supply and cautioned those in the affected areas not to give infants tap water. On Thursday, cities in two of Tokyo’s neighboring prefectures, Chiba and Saitama, also reported disturbing levels of radiation in their water.

Nuclear workers will have to keep venting radioactive gases from the damaged reactors, adding to the plume of emissions carried by winds and dispersed by rain. The public has been warned not to consume food and milk from the area near the plant.

Japanese officials said nine days ago that there were signs of damage to the reactor vessel at reactor No. 3, particularly warning then that there might have been damage to the suppression pool.

But Michael Friedlander, a former nuclear power plant operator for 13 years in the United States, said that the presence of radioactive cobalt and molybdenum in water samples taken from the basement of the turbine building of reactor No. 3 raised the possibility of a very different leak.

Both materials typically occur not because of fission but because of routine corrosion in a reactor and its associated piping over the course of many years of use, he said.

These materials are continuously removed from the reactor’s water system as it circulates through a piece of equipment called a condensate polisher, which is located outside the reactor vessel. The discovery of both materials in the basement suggests damage to that equipment or its associated piping, as opposed to a breach of the reactor vessel itself, Mr. Friedlander said.

The condensate polisher is also located in the basement of the turbine building, where the tainted water was found. By contrast, the reactor vessel is actually located in a completely different, adjacent building, and would be far less likely to leak into the basement of the turbine building.

The aggressive use of saltwater to cool the reactor and storage pool may mean that more of these highly radioactive corrosion materials will be dislodged and contaminate the area in the days to come, posing further hazards to repair workers, Mr. Friedlander added.

Speaking at a Webcast press conference, Sakae Muto, a Tokyo Electric Power vice president, said that the company did not know how badly the seawater used to cool the reactors had contributed to corrosion. Seawater leaves residue behind as it evaporates and corrosion damages critical pipes, valves and metal assemblies.

He said the company had found the same problem with contaminated water in the basements of the No.1 and No. 2 turbine buildings as that which caused the men’s injuries in the No. 3 unit. Removing the radioactive water will delay the work of restarting cooling systems.

On Friday, the company switched to pumping fresh water to cool the No. 1 unit.

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Secrecy shrouds Japan crisis

by Ralph Vartabedian - Mar. 26, 2011 12:00 AM

Los Angeles Times

How did Japanese workers at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant jury-rig fire hoses to cool damaged reactors? Is contaminated water from waste pools overflowing into the Pacific Ocean? Exactly who is the national incident commander?

The answers to those and many other questions are unclear to U.S. nuclear scientists and policy experts, who say the quality and quantity of information coming out of Japan have left gaping holes in their understanding of the disaster nearly two weeks after it began.

At the same time, they say, the depth of the crisis has been growing, judging by releases of radioactivity that by some measures have reached half of the level of those released in the Chernobyl accident of 1986, according to new analysis by European and American scientists.

The lack of information has led to growing frustration with Tokyo Electric Power Co. and the Japanese government, which has parceled out information with little context, few details and giant gaps. It has left the international community confused about what is happening and what could come next.

"Information-sharing has not been in the culture of Tepco or the Japanese government," said Najmedin Meshkati, a University of Southern California engineering professor who has advised federal agencies on nuclear safety.

Almost every step of the way, the problems at the Fukushima Daiichi plant have been understated by those in charge in Japan, outside experts say, forcing observers to analyze the situation as best they can from afar.

The public-health impact is growing with news Friday of a possible breach in one of the reactors at the nuclear plant.

Two workers suffered skin burns after wading into water 10,000 times more radioactive than levels normally found in water in or around a reactor, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

An Austrian meteorological institute, the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, said this week that models showed the emissions of radioactive cesium from the plant might already amount to 50 percent of what was released from Chernobyl and that releases of radioactive iodine could be 20 percent of the Chernobyl total.

Edwin Lyman, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, said Thursday that his modeling had confirmed the Austrian analysis, suggesting that Japan might have to exclude people from a large area and face a remediation effort more costly than had been thought.

Masaru Tamamoto, a professor of Asian and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Cambridge in Britain, said the handling of the crisis by Japanese government and corporate authorities is consistent with a culture that carefully guards information from the public and leaves decisions in the hands of bureaucrats.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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High radiation levels detected in ocean near Japanese nuclear plant

By Tony Barboza and Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times

March 26, 2011, 12:39 p.m.

High levels of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan have spread to the ocean near the crippled power station, with readings of radioactive iodine as much as 1,250 times higher than normal levels, Japanese officials said Saturday.

Radioactivity in the water inside the plant had also spiked, with readings as high as 200 to 300 millisieverts per hour recorded in reactor No. 2, Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior official with the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency in Tokyo, said Saturday. The maximum exposure permitted for Japanese workers is 250 mSv over the course of a year.

At the No. 1 reactor, readings indicated the presence of cesium-136 and yttrium-91 in the cooling water, according to a statement on the nuclear agency's website.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, resorted to using more than 5,300 tons of ocean water to keep its reactors and adjacent fuel storage pools cool after the magnitude 9 Tohoku earthquake and resulting tsunami on March 11 knocked out the normal cooling system. But the salt in seawater is corrosive to the reactors, and engineers are trying to pump it out and drain it into the sea.

Tepco began pumping fresh water into reactors Nos. 1 and 3 on Friday, and fresh water may be used to cool the spent fuel pools at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors beginning Sunday, Nishiyama said.

So far, radiation in the ocean appears to be limited to the area close to the plant. Levels of iodine-131 19 miles off the coast were still within acceptable limits, Nishiyama said. The radioactive particles do not threaten sea life, he added.

"Ocean currents will disperse radiation particles and so it will be very diluted by the time it gets consumed by fish and seaweed," he said.

A U.S. expert agreed that the radioactivity would have minimal effects on marine life and seafood because the particles will be mixed with water up to 300 feet deep.

"Cesium and iodine are soluble so they will be rapidly diluted by a factor of 100 or more," said Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist who studies naturally occurring and manmade radioactive isotopes in ocean water at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

When radioactive substances are released into ocean water, Buesseler said, they dilute and mix into the water so quickly, he said, "it's like dropping a dye in water," and concentrations quickly plummet. "You automatically have less exposure because it's mixed down and diluted," he said.

Health authorities should still monitor seawater and seafood for radiation, he said, but it is unlikely to pose as much of a risk in the ocean as it does on land, where radioactive isotopes have a more direct pathway to expose humans through comestibles like spinach, milk and drinking water.

Ocean currents will further reduce concentrations of the isotopes by carrying them south along the Japanese coast, then out to sea.

Buesseler said research after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident showed that while levels of cesium-137 in the Black Sea — a body of saltwater several hundred miles away— elevated sharply, the radiation wasn't high enough to make water exposure or seafood consumption dangerous.

"You still could bathe in the water, you could eat the fish in the water, and if you wanted to drink saltwater, you could drink the water," he said.

Radiation readings 10 millions times above normal

Radioactivity in Fukushima plant water hits new high

By Julie Makinen

March 27, 2011, 12:56 a.m.

TOKYO— Puddles with 10 million times more radioactivity than would be found in water in a normally functioning nuclear reactor have been discovered at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi facility, Japanese officials said Sunday, raising new questions about the extent of damage to reactor No. 2 and the threat to workers there.

The water was found in the turbine building of the No. 2 reactor, and Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it was trying to pinpoint the source of the radiation. The Nucelar and Industrial Safety Agency said the water was 10,000 times as radioactive as the water at the No. 3 reactor trubine building where two workers were injured last week.

It was not immediately clear to what extent the discovery of the extremely high radiation at reactor No. 2 would slow efforts to stabilize the facility, which was severely crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan.

At a news conference Sunday afternoon, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said, "We are committed to no further such accidents" adding that removing the highly radioactive water would "take time." It was unclear whether the water could be removed without humans performing the work, or by some other means.

Naoto Sekimura, a nuclear expert from the University of Tokyo, told NHK news that the radioactive water found at reactor No. 2 may be coming from the damaged suppression pool, a doughnut-shaped reservoir at the bottom of the reactor's containment vessel. The suppression pool at reactor No. 2 is believed to have been damaged in an explosion several days after the quake and tsunami.

Edano, speaking earlier on a Sunday TV talk show, said the radioactive water is "almost certainly" seeping from a reactor core, the Associated Press reported.

On Saturday, the utility admitted that it had failed to adequately warn workers about dangerous radioactive water at the plant.

Edano chastised the company, known as TEPCO, saying Saturday that it needed to share information more quickly and, unless it does so, "the government will not be able to give appropriate instructions and [the company] will make workers, and eventually the public, distrustful," according to Kyodo News.

TEPCO officials apologized for the lapse but also noted that workers had ignored alarms that had alerted them to high levels of radiation in the work area.

Leakage of radiation beyond the main reactor buildings continues to be a cause for concern.

Levels of radioactive iodine as much as 1,250 times higher than the benchmark considered safe were found in seawater about 1,000 feet from the complex, officials said Saturday. However, experts said the radiation would quickly disperse and would not pose a threat to people nearby or to sea life.

People within 12 miles of the plant were evacuated shortly after the earthquake and tsunami struck; those living within 18 miles have been told to stay indoors to avoid radiation exposure. But in recent days, the government has urged people living within 18 miles of the plant to leave their homes voluntarily as supplies in the region have been hard to come by.

Asked at the news conference Sunday afternoon whether the government was considering mandating evacuation of the 18-mile zone, Edano said the government was "keeping all options open."

Photos: Sifting through the remains of a home

julie.makinen@latimes.com

Opps! High radiation readings a mistake

Officials: Big spike at Japan nuke plant an error

By YURI KAGEYAMA and MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Yuri Kageyama And Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press

TOKYO – Emergency workers struggling to pump contaminated water from Japan's stricken nuclear complex fled from one of the troubled reactors Sunday after reporting a huge increase in radioactivity — a spike that officials later apologetically said was inaccurate.

The apology came after employees fled the complex's Unit 2 reactor when a reading showed radiation levels had reached 10 million times higher than normal in the reactor's cooling system. Officials said they were so high that the worker taking the measurements had withdrawn before taking a second reading.

On Sunday night, though, plant operators said that while the water was contaminated with radiation, the extremely high reading was a mistake.

"The number is not credible," said Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita. "We are very sorry."

He said officials were taking another sample to get accurate levels, but did not know when the results would be announced.

The situation came as officials acknowledged there was radioactive water in all four of the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex's most troubled reactors, and as airborne radiation in Unit 2 measured 1,000 millisieverts per hour — four times the limit deemed safe by the government, Kurita said.

Officials say they still don't know where the radioactive water is coming from, though government spokesman Yukio Edano has said some is "almost certainly" seeping from a cracked reactor core in one of the units.

While the discovery of the high radiation levels — and the evacuation of workers from one reactor unit — again delayed efforts to bring the deeply troubled complex under control, Edano insisted the situation had partially stabilized.

"We have somewhat prevented the situation from turning worse," he told reporters Sunday evening. "But the prospects are not improving in a straight line and we've expected twists and turns. The contaminated water is one of them and we'll continue to repair the damage."

The discovery over the last three days of radioactive water has been a major setback in the mission to get the plant's crucial cooling systems operating more than two weeks after a massive earthquake and tsunami.

The magnitude-9 quake off Japan's northeast coast on March 11 triggered a tsunami that barreled onshore and disabled the Fukushima plant, complicating an immense humanitarian disaster.

The death toll from the twin disasters stood at 10,668 Sunday, with more than 16,574 people missing, police said. Hundreds of thousands of people are homeless.

Workers have been scrambling to remove the radioactive water from the four units and find a safe place to store it, TEPCO officials said.

On Sunday night, Minoru Ogoda of Japan's nuclear safety agency said each unit could have hundreds of tons of radioactive water.

The protracted nuclear crisis has spurred concerns about the safety of food and water in Japan, which is a prime source of seafood for some countries. Radiation has been found in food, seawater and even tap water supplies in Tokyo.

Just outside the coastal Fukushima nuclear plant, radioactivity in seawater tested about 1,250 times higher than normal last week — but that number had climbed to 1,850 times normal by the weekend.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, a nuclear safety official, said the increase was a concern, but also said the area is not a source of seafood and that the contamination posed no immediate threat to human health.

Experts with the International Atomic Energy Agency said the ocean would quickly dilute the worst contamination.

Up to 600 people are working inside the plant in shifts. Nuclear safety officials say workers' time inside the crippled units is closely monitored to minimize their exposure to radioactivity, but two workers were hospitalized Thursday when they suffered burns after stepping into contaminated water. They are to be released from the hospital Monday.

Edano has urged TEPCO to be more transparent about the potential dangers after the safety agency revealed the plant operator was aware of high radiation levels in the air in Unit 3 several days before the two workers suffered burns there.

A top TEPCO official acknowledged Sunday it could take a long time to completely clean up the complex.

"We cannot say at this time how many months or years it will take," TEPCO Vice President Sakae Muto said, insisting the main goal now is to cool the reactors.

A poll, meanwhile, showed that support for Japan's prime minister has risen as the administration tackles the disasters.

The public opinion poll conducted over the weekend by Kyodo News agency found that approval of Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his Cabinet rose to 28.3 percent after sinking below 20 percent in February, before the earthquake and tsunami.

Last month's low approval led to speculation that Kan's days were numbered. While the latest figure is still low, it suggests he is making some gains with voters.

About 58 percent of respondents in the nationwide telephone survey of 1,011 people said they approved of the government's handling of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but a similar number criticized its handling of the nuclear crisis.

Source

Radioactive water spilling into tunnels beneath Japan's quake-damaged nuclear plant

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times

March 28, 2011, 8:10 a.m.

Highly radioactive water is building up in tunnels underneath at least three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, impairing the ability of workers to reestablish power connections at the facility.

Engineers have run a new power line to the plant from the electrical grid, but they cannot reconnect the earthquake-damaged plant's cooling systems until the water is pumped out of the tunnels. The water is so radioactive, however, that plant authorities fear simply releasing it directly into the environment and are exploring ways to capture and store it.

Experts say it could take days to weeks to work out a way to remove all the water safely, further slowing efforts to bring the stricken facility fully under control. Efforts to pump out the water are proceeding while workers continue to pump water into the plant's reactors to keep them cool and prevent a meltdown.

