Japan's emperor urges nation not to give up

TOKYO — Japan's Emperor Akihito spoke to the nation Wednesday in the first made-for-TV address of his reign, expressing condolences to victims of the massive earthquake and tsunami and urging the Japanese people not to give up.
Bowing and then speaking solemnly in a gray suit, he also voiced concern about the crisis at a nuclear power plant damaged by the disasters that has led to radiation leakage.
"I am deeply concerned about the nuclear situation because it is unpredictable," he said. "With the help of those involved I hope things will not get worse."
The historic broadcast underscores the gravity of the situation facing Japan. While Akihito makes annual televised speeches to crowds marking the New Year and end of World War II, he has never directly addressed the country on camera, according to the Imperial Household Agency.
Friday's quake-spawned tsunami devastated Japan's northeastern coast, and officials believe more than 10,000 people have died.
Akihito, 77, thanked those involved in disaster relief operations, including foreign governments, and urged an all-out rescue effort.
"We don't know the number of victims, but I pray that every single person can be saved," he said in the roughly six-minute appearance.
Japan faced a worsening nuclear crisis after authorities on Wednesday ordered emergency workers to withdraw from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant amid a surge in radiation, temporarily suspending efforts to cool the facility's overheating reactors.
Radiation levels fell later Wednesday, but it was not immediately clear if the workers had returned, or how far away they had withdrawn. The workers at the forefront of the fight — a core team of 70 — 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.
The emperor's message was not live but taped earlier in the day, the Imperial Household Agency said.

China Slows Nuclear Power Plans

BEIJING — China suspended approval on Wednesday of 28 planned nuclear power plants while it revised safety standards, making the surprise announcement after Premier Wen Jiabao met with top advisers to discuss Japan’s nuclear crisis.
The government said it was also requiring safety checks at all existing plants.
“We must fully grasp the importance and urgency of nuclear safety, and development of nuclear power must make safety the top priority,” the government said on its Web site.
The government also said that levels of radiation remained normal in China and that experts had concluded that the wind would scatter the radiation from Japan’s stricken Daiichi nuclear complex to the east over the Pacific Ocean, away from China. “This will not affect the health of our public,” the statement aid.
Three days ago, before the gravity of the nuclear disaster in Japan was clear, a top Chinese official restated China’s commitment to nuclear power.
“Some lessons we learn from Japan will be considered in the making of China’s nuclear power plans,” Liu Tienan, chief of China’s National Energy Bureau, said over the weekend. “But China will not change its determination and plan for developing nuclear power.”
China has been aggressively pursuing nuclear power as an alternative to oil and its main energy source, coal. Officials have said that 28 new nuclear plants had been approved, which would amount to roughly 40 percent of the plants now planned worldwide.
Construction has begun on 20 to 25 of the Chinese plants, according to industry experts and the World Nuclear Association, an international group that promotes nuclear energy. Thirteen plants are already in operation, according to the association’s Web site.

Anger over Japan nuclear exodus

The governor of the region at the centre of Japan's nuclear crisis has criticised official handling of the evacuation of the area around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

Fukushima prefecture governor Yuhei Sato said: "Anxiety and anger felt by people have reached boiling point."
Engineers are racing to avert a nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi, badly damaged by Friday's quake and tsunami.
The government has declared a 20km (12-mile) evacuation zone around it.
Another 140,000 people living between 20-30km of the facility were told on Tuesday not to leave their homes.
Mr Sato said centres already housing people who had been moved from their homes near the plant did not have enough hot meals and basic necessities such as fuel and medical supplies. "We're lacking everything," he said.
Japanese media have became more critical of Prime Minister Naoto Kan's handling of the disaster, and have accused both the government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co of failing to provide enough information on the incident.
Thousands of people were killed in the 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami. In a rare public appearance, Japan's Emperor Akihito has said he is "deeply worried" about the crisis his country is facing.

The atomic crisis has been caused by the tsunami wrecking back-up diesel generators which kept the nuclear fuel cool at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, 220km from Tokyo.

Workers have been dousing the reactors with seawater in a frantic effort to stabilise their temperatures, since the first in a series of explosions rocked the plant on Saturday.
Helicopters deployed to dump water on the facility on Wednesday were pulled out amid concerns over radiation levels in the air above the site. Reports suggest another plan is now under consideration to use water cannon.
Earlier, the plant's operators evacuated its skeleton crew of 50 workers for about an hour as ground-level radiation spiked.
And yet another fire broke out in a reactor, while steam billowed from another one.
The power facility has sent low levels of radiation wafting into Tokyo, spreading alarm in the city and internationally.
The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Yukiya Amano, said developments at the plant were "very serious", as he prepared to head to the country to assess the situation.
'Unprecedented' Emperor Akihito went on live TV on Wednesday to make his first public comments on the disaster, and urged an all-out rescue effort.
TV stations interrupted programming to show the emperor describing the crisis facing the nation as "unprecedented in scale".
The 77-year-old - deeply respected by many Japanese - said: "I hope from the bottom of my heart that the people will, hand in hand, treat each other with compassion and overcome these difficult times."
Japan's titular head of state - who acceded to the throne in 1989 after the death of his father Hirohito - said he prayed that every victim would be saved.
He spoke as snow blanketed swathes of the disaster zone, where many survivors have little food, water or heat.
About 450,000 people have been staying in temporary shelters, many sleeping on the floor of school gymnasiums.

More than 4,300 people are listed as dead but it is feared the total death toll from the catastrophe, which pulverised the country's north-east coast, will rise substantially.

