JAPAN’S GOVERNMENT was struggling last night to dampen mounting public panic as workers at a nuclear power plant 240km from the city battled to save it from going into meltdown.
The government’s top spokesman, Yukio Edano, admitted fuel rods at the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi facility had been left fully exposed for over two hours after pumps using seawater to cool the core ran out of fuel. Without coolants, temperatures inside the reactor core can rise hundreds of degrees, melting the rods.
Mr Edano told reporters last night seawater was again being pumped around the rods in the No 2 reactor, and the water level was starting to rise.
“It has now reached a stage where it is being cooled. If that continues, the situation will stabilise.”
The near-meltdown follows an explosion at the plant’s No 3 reactor yesterday, which injured 11 and sent plumes of smoke and debris into the air. The government insisted that the reactor core had held during the blast and there had been minimal radiation exposure.
However, Japanese press reports say at least 15 people have been contaminated by radiation from steam released from the plant. The US navy also said 17 military personnel working in rescue operations around the nuclear site had been exposed to low levels of radiation.
It is also very likely that more radioactive steam escaped into the air during the attempt to cool the fuel rods last night.
The USS Ronald Reagan, a giant aircraft carrier anchored about 160km off Japan’s shore, moved further into the Pacific after detecting the contamination, said AP News, though it insisted the levels were harmless. “It is certainly not cause for alarm,” Cdr Davis said.
The frantic attempts to prevent catastrophe at the nuclear plant come amid a huge search for bodies and missing loved ones. Thousands of corpses have been washing up along the Pacific coast, which was devastated by Friday’s huge tsunami.
Over 2,000 bodies were recovered from Miyagi Prefecture alone, instantly doubling yesterday’s confirmed death toll of 1,833 deaths and confirming fears that the final tally could be in the tens of thousands.
Nearly half a million people have been evacuated in Miyagi and surrounding prefectures, with thousands taking refuge in makeshift shelters. Water and power supplies remain cut off in about 1.5 million households.
“The shops are running out of food so we’re giving them water, bread as well as blankets,” said Moto Otsuka, spokesman for the prefecture. “The main issue for most people is trying to contact their family members. Communications are still not working.”
Messages from people looking for family members missing since Friday have begun appearing in community centres, schools and government offices. “I can’t contact my mother,” said Norito Kurosawa, who is taking refuge with 700 others in Miyagi’s local government building. “I heard there was a landslide near our home after the earthquake and that she may have been caught up in it.”
Many cities have been forced to divert dwindling supplies and power to overwhelmed hospitals and community centres. Patients in the Ishinomaku Red Cross Hospital in Miyagi are spilling into the corridors and halls as doctors struggle to cope. On the floors and slumped in wheelchairs, elderly people have begun to die after having been evacuated from quake- and tsunami-stricken areas.
With food and other supplies running out, panic buying has also hit stores in Tokyo and other large cities. Around the country there are queues hundreds of cars long for petrol, which is being rationed.
Thousands of schools have been closed and factories and businesses are operating reduced hours to save on power. Japan’s meteorological agency is also warning that another large earthquake is likely in the next few days. At 5am today, local time, an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.1 jolted the Tokyo area. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage and no tsunami warning was issued.
Foreign workers in Tokyo have already begun leaving the capital, in some cases on the advice of their embassies. “We can sit around staring at the rolling news and growing more anxious by the minute about a new earthquake, tsunami, nuclear threat, or we can do something about it and get away for a few days,” said Nicole Fall, an Australian who left Tokyo on Sunday night for the city of Osaka, about 500km away. Officials in many embassies are also quietly sending their families out of the country. Some foreign companies are sending employees to the south until the level of radiation leak can be assessed. Families outside the 20km evacuation zone around the stricken plant say they are increasingly worried about the possibility of catastrophe. “I just don’t know what we should do,” said Masazumi Chiba, who lives in Fukushima, about 50km from the plant.