Pools of water burned two workers last week when they stepped into the water and it seeped into their boots. The workers suffered radiation burns on their legs and were hospitalized, but they were scheduled to be released from the hospital on Monday.

On Sunday, plant officials erroneously said the water was releasing radiation 1,000 times higher than permitted, but on Monday they said it was four times higher than permitted levels.

The water was also found in trenches used for wiring and pipes outside the reactor buildings.

Engineers are not sure where the radioactive water is coming from, but say they fear that the reactor containment vessels at units No. 2 and No. 3 have, at the least, been cracked, allowing some radiation to seep out. A crack in No. 3 is considered particularly ominous because that reactor is fueled with a mixed oxide containing uranium and highly carcinogenic plutonium.

If the plutonium escapes, it would be a much bigger problem than if the uranium escapes.

The head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, arrived in Tokyo on Monday to meet with Japanese authorities and to get a first-hand look at the situation, according to a statement from the U.S. Embassy.

thomas.maugh@latimes.com

Plutonium leaking from nuclear plants

3 types of plutonium detected at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant

Three types of plutonium have turned up amid the radioactive contamination on the grounds of the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, its owner reported Monday.

The plutonium is a byproduct of nuclear reactions that is also part of the fuel mix at the damaged No. 3 reactor.

It was found in soil at five different points inside the plant grounds, the Tokyo Electric Power Company said late Monday.

Plutonium can be a serious health hazard if inhaled or ingested, but external exposure poses little health risk, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Source

Officials say plutonium detected in soil outside of troubled Japanese nuclear complex

By The Associated Press – 29 minutes ago

TOKYO — Power company officials say plutonium has been detected in the soil outside of the stricken Japanese nuclear complex.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. says in a statement that the plutonium was discovered Monday in five locations around the plant, which has been leaking radiation for nearly two weeks.

TEPCO official Jun Tsuruoka says the amounts were very small and were not a risk to public health.

Experts had expected traces of plutonium to be detected once crews began searching for it this week, since it is present in the nuclear fuel in the troubled complex.

Source

UPDATE 1-Japan says plutonium found at Fukushima

Mon Mar 28, 2011 3:16pm GMT

TOKYO, March 28 (Reuters) - Plutonium has been found in soil at various points within Japan's stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex but does not present a risk to human health, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said on Monday.

TEPCO vice-president Sakae Muto told journalists at the company's latest briefing that test results showing the plutonium came from samples taken a week ago.

It was the latest bad news from the plant, where evidence of radiation has been mounting and engineers face a protracted battle to control reactors damaged by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

Source

More radioactive water spills at Japan nuke plant

Reuters/Tokyo Electric Power Co./Kyodo

By SHINO YUASA, Associated Press Shino Yuasa, Associated Press

TOKYO – Workers discovered new pools of radioactive water leaking from Japan's crippled nuclear complex, officials said Monday, as emergency crews struggled to pump out hundreds of tons of contaminated water and bring the plant back under control.

Officials believe the contaminated water has sent radioactivity levels soaring at the coastal complex and caused more radiation to seep into soil and seawater. Crews also found traces of plutonium in the soil outside of the complex on Monday, but officials insisted there was no threat to public health.

Plutonium — a key ingredient in nuclear weapons — is present in the fuel at the complex, which has been leaking radiation for over two weeks, so experts had expected some to be found once crews began searching for evidence of it this week.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. official Jun Tsuruoka said only two of the plutonium samples taken Monday were from the leaking reactors. The other three were from earlier nuclear tests. Years of weapons testing in the atmosphere left trace amounts of plutonium in many places around the world.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, was crippled March 11 when a tsunami spawned by a powerful earthquake slammed into Japan's northeastern coast. The huge wave engulfed much of the complex, and destroyed the crucial power systems needed to cool the complex's nuclear fuel rods.

Since then, three of the complex's six units are believed to have partially melted down, and emergency crews have struggled with everything from malfunctioning pumps to dangerous spikes in radiation that have forced temporary evacuations.

Confusion at the plant has intensified fears that the nuclear crisis will last weeks, months or years amid alarms over radiation making its way into produce, raw milk and even tap water as far away as Tokyo.

The troubles at the Fukushima complex have eclipsed Pennsylvania's 1979 crisis at Three Mile Island, when a partial meltdown raised fears of widespread radiation release, but is still well short of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which killed at least 31 people with radiation sickness, raised long-term cancer rates, and spewed radiation across much of the northern hemisphere.

While parts of the Japanese plant has been reconnected to the power grid, the contaminated water — which has now been found in numerous places around the complex, including the basements of several buildings — must be pumped out before electricity can be restored to the cooling system.

That has left officials struggling with two sometimes-contradictory efforts: pumping in water to keep the fuel rods cool and pumping out — and then safely storing — contaminated water.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, called that balance "very delicate work."

He also said workers were still looking for safe ways to store the radioactive water.

"We are exploring all means," he said.

The buildup of radioactive water first became a problem last week, when it splashed over the boots of two workers, burning them and prompting a temporary suspension of work.

Then on Monday, officials with Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns and runs the complex, said that workers had found more radioactive water in deep trenches used for pipes and electrical wiring outside three units.

The contaminated water has been emitting radiation exposures more than four times the amount that the government considers safe for workers.

The five workers in the area at the time were not hurt, said TEPCO spokesman Takashi Kurita.

Exactly where the water is coming from remains unclear, though many suspect it is cooling water that has leaked from one of the disabled reactors.

It could take weeks to pump out the radioactive water, said Gary Was, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Michigan.

"Battling the contamination so workers can work there is going to be an ongoing problem," he said.

Meanwhile, new readings showed ocean contamination had spread about a mile (1.6 kilometers) farther north of the nuclear site than before but is still within the 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius of the evacuation zone. Radioactive iodine-131 was discovered offshore at a level 1,150 times higher than normal, Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told reporters.

Amid reports that people had been sneaking back into the mandatory evacuation zone around the nuclear complex, the chief government spokesman again urged residents to stay out. Yukio Edano said contaminants posed a "big" health risk in that area.

Gregory Jaczko, head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, arrived in Tokyo on Monday to meet with Japanese officials and discuss the situation, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.

"The unprecedented challenge before us remains serious, and our best experts remain fully engaged to help Japan," Jaczko was quoted as saying.

Early Monday, a strong earthquake shook the northeastern coast and prompted a brief tsunami alert. The quake was measured at magnitude 6.5, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. No damage or injuries were reported.

Scores of earthquakes have rattled the country over the past two weeks, adding to the sense of unease across Japan, where the final death toll is expected to top 18,000 people, with hundreds of thousands still homeless.

TEPCO officials said Sunday that radiation in leaking water in Unit 2 was 10 million times above normal — a report that sent employees fleeing. But the day ended with officials saying that figure had been miscalculated and the level was actually 100,000 times above normal, still very high but far better than the earlier results.

"This sort of mistake is not something that can be forgiven," Edano said sternly Monday.

___

Associated Press writers Tomoko A. Hosaka, Mayumi Saito, Mari Yamaguchi and Jeff Donn contributed to this report.

Source

Exec's vanishing act in crisis questioned

No-show power-firm chief angers Japan

by Andrew Higgins - Mar. 29, 2011 12:00 AM

Washington Post

TOKYO - In normal times, Masataka Shimizu lives in the Tower, a luxury high rise in the same upscale Tokyo district as the U.S. Embassy. But he hasn't been there for more than two weeks, according to a uniformed doorman.

The Japanese public hasn't seen much of him recently either. Shimizu, president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, the company that owns a haywire nuclear power plant just 150 miles from the capital, is the most invisible - and also most reviled - chief executive in Japan.

Amid rumors that Shimizu had fled the country, checked into hospital or even committed suicide, company officials said Monday that their boss suffered an unspecified "small illness" due to overwork after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake sent a tsunami crashing onto his company's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear-power station.

After a short break to recuperate, they said, Shimizu, 66, is back at work directing an emergency command center on the second floor of Tepco's central Tokyo headquarters.

Still, company officials are vague about whether they've actually seen their boss: "I'll have to check on that," said spokesman Ryo Shimitsu, who is not related to the president. Another staffer, Hiro Hasegawa, said he'd seen the president regularly but couldn't provide details.

Vanishing in times of crisis is something of a tradition among Japan's industrial and political elite. During Toyota's recall debacle last year, the carmaker's chief also went AWOL.

"It is very, very sad, but this is normal in Japan," said Yagushi Hirai, the chief editor of Shyukan Kinyobi, a weekly news magazine.

But the huge scale of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Dai-ichi and mounting anger at Tepco's obfuscations have put unprecedented strain on the Japanese establishment's preference for invisible crisis management. And the Internet has helped erode Japan's deferential norms and given voice to those who want more than just a contrite bow.

Shimizu's vanishing act "is not so much extremely strange as inexcusable," said Takeo Nishioka, chairman of the upper house of Japan's Diet, or parliament. Speaking to reporters, Nishioka described as "mysterious" Shimizu's refusal to join the head of the nuclear safety agency at a briefing on the crisis for parliament. "I cannot understand this," Nishioka fumed.

Shimizu last appeared in public at a late-night press conference March 13, two days after the worst earthquake on record in Japan. The tsunami triggered by the quake, said Shimizu, dressed in a blue company uniform instead of his normal business suit, "exceeded our expectations."

Since then the Fukushima plant has gone berserk, releasing radiation into the air, contaminating the sea and spreading alarm across Japan and beyond. Shimizu's public response: an arid message on the company's website expressing "deep apologies for the concerns and inconveniences caused due to the incident."

Tepco's contrition brought an angry blast from the governor of Fukushima prefecture, a region that has borne the brunt of the fiasco. Residents of Fukushima, Gov. Yuhei Sato told Japanese television, are "not in a position to accept apologies because their anger and anxiety are extreme."

On Sunday, hundreds of protesters marched past Tokyo Electric's headquarters, chanting "no more Hiroshimas" and hurling insults at a pillar of Japan's corporate establishment. One protester, dressed like the grim reaper with skull mask and black cloak, stood in front of a line of police and waved a board mocking Tepco's assurances: "Nuclear energy is still safe. DEATH."

Even company insiders now question Shimizu's decision to play by old rules during the worst nuclear crisis since the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.

"Personally I'd recommend that he speak in public as soon as possible," said Toko Kanoh, a former Tepco vice president who, after a 12 years in the upper house of parliament, is back at the electricity company as an adviser.

Earthquake screws up auto production in Japan

As Japan shutdowns drag on, auto crisis worsens

By ELAINE KURTENBACH and SHARON SILKE CARTY, AP Business Writers Elaine Kurtenbach And Sharon Silke Carty, Ap Business Writers – Mon Mar 28, 4:32 pm ET

TOKYO – The auto industry disruptions triggered by Japan's earthquake and tsunami will worsen in the coming weeks.

Car buyers will have difficulty finding the model they want in certain colors, thousands of auto plant workers will likely be told to stay home, and companies such as Toyota, Honda and others will lose billions of dollars in revenue. More than two weeks since the natural disaster, inventories of crucial car supplies — from computer chips to paint pigments — are dwindling fast as Japanese factories that make them struggle to restart.

Because parts and supplies are shipped by slow-moving boats, the real drop-off has yet to be felt by factories in the U.S., Europe and Asia. That will come by the middle of April.

"This is the biggest impact ever in the history of the automobile industry," said Koji Endo, managing director at Advanced Research Japan in Tokyo.

Much of Japan's auto industry — the second largest supplier of cars in the world — remains idle. Few plants were seriously damaged by the quake, but with supplies of water and electricity fleeting, no one can say when factories will crank up. Some auto analysts said it could be as late as this summer.

There are signs, though, that things might not be as bad as analysts are predicting. Nissan Motor Co., which has seen production stop in several areas, said Monday that it expects factories to be back in operation in weeks rather than months.

The company has studied all of its parts suppliers and companies that supply parts to them and has determined that the situation isn't as dire as some predictions, spokesman Brian Brockman said Monday.

"It remains a fairly dynamic issue," he said. "We think we'll be back up in full production in a matter of weeks."

Yet at least in the short term, problems remain. Hitachi Automotive Systems, which makes parts such as airflow sensors and drive control systems, is waiting for its suppliers to restart while dealing with its own problems. Its plants are without water and gas, and have rolling electricity blackouts. Workers are repairing crumpled ceilings, fallen walls and cleaning up shattered glass. A spokesman said he doesn't know when its plants will reopen.

The uncertainly has suppliers, automakers and dealers scrambling. And it exposes the vulnerability of the world's most complex supply chain, where 3,000 parts go into single car or truck. Each one of those parts is made up of hundreds of other pieces supplied by multiple companies. All it takes is for one part to go missing or arrive late, and a vehicle can't be built.

When General Motors briefly shut a pickup plant in Shreveport, Louisiana, due to a lack of parts, it caused the partial closing of a New York factory that supplies engines for those trucks. Sweden's Volvo has warned that its production could be disrupted because it is down to a week's worth of some parts.

Car buyers will soon see higher prices and fewer choices. Some car colors will be harder to get because a paint pigment factory in Japan was damaged and shut production. As a result, Ford is telling dealers to stop ordering "tuxedo black" models of its F-150 pickup and Expedition and Navigator SUVs. It's also shifting away from some reds. The moves are precautionary, Ford said. Chrysler has stopped taking orders for vehicles in 10 paint colors.

The plant that makes the pigment, run by Merck KGaA, won't resume production for four to eight weeks, and that depends a lot on progress in cleaning up the nearby damaged nuclear power plant, a company spokeswoman said.

The factory is in Onahama in northeast Japan, about 30 miles from the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, which is leaking radiation.

"For both the timing of the repair start and for its timely completion, we are dependent upon the availability of infrastructure and utilities as well as upon developments at the Fukushima power plant," Merck KGaA spokeswoman Phyllis Carter said Monday.

The company makes pigments around the world, but the Onahama plant is the only one that produces the type used in many automotive paints, she said.

The lack of colors worries some dealers, especially when popular ones like black could be in short supply.

"It's hard enough to sell a $60,000 Navigator in this economy," said Fortunes O'Neal, general manager at Park Cities Ford in Dallas. "We don't want to have to tell customers, `You've got to pick another color.'"

Customers also face rising prices for models like Toyota's Prius, which is made only in Japan. Fears of falling supply have some dealers driving a hard bargain with customers who want the fuel-efficient hybrid as gasoline prices rise. Recent discounts of 5 to 10 percent on that car are disappearing.