In other developments:

• After losing $620bn (£385bn) in the first two days of this week, Japan's stock market rebounded to finish Wednesday up by 5.7%
• France urged its nationals in Tokyo to leave the country or move south; two Air France planes were sent to begin evacuation
• Australia advised its citizens to consider leaving Tokyo and the most damaged prefectures
• Turkey warned against travel to Japan.

Tokyo detects "minute" amount of radiation

(Reuters) - "Minute levels" of radiation have been detected in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, Kyodo news agency said, quoting the metropolitan government.
They had found iodine and cesium but it was not immediately clear if it was linked to the damaged nuclear plant in the northeast.
It also said that radiation levels in Saitama, near Tokyo, were 40 times normal levels, quoting the local government.

Wall Street slammed; Dow falls nearly 300 amid Japan disaster

NEW YORK — Wall Street tumbled Tuesday, following Japan’s stock market sharply lower as the earthquake-shattered country faced an unfolding nuclear crisis.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell as much as 297 points in early trading, but was lately off those lows. The dollar strengthened and government bond prices rose, as investors flocked to the relative safety of U.S. Treasurys.
Earlier, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average sank a staggering 10.6 percent — more than 1,000 points — after a radiation leak was detected at a crippled power plant and residents were warned to stay indoors, sending global equities sharply lower in what could be a prolonged bout of turmoil for the world’s financial markets.
Tuesday’s drop marked the worst two-day rout for the Nikkei since 1987. It followed a 6 percent tumble Monday — the first trading day since a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck the northeastern coast, washing away towns and likely killing more than 10,000 people. Losses on Monday and Tuesday have sent the Nikkei spiraling downward 20 percent since the beginning of the year.
Fears of a nuclear catastrophe in Japan drove down U.S. equities. Wall Street was also looking ahead to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy meeting later Tuesday, when the central bank is expected to hold monetary policy on a steady course, even as lofty oil prices and increased uncertainty following Japan’s earthquake raises doubts about the global economy’s path.
In a statement due around 2:15 p.m. ET, policymakers are likely to nod to recent improvement in the economy while seeking to avoid any suggestion that they intend to cut short a $600 billion bond-buying program announced in November.
Fed officials will likely do so by beefing up their assessment of economic conditions while emphasizing just how far the central bank remains from its targets for both inflation and employment.

Radiation falls at Japanese plant

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Radiation levels have fallen at Japan's earthquake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the government says.

The levels had spiked to harmful levels after a fire and a third explosion at the site.

Weather reports say winds are blowing radiation from the plant, on Japan's north-east coast, over the Pacific.

Friday's 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami devastated Japan's north-east coast, with more than 3,000 confirmed dead and thousands missing.

Officials have warned people within 20-30km of the nuclear plant to either leave the area or stay indoors.

Further strong aftershocks - one of 6.1-magnitude centred south-west of Tokyo - continue to rock the country.

Friday afternoon's earthquake was the strongest in Japan since records began to be kept. It hit the north-east of the main island of Honshu and triggered a powerful tsunami that devastated dozens of coastal communities.
The latest official death toll from the quake and tsunami stands at more than 3,000 - but thousands of people are missing and it is feared at least 10,000 may have been killed.
More than 500,000 people have been made homeless.
The government has deployed 100,000 troops to lead the aid effort.
Explosions The crisis at the Fukushima plant - which contains six nuclear reactors - has mounted since the earthquake knocked out the cooling systems.
Explosions rocked the buildings housing reactors one and three on Saturday and Monday.
On Tuesday morning a third blast hit reactor two's building. A fire also broke out at a spent fuel storage pond at the power plant's reactor four.

That reactor had been shut down before the quake for maintenance, but its spent nuclear fuel rods were still stored on the site.

Officials said the explosions were caused by a buildup of hydrogen.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said they were closely watching the remaining two reactors at the plant, five and six, as they had begun overheating slightly.
He said cooling seawater was being pumped into reactors one and three - which were returning to normal - and into reactor two, which remained unstable.
Japan's nuclear safety agency said earlier it suspected the blast may have damaged reactor two's suppression chamber, which would have allowed radioactive steam to escape.
The head of the UN's nuclear agency - the International Atomic Energy Agency - said there was a "possibility of core damage" at reactor two.
"The damage is estimated to be less than five percent," Reuters news agency quoted Yukiya Amano as saying.
The IAEA chief added that the nuclear emergency was "worrying", but much different from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
The BBC's Chris Hogg in Tokyo says damage to the core or its container would make it a more serious incident than the previous explosions, which were thought just to have damaged the buildings housing the reactors.
Rolling blackouts
Radiation levels in the Japanese capital - 250km away - were reported to be higher than normal, but officials said there were no health dangers.
Tokyo residents have been stocking up on supplies, with some stores selling out of items such as food, water, face masks and candles.
Mariko Kawase, 34, told AFP news agency: "I am shopping now because we may not be able to go out due to the radiation."
Radiation levels in Chiba prefecture, next to Tokyo, were 10 times above normal levels, Kyodo News reported. Tokyo city officials said the radiation later fell to closer to normal levels.
After Tuesday's blast, radiation dosages of up to 400 millisieverts per hour were recorded at the Fukushima Daiichi site, about 250km north-east of Tokyo.
A single dose of 1,000 millisieverts causes temporary radiation sickness such as nausea and vomiting.

Three other nuclear power plants shut down automatically during Friday's earthquake and are in a safe and stable condition, the IAEA reported on Tuesday.

The loss of so much generating capacity in one blow has meant rolling blackouts have had to imposed for parts of Tokyo.
In other developments:

• An elderly man was pulled out from a collapsed building in Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture, 96 hours after the disaster
• A 70-year-old woman was rescued after 92 hours from rubble in the coastal town of Otsuchi
• Airlines from Asia and Europe - including Germany's Lufthansa, Air China and Taiwan's EVA Airways - halted flights to Tokyo
• The Nikkei share index tumbled again, ending 10.55% lower, as the central bank pumped almost $100bn (£62bn) more cash into the financial system, a day after its record $183bn intervention
• Ninety-one countries have offered aid to Japan, ranging from blankets to search dogs and military transport aircraft

Japan has also announced a 30-km no-fly zone around the site to prevent planes spreading the radiation further afield.

Radiation fears after Japan blast

 

As radiation levels near the plant rise, people are being checked for exposure

 

Radiation from Japan's quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has reached harmful levels, the government says.

The warning comes after the plant was rocked by a third blast which appears to have damaged one of the reactors' containment systems for the first time.
If it is breached, there are fears of more serious radioactive leaks.
Officials have extended the danger zone, warning residents within 30km (18 miles) to evacuate or stay indoors.

The crisis has been prompted by last Friday's 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami in north-eastern Japan.

On Tuesday morning, reactor 2 became the third to explode in four days at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
A fire also briefly broke out at the plant's reactor 4, and is believed to have caused radioactive leaks.
Reactor 4 had been shut down before the quake for maintenance, but its spent nuclear fuel rods are still stored on the site.
Radiation levels in the Japanese capital - 250km (155 miles) away - were reported to be higher than normal, but officials said there were no health dangers.
Tokyo residents have been stocking up on supplies, with some stores selling out of items such as food, water, face masks and candles.
Housewife Mariko Kawase, 34, told AFP news agency: "I am shopping now because we may not be able to go out due to the radiation."
In other developments:

• A 70-year-old woman has been rescued alive from rubble in the coastal town of Otsuchi, five days after disaster
• The Nikkei share index tumbled again, ending 10.55% lower, as the central bank pumped almost $100bn (£62bn) more cash into the financial system, a day after its record $183bn intervention
• Ninety-one countries have offered aid to Japan, ranging from blankets to search dogs and military transport aircraft

In a televised address, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said: "There is still a very high risk of more radiation coming out."
No-fly zone He said that those living within between 20km (12 mile) and 30km of the plant were at risk and should not leave their homes.

Residents within 20km have already been advised to evacuate, and the premier said anyone left in that exclusion zone must leave.

"Now we are talking about levels that can impact human health," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano.
He told residents: "Please do not go outside. Please stay indoors. Please close windows and make your homes airtight.
"Don't turn on ventilators. Please hang your laundry indoors."
Japan also announced a 30-km no-fly zone around the reactors to prevent planes spreading the radiation further afield.
Radiation levels around Fukushima for one hour's exposure rose to eight times the legal limit for exposure in one year, said the plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco).
The International Atomic Energy Agency said after Tuesday's blast that radiation dosages of up to 400 millisieverts per hour had been recorded at the site.
Exposure to over 100 millisieverts a year is a level which can lead to cancer, according to the World Nuclear Association.
On Monday, a hydrogen blast at the Fukushima plant's reactor 3 was felt 40km (25 miles) away. It followed a blast at reactor 1 on Saturday.
All explosions have followed cooling system breakdowns. Engineers are trying to prevent meltdowns by flooding the chambers of the nuclear reactors with seawater.
Japan's nuclear safety agency said it suspects Tuesday's blast may have damaged reactor 2's suppression chamber.

The BBC's Chris Hogg in Tokyo says that would make it a more serious incident than the previous explosions, which were thought just to have damaged the buildings housing the reactors.

The latest official death toll stands at about 2,400 - but some estimates suggest at least 10,000 may have been killed.
Thousands are still unaccounted for - including hundreds of tourists - while many remote towns and villages have not been reached.
More than 500,000 people have been made homeless.
The government has deployed 100,000 troops to lead the aid effort.
The UK Foreign Office has updated its travel advice to warn against all non-essential travel to Tokyo and north-eastern Japan. British nationals and friends and relatives of those in Japan can contact the Foreign Office on +44(0) 20 7008 0000.




 

Hydrogen Explosion Occurs at Japanese Nuke Plant

Japan's chief cabinet secretary says a hydrogen explosion has occurred at Unit 3 of Japan's stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. The blast was similar to an earlier one at a different unit of the facility. (March 13)

Calif. official: Tsunami damage upward of $40M

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- A California official estimates that statewide damage from last week's tsunami exceeds $40 million.

Mike Dayton, acting secretary of the Emergency Management Agency, gave the estimate Monday after touring Santa Cruz Harbor, where 18 vessels sank, about 100 were damaged and another 12 remained unaccounted for.

The damage in Santa Cruz Harbor alone is estimated at $17 million.

Officials at Crescent City Harbor, which also suffered significant wave damage, are still working on a damage total.

Dayton watched as recovery crews used large inflatable pillows to get battered vessels to float to the top of the water.

He says state officials are still determining whether to seek federal assistance with rebuilding efforts.