Japanese carmakers, who have shut most of their domestic plants, are warning that some of their overseas factories will stop running, too, in an effort to conserve supplies. Toyota and Honda expect shutdowns at North American plants. Honda said production could be interrupted after April 1. Most of its parts are made in the region, but a few critical ones still come from Japan.

Goldman Sachs estimates the shutdowns are costing Japanese automakers $200 million a day, which adds up to $2.8 billion for just the past two weeks. Each week of continued shutdowns costs $1.4 billion. By comparison, Toyota made $2.3 billion in all of 2010, and its sudden acceleration recalls cost $2 billion. The cost of damage from Japan's natural disaster could dwarf that recall, which was considered Toyota's biggest crisis ever.

Much depends on how many spare components automakers have in stock — which is probably few. Japan's automakers spearheaded lean manufacturing, under which parts are delivered to plants the same day they are used. Automakers are still receiving parts that were put on ships weeks ago, but those supplies will dwindle.

After the earthquake hit, car companies began the long process of figuring out which parts are in danger of running out. That means figuring out where every piece in every part comes from.

"Everyone is putting on the brakes a little bit and taking a look to see where they are affected," said Paul Newton, an analyst with IHS Automotive.

Companies will shut down plants as soon as some parts start running out, which could start happening in the next four to six weeks, he said. "You will see it happen almost daily."

IHS Automotive predicts that one-third of daily global automotive production will be cut. That means about 5 million vehicles worldwide won't be built, out of the 72 million vehicles planned for production in 2011.

Although most Japanese auto parts makers are not located in the areas that were inundated by the tsunami, between quake damage, electricity outages and water cutoffs, many factories in the region remain paralyzed.

Suppliers could be running again in April, but it could take until May or June for the entire supply base to be back.

Some car manufacturers, meanwhile, may shift operations to deal with the crisis. Nissan, for example, is thinking of moving some engine production to Tennessee from Japan.

But those shifts won't be easy. Lean inventories make it hard for automakers to suddenly change sources of supply. And plants that build car electronics, for example, have stringent safety requirements and exacting high-tech specifications that limit a company's flexibility, said Christopher Richter, an analyst at CLSA Asia Capital Markets. A supplier for the computer chip that triggers an air bag, for example, can't be switched quickly.

But car executives can keep this from becoming a total disaster: They can allocate scarce parts to more popular or profitable vehicles, keeping those assembly lines running while slowing the less profitable ones.

___

Kurtenbach reported from Tokyo and Carty reported from Detroit. David Koenig in Dallas, Tom Krisher in Detroit and Malcolm Foster in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Source

U.S. robot to survey Japan plant

Struggle to halt spread of contaminants continues

Mar. 30, 2011 12:00 AM

Washington Post

TOKYO - Cool water powered by diesel generators or firetruck pumps continued to circulate around nuclear fuel rods in reactors at the tsunami-stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear-power plant Tuesday, limiting the potential for further releases of toxic particles, as workers struggled to contain the spread of radioactive contamination.

Crews piled sandbags and concrete blocks around the mouths of flooded tunnels to keep contaminated water from spilling into the sea and slowly pumped stagnant radioactive water out of dark turbine rooms.

To help survey the facility, the U.S. Energy Department is sending a robot and several radiation-shielded cameras, a spokeswoman said Tuesday. The tank-treaded robot, called Talon, is being dispatched from the Idaho National Laboratory and will scout the most radioactive areas of the plant with cameras and radiation sensors.

At the same time, scientists - under orders from Japanese nuclear regulators - painstakingly increased their documentation of the damage that explosions from the malfunctioning reactors and probable leaks from one or more reactor cores have begun to inflict on the country's food and water supply and its environment.

"Monitor," "measure," "follow" and "study" have become the mantras of government officials who have only the earliest glimpses of how the disaster will evolve.

At a meeting of the Japanese parliament, Prime Minister Naoto Kan criticized plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. for failing to adequately protect the facility from disaster. The plant was flooded by a wave that easily swept over its 20-foot-high protective wall.

When asked about whether contaminated water on the site is continuing to spread, Hidehiko Nishiyama, director general for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said he had no data to show that it was.

But Tokyo Electric should "strengthen surveillance and monitoring," Nishiyama said. The same goes for tracking the extent of plutonium found in five soil samples taken at the plant or the path of radioactive iodine that has been traced in the ocean.

On Monday, the utility reported that underground tunnels outside the building were filled with water.

Radiation doses in both buildings near the second reactor measured in excess of 1,000 millisieverts per hour, potent enough to cause serious illness after several hours of exposure. The limit on workers there is 250 millisieverts of radiation per year, which they would reach in 15 minutes at the most radioactive sites in the facility.

Government officials said they would work to improve conditions for the hundreds of workers who are risking their lives to bring the plant under control. An inspector for the nation's nuclear regulator on Monday offered a picture of harsh and chaotic work conditions: The workers eat only two meals a day because of sporadic shipments of food and sleep in one large room or hallways at a headquarters near the plant. They have limited fresh water and no outside phone lines.

Nuclear regulators and Tokyo Electric officials say they still do not know the precise source of the leak. They believe it is a broken pipe or a crack in a condensation chamber near the base of the reactor building, and that seepage has come into contact with partially melted nuclear fuel rods in the reactor's core.

Meanwhile, in Washington, U.S. officials expressed concern about the limited information shared by the Japanese. Citing "many gaps in our knowledge," Peter Lyons, acting assistant secretary at the Department of Energy, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, "It appears all three reactor cores are damaged" but to unknown extent.

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Tainted seafood fears spread as Japan plant leaks

By MARI YAMAGUCHI and SHINO YUASA, Associated Press Mari Yamaguchi And Shino Yuasa, Associated Press

TOKYO – Fears about contaminated seafood spread Wednesday despite reassurances that radiation in the waters off Japan's troubled atomic plant pose no health risk, as the country's respected emperor consoled evacuees from the tsunami and nuclear emergency zone.

While experts say radioactive particles are unlikely to build up significantly in fish, the seafood concerns in the country that gave the world sushi are yet another blemish for Brand Japan. It has already been hit by contamination of milk, vegetables and water, plus shortages of auto and tech parts after a massive quake and tsunami disabled a coastal nuclear power plant.

Setbacks at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex mounted Wednesday, as the plant's operator, Tokyo Power Electric Co., announced that its president was hospitalized. Masataka Shimizu has not been seen since a news conference two days after the March 11 quake that spawned the destructive wave. His absence fueled speculation that he had suffered a breakdown.

Spokesman Naoki Tsunoda said Shimizu, 66, was admitted to a Tokyo hospital Tuesday after suffering dizziness and high blood pressure.

The problems at the nuclear plant have taken center stage, but the tsunami also created another disaster: Hundreds of thousands of people were forced from their homes after the wave drove miles (kilometers) inland, decimating whole towns. The official death toll stood at 11,362 late Wednesday, with the final toll likely surpassing 18,000.

Japan's respected Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited disaster evacuees at a center in Tokyo on Wednesday. The visit was marked by a formality that is typical of interactions with the royal couple, but survivors said they were encouraged.

"I couldn't talk with them very well because I was nervous, but I felt that they were really concerned about us," said Kenji Ukito, an evacuee from a region near the plant who has already moved four times since the quake. "I was very grateful."

The emperor and his wife make fairly frequent public appearances, visiting nursing homes and the disabled and attending ceremonies throughout the year. In particular, they are expected to mourn with those affected by natural disasters. Akihito made a similar visit to evacuees after the Kobe earthquake in 1995.

At the Fukushima plant, the fight to cool the reactors and stem their release of radiation has become more complicated in recent days since the discovery that radioactive water is pooling in the plant, restricting the areas in which crews can work. It also puts emergency crews in the uncomfortable position of having to pump in more water to continue cooling the reactor while simultaneously pumping out contaminated water.

That contamination has also begun to seep into the sea, and tests Wednesday showed that waters 300 yards (meters) outside the plant contained 3,355 times the legal limit for the amount of radioactive iodine.

It's the highest rate yet, but Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama said it did not pose any threat to human health because the iodine rarely stays in fish. There is no fishing in the area because it is within the evacuation zone around the plant.

Radioactive iodine is short-lived, with a half-life of just eight days, and in any case was expected to dissipate quickly in the vast Pacific Ocean. It does not tend to accumulate in shellfish.

Other radioactive particles have been detected in the waters near the plant, and some have made their way into fish. Trace amounts of radioactive cesium-137 have been found in anchovies as far afield as Chiba, near Tokyo, but at less than 1 percent of acceptable levels.

"We have repeatedly told consumers that it is perfectly safe to eat fish," said Shoichi Takayama, an official with Japan's fishery agency.

Citing dilution in the ocean, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has played down the risks of seafood contamination.

But, as with other reports of radiation levels in food and tap water, fear has begun to override science. Several countries, including China, India and South Korea, have ordered special inspections for or outright bans on fish from areas near the plant.

Ren Cheng, a spokesman for Taiwan's Mitsui Food & Beverage Enterprise Group that operates several upscale Japanese restaurants in Taipei, said his company has seen a 50 percent drop in revenue since the crisis began.

"We are not importing any food products from Japan. All the Japanese ingredients we are using were all procured before the quake," he said. "We have put up signs in our restaurants to reassure costumers about the safety of our food."

Domestic consumption, however, is far more important to Japan, which imports far more seafood than it exports. According to the fisheries agency, the domestic catch typically totals around 5.5 million tons. Less than a million of that gets exported, while another nearly 3 million tons are imported.

In stores near Tokyo's famed Tsukiji fish market, fresh fish was selling poorly.

Instead, customers "are stockpiling" frozen fish, in the hopes it was caught before radiation began to climb, said Hideo Otsubo, who works at a seafood company near the market.

Tourism to Japan has fallen sharply since the disaster, and sushi chef Akira Ogimoto blamed that dropoff for a 30 to 40 percent decline in customers to his restaurant near the market, where the daily tuna auction is a big draw for foreigners.

Add on the radiation fears, and fishermen are worried their livelihoods will be threatened just when they need to rebuild their homes.

"I worry we won't be able to sell our seaweed. If the radiation ruins our fishing, we are lost," said Toshiaki Kikuchi, a 63-year-old innkeeper and seaweed farmer in Soma, a city near the troubled plant.

Meanwhile, TEPCO's bungling response to the nuclear emergency has been severely criticized by the government and the press. The first few days after the quake saw fires and explosions and confusion has reigned throughout, and the company — whose shares have plunged nearly 80 percent — has frequently retracted or corrected information.

There has also been criticism that safeguards were lax at the Fukushima plant. The nuclear agency ordered plant operators nationwide on Wednesday to review their emergency procedures. The agency told utilities they must have on hand mobile backup generators and fire engines, which have been used at Fukushima to cool the reactors. The operators must report back to the agency within a month.

TEPCO chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata apologized at a news conference for the company's missteps. He has stepped in for the hospitalized president, but fears of a leadership vacuum remained. And Katsumata himself acknowledged that operations could deteriorate if Shimizu were hospitalized for a long time.

"In case of a long absence, it seems to me decisions might not be made smoothly," Katsumata told reporters.

The company also acknowledged for the first time it would have to completely scrap at least four of the plant's reactors — a fate experts and the government had already condemned them to.

The missteps at TEPCO have sparked calls from the opposition for its nationalization, and the Yominuri Shimbun newspaper, citing anonymous sources, said the government was considering it. But Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano denied those reports.

"My understanding is that the government is not considering such an option at this moment," Edano said Tuesday. He was more circumspect when asked again Wednesday, but reiterated that the company must work to resolve the crisis and compensate victims.

___

Associated Press writers Eric Talmadge in Fukushima, Noriko Kitano and Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo, Margie Mason in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

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Japan's tsunami debris to hit West Coast

Posted 4/1/2011 8:16 AM ET

By Phuong Le, Associated Press

SEATTLE — John Anderson has discovered just about everything during the 30 years he's combed Washington state's beaches -- glass fishing floats, hockey gloves, bottled messages, even hundreds of mismatched pairs of Nike sneakers that washed up barnacled but otherwise unworn.

The biggest haul may come in one to three years when, scientists say, wind and ocean currents eventually will push some of the massive debris from Japan's tsunami and earthquake onto the shores of the U.S. West Coast.

"I'm fascinated to see what actually makes it over here, compared to what might sink or biodegrade out there," said Anderson, 57, a plumber and avid beachcomber who lives in the coastal town of Forks, Wash.

The floating debris will likely be carried by currents off of Japan toward Washington, Oregon and California before turning toward Hawaii and back again toward Asia, circulating in what is known as the North Pacific gyre, said Curt Ebbesmeyer, a Seattle oceanographer who has spent decades tracking flotsam.

Ebbesmeyer, who has traced Nike sneakers, plastic bath toys and hockey gloves accidentally spilled from Asia cargo ships, is now tracking the massive debris field moving across the Pacific Ocean from Japan.

"If you put a major city through a trash grinder and sprinkle it on the water, that's what you're dealing with," he said.

As to whether any of the debris might be radioactive from the devastation at Japanese nuclear power plants, James Hevezi, chair of the American College of Radiology Commission on Medical Physics, said there could be.

"But it would be very low risk," Hevezi said. "The amount that would be on the stuff by the time it reached the West Coast would be minimal."

Only a small portion of that debris will wash ashore, and how fast it gets there and where it lands depends on buoyancy, material and other factors. Fishing vessels or items that poke out of the water and are more likely influenced by wind may show up in a year, while items like lumber pieces, survey stakes and household items may take two to three years, he said.

If the items aren't blown ashore by winds or get caught up in another oceanic gyre, they'll continue to drift in the North Pacific loop and complete the circle in about six years, Ebbesmeyer said.

"The material that is actually blown in will be a fraction" of the tsunami debris, said Curt Peterson, a coastal oceanographer and professor of in the geology department at Portland State University in Oregon. "Some will break up in transit. A lot of it will miss our coast. Some will split up and head up to Gulf of Alaska and (British Columbia)."

"All this debris will find a way to reach the West coast or stop in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch," a swirling mass of concentrated marine litter in the Pacific Ocean, said Luca Centurioni, a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.