URGENT: Work resumes to pump seawater into troubled nuclear reactor unit: TEPCO

Work resumed early Tuesday morning to inject seawater into a troubled reactor unit at the quake-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after a steam vent of the pressure container was opened, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

Fuel rods became fully exposed again at the No. 2 reactor late Monday night after workers recovered water levels to cover half of them in a bid to prevent overheating, according to the utility.

A series of troubles have been reported at the nuclear power plant in a Pacific coast region in Fukushima Prefecture following a massive tsunami triggered by a catastrophic earthquake on Friday.

Rikuzentakata destroyed by tsunami

Before the tsunami, Rikuzentakata was home to 24,000 people. After the huge wave wiped out the entire town, 18,000 of its residents are missing.

Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett reports from the devastated town in northern Japan.

Obama aide: Little chance that Japan radioactivity will drift to U.S.

There is little chance that harmful radiation from Japan's damaged nuclear plants will reach American land, said Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Gregory Jaczko.
"Based on the type of reactor design and the nature of the accident, we see a very low likelihood -- really, a very low probability -- that there's any possibility of harmful radiation levels in the United States or in Hawaii or any other U.S. territories," Jaczko told reporters at the White House.
Jaczko also said that his office has dispatched two NRC technical experts to Japan to help with the nuclear plant damage by last week's earthquake and tsunami.
The NRC chair also said all U.S. nuclear plants are "designed to withstand significant phenomena," such as earthquake and tsunamis. He said he could not say where U.S. plants could withstand the kind of massive, 8.9-on-the-Richter-scale kind of earthquake that hit Japan.

NHK: Strong aftershock shakes camera at Tokyo studio

March 14, 2011: A strong aftershock shook the outdoor camera at broadcaster NHK, located in Tokyo, Monday afternoon. (from NHK aircheck)

"All is gone"

As you enter the tsunami zone, there is nothing but devastation stretching away into the distance.

It begins just a few miles from the skyscrapers of Sendai city. You can see the city's tower blocks nearby but, as you head towards the seashore, everything has been destroyed.

A vast swathe of land along the coast, perhaps a couple of miles deep, has been inundated.

Field after field is flooded, the ditches along the roadside are full of cars swept away by the waves of water that poured through here, and debris from thousands of homes lies everywhere. In one flooded field alone I counted more than 50 cars.

In another field is a green armchair, sitting incongruously in the middle of the water. All around are things picked up by the tsunami, now strewn here and there.

In the distance, men in orange suits and waterproof boots try to cut through the roof of a collapsed house. And far behind them black smoke pours from a burning petrochemical plant.
The scene could almost be apocalyptic.

The skies all along the coastline are buzzing with helicopters. They are search teams scouring the wrecked landscape for any signs of life.

But thousands are still missing, and it is hard to believe that anyone could have survived.
Amidst the devastation we came across Natsuko Komura. She was picking her way through the mud, looking lost.

She told us she had been riding her horse here when the earthquake struck. She jumped in her car and fled, along with many others, as the waves approached.

"The traffic lights had stopped working and there was massive congestion, rows and rows of cars," she told me.

Now she had come back to see if she could find her horse. But she couldn't even recognise where roads used to be, unable to find her bearings because the tsunami has altered everything.

 

 

"Words fail me," she said, "because there is nothing here, the things that are supposed to be here, everything is gone."
As we moved on, she just stood, rooted where she was, bewildered.
But others didn't outrun the tsunami. Search teams are combing through the flooded fields and wrecked villages looking for bodies. They use long probes to poke into the mud and the piles of flotsam dumped by the water.
We watched as the teams waded out to a minivan that had been marooned in the middle of a field. Inside they found one more body, someone who had drowned in their car as they tried to escape.
More than 200 bodies have been recovered in this area. The police chief for the local prefecture estimates 10,000 may have died.
New alerts Then we headed further towards where the tsunami hit land close to the little village of Higashiro. We had to pick our way through a sea of mud.
What should have been a road was covered in broken branches, a squashed tractor and lots of electricity cables that had been brought down. The destruction goes on and on.
The seashore was in the distance behind a row of trees. Here the waves toppled houses, they lie at crazy angles. Trees have been smashed into the buildings. A motorcycle lies twisted and bent.
Inside the houses the furniture has been turned to matchsticks, possessions tossed everywhere, and on a few walls are portraits with the faces of those who once lived here, now stained by the waters which filled everything.
An old man who had just been recovering some possessions from his house in the village said: "The faster people ran, the more chance they had of surviving." Then he added: "Thirty people are still missing, I don't know if they are alive or dead."
At the end of the day the recovery teams had to pull back a couple of miles from the seashore. Another tsunami alert had just sounded and it wasn't safe for them to keep working near the coast.
Every day there are more new earth tremors, aftershocks from Friday's giant earthquake. As you gaze over the wrecked landscape it feels as if the natural order of things has been shaken, and nobody knows when it will settle down again.


 

Swiss suspend nuclear plant replacements approvals

(Reuters) - Swiss Energy Minister Doris Leuthard has suspended the approvals process for three nuclear power stations so safety standards can be revisted after the crisis in Japan.
"Safety is our first priority," Leuthard said in a statement on Monday.

Switzerland's five existing nuclear reactors generate about 40 percent of the country's electricity but some will have to be retired in coming years. Decisions on sites for new plants had expected to be made in mid-2012.
The Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate ENSI has been requested to do safety checks at the existing plants, the Swiss department of the environment, transport, energy and communications said in the statement.
Swiss utility companies Axpo, Alpiq (ALPH.S) and BKW (BKWN.S) said in December they would club together in their plans to build two new nuclear power to replace existing capacity.

Meltdown alert at Japan reactor

Technicians are battling to stabilise a third reactor at a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear plant, which has been rocked by a second blast in three days.

 

The Fukushima Daiichi plant's operators have resumed pumping seawater into reactor 2 after a cooling system broke.
They warned of a possible meltdown when the fuel rods became exposed after the pump stopped as its fuel ran out.
A cooling system breakdown preceded explosions at the plant's reactor 3 on Monday and reactor 1 on Saturday.
The latest hydrogen blast injured 11 people, one of them seriously. It was felt 40km (25 miles) away and sent a huge column of smoke into the air.
The outer building around the reactor was largely destroyed.
But as with the first explosion, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said the thick containment walls shielding the reactor cores remained intact. It also said radiation levels outside were still within legal limits.
Mass evacuation Shortly after the blast, Tepco warned that it had lost the ability to cool Fukushima Daiichi's reactor 2.

Hours later, the company revealed that the fuel rods inside had been exposed fully at one point, reportedly for about two-and-a-half hours. It said a fire pump being used to pump seawater into the reactor had run out of fuel.

The company is now trying to inject sea water into the reactor to cover the fuel rods, cool them down and prevent another explosion.
Initially, water levels continued to fall despite the efforts, as only one of the five fire pumps was working, officials said. The other four were believed to have been damaged by the blast at reactor 3.
By Monday evening, however, the water level inside the reactor had risen to 2m (7ft), the Kyodo news agency reported.
Exposure for too long a period of time can damage the fuel rods and raise the risk of overheating and possible meltdown.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said workers were also battling rising pressure within the reactor. They have opened vents in the containment vessel, which could release small amounts of radiation.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano earlier said the emergency effort to cool reactor 2 would hopefully stabilise the situation, and that radiation around the plant remained at tolerable levels despite the various crises.
Nevertheless, tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from a 20km (12 mile) exclusion zone around the plant.
The US said it had moved one of its aircraft carriers from the area after detecting low-level radiation 160km (100 miles) offshore.
Experts say a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl in the 1980s is highly unlikely because the reactors are built to a higher standard and have much more rigorous safety measures.
Earlier, Tepco said it had restored the cooling systems at two of the three reactors experiencing problems at the nearby Fukushima Daini power plant, 11.5km (7.1 miles) to the south.
Complete devastation Meanwhile, the relief operation is continuing after Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake, which triggered a tsunami that devastated swathes of the north-eastern coast of the country.
About 2,000 bodies had been found washed ashore on beaches in the north-eastern prefecture of Miyagi, police said.
A thousand were found on the Ojika peninsula and another thousand in the town of Minamisanriku, which was flattened by the tsunami.

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Hundreds perish in 8.9 earthquake, tsunamis as minister warns of nuclear radiation

A dam in Japan's northeast Fukushima prefecture broke and homes were washed away, Kyodo news reported early this morning.

Aftershocks continued to strike Japan as the nation grappled with the scale of the disaster, which brought buildings down in balls of fire across the country and killed an unknown number of people. Giant waves swept 5km inland through coastal areas north of Tokyo, tearing up houses, farms and factories.

Following what was deemed the biggest quake to hit the country - and almost certainly its greatest natural disaster - Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan addressed his people as live television coverage presented an unfolding vision of the catastrophe.

He warned of "major damage in broad areas in northern Japan" and asked people "to act calmly while listening carefully to information from radio and TV".

The Japanese government said it was acting on the presumption the quake was the largest the country had seen, and sent warships and army personnel to assist, while jet fighters were scrambled to assess the damage.

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

A state of emergency was declared at the Ongawa nuclear power plant in the wake of the giant earthquake but a fire there was extinguished early this morning.

About 6000 people within a 3-kilometre radius were also urged to leave areas surrounding a nuclear plant in the Fukushima prefecture, which was early this morning was "under control" after water was pumped into the reactor's cooling system.

A total of 11 reactors at four nuclear plants were automatically shut down by the quake but Mr Kan said no leakages had been detected.

Flames were last night still roaring out of an oil refinery north of Tokyo.

The UN said it was ready to send search-and-rescue teams.

Australia said it also stood ready to provide Japan with whatever assistance it required.

The Australian embassy in Tokyo was last night trying to ascertain whether any Australians had been hurt or injured by the quake.

An estimated 11,000 Australians live in Japan, including 14 in the Miyagi prefecture and nine in Sendai, the area worst hit by the tsunamis. The 8.9-magnitude earthquake hit Japan at 2.46pm local time (4.46pm AEDT), unleashing tsunamis up to 10m high that sent ships crashing into the shore and carried cars through the streets of coastal towns.

A ship carrying about 100 people was reportedly swept away by the tsunami and its fate remained unknown last night, while reports said a passenger train was also unaccounted for.

The Pacific Rim was on high alert after a tsunami warning was issued for virtually the entire region. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from coastal areas in Hawaii, which lay in the direct path of the tsunami. The quake - the fifth-biggest recorded by the US Geological Survey - struck just under 400km northeast of Tokyo.

It was followed by at least 19 aftershocks, one as strong as 7.1.

Thirty minutes after the main quake, tall buildings were still swaying in Tokyo and mobile phone networks were not working. Big aftershocks rocked Tokyo hours after the first quake, and hundreds of people were reported trapped in buildings.

Oil installations exploded into infernos that spread through residential areas, and Mr Kan said all was being done to secure the country's nuclear power plants.