"The dispersion is pretty large, so it's not like a straight shot from Tokyo to San Francisco," said Centurioni, the principal investigator for the Global Drifter Program funded by NOAA. The program deploys about 900 satellite-tracked drifting buoys each year throughout the world to collect sea surface temperature and other data.

Much of the debris will be plastic, which doesn't completely break down. That raises concerns about marine pollution and the potential harm to marine life. But the amount of tsunami debris, while massive, still pales in comparison to the litter that is dumped into oceans on a regular basis, Ebbesmeyer said.

Ebbesmeyer and retired NOAA researcher Jim Ingraham are using a computer program to plot the path of debris from March 11 tsunami to add to growing knowledge about ocean currents. The modeling relies on weather data collected by U.S. Navy, and the researchers are waiting for the monthly release of that data to make their first projections.

Ingraham developed the program to figure out the effects of ocean currents on salmon migration, but the two also have been using it plot the path of a multitude of floating junk.

Ebbesmeyer first became interested in flotsam when he heard reports of beachcombers finding hundreds of water-soaked shoes in Washington, Oregon and Alaska. An Asia cargo ship bound for the U.S. in 1990 had spilled thousands of Nike shoes into the middle of the North Pacific Ocean. He was able to trace serial numbers on shoes to the cargo ship, giving him the points where they began drifting in the ocean and where they landed.

The oceanographer also has tracked plastic bath toys -- frogs, turtle, ducks and beavers -- that fell overboard a cargo ship in 1992 in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and were later found in Sitka, Alaska.

Ebbesmeyer relies heavily on a network of thousands of beachcombers such as Anderson to report the location and details of their finds.

Anderson says he constantly scans the beaches watching for something that catches his eye. He's found about 20 bottled messages, mostly from schoolchildren, and the several hundred Nike sneakers, which he cleaned up by soaking in water and eventually gave away, sold or swapped.

"In two years, there's going to be stuff coming in (from Japan), and probably lots of it," he said. "Some of it is bound to come in."

Source

Radioactive water leaks from Japan nuclear plant

Posted 4/2/2011 2:37 AM ET

TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese nuclear official says highly radioactive water is leaking from a damaged nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean.

Nuclear safety spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama says the air above the leak contains 1,000 millisiverts of radioactivity. Exposure to 500 millisiverts over a short period of time can increase the risk of cancer.

The water was seeping Saturday from a crack in the containment for a maintenance pit on the edge of the nuclear site.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi plant has been spewing radioactivity since it was hit by a tsunami three weeks ago.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan (AP) -- Japan's prime minister bowed and paused for a minute of silence Saturday in front of one of the only buildings left standing in a town gutted by a massive tsunami, as he visited the pulverized northeastern coast for the first time.

U.S. and Japanese troops resumed their all-out search of the coastline for any remaining bodies in what could be their last chance to find those swept out to sea. More than 15,500 people are still missing after the disaster, which officials fear may have killed some 25,000 people.

The magnitude-9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami also knocked out power to a nuclear plant, disabling cooling systems and allowing radiation to seep out of the overheating reactors.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan went to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex soon after the wave hit. But Saturday marked his first visit to some of the dozens of villages, towns and cities wiped out in the March 11 disaster.

Dressed in the blue work clothes that have become almost a uniform for officials, Kan stopped first in Rikuzentakata -- a town of about 20,000 people that was flattened by the torrent of water.

The town hall still stands, but all its windows are blown out and a tangle of metal and other debris is piled in front of it. The prime minister bowed his head for a minute of silence in front of the building. He met with the town's mayor, whose 38-year-old wife was swept away in the wave and has been missing since.

Kan later visited an elementary school, which, like scores of schools and sports centers up and down the coast, is serving as an evacuation center.

"The government fully supports you until the end," Kan told the 250 evacuees.

Up and down the coast, helicopters, planes and boats carrying U.S. and Japanese troops scoured again Saturday for the dead. They found 30 bodies Friday, most floating in coastal waters. So far, 11,800 deaths have been confirmed.

"Unfortunately, we've come across remains over the scope of our mission, so it may be more likely than you think" to find bodies at sea so long after the disaster, said U.S. Navy Lt. Anthony Falvo.

Some may have sunk and just now be resurfacing. Others may never be found. After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, 37,000 of the 164,000 people who died in Indonesia simply disappeared, their bodies presumably washed out to sea.

The Japanese military stopped short of saying the search would end for good after Sunday, but public affairs official Yoshiyuki Kotake said activities will be limited.

Police officers have also been searching for bodies in decimated towns inland, but in some cases their efforts have been complicated or even stymied by dangerous levels of radiation from the nuclear plant, which is 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo.

People who live within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the plant have been forced to leave, though residents are growing increasingly frustrated and have been sneaking back to check on their homes. Government officials warned Friday that there were no plans to lift the evacuation order anytime soon.

Tadashi and Ritsuko Yanai and their 1-month-old boy fled their home six miles (10 kilometers) from the plant after the quake. Baby Kaon has grown accustomed to life in a shelter routine, but his parents haven't.

When asked if he had anything he would like to say to Kan, the 32-year-old father paused to think and then replied: "We want to go home. That's all, we just want to go home."

Radiation concerns have rattled the Japanese public, already struggling to return to normal life after the earthquake-generated tsunami. Three weeks later, more than 165,000 are living in shelters, 260,000 households still do not have running water and 170,000 do not have electricity.

The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna has said they've seen evidence that less radiation is being emitted. Samples from Iitate village -- about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the Fukushima complex -- show levels decreasing from earlier in the week.

But senior official Denis Flory told reporters that "the overall situation is basically unchanged. It is still very serious."

Damage to the reactor cores from overheating is thought to be extensive, ranging from about 25 to 70 percent, according to a TEPCO spokesman who declined to named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The U.N. nuclear agency is sending two reactor specialists to Japan to get firsthand information. They will meet experts in Tokyo and may go to the Fukushima site.

___

Alabaster reported from Sendai. Associated Press writers Veronika Oleksyn in Vienna, Eric Talmadge in Fukushima and Ryan Nakashima, Mari Yamaguchi, Mayumi Saito, Noriko Kitano, Shino Yuasa and Cara Rubinsky in Tokyo contributed to this report.

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In Japan, Seawall Offered a False Sense of Security

Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

Published: March 31, 2011

TARO, Japan — So unshakable was this town’s faith in its sea wall and its ability to save residents from any tsunami that some rushed toward it after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of northeast Japan on the afternoon of March 11.

After all, the sea wall was one of Japan’s tallest and longest, called the nation’s “Great Wall of China” by the government and news media. Its inner wall was reinforced by an outer one, and they stretched 1.5 miles across the bay here. The surface was so wide that high school students jogged on it, townspeople strolled on it, and some rode their bicycles on it. A local junior high school song even urged students: “Look up at our sea wall. The challenges of tsunamis are endless.”

But within a few minutes on March 11, the tsunami’s waves tore through the outer wall before easily surging over the 34-foot-high inner one, sweeping away those who had climbed on its top, and quickly taking away most of the town of Taro.

“For us, the sea wall was a source of pride, an asset, something that we believed in,” said Eiko Araya, 58, the principal of Taro No. 3 Elementary School. Like several other survivors, Ms. Araya was walking atop the inner wall late Wednesday afternoon, peering down at the ruins of Taro. “We felt protected, I believe. That’s why our feeling of loss is even greater now.”

Tsunamis are an integral part of the history of Japan’s Sanriku region, which includes this fishing town of about 4,400. People speak of tsunamis as if they were enemies that “take away” the inhabitants here. Perhaps because the loss of life over the decades has been so great, a local teaching, called tendenko, unsentimentally exhorts people to head for higher ground immediately after an earthquake, without stopping to worry about anybody else.

Sanriku is also home to some of the world’s most elaborate anti-tsunami infrastructure, including concrete sea walls that transform seaside communities into garrisonlike towns with limited views of the ocean. About 50 miles south of here, in the city of Kamaishi, the world’s deepest breakwater was completed two years ago after three decades of construction, at a cost of $1.5 billion.

The recent tsunami damaged, perhaps irreparably, Kamaishi’s breakwater, as well as countless sea walls and other facilities designed to shield communities against tsunamis. Researchers are starting to assess whether the sea walls and breakwaters minimized the force of the tsunami even as some experts are already calling for a stop to more coastline engineering, saying money should be spent instead on education and evacuation drills.

As Japan undertakes the monumental task of rebuilding areas of its northeast, it will also face the hard choice of whether to resurrect the expensive anti-tsunami infrastructure — much of which was built during Japan’s economic ascendancy.

Osamu Shimozawa, a city official in Kamaishi, said a decision not to rebuild would be tantamount to “abandoning rural Japan.”

“We have to provide a permanent feeling of security so that people will live here,” Mr. Shimozawa said.

Kamaishi’s 207-foot deep breakwater — sections of which now lie broken in the harbor — blunted the force of the tsunami, according to preliminary investigations by independent civil engineers. In Kamaishi, 648 deaths have been confirmed, while 630 people are still listed as missing.

“The damage was limited, compared to other places,” said Shoichi Sasaki, an official at the Ministry of Land’s office in Kamaishi.

It was an opinion shared by most people interviewed in Kamaishi, many of whom had witnessed construction crews erecting the breakwater from 1978 to 2009.

Toru Yaura and his wife, Junko, both 60, were clearing the debris from the first floor of their home, several blocks from the water.

“Without the breakwater, the impact would probably have been greater,” Mr. Yaura said, explaining that the water rose up to his waist on the second floor of his two-story house.

The Yauras, who are staying at a shelter, were initially trapped inside their home, alone without electricity, the night after the tsunami — which also happened to be Mr. Yaura’s 60th birthday.

Here in Taro, the number of dead was expected to rise above 100.

Instead of protecting the townspeople, the sea wall may have lulled them with a false sense of security, said Isamu Hashiba, 66, who had driven here from a nearby district to attend a friend’s cremation.

His wife, Etsuko, 55, said, “There were people who were looking at the tsunami from the sea wall because they felt safe.”

The town began building the inner wall after a tsunami decimated Taro’s population in 1933. The wall was reinforced and expanded in the 1960s.

In the 1933 tsunami, said Ms. Araya, the school principal, her mother lost all her relatives, except one uncle, at the age of 11. Her mother, now 89, survived the most recent tsunami because she happened to be at a day care center for the elderly.

“People say that those who live in Taro will encounter a tsunami twice in their lives,” Ms. Araya said. “That’s the fate of people born in Taro.”

Perhaps because it was their fate, because they were used to rising from tsunamis every few generations, some of those walking on the sea wall were already thinking about the future.

Ryuju Yamamoto, 66, peered down, trying to spot his house below, but was more interested in talking about the woman he was wooing. A tatami-mat maker, he pointed below to a spot where he had found his dresser and tatami mat, as well as a doll he had received as a wedding gift three decades ago. His father had forced him into an arranged marriage, he said, that lasted 40 days.

“I learned that she already had this,” he said, pointing to his thumb, signifying a boyfriend. “And she refused to break it off.”

Unexpectedly, at a year-end party for dog owners last December, Mr. Yamamoto said he saw a woman he had met while walking his dog. The woman lived with her mother, who, Mr. Yamamoto learned, teaches taishogoto, a Japanese musical instrument. So Mr. Yamamoto was now taking lessons from the mother, regularly visiting their home, which was unaffected by the tsunami.

“That’s my strategy,” Mr. Yamamoto said, adding that he was making progress. After learning that he was now living in a shelter, he said, the mother had invited him to take a bath in their home.

“I’m going tomorrow,” he said.

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Reactor Core Was Severely Damaged, U.S. Official Says

By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID JOLLY

Published: April 1, 2011

WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Friday that roughly 70 percent of the core of one reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan had suffered severe damage.

Members of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force prepare to search for tsunami and earthquake victims off Iwate Prefecture on Friday.

His assessment of the damage to Reactor No. 1 was the most specific yet from an American official on how close the plant came to a full meltdown after it was hit by a severe earthquake and massive tsunami on March 11.

Japanese officials have spoken of “partial meltdown” at some of the stricken reactors. But they have been less than specific, especially on the question of how close No. 1 — the most badly damaged reactor — came to a full meltdown.

Mr. Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, suggested that the worst moments of the crisis appeared to be receding, saying that the best information the United States had received from the Japanese authorities indicated that water was once again covering the cores of the stricken reactors and that pools of spent fuel atop the reactor buildings were “now under control.”

In addition to the severe damage at Reactor No. 1, the Energy Department said that Reactor No. 2 had suffered a 33 percent meltdown. Mr. Chu cautioned that the figures were “more of a calculation” because radiation levels inside the plant had been too high for workers to get inside, and sensors were unreliable.

He called the nuclear crisis in Japan “a cascade of events” that led to multiple failures of backup systems. He told reporters at a breakfast that while officials were reviewing the accident to see if American nuclear plants needed significant changes, he did not want to overreact or rush into changes whose effects might not be fully understood.

“First and foremost, we are trying to make sure that fuller damage is not done,” he said.

Questioned about the long-term effects of Japan’s effort to “feed and bleed” the reactors — pouring in cooling water, then releasing it as steam into the atmosphere — he said there was an effort now under way to “minimize the release” of radioactivity into the air.

“They’re trying to reach a steady state,” he said, in which cooling could take place with minimal radioactive releases into the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Japan and the United States combined efforts on Friday in a final search for thousands of people still missing after the earthquake and tsunami. The three-day effort will be the last big sweep before officials in Tokyo shift their focus to a daunting national reconstruction effort.

In the largest rescue mission ever carried out in Japan, 18,000 Japanese searchers have been joined by 7,000 American sailors and Marines, in an operation using 120 helicopters and reconnaissance aircraft and 65 ships to scour a coastal area from the northern tip of Iwate Prefecture to the southern end of Fukushima Prefecture.

“Until now,” said Minako Sawamura, a spokeswoman for the Japanese military in Sendai, “the search has focused on finding survivors on land. But the tsunami carried many people with it when it washed back out to sea. So we’re making an effort, including from the air, to find those people.” The National Policy Agency still lists 16,464 as missing, and the number of dead at 11,620.

In a symbolic gesture to show the changing emphasis in Tokyo, Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, showed up for a news conference Friday morning dressed in normal business attire, the first time since the disaster struck that he had not appeared in one of the blue work jackets officials have worn to indicate the seriousness of the situation.

“We want to show that the government is looking to the future, considering the reconstruction plans,” Mr. Edano said.

Japanese nonetheless remain concerned by the drama at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, 140 miles north of Tokyo. Since the quake and tsunami hit, the plant has sustained fires and explosions at several reactor buildings. Radiation leaks have included some into the sea near the plant. The operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said this week that four of the six reactors there would be scrapped.

Attempts to cool the reactors and spent-fuel pools, and efforts to answer the critical question of where the radiation leaks are coming from, are being hindered by highly radioactive water in turbine buildings attached to Reactors 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Junichi Matsumoto, a Tokyo Electric Power spokesman, said at an afternoon news conference that the pumping of the contaminated water was continuing successfully.

Tokyo Electric Power said late Thursday that the groundwater near the plant had also been contaminated. The company initially said the radiation was 10,000 times the normal level, then later questioned its own data. It did the same with a report that the level of iodine 131 in seawater near the plant had fallen below 2,000 times the statutory limit, compared with a level of more than 4,000 times the limit on Thursday.

On Friday, Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy head of the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said at a news conference that the government had questions about the company’s figures and had asked it to review the data.

Tokyo Electric officials said they would recalculate the figures after an error was discovered in a computer program. The company has several times issued radioactivity reports only to retract them after experts questioned their validity.

Questions about the credibility of the data have added to a sense that the authorities are uncertain about what is happening inside the reactors of the damaged power plant.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and David Jolly from Tokyo. Reporting was contributed by Makiko Inoue, Ken Ijichi, Moshe Komata and Chika Ohshima from Tokyo.

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Japan to Release Low-Level Radioactive Water Into Ocean

By HIROKO TABUCHI and KEN BELSON

Published: April 4, 2011

TOKYO — Tokyo Electric Power Company said on Monday that it will release almost 11,500 tons of water contaminated with low levels of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean as workers struggle to contain the increasing amounts of dangerous runoff resulting from efforts to cool the plant’s damaged reactors.

On Monday, people in Otsuchi, Japan, in Iwate Prefecture, searched for belongings in homes damaged by the March 11 tsunami.

The water to be released is being dumped to make storage room available for water with more dangerous levels of radiation.

Tokyo Electric Power has been pumping hundreds of tons of water into four of the six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station to cool the nuclear fuel in the reactor core and in spent fuel storage pools. While much of that water is evaporating, a significant amount has also been discovered in various parts of the plant, which was crippled by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that northeast struck Japan on March 11.

Over the weekend, workers resorted to desperate measures — including sawdust and shredded newspaper — in an effort to stem a direct leak of an estimated seven tons an hour of radioactive water escaping from a pit near the reactor.

Workers have focused especially on trying to pump out highly radioactive water flooding the turbine building of the No. 2 reactor. But a facility at the plant designed to store and treat the radioactive water has already been filled with runoff in recent days, the company said.

To free up space, about 10,000 tons of less seriously contaminated water will soon be released into the sea from the facility, said Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary. Tokyo Electric said it planned to begin dumping water in the ocean starting on Monday night in Japan, with a release of about 4,800 tons of water a day for two days.

An additional 1,500 tons of radioactive water will also be released from the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors, after runoff was found flooding parts of their turbine buildings. There are concerns that the water could damage the backup diesel generators for the reactors’ cooling systems, Mr. Edano said. Water from these reactors will be released 300 tons at a time over five days.

“Unfortunately, the water contains a certain amount of radiation,” Mr. Edano said. “This is an unavoidable measure to prevent even higher amounts of radiation from reaching the sea.”

The water that will be released contains about 100 times the legal limits of radiation, Tokyo Electric said. Consuming seafood caught in the area every day for a year would result in the intake of about 0.6 millisieverts of radiation, or about a quarter of average annual exposure to radiation in Japan, a company spokesman told a news conference. Mr. Edano said he ordered the company to monitor the effects of radioactive materials in the water on sea life.

Marine biologists, however, were not as sanguine as Tokyo Electric about the release of contaminated water into the ocean. They note that the amount of water making its way into the ocean has increased in recent days and would likely continue for many more months. The government is also finding higher than normal levels of radioactive materials in the waters south of Fukushima.

“We’re seeing the levels of radioactive materials in the water increase, which means this problem is going to continue to get worse and worse,” said Kenya Mizuguchi, professor emeritus at Tokyo University of Maritime Science and Technology.

The Japanese government has said it could take months to stem the release of radioactive material from the plant.

Elements such as cesium 137, which has a half-life of 30 years, collect in larger fish as they consume smaller fish, which means the problem may accumulate over time. Iodine 131 and other elements that have far shorter half lives are not as dangerous because it can take weeks for fish to make it to supermarkets and restaurants, according to Hiroki Otani, who teaches in the Health and Welfare Department at Tokyo Metropolitan University.

But Mr. Otani said that the government needs to release more data that illustrates the impact on shellfish and different types of seaweed that do not move around the ocean.

While levels of radioactive materials are much higher than normal, the mixing of radioactive water from the Fukushima plant with uncontaminated seawater can lead to a rapid decrease in radiation levels, according to an analysis by the International Atomic Energy Agency on April 1.

The I.A.E.A., citing samples taken by Japanese authorities on March 24 and 27, said radiation levels in the water about 19 miles offshore from the nuclear plant were only about one-thousandth the level closer in, at about 360 yards from the shore. Nevertheless, the level of radiation at 19 miles offshore was still hundreds to thousands of times as high as levels sampled in the same location in 2005.

The I.A.E.A said in a different analysis that the short term concern from radioactive water would be iodine 131, owing to “possible enrichment in the marine food chain.”

Regardless of the scientific debate about the impact on marine life, businesses that make their living off of seafood are being hurt by the news about the release of contaminated water into the ocean. The price for some fish like inada, or young yellowtail, has fallen by half or more in recent days, according to Seizaburo Tsuruoka, the deputy chief of the Isumi-East Fisheries Cooperatives in Chiba Prefecture, south of Fukushima.

Mr. Tsuruoka said his fishermen test their fish and have not found that they are radioactive. He added that the ocean current is travelling from south to north this season. He worries, though, what will happen when the tide reverses in autumn.

“While the government says, ‘don’t worry,’ the company says it will release water from the plant,” he said. “I’m sure the general public feels very uncomfortable, and we get hurt.”

Tokyo Electric Power has said it has little choice but to pump more water into the reactors at the moment, since the normal cooling systems at the plant are inoperable and extensive amounts of radioactive material would be released if the reactors melted down fully or if the rods caught fire.

Earlier on Monday, workers’ efforts to plug a leak of contaminated water from the nuclear plant by using sawdust, shredded newspaper and an absorbent powder appeared to be failing.

Water with high amounts of radioactive iodine has been leaking directly into the Pacific Ocean from a large crack discovered Saturday in a six-foot-deep pit next to the seawater intake pipes at the No. 2 reactor. Experts estimate that about seven tons an hour of radioactive water is escaping the pit. Safety officials have said that the water contains one million becquerels per liter of iodine 131, or about 10,000 times the levels normally found in water at a nuclear plant.

After an unsuccessful attempt to flood the pit with concrete to stop the leak, workers on Sunday turned to trying to plug the apparent source of the water — an underground shaft thought to lead to the damaged reactor building — with more than 120 pounds of sawdust, three garbage bags full of shredded newspaper and about nine pounds of a polymeric powder that officials said absorbed 50 times its volume of water.

To store more of the contaminated runoff, Tokyo Electric is rushing emergency tanks to the plant, though they may not arrive until mid-April, a company spokesman said. Tokyo Electric also plans to moor a giant artificial floating island off the coast to store contaminated water, though getting the island in place will take at least a week, he said.

Source

Sea radiation is another blow to Japan's fishermen

Posted 4/5/2011 3:24 PM ET

By Malcolm Foster And Ryan Nakashima, Associated Press

TOKYO — Fishermen who lost their homes and boats in Japan's tsunami now fear radioactive water gushing into the Pacific Ocean from a crippled nuclear plant could cost them their livelihoods.

The contaminated water raised concerns about the safety of seafood in the country that gave the world sushi, prompting the government to set limits for the first time on the amount of radiation permitted in fish.

Authorities insisted the radioactive water would dissipate and posed no immediate threat to sea creatures or people who might eat them. Most experts agreed.

Still, Japanese officials adopted the new standards as a precaution. And the mere suggestion that seafood from Japan could be at any risk stirred worries throughout the fishing industry.

"Even if the government says the fish is safe, people won't want to buy seafood from Fukushima," says Ichiro Yamagata, a fisherman who lived in the shadow of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. "We probably can't fish there for several years."

Fukushima is not a major fishing region, and no fishing is allowed in the direct vicinity of the plant. But experts estimate the coastal areas hit by the massive wave account for about a fifth of Japan's annual catch.

India announced Tuesday that it was halting food imports from Japan out of fear of radiation contamination. Few countries have gone so far, but India's three-month ban reflected the unease created by the nuclear crisis among consumers.

India said the ban would last three months or until the risk subsides. It planned to review the situation weekly.

Yamagata, whose home is within the 12-mile (20-kilometer) evacuation zone around the plant, is staying in a Tokyo soccer stadium with his wife and about 140 other refugees. He expects his fishing days are over.

After the magnitude-9.0 earthquake on March 11, he ran outside and watched the second floor of his house collapse, then fled with his family when tsunami warnings sounded.

Since then, he hasn't been allowed to return to check on the 5-ton boat he used to troll for flounder. He assumes it's gone, too. The tsunami killed up to 25,000 people and left tens of thousands homeless as it swamped about 250 miles (400 kilometers) of the northeastern coast and knocked out power to the plant.

Workers there have been desperately trying to cool down overheated reactors, but the effort has required spraying large amounts of water and allowing it to gush out wherever it can escape, sometimes into the sea.

Radioactivity will continue spewing into the air and water until cooling systems are restored.

The new limits on radioactivity in fish were imposed after plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced water tested near the plant Saturday contained levels of radioactive iodine 7.5 million times the legal limit. That level had dropped to 5 million two days later.

Past readings were lower, but they were also taken farther from the plant, so the new readings did not necessarily mean that contamination was getting worse.

Japan said some fish caught last week about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the plant would have exceeded the new limits, which may change as circumstances do.

The radiation standards for fish will be the same as for vegetables. After spinach and milk exceeded safety limits following the quake, health experts said people would still have to eat enormous quantities of tainted produce or dairy before getting even the amount of radiation contained in a CT scan.

Japan imports far more fish than it exports, but it sent the world $2.3 billion worth of seafood last year.

Some people were undaunted. At Sushizanmai, a sushi bar just outside Tokyo's famed Tsukiji fish market, customers were still eating Japan's famed raw fish delicacies Tuesday night.

But chef Seiichiro Ogawa said the fuss over radiation could hurt business. His restaurant is trying to get more fish from the western part of Japan, which has not been affected by the nuclear crisis.

"Japanese customers are especially sensitive to this kind of thing, so I'm worried they'll stop eating sushi," said Ogawa, who has already seen his business drop 50 percent after foreigners stopped visiting the city after the quake. "We need this nuclear problem to be resolved."

Back at the nuclear plant about 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, there was a rare bit of good news Tuesday: Japan's nuclear safety agency said injections of coagulant seemed to be slowing the flow of highly contaminated water that was spilling directly into the ocean from a crack discovered over the weekend.

Previous attempts to find the leak using milky white bath salts failed, but TEPCO now believes it was able to trace the leak to an area somewhere below a cracked maintenance pit.

TEPCO also said this week it is purposely dumping more than 3 million gallons of low-level radioactive water into the sea to make room in a storage tank for more highly contaminated water that it needs to remove before workers can restore important cooling systems.

That announcement angered Fukushima's federation of fisheries groups, which sent the company a letter of protest.

"Our prefecture's fisherman have lost their lives, fishing boats, piers and buildings due to the Great Eastern Japan Disaster," federation chairman Tetsu Nozaki said in the letter. "This low-level contaminated water has raised fears among fishermen that they will never be able to fish in our prefecture's waters again, and we absolutely want you to stop."

TEPCO's reputation has taken a serious hit in the crisis. On Tuesday, its stock dropped 80 yen -- the maximum daily limit, or 18 percent -- to just 362 yen ($4.30), falling below its previous all-time closing low of 393 yen from December 1951. Since the quake, the share price has plunged 80 percent.

In what could be an effort to counter the bad publicity, Takashi Fujimoto, TEPCO's vice president, said it was offering 20 million yen ($240,000) in "apology money" to each town or city affected by the mandatory evacuation zone around the plant.

That's likely to be little comfort to fisherman Yamagata and his wife, Chiharu, who are angry with TEPCO over the situation.

"All we heard was that the plants were safe, safe, safe," she said. "I feel like they were hiding things from us. Now that radiation is seeping out, it's too late."

Ichiro Yamagata, who is 50, said he would like to return to his home and his job, but he sees no way that could happen. Nearly 17,000 boats have already been reported damaged in three hardest-hit prefectures, and that's just a partial tally.

Some fishing boats that left the harbor immediately after the quake got far enough out to sea that they were safe from the tsunami, Yamagata said, but others were swept away.

For now, the Yamagatas are passing their days at the soccer stadium, sleeping on mats in large rooms sectioned off with blue, knee-high dividers. They have no possessions -- Ichiro Yamagata doesn't even have his driver's license -- and only enough cash in the bank to last six months.

"After that, I'm going to have to find some kind of work," he said. "But fishermen can't be salarymen. I can only do simple jobs."

___

Associated Press writers Yuri Kageyama and Noriko Kitano contributed to this report.

7.4 Aftershock

Another strong quake strikes off tsunami-hit Japan

By CARA RUBINSKY, Associated Press Cara Rubinsky, Associated Press

TOKYO – Japan was rattled by a strong aftershock and tsunami warning Thursday night nearly a month after a devastating earthquake and tsunami flattened the northeastern coast.

Announcers on Japan's public broadcaster NHK told coastal residents to run to higher ground and away from the shore.

The Japan meteorological agency issued a tsunami warning for a wave of up to 6 feet (two meters) after the magnitude-7.4 aftershock. The warning was issued for a coastal area already torn apart by last month's tsunami, which is believed to have killed some 25,000 people and has sparked an ongoing crisis at a nuclear power plant.