Many injuries were reported from Pacific coastal areas of the main Honshu island and the capital, Tokyo, while TV footage showed widespread flooding in the area. A 10m wall of water was reported at Sendai in northeastern Miyagi prefecture. NHK showed footage of a large ship being swept away by the tsunami and ramming into a breakwater in the city of Kesennuma in Miyagi.

Helicopter footage showed massive inundation in northern coastal towns, where floods of black water sent shipping containers, cars and debris crashing through towns. Mud waves were shown racing upstream along the Natori river in Sendai city and moving inland, tearing up roads, tossing vehicles around and covering farm fields.

Japan's meteorological agency said that within two hours, large tsunamis washed ashore into cities along a 2100km stretch of the country's eastern shore from the northern island of Hokkaido to central Wakayama prefecture.

The International Red Cross last night warned that the tsunamis generated from the quake would be higher than many Pacific islands.

While Japanese authorities last night confirmed deaths in two figures, the extent of the devastation led to expectations of mass casualties.

Kevin McCue, a seismologist and adjunct professor at Central Queensland University based in Canberra, said seven earthquakes over magnitude-8 had rocked Japan since 1891. In 1923, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake killed 147,000 people in Kanto, he said.

In 1995, more than 6000 people died in an earthquake. But the 8.9-magnitude quake yesterday exceeded all of them.

"Our expectation is that many people will be killed and there will be extensive damage," Professor McCue said. "Fortunately for Tokyo, it's a bit further north than the great Kanto earthquake was, which means the damage in Tokyo is likely to be much less."

The earthquake off Indonesia that set off the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, killing more than 200,000 people, was 9.1 on the Richter scale.

Co-director of the Australian Tsunami Research Centre James Goff said the earthquake would test Japan's building code, tsunami warning system and evacuation plans.

AT least 337 people died in the strongest earthquake ever to hit Japan yesterday and the final death toll from that catastrophe and subsequent tsunamis is likely to pass 1000.

The magnitude-8.9 megaquake caused catastrophic damage across Japan, with cities engulfed by tsunamis set off by the 8.9 megaquake.

The earthquake unleashed a monster tsunami that together claimed hundreds of lives, as a minister warned there could be a discharge of radiation from a nuclear plant.

The towering wall of water generated by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake - the seventh biggest in history - pulverised the northeastern city of Sendai, where police reportedly said that between 200 and 300 bodies had been found on the coast.

Kyodo News said the final death toll was likely to pass 1000.

At least 531 were missing as of last night.

The 10m (33-foot) wave of black water sent shipping containers, cars and debris crashing through the streets of Sendai and across open farmland, while a tidal wave of debris-littered mud destroyed everything in its path.

"Japan has a rigorous earthquake building code and excellent tsunami warning system and evacuation plans," he said. "This event will likely provide a severe test for all of them."

In the capital, where millions evacuated swaying buildings, multiple injuries were reported when the roof of a hall collapsed during a graduation ceremony.

"We were shaken so strongly that we needed to hold on to something in order not to fall," said an official in the local government of the hard-hit city of Kurihara in Miyagi prefecture.

"We couldn't escape the building immediately because the tremors continued . . . Officials are now outside, collecting information on damage."

Plumes of smoke rose from at least 10 locations in Tokyo, where 4 million homes suffered power outages. The quake saw Tokyo's metro system shut down, along with the main international airport at Narita. Metropolitan expressways were also closed.

Professor McCue said a Pacific-wide tsunami has been generated and would hit other countries in the north Pacific within hours.

Authorities warned that tsunamis could extend around the Pacific, with Southeast Asia, Australia, and the west coasts of the Americas vulnerable.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said: "An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coasts near the epicentre in minutes, and more distant coastlines within hours."

But Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said there was no tsunami threat for Australia.

New tsunami warning for Japan cancelled

AFTER initial reports of a three metre tsunami off the coast, the Meteorological Agency says there is no current risk of another deadly wave hitting Japan's northeastern coast.

Soldiers and officials along a stretch of Japan's northeastern coast had warned residents that the area could be hit by another tsunami, ordering them to higher ground.

Farther south along the coast, helicopters flew over coastal communities warning residents to head to higher ground.

In Sendai, the biggest city in the area, police announced warnings on a public address system.

Earlier, Jiji news agency reported that a large wave was spotted off the coast by a helicopter, but the meteorological agency says it had detected no sign of a new tsunami or a major quake that would have triggered it.

Authorities had issued evacuation orders in some parts of the devastated coastline after the initial report and as seawater was seen retreating off Iwate and Aomori prefectures - a phenomenon that occurs before tsunamis.

Public broadcaster NHK had reported that the crew of a fire department helicopter had spotted a three-metre high tsunami off Fukushima prefecture, saying it was expected to hit shortly after 1.30pm AEDT.

By 2pm AEDT no tsunami was reported to have hit.

A meteorological agency official told AFP: "When we detect an earthquake, the agency issues either a tsunami warning or an alert, but there was no quake monitored".

He added, as a note of caution, that some of the agency's offshore monitoring systems had been broken by last Friday's disaster.

An offshore quake had struck 140 kilometres northeast of Tokyo earlier today, shaking tall buildings in Tokyo, but authorities did not then issue a tsunami alert.

The quake off coastal Ibaraki prefecture - one of many aftershocks since Friday's massive 9 quake - had a 5.8-magnitude, said the US Geological Survey, which said the quake struck at a depth of 18 kilometres.

Meanwhile, an explosion has rocked a quake-damaged Japanese nuclear power plant but the reactor apparently has not been breached.

Hydrogen blast occurs at Fukushima plant's No. 3 reactor: agency

A hydrogen explosion occurred Monday morning at the quake-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's troubled No. 3 reactor, the government's nuclear safety agency said, urging about 600 residents in a 20-kilometer radius to stay indoors.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. confirmed that the 11:01 a.m. blast did not damage the container of the No. 3 reactor, allaying concerns that the explosion may have caused a massive release of radioactive substance.

TEPCO said three workers, including its employees, were injured by the blast. All of them suffered bruises.

''According to the plant chief's assessment, the container's health has been maintained,'' Edano told a press conference. ''The possibility is low that massive radioactive materials have spattered.''

Edano said the blast that blew away the roof and the walls of the building housing the container was similar to an explosion Saturday at the No. 1 reactor of the same plant, following Friday's magnitude 9.0 quake.

It had been widely expected that the No. 3 reactor would follow the same path.

The top government spokesman said operations to pour seawater into the reactor to cool it down were continuing and the level of pressure in the container was stable.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said wind was not blowing in the area. The radiation level had not significantly risen, it added.

The Tokyo metropolitan government is also examining radiation levels in the metropolis.

The Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant has been shut down since the quake and some of its reactors have lost their cooling functions, leading to brief rises in the radiation level over the weekend. As a result, cores at the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors have been partially melting.

Earlier in the day, TEPCO reported to the government that the radiation level at the plant had again exceeded the legal limit and pressure in the container of the No. 3 reactor had briefly increased.

On Monday, radiation at the plant's premises rose over the benchmark limit of 500 micro sievert per hour at two locations, measuring 751 micro sievert at the first location at 2:20 a.m. and 650 at the second at 2:40 a.m., according to the report.

The hourly amounts are more than half the 1,000 micro sievert to which people are usually exposed in one year.

The maximum level detected so far around the plant is 1,557.5 micro sievert logged Sunday.

The utility had been pouring seawater into the plant's No. 1 and No. 3 reactors to help cool their cores, which are believed to have partially melted after part of the fuel rods were no longer covered by coolant water when levels fell following the quake.

The seawater injection stopped around 1 a.m. due to the shortage of water left in tanks, but resumed for No. 3 reactor at 3:20 a.m., according to the nuclear safety agency.

The halt of coolant water injection apparently caused rising pressure in the reactor container and an increase in the radiation level at the plant, the agency said.

TEPCO at one point planned to release radioactive steam from the No. 3 reactor container to depressurize it and ordered workers to vacate the site. But as the pressure later lowered, workers resumed operations at the site, according to the agency.

Edano said pressure in the No. 1 reactor container has been stable and seawater injection for the reactor will resume later.

Operator: Nuke blast site radiation under control

TOKYO — The operator of a Japanese nuclear power plant where a reactor's containment building exploded says radiation levels at the unit are within legal limits.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. says radiation levels at Unit 3 of the stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant were 10.65 microsieverts Monday, significantly under the 500 microsieverts at which a nuclear operator is legally bound to file a report to the government.

There was a hydrogen explosion at the unit earlier in the day.

Officials have been racing to stave off multiple reactor meltdowns after a devastating quake and tsunami incapacitated the Fukushima plant.

More than 180,000 people have evacuated the area, and up to 160 may have been exposed to radiation.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

SOMA, Japan (AP) — The second hydrogen explosion in three days rocked Japan's stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant Monday, sending a massive column of smoke into the air and wounding six workers. It was not immediately clear how much — if any — radiation had been released.

The explosion at the plant's Unit 3, which authorities have been frantically trying to cool following a system failure in the wake of a massive earthquake and tsunami, triggered an order for hundreds of people to stay indoors, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano.

The blast follows a similar explosion Saturday that took place at the plant's Unit 1, which injured four workers and caused mass-evacuations.

Japan's nuclear safety agency said six workers were injured in Monday's explosion but it was not immediately clear how, or whether they were exposed to radiation. They were all conscious, said the agency's Ryohei Shomi.

Earlier, Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the reactor, said three workers were injured and seven missing.

The reactor's inner containment vessel holding nuclear rods was intact, Edano said, allaying some fears of the risk to the environment and public. TV footage of the building housing the reactor appeared to show similar damage to Monday's blast, with outer walls shorn off, leaving only a skeletal frame.

More than 180,000 people have evacuated the area in recent days, and up to 160 may have been exposed to radiation.

Earlier Monday, pressure had jumped inside Unit 3, forcing the evacuation of 21 workers. But they returned to work after levels appeared to ease.

Associated Press journalists felt the explosion in the tsunami-devastated port town of Soma, some 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of the reactor. They reported feeling the faint rumble a blast and the ground shaking.

At the time, sirens were wailing as rescue workers were in the midst of evacuating all those in the city to high ground due to a tsunami warning. That turned out to be a false alarm.

Military Crew Said to Be Exposed to Radiation, but Officials Call Risk in U.S. Slight

The Pentagon was expected to announce that the aircraft carrierRonald Reagan, which is sailing in the Pacific, passed through a radioactive cloud from stricken nuclear reactors in Japan, causing crew members on deck to receive a month’s worth of radiation in about an hour, government officials said Sunday.

The officials added that American helicopters flying missions about 60 miles north of the damaged reactors became coated with particulate radiation that had to be washed off.

There was no indication that any of the military personnel had experienced ill effects from the exposure. (Everyone is exposed to a small amount of natural background radiation.)