Officials at the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant said there's no immediate sign of new problems caused by the aftershock. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it evacuated two workers there and seven at a sister plant to the south that was not badly damaged.

Officials say Thursday's aftershock hit 16 miles (25 kilometers) under the water and off the coast of Miyagi prefecture. The quake that preceded last month's tsunami was a 9.0-magnitude.

Buildings as far away as Tokyo shook for about a minute.

In Ichinoseki, inland from Japan's eastern coast, buildings shook violently, knocking items from shelves and toppling furniture, but there was no heavy damage to the buildings themselves. Immediately after the quake, all power was cut. The city went dark, but cars drove around normally and people assembled in the streets despite the late hour.

Paul Caruso, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., said Thursday's quake struck at about the same location and depth as the March 11 quake. It's the strongest of the more than 1,000 aftershocks that have been felt since, except for a 7.9 aftershock that day.

The USGS said the aftershock struck off the eastern coast 40 miles (65 kilometers) from Sendai and 70 miles (115 kilometers) from Fukushima. It was about 205 miles (330 kilometers) from Tokyo.

A Pacific Tsunami Warning Center evaluation of the quake said an oceanwide tsunami was not expected. However, it noted quakes of that strength can cause waves that are destructive locally.

Source

Man stranded in empty Japanese town since tsunami

By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press – Fri Apr 8, 3:32 pm ET

MINAMI SOMA, Japan – The farmhouse sits at the end of a mud-caked, one-lane road strewn with toppled trees, the decaying carcasses of dead pigs and large debris deposited by the March 11 tsunami. Stranded alone inside the unheated, dark home is 75-year-old Kunio Shiga. He cannot walk very far and doesn't know what happened to his wife.

His neighbors have all left because the area is 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant — just within the zone where authorities have told everyone to get out because of concerns about leaking radiation.

No rescuer ever came for him.

When a reporter and two photographers from The Associated Press arrived at Shiga's doorstep Friday, the scared and disoriented farmer said: "You are the first people I have spoken to" since the earthquake and tsunami.

"Do you have any food?" he asked. "I will pay you."

Shiga gratefully accepted the one-liter bottle of water and sack of 15-20 energy bars given to him by the AP, which later notified local police of his situation.

He said he has been running out of supplies and was unable to cook his rice for lack of electricity and running water. His traditional, two-story house is intact, although it is a mess of fallen objects, including a toppled Buddhist shrine. Temperatures at night in the region have been cold, but above freezing.

The Odaka neighborhood where he lives is a ghost town. Neighboring fields are still inundated from the tsunami. The smell of the sea is everywhere. The only noise comes from the pigs foraging for food.

Local police acknowledged they have not been able to check many neighborhoods because of radiation concerns.

As radiation from the Fukushima nuclear plant has fallen in recent days, however, the police have fanned out inside the evacuation zone to cover more areas.

On Friday, they were busy searching for bodies two miles (three kilometers) from Shiga's farmhouse.

Hundreds of police, many mobilized from Tokyo and wearing white radiation suits, pulled four bodies in an hour from one small area in Minami Soma. They had found only five bodies the previous day.

The AP crew, which had been watching the police search, later broke away to see if it could find any residents living inside the evacuation zone. Some construction workers directed them to a part of town where some houses were intact.

The farmhouse where Shiga's family has grown vegetables for generations is at the end of a long mud- and rubble-covered road blocked by fallen trees and dead and decaying animals.

The journalists spotted the relatively undamaged house about 500 meters (yards) away. Unable to drive on the road because of the debris, they navigated the rest of the way on foot, sometimes crawling over large branches.

Shiga was seen wandering in front of his house but went inside. The journalists went to greet him.

He said he spent his lonely days since the disaster sitting in bed in his dark home and listening to a battery-powered radio. A scruffy beard covered his face.

"The tsunami came right up to my doorstep," he said. "I don't know what happened to my wife. She was here, but now she's gone."

Shiga said he was aware of the evacuation order but could do nothing about it, since he is barely able to walk past the front gate of his house. His car is stuck in mud and won't start.

The AP journalists asked Shiga for permission to tell the authorities about him. He agreed, and they went to a police station to tell them about the stranded farmer. The police said they would check on him as soon as they could.

Even if authorities can make it to him, Shiga said he might rather stay.

"I'm old and I don't know if I could leave here. Who would take care of me?" he said, staring blankly through his sliding glass doors at the mess in his yard. "I don't want to go anywhere. But I don't have water and I'm running out of food."

Source

Japan equates nuclear crisis severity to Chernobyl

By RYAN NAKASHIMA and SHINO YUASA, Associated Press

TOKYO – Japan ranked its nuclear crisis at the highest possible severity on an international scale — the same level as the 1986 Chernobyl disaster — even as it insisted Tuesday that radiation leaks are declining at its tsunami-crippled nuclear plant.

The higher rating is an open acknowledgement of what was widely understood already: The nuclear accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is the second-worst in history. It does not signal a worsening of the plant's status in recent days or any new health dangers.

Still, people living nearby who have endured a month of spewing radiation and frequent earthquakes said the change in status added to their unease despite government efforts to play down any notion that the crisis poses immediate health risks.

Miyuki Ichisawa closed her coffee shop this week when the government added her community, Iitate village, and four others to places people should leave to avoid long-term radiation exposure. The additions expanded the 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone where people had already been ordered to evacuate soon after the March 11 tsunami swamped the plant.

"And now the government is officially telling us this accident is at the same level of Chernobyl," Ichisawa said. "It's very shocking to me."

Japanese nuclear regulators said the severity rating was raised from 5 to 7 on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency due to new assessments of the overall radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.

According to the Vienna-based atomic energy agency, the new ranking signifies a major accident that includes widespread effects on the environment and people's health. The scale, designed by experts convened by the IAEA and other groups in 1989, is meant to help the public, the technical community and the media understand the public safety implications of nuclear events.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Japan's decision did not mean the disaster had been downplayed previously.

Early actions by Japanese authorities — evacuations, radiation warnings and the work at the plant to contain leaks — showed they realized the gravity of the situation, Denis Flory, an IAEA deputy director general, said.

The upgraded status did not mean radiation from the plant was worsening, but rather reflected concern about long-term health risks as it continues to spew into the air, soil and seawater. Most radiation exposures around the region haven't been high enough yet to raise significant health concerns.

Workers are still trying to restore disabled cooling systems at the plant, and radioactive isotopes have been detected in tap water, fish and vegetables.

Iitate's town government decided Tuesday to ban planting of all farm products, including rice and vegetables, expanding the national government's prohibition on growing rice there.

Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, went on national television and urged people not to panic.

"Right now, the situation of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant has been stabilizing step by step. The amount of radiation leaks is on the decline," he said. "But we are not at the stage yet where we can let our guard down."

Japanese officials said the leaks from the Fukushima plant so far amount to a tenth of the radiation emitted from Chernobyl, but about 10 times the amount needed to reach the level 7 threshold. They acknowledged the emissions could eventually exceed Chernobyl's, but said the chance that will happen is very small. However, regulators have also acknowledged that a more severe nuclear accident is a distinct possibility until regular cooling systems are restored — a process likely to take months.

"Although the Fukushima accident is now at the equal level as Chernobyl, we should not consider the two incidents as the same," said Hiroshi Horiike, professor of nuclear engineering at Osaka University. "Fukushima is not a Chernobyl."

In Chernobyl, in what is now the Ukraine, a reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing a cloud of radiation over much of the Northern Hemisphere. A zone about 19 miles (30 kilometers) around the plant was declared uninhabitable.

Thirty-one men died mostly from being exposed to very high levels of radiation trying to contain the accident. But there is no agreement on how many people are likely to die of cancers caused by its radiation.

No radiation exposure deaths have been blamed on the leaks at Fukushima Dai-ichi. Two plant workers were treated for burns after walking in heavily contaminated water in a building there.

The tsunami, spawned by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, knocked out cooling systems and backup diesel generators, leading to hydrogen explosions at three reactors and a fire at a fourth that was undergoing regular maintenance and was empty of fuel. Workers have been improvising for weeks with everything from helicopter drops to fire hoses to supply cooling water to the plant.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, noted that unlike in Chernobyl there have been no explosions of reactor cores, which are more serious than hydrogen explosions.

"In that sense, this situation is totally different from Chernobyl," he said.

NISA officials said they raised the incident level because of the cumulative amount of radioactive particles released into the atmosphere. Other factors included damage to the plant's buildings and accumulated radiation levels for its workers.

The revision was based on cross-checking and assessments of data on leaks of radioactive iodine-131 and cesium-137. Officials did not say why they skipped level 6 or when exactly the radiation level exceeded the level 7 threshold.

Based on government estimates, the equivalent of 500,000 terabecquerels of radiation from iodine-131 has been released into the atmosphere since the crisis began, well above the several tens of thousands of terabecquerels needed to reach level 7. A terabecquerel equals a trillion becquerels, a measure of radiation emissions. The Chernobyl incident released 5.2 million terabecquerels into the air.

"We have refrained from making announcements until we have reliable data," Nishiyama said. He also emphasized that no more major leaks are expected from the reactors, though he acknowledged more work is needed to keep the reactors stable.

Work to stabilize the plant has been impeded by continued aftershocks, the latest a 6.3-magnitude quake Tuesday that prompted plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, to temporarily pull back workers. Work removing highly radioactive water, a necessary step before cooling systems can be restored, finally resumed around 7:30 p.m.

In his televised address, Kan gave the nation a pep talk, telling people to focus on recovering from the disasters that are believed to have killed 25,000 people.

"Let's live normally without falling into excessive self-restraint," he said. "We should eat and drink products from the quake-hit areas as a form of support."

Many of the more than 14,500 people still listed as missing from the quake and tsunami are thought to have been swept out to sea. A month after the disaster, more than 145,000 people are still living in shelters.

Among them is Kenichi Yomogita, a plumbing contract worker at Fukushima Dai-ichi who was off work the day of the tsunami and has not returned. His hometown of Tomioka is in the evacuation zone, and he thinks it will be at least three years before he can return. For now he is living at a shelter in Koriyama, and said the upgraded crisis level has not improved his hopes.

"At first the reality of this situation didn't sink in," he said, "but this news shows how serious it is."

___

Associated Press writers Yuri Kageyama, Mari Yamaguchi, Mayumi Saito and Malcolm J. Foster and Noriko Kitano in Tokyo, George Jahn in Vienna and photographer Hiro Komae contributed to this report.

Source

Powerful quake strikes northeast Japan

TOKYO — A powerful earthquake struck near Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant on Tuesday, shaking buildings in Tokyo. No tsunami warning was issued and no damage immediately reported.

The US Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 6.0 and hit less than 11 kilometres (7 miles) below ground, 70 kilometres south of Fukushima city in the prefecture of the same name.

Japanese officials had put the magnitude at 6.3.

Emergency workers grappling to bring stricken reactors under control at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were temporarily ordered to evacuate, an official from operator Tokyo Electric Power said.

A loss of power to the cooling systems at the plant following the massive tsunami caused by a huge undersea quake on March 11 left reactors heating up dangerously, sparking the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.

A seismologist said he expected aftershocks from the mega-quake to continue for weeks or even months, although their frequency and strength would gradually fade.

"Aftershocks are a completely normal phenomenon," said Jean-Paul Montagner at the Institute of the Physics of the Globe in Paris.

"When there is a very large earthquake, all the tectonic forces in region are disturbed. These aftershocks are simply a way by which the region settles down."

Montagner emphasised, though, the need to be "very humble" when it comes to understanding tectonic dynamics, especially in a place like Japan, which is at the crossroads of four plates.

Each year, Japan accounts for more than a fifth of the most violent earthquakes that occur on the globe, he said.

Source

Body found on Oregon beach was tsunami victim

By KOMO Staff & News Services

Story Published: Apr 12, 2011 at 9:23 AM PDT

ASTORIA, Ore. -- A body that washed ashore in Oregon has been identified as the man who was swept out to sea in California in a tsunami surge generated thousands of miles away by the earthquake off Japan's coast.

The body of Dustin Douglas Weber, 25, was found April 2 by a person walking on the shore south of the Columbia River.

Weber was swept away near the mouth of the Klamath River in California on March 11.

He is the first person on the West Coast killed by a tsunami since 1964, when 11 people in Crescent City, Calif. died from the surge created by an earthquake in Alaska.

In the hours after the major quake off the coast of Japan, the official warnings had said the tsunami would hit the West Coast around 7:30 a.m., and Dustin thought the danger had passed at that time, according to his family.

He did not understanding that the wave surges would get bigger and go on for hours, his mother said. Dustin was skipping rocks into the river when he was swept away.

"He was not looking in the direction it was coming from, but they saw it coming," his mother said. "They tried to run down there and save him. One of the guys almost had him by the shirt. They couldn't save him.

"They tried to yell for him, but the ocean was too loud."

Source

Japan to build 100K homes for tsunami survivors

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s government proposed a special $50 billion budget to help finance reconstruction efforts and plans to build 100,000 temporary homes for survivors of last month’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.

The twin disasters destroyed roads, ports, farms and homes and crippled a nuclear power plant that forced tens of thousands of more people to evacuate their houses for at least several months. The government said the damage could cost $309 billion, making it the world’s most expensive natural disaster.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he was moved by his conversations with victims during a recent tour of shelters.

“I felt with renewed determination that we must do our best to get them back as soon as possible,” he told reporters.

The government approved an extra $50 billion (4 trillion yen) to help finance the rebuilding, in what is expected to be only the first installment of reconstruction funding. About $15 billion (1.2 trillion yen) will go to fixing roads and ports and more than $8.5 billion (700 billion yen) will go to build temporary homes and clearing rubble.

“This is the first step toward rebuilding Japan after the major disasters,” Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said.

More than 27,000 people are dead or missing after the earthquake and tsunami hit northern Japan on March 11. About 135,000 survivors are living in 2,500 shelters set up in schools and community centers. Many others have moved into temporary housing or are staying with relatives.

As part of the government’s recovery plan, it will build 30,000 temporary homes by the end of May and another 70,000 after that, Kan said.

Source

Toyota: Output won't return to normal until end of year

By Chris Woodyard, USA TODAY

Toyota said today it won't be able to return all its models back to regular production until "November or December" in the U.S., Japan and around the world.

The announcement heightens the prospect that Toyota and its Lexus luxury division will run out of cars, or at least the most popular models, over the next few months. The output cuts are due to the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan.

In statement, Toyota says:

After an in-depth analysis of its suppliers affected by the earthquake and tsunami, Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) announced today that global production will begin to ramp up as soon as July in Japan and August in North America, with all models back to normal production by November or December 2011.

The one-month difference in the start date is due to the time required to ship parts from Japan to overseas plants.

"To all the customers who made the decision to buy a vehicle made by us, I sincerely apologize for the enormous delay in delivery," said President Akio Toyoda at a press conference in Japan today announcing the normalization timeline

Currently, manufacturing plants in Japan are working at 50% of capacity due to parts availability, while those in North America are operating at 30% of capacity because of the parts supply situation.

The company said it plans to continue procuring parts from the same suppliers, but it will consider substitute parts from other suppliers. TMC said there are approximately 150 parts affecting new-vehicle production, mainly electronic, rubber and paint-related. However, replacement parts for sales service and repair are available.

TMC also said it is continuing to do all it can to minimize the impact on employment. In North America, it was announced earlier this week that there are no plans for layoffs at manufacturing plants.

"Our entire company is committed to solving the problems before us," Toyoda said, "so that we can achieve production recovery even one day sooner."

Source

With 12,000 still missing, Japan keeps searching

Posted 4/25/2011 12:12 PM ET

By Tomoko A. Hosaka, Associated Press

SHICHIGAHAMAMACHI, Japan — A line of somber soldiers walked methodically through a drained swamp Monday, with each step sinking their slender poles into the muck beneath.

If one hit a body, he would know.

"Bodies feel very distinctive," said Michihiro Ose, a spokesman for the Japanese army's 22nd infantry regiment.

The men were among 25,000 troops given the morbid duty of searching the rubble, the seas and the swamps of northeastern Japan for the bodies of the nearly 12,000 people still missing in last month's earthquake and tsunami.

The two-day operation was the biggest military search since the March 11 disaster. With waters receding, officials hoped the troops, backed by police, coast guard and U.S. forces, would make significant progress. By Monday evening, they had found 38 bodies, the military said.

In the town of Shichigahamamachi, about two dozen Japanese soldiers in black boots, white masks and waterproof jumpsuits traveled silently in unison across the soggy earth, made even softer by torrential rains an hour earlier. In some areas, the mud came up to their knees.

The search focused on a long, narrow marsh drained in recent weeks by the army using special pump trucks.

Once the soldiers reached the end of the marsh, they turned around and walked back. And then back again.

"It's important not to miss anything," Ose said as he watched the soldiers nearly camouflaged by the dark gray mud. "As long as there is time left in the day, we will keep going up and down."

In another part of town, several dozen soldiers cleared mountains of rubble by hand from a waterfront neighborhood filled with gutted and teetering houses. Four people in the neighborhood were missing, said 67-year-old Sannojo Watanabe.

"That was my house right there," he said, pointing to a foundation with nothing atop it.

He surveyed the neighborhood: "There's nothing left here."

A total of 24,800 soldiers -- backed by 90 helicopters and planes -- were sent to comb through the rubble for buried remains, while 50 boats and 100 navy divers searched the waters up to 12 miles (20 kilometers) off the coast to find those swept out to sea.

The search is far more difficult than that for earthquake victims, who would mostly be under rubble. The tsunami could have left the victims anywhere.

"We just don't know where the bodies are," Ose said.

In all, 370 troops from the 22nd infantry regiment looked for a dozen people still missing from Shichigahamamachi. The regiment had been searching the area with a far smaller contingent, but tripled the number of troops for the two-day intense search, said Col. Akira Kunitomo, the regimental commander.

Bodies found so many weeks after the disaster are likely to be unrecognizable, black and swollen, Ose said.

"We wouldn't even know if they would be male or female," he said.

The work is personal for the unit. More than half its 900 troops hail from Miyagi prefecture, which was hit hard by the tsunami, and nearly all are from northern Japan. It lost one of its own to the tsunami -- a soldier in his 30s who was on break but tried in vain to rush back to camp after the earthquake.

More than 14,300 people have been confirmed dead and nearly 11,900 remain missing. The military's first major sweep for bodies uncovered 339; its second turned up 99 more, Defense Ministry spokesman Norikazu Muratani said.

After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, bodies turned up along the Indonesian coast for months afterward. However, 37,000 of the 164,000 people who died in Indonesia simply disappeared, their bodies presumably washed out to sea.

Last week, two undersea robots provided by the nonprofit International Rescue Systems Institute conducted five-day searches in waters near three tsunami-hit towns. They found cars, homes and other wreckage, but no bodies, said Mika Murata, an official with the institute.

The Japanese government has come under criticism for its response to the disasters and a subsequent nuclear crisis.

On Monday, Goshi Hosono, an adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan and member of his nuclear crisis management task force, slammed the operator of the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co., for its handling of the crisis.

The plant was not properly prepared for the tsunami or for the loss of power that followed, he said. And TEPCO delayed the crucial venting of radioactive steam that built up immense pressure and may have contributed to hydrogen explosions that made the crisis even worse, he said. All those issues are being investigated, he said.

"I think TEPCO is used to its routine work as a supplier of electricity, but it was not good at handling something different," he said.

TEPCO announced a roadmap last week to bring the plant into cold shutdown within six to nine months, a crucial step for allowing the tens of thousands evacuated from a 12-mile (20-kilometer) area around the plant to return home.

Hosono said the situation at the plant remained "extremely difficult," with radioactivity high in some areas and the transfer of contaminated water proving very tough. Though work is slower than hoped for, Hosono said he saw no reason it would not be completed along the road map's timetable.

Meanwhile, the government was discussing how much of the compensation for the nuclear crisis it would bear and how much would be paid by TEPCO.

With its liability likely to stretch into the billions, TEPCO announced Monday it would slash executive compensation by 50 percent, cut managers' salaries by 25 percent and low-level employees would get a 20 percent pay cut. It also planned to freeze hiring for next year. The amount saved would total 54 billion yen ($660 million) for the year, the company said.

____

Associated Press writers Shino Yuasa and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

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Japanese drop politeness norm amid crisis
Nuclear woes after disasters test patience of some citizens

by John M. Glionna and Kenji Hall - May. 1, 2011 12:00 AM

Los Angeles Times

TOKYO - Kenji Kadota long followed the dual credo drilled into him during childhood: Hide your anger and trust the powers that be.

Yet in the wake of March's triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and radiation release, the 55-year-old construction chief has thrown all such cultural lessons out the window.

Kadota faults the firm that runs the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant for its mishandling of the nuclear crisis that has followed the March 11 natural disasters. He believes dithering public officials have compounded the public's anxiety by withholding information about the true dangers facing people who live near the plant.

So for the first time in his life, Kadota is speaking up. He's joined a growing chorus of college students, ruddy-faced fishermen, small-town mayors and even a combative prefecture governor voicing dissatisfaction in a manner highly uncommon in a nation known for taking politeness to the extreme.

"Japanese are raised to keep their feelings to themselves, but now that's impossible," said Kadota, who complained that officials failed to deliver water and emergency supplies to his hometown of Iwaki, not far from the stricken plant. "We've been abandoned. And I am angry."

Waging protests or posting tirades on Twitter and YouTube, Japanese citizens blame both government officials and Tokyo Electric Power Co. for the release of dangerous radioactivity into the air, soil and sea.

"There was already a small segment of people who distrusted nuclear power. But the rest of the public did not have a strong opinion about it, or if they were uneasy they didn't express it," said Yukio Maeda, at the University of Tokyo's Institute of Social Science. "The nuclear accident has made people feel uneasy and in danger, and that has triggered people to express their fears and anger out loud."

The Fukushima plant was not built to withstand earthquakes or tsunamis of the scale that hit, and the blame for flaws probably isn't Tepco's alone. Cozy ties between regulators and industry executives and complacency about safety may have been as much a factor, many believe. And after disaster struck, human error, confusion and miscommunication appear to have slowed the response.

Still, Tepco has borne the brunt of the public backlash. Officials acknowledged they received an average of 40,000 public complaints per day during the first weeks. In Tokyo, police were recently assigned to guard worker dormitories and headquarters as protesters called for an end to nuclear power.

People on the Internet have demanded that company executives be punished. Some suggest that bosses should be forced to work inside the damaged plant. Salaries and addresses of some executives have been posted online. One post began, "How to execute a Tepco executive."

Fukushima Gov. Yuhei Sato has seen his prefecture's farm products register elevated radioactive levels. Soon after the disaster, Sato refused to meet with Tepco President Masataka Shimizu, whose entourage showed up to offer the usual Japanese display of contrition: bowing and apologizing.

"There is just no way for me to accept their apology," Sato told a TV reporter.

In Minami-Soma, a town near the damaged reactors, Mayor Katsunobu Sakurai has lashed out against Tepco and the government for the lack of information about the continuing peril.

He recently went online to make his case about the "injustice" of his town's predicament.

In a 10-minute English-subtitled video posted on YouTube, Sakurai said the government's lack of leadership has made life extremely difficult.

"Even volunteers and those delivering relief supplies have no choice but to enter the city at their own risk," he said. "Residents are being forced into starvation."

Fishermen call the utility's response insulting, incompetent and unforgivable, especially the utility's dumping of more than 10,000 tons of contaminated water into the ocean without even consulting them.

Seafood accounts for about half of Japan's $3 billion in annual food exports, and overseas customers are shunning the catch no matter what area it comes from.

Quake lowered some of Japan by 5 meters

Quake shifted Japan; towns now flood at high tide

By JAY ALABASTER, Associated Press Jay Alabaster, Associated Press – Mon May 9, 5:46 am ET

ISHINOMAKI, Japan – When water begins to trickle down the streets of her coastal neighborhood, Yoshiko Takahashi knows it is time to hurry home.

Twice a day, the flow steadily increases until it is knee-deep, carrying fish and debris by her front door and trapping people in their homes. Those still on the streets slosh through the sea water in rubber boots or on bicycle.

"I look out the window, and it's like our houses are in the middle of the ocean," says Takahashi, who moved in three years ago.

The March 11 earthquake that hit eastern Japan was so powerful it pulled the entire country out and down into the sea. The mostly devastated coastal communities now face regular flooding, because of their lower elevation and damage to sea walls from the massive tsunamis triggered by the quake.

In port cities such as Onagawa and Kesennuma, the tide flows in and out among crumpled homes and warehouses along now uninhabited streets.

A cluster of neighborhoods in Ishinomaki city is rare in that it escaped tsunami damage through fortuitous geography. So, many residents still live in their homes, and they now face a daily trial: The area floods at high tide, and the normally sleepy streets turn frantic as residents rush home before the water rises too high.

"I just try to get all my shopping and chores done by 3 p.m.," says Takuya Kondo, 32, who lives with his family in his childhood home.

Most houses sit above the water's reach, but travel by car becomes impossible and the sewage system swamps, rendering toilets unusable.

Scientists say the new conditions are permanent.

Japan's northern half sits on the North American tectonic plate. The Pacific plate, which is mostly undersea, normally slides under this plate, slowly nudging the country west. But in the earthquake, the fault line between the two plates ruptured, and the North American plate slid up and out along the Pacific plate.

The rising edge of plate caused the sea floor off Japan's eastern coast to bulge up — one measuring station run by Tohoku University reported an underwater rise of 16 feet (5 meters) — creating the tsunami that devastated the coast. The portion of the plate under Japan was pulled lower as it slid toward the ocean, which caused a corresponding plunge in elevation under the country.

Some areas in Ishinomaki moved southeast 17 feet (5.3 meters) and sank 4 feet (1.2 meters) lower.

"We thought this slippage would happen gradually, bit by bit. We didn't expect it to happen all at once," says Testuro Imakiire, a researcher at Japan's Geospatial Information Authority, the government body in charge of mapping and surveys.

Imakiire says the quake was powerful enough to move the entire country, the first time this has been recorded since measurements began in the late 19th century. In Tokyo, 210 miles (340 kilometers) from Ishinomaki, parts of the city moved 9 inches (24 centimeters) seaward.

The drop lower was most pronounced around Ishinomaki, the area closest to the epicenter. The effects are apparent: Manholes, supported by underground piping, jut out of streets that fell around them. Telephone poles sank even farther, leaving wires at head height.

As surrounding areas clear rubble and make plans to rebuild, residents in this section of Ishinomaki are stuck in limbo — their homes are mostly undamaged and ineligible for major insurance claims or government compensation, but twice a day the tide swamps their streets.

"We can't really complain, because other people lost so much," says Yuichiro Mogi, 43, as his daughters examine a dead blowfish floating near his curb.

The earthquake and tsunami left more than 25,000 people either dead or missing, and many more lost their homes and possessions.

Mogi noticed that the daily floods were slowly carrying away the dirt foundation of his house, and built a small embankment of sandbags to keep the water at bay. The shipping company worker moved here 10 years ago, because he got a good deal on enough land to build a home with a spacious front lawn, where he lives with his four children and wife.

Most of the residences in the area are relatively new.

"Everyone here still has housing loans they have to pay, and you can't give away this land, let alone sell it," says Seietsu Sasaki, 57, who also has to pay off loans on two cars ruined in the flooding.

Sasaki, who moved in 12 years ago with his extended family, says he hopes the government can build flood walls to protect the neighborhood. He never paid much attention to the tides in the past, but now checks the newspaper for peak times each morning.

Officials have begun work on some embankments, but with much of the city devastated, resources are tight. Major construction projects to raise the roads were completed before the tsunami, but much of that work was negated when the ground below them sank.

The constant flooding means that construction crews can only work in short bursts, and electricity and running water were restored only about two weeks ago. The area still doesn't have gas for hot water, and residents go to evacuee shelters to bathe.

"We get a lot of requests to build up these areas, but we don't really have the budget right now," says Kiyoshi Koizumi, a manager in Ishinomaki's roads and infrastructure division.

Sasaki says he hopes they work something out soon: Japan's heavy summer rains begin in about a month, and the higher tides in autumn will rise well above the floor of his house

I am not against nuclear power plants. I am against GOVERNMENT NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS. But I certainly am not against PRIVATELY run and owned nuclear plants.

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Japanese Officials Ignored or Concealed Dangers

By NORIMITSU ONISHI and MARTIN FACKLER

Published: May 16, 2011

OMAEZAKI, Japan — The nuclear power plant, lawyers argued, could not withstand the kind of major earthquake that new seismic research now suggested was likely. Enlarge This Image Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

The Hamaoka nuclear plant in Omaezaki, Japan, about 120 miles from Tokyo. A lawsuit was filed nearly a decade ago to try to shut down the plant, considered the most dangerous in Japan.

If such a quake struck, electrical power could fail, along with backup generators, crippling the cooling system, the lawyers predicted. The reactors would then suffer a meltdown and start spewing radiation into the air and sea. Tens of thousands in the area would be forced to flee.

Although the predictions sound eerily like the sequence of events at the Fukushima Daiichi plant following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the lawsuit was filed nearly a decade ago to shut down another plant, long considered the most dangerous in Japan — the Hamaoka station.

It was one of several quixotic legal battles waged — and lost — in a long attempt to improve nuclear safety and force Japan’s power companies, nuclear regulators, and courts to confront the dangers posed by earthquakes and tsunamis on some of the world’s most seismically active ground.

The lawsuits reveal a disturbing pattern in which operators underestimated or hid seismic dangers to avoid costly upgrades and keep operating. And the fact that virtually all these suits were unsuccessful reinforces the widespread belief in Japan that a culture of collusion supporting nuclear power, including the government, nuclear regulators and plant operators, extends to the courts as well.

Yuichi Kaido, who represented the plaintiffs in the Hamaoka suit, which they lost in a district court in 2007, said that victory could have led to stricter earthquake, tsunami and backup generator standards at plants nationwide.

“This accident could have been prevented,” Mr. Kaido, also the secretary general of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, said of Fukushima Daiichi. The operator of the plant, Chubu Electric Power Company, temporarily shut down Hamaoka’s two active reactors over the weekend, following an extraordinary request by Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

After strengthening the plant’s defenses against earthquakes and tsunamis, a process that could take a couple of years, the utility is expected to restart the plant.

Japan’s plants are all located in coastal areas, making them vulnerable to both quakes and tsunamis. The tsunami is believed to have caused the worst damage at the Fukushima plant, though evidence has begun emerging that the quake may have damaged critical equipment before the waves struck.

The disaster at Fukushima Daiichi, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, directly led to the suspension of Hamaoka here in Omaezaki, a city about 120 miles southwest of Tokyo. But Mr. Kan’s decision was also clearly influenced by a campaign, over decades, by small groups of protesters, lawyers and scientists, who sued the government or operators here and elsewhere.

They were largely ignored by the public. Harassment by neighbors, warnings by employers, and the reluctance of young Japanese to join antinuclear groups have diminished their numbers.

But since the disaster at Fukushima and especially the suspension of Hamaoka, the aging protesters are now heralded as truth-tellers, while members of the nuclear establishment are being demonized.

On Friday, as Chubu Electric began shutting down a reactor at 10 a.m., Eiichi Nagano, 90, and Yoshika Shiratori, 78, were battling strong winds on the shoreline leading to the plant here. Mr. Shiratori, a leader of the lawsuit, led the way as Mr. Nagano followed with a sprightly gait despite a bent back. The two men scrambled up a dune, stopping only before a “No Trespassing” sign.

“Of course, we’re pleased about the suspension,” Mr. Nagano said, as the strong wind seemed to threaten to topple him. “But if we had done more, if our voices had been louder, we could have prevented the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi. Fukushima was sacrificed so that Hamaoka could be suspended.”

Unheeded Warnings

In 1976, a resource-poor Japan still reeling from the shocks of the oil crisis was committed fully to nuclear power to achieve greater energy independence, a path from which it never strayed despite growing doubts in the United States and Europe.

That year, as Hamaoka’s No. 1 reactor started operating and No. 2 was under construction, Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismologist and now professor emeritus at Kobe University, publicized research showing that the plant lay directly above an active earthquake zone where two tectonic plates met. Over the years, further research would back up Mr. Ishibashi’s assessment, culminating in a prediction last year by the government’s own experts that there was a nearly 90 percent chance that a magnitude 8.0 quake would hit this area within the next 30 years.

After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, residents in this area began organizing protests against Chubu Electric. They eventually sued the utility in 2003 to stop the plant’s reactors, which had increased to four by then, arguing that the facility’s quake-resistance standards were simply inadequate in light of the new seismic predictions.

In 2007, a district court ruled against the plaintiffs, finding no problems with the safety assessments and measures at Hamaoka. The court appeared to rely greatly on the testimony of Haruki Madarame, a University of Tokyo professor and promoter of nuclear energy, who since April 2010 has been the chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan, one of the nation’s two main nuclear regulators.

Testifying for Chubu Electric, Mr. Madarame brushed away the possibility that two backup generators would fail simultaneously. He said that worrying about such possibilities would “make it impossible to ever build anything.” After the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, Mr. Madarame apologized for this earlier comment under questioning in Parliament. “As someone who promoted nuclear power, I am willing to apologize personally,” he said.

In the early days of nuclear power generation in Japan, the government and nuclear plant operators assured the public of the safety of plants by promising that they would not be located on top of active fault lines, Mr. Ishibashi, the seismologist, said in an interview.

But he said that advances in seismology have led to the gradual discovery of active fault lines under or near plants, creating an inherent problem for the operators and the government and leading to an inevitable conclusion for critics of nuclear power.

“The Japanese archipelago is a place where you shouldn’t build nuclear plants,” Mr. Ishibashi said.

Advances in seismology also led to lawsuits elsewhere. Only two courts have issued rulings in favor of plaintiffs, but those were later overturned by higher courts. Since the late 1970s, 14 major lawsuits have been filed against the government or plant operators in Japan, which until March 11 had 54 reactors at 18 plants..

In one of the two cases, residents near the Shika nuclear plant in Ishikawa, a prefecture facing the Sea of Japan, sued to shut down a new reactor there in 1999. They argued that the reactor, built near a fault line, had been designed according to outdated quake-resistance standards.

A district court ordered the shutdown of the plant in 2006, ruling that the operator, Hokuriku Electric Power Company, had not proved that its new reactor met adequate quake-resistance standards, given new knowledge about the area’s earthquake activity.

Kenichi Ido, the chief judge at the district court who is now a lawyer in private practice, said that, in general, it was difficult for plaintiffs to prove that a plant was dangerous. What is more, because of the technical complexities surrounding nuclear plants, judges effectively tended to side with a national strategy of promoting nuclear power, he said.

“I think it can’t be denied that a psychology favoring the safer path comes into play,” Mr. Ido said. “Judges are less likely to invite criticism by siding and erring with the government than by sympathizing and erring with a small group of experts.”

That appears to have happened when a higher court reversed the decision in 2009 and allowed Hokuriku Electric to keep operating the reactor. In that decision, the court ruled that the plant was safe because it met new standards for Japan’s nuclear plants issued in 2006.

Critics say that this exposed the main weakness in Japan’s nuclear power industry: weak oversight.

The 2006 guidelines had been set by a government panel composed of many experts with ties to nuclear operators. Instead of setting stringent industrywide standards, the guidelines effectively left it to operators to check whether their plants met new standards.

In 2008, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Japan’s main nuclear regulator, said that all the country’s reactors met the new quake standards and did not order any upgrades.

Concealing Facts

Other lawsuits reveal how operators have dealt with the discovery of active fault lines by underestimating their importance or concealing them outright, even as nuclear regulators remained passive.

For 12 years, Yasue Ashihara has led a group of local residents in a long and lonely court battle to halt operations of the Shimane nuclear plant, which sits less than five miles from Matsue, a city of 200,000 people in western Japan.

Ms. Ashihara’s fight against the plant’s operator, Chugoku Electric Power, revolves around not only the discovery of a previously unknown active fault line, but an odd tug of war between her group and the company about the fault’s length, and thus the strength of the earthquakes it is capable of producing.

The utility has slowly accepted the contention of Ms. Ashihara’s group by repeatedly increasing its estimate of the size of the fault. Yet a district court last year ruled in favor of Chugoku Electric Power, accepting its argument that its estimates were based on the better scientific analysis.

“We jokingly refer to it as the ever-growing fault line,” said Ms. Ashihara, 58, who works as a caregiver for the elderly. “But what it really means is that Chugoku Electric does not know how strong an earthquake could strike here.”

Her group filed the lawsuit in 1999, a year after the operator suddenly announced that it had detected a five-mile-long fault near the plant, reversing decades of claims that the plant’s vicinity was free of active faults.

Chugoku Electric said the fault was too small to produce an earthquake strong enough to threaten the plant, but Ms. Ashihara’s suit cited new research showing the fault line could in fact be much longer, and produce a much stronger earthquake. It got a boost in 2006, when a seismologist announced that a test trench that he had dug showed the fault line to be at least 12 miles long, capable of causing an earthquake of magnitude 7.1.

After initially resisting, the company reversed its position three years ago to accept the finding. But a spokesman for the Chugoku Electric said the plant was strong enough to withstand an earthquake of this size without retrofitting.

“This plant sits on solid bedrock,” said Hiroyuki Fukada, assistant director of the visitor center for the Shimane plant, adding that it had a 20-foot, ferro-concrete foundation. “It is safe enough for at least a 7.1 earthquake.”

However, researchers now say the fault line may extend undersea at least 18 miles, long enough to produce a magnitude 7.4 earthquake. This prompted Ms. Ashihara’s group to appeal last year’s ruling.

Ms. Ashihara said she has waged her long fight because she believes the company is understating the danger to her city. But she says she has at times felt ostracized from this tightly bound community, with relatives frowning upon her drawing attention to herself.

Still, she said she hoped the shutdown of Hamaoka would help boost her case. She said local residents had already been growing skeptical of the Shimane plant’s safety after revelations last year that the operator falsified inspection records, forcing it to shut down one of the plant’s three reactors.

In Ms. Ashihara’s case, the nuclear operator acknowledged the existence of the active fault line in court. In the case of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata, a prefecture facing the Sea of Japan, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, the utility that also operates Fukushima Daiichi, did not disclose the existence of an active fault line until an earthquake forced it to.

In 1979, residents sued the government to try overturn its decision granting Tepco a license to build a plant there. They argued that nuclear regulators had not performed proper inspections of the area’s geology — an accusation that the government would acknowledge years later — and that an active fault line nearby made the plant dangerous. In 2005, the Tokyo High Court ruled against the plaintiffs, concluding that no such fault line existed.

But in 2007, after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake damaged the plant, causing a fire and radiation leaks, Tepco admitted that, in 2003, it had determined the existence of a 12-mile-long active fault line in the sea nearby.

Weighing the Chances

The decision to suspend Hamaoka has immediately raised doubts about whether other plants should be allowed to continue operating. The government based its request on the prediction that there is a nearly 90 percent chance that a magnitude 8.0 earthquake will hit this area within the next 30 years. But critics have said that such predictions may even underestimate the case, pointing to the case of Fukushima Daiichi, where the risk of a similar quake occurring had been considered nearly zero.

“This is ridiculous,” said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at the Research Reactor Institute at Kyoto University. “If anything, Fukushima shows us how unforeseen disasters keep happening. There are still too many things about earthquakes that we don’t understand.”

Until March 11, Mr. Koide had been relegated to the fringes as someone whose ideas were considered just too out of step with the mainstream. Today, he has become an accepted voice of conscience in a nation re-examining its nuclear program.

For the ordinary Japanese who waged lonely battles against the nuclear establishment for decades — mostly graying men like Mr. Nagano and Mr. Shiratori — the Hamaoka plant’s suspension has also given them their moment in the sun.

The two worried, however, that the government will allow Hamaoka to reopen once Chubu Electric has strengthened defenses against tsunamis. Chubu Electric announced that it would erect a 49-foot high seawall in front of the plant, which is protected only by a sand dune.

“Building a flimsy seawall isn’t enough,” Mr. Shiratori said. “We have to keep going after Chubu Electric in court and shut down the plant permanently.”

“That’s right,” Mr. Nagano said, the smallness of his bent frame emphasized by the enormous plant behind him. “This is only the beginning.”

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Rods in 3 reactors at Japan plant mostly melted

May. 23, 2011 11:33 PM

Associated Press

TOKYO - The operator of Japan's damaged nuclear power plant said Tuesday that fuel rods inside three of the facility's reactors likely melted in the days immediately after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The clearer picture of the extent of the damage comes as U.N. nuclear experts planned to meet with Japan's trade minister later Tuesday at the start of a fact-finding trip.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said last week that repaired water gauges showed that fuel rods in Unit 1 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant had mostly melted and fallen into a lump at the bottom of the pressure vessel - a state that TEPCO officials have described as a "meltdown" - after the complex's cooling system was knocked out by the tsunami.

Fresh data from Units 2 and 3 indicate that fuel rods in those reactors are in a similar state, spokeswoman Aya Omura said Tuesday.

In all three reactors, the melted fuel is mostly covered with water and remains at temperatures far below dangerous levels, officials say.

"We have analyzed data, which showed that it was highly likely that most of the fuel rods have melted. But it is unlikely that melting fuel rods could worsen the crisis because the melted fuels are covered in water," said Takeo Iwamoto, a company spokesman.

The disaster at Fukushima plant, the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, has raised questions about the lax oversight of Japan's nuclear industry.

The delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency will tour the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, during a visit expected to focus on safety issues.

TEPCO continues to face obstacles in bringing the radiation-leaking plant under control.

On Monday, officials said temporary containers holding radioactive water pumped from the reactors are almost full, raising concerns they could overflow and leak into the sea again. They said the water could fill the tanks in three days and a system to reprocess the water - now measuring more than 80,000 tons - for reuse in the reactors was not finished.

Fully ridding the plant of the contaminated water - that is pooling in reactor and turbine buildings, trenches and pits - could take through the end of December, TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto has said. The amount of contaminated water could eventually swell to about 200,000 tons, as TEPCO continues to pump water into the reactors and their spent fuel storage pools to help control temperatures and radiation.

Matsumoto had initially said the storage space could last until the system was ready in mid-June. If the storage containers reach full capacity, the water would have to stay inside the turbine basement areas.

TEPCO has been working with French nuclear engineering giant Areva on a system to reprocess the water so it can then be pumped back into the reactors for cooling.

The operator has also been scrambling bring in additional containers for water that is less radioactive. A giant floating storage tank that can hold about 10,000 tons of water arrived at the plant over the weekend.

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