But the episodes showed that the prevailing winds were picking up radioactive material from crippled reactors in northeastern Japan. Ever since an earthquake struck Japan on Friday, the authorities worldwide have been laying plans to map where radioactive plumes might blow and determine what, if any, danger they could pose to people.

Blogs were churning with alarm. But officials insisted that unless the quake-damaged nuclear plants deteriorated into full meltdown, any radiation that reached the United States would be too weak to do any harm.

Washington had “hypothetical plots” for worst-case plume dispersal within hours of the start of the crisis, a senior official said Sunday. The aim, the official added, was “more to help Japan” than the United States, since few experts foresaw high levels of radiation reaching the West Coast.

For now, the prevailing winds over Japan were blowing eastward across the Pacific. If they continue to do so, international stations for radioactive tracking at Wake or Midway Islands might detect radiation later this week, said Annika Thunborg, a spokeswoman for an arm of the United Nations in Vienna that monitors the planet for spikes in radioactivity.

“At this point, we have not picked up anything” in detectors midway between Japan and Hawaii, Ms. Thunborg said in an interview on Sunday. “We’re talking a couple of days — nothing before Tuesday — in terms of picking something up.”

Agencies involved in the tracking efforts include the World Meteorological Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, which runs a global network of more than 60 stations that sniff the air for radiation spikes.

In the United States, the Departments of Defense and Energy maintain large facilities and cadres of specialists for tracking airborne releases of radiation, both civilian and military.

On Sunday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it expected no “harmful levels of radioactivity” to move on the winds to Hawaii, Alaska or the West Coast from the reactors in Japan, “given the thousands of miles between the two countries.”

In interviews, some private nuclear experts called a windborne threat unlikely. Others urged caution.

“We’re all worrying about it,” said Robert Alvarez, a nuclear expert who, from 1993 to 1999, was a policy adviser to the secretary of energy, who runs the nation’s nuclear complex.

“It’s going to be very important,” he added, “for the Japanese and U.S. authorities to inform the public about the nature of the plumes and any need for precautionary measures.”

The plume issue has arisen before. In 1986, radiation spewing from the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine was spread around the globe on winds and reached the West Coast in 10 days. It was judged more of a curiosity than a threat.

Since then, scientists have refined their abilities to monitor such atmospheric releases. The advances are rooted in the development of new networks of radiation detectors, flotillas of imaging satellites and the advent of supercomputers that can model the subtle complexities of the wind to draw up advanced forecasts.

With the Japanese crisis, popular apprehension has also soared.

“Concern has been raised about a massive radioactive cloud escaping and sweeping over the West Coast,” said a recent blog, recommending whole grains and health foods for fighting radiation poisoning.

On another blog, someone asked, “Should I take iodine now?” That referred to pills that can prevent poisoning from the atmospheric release of iodine-131, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear plants that the Japanese authorities have identified as escaping into the atmosphere.

While federal officials expected little danger in the United States from Japanese plumes, they were taking no chances. On Sunday, Energy Department officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the agency was working on three fronts.

One main player is the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Officials said they had activated its National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center, which draws on meteorologists, nuclear scientists and computer scientists to forecast plume dispersal.

Separately, energy officials said the agency was readying plans to deploy two-person monitoring and sampling teams, if necessary. The teams would travel to consulates, military installations and Navy ships to sample the air in a coordinated effort to improve plume tracking.

Finally, the department was preparing what it calls its Aerial Measuring System. Its detectors and analytical equipment can be mounted on a variety of aircraft. Officials said the equipment and monitoring team are staged out of the department’s Remote Sensing Laboratory at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, and are on two-hour call.

“We’re on top of this,” a department official said.

Explosion at Japan nuclear plant

A second explosion has hit the nuclear plant in Japan that was damaged in Friday's earthquake, but officials said it had resisted the blast.

TV footage showed smoke rising from Fukushima plant's reactor 3, two days after an explosion hit reactor 1.

Japan's nuclear safety agency said the blast was believed to have been caused by the build-up of hydrogen.

Officials said the reactor core was still intact, and that radiation levels were below legal limits.

Technicians have been battling to cool three reactors at the Fukushima 1 plant since Friday, when the quake and tsunami combined to knock out the cooling system.

The government said an operation pumping seawater into the reactors to help lower the temperature was still going on despite the explosion.

Evacuations

The natural disaster killed hundreds and left thousands missing, sparking a huge rescue operation.

The BBC's Rachel Harvey in the port town of Minami Sanriku describes it as a scene of utter devastation, with the landscape strewn with debris.

She says everything has been flattened until about 2km inland, and says it looks unlikely that many survivors will be found.

Japanese police have so far confirmed 1,597 deaths, but the final toll is expected to be much higher.

Kyodo news agency reported that 2,000 bodies had been found on the shores of Miyagi prefecture on Monday, but the claims could not be verified.

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from the area around Fukushima nuclear plant.

At least 22 people are now said to be undergoing treatment for radiation exposure.

Government spokesman Yukio Edano said there was a low possibility of radioactive contamination from the latest explosion at the plant.

He said the reactor's containment vessel had resisted the explosion.

The operators of the Fukushima plant said seven people were missing and three were injured by the blast.

Experts say a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl in the 1980s is highly unlikely because the reactors are built to a much higher standard and have much more rigorous safety measures.

Powerful aftershocks

Earlier, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the situation at the nuclear plant was alarming, and the earthquake had thrown Japan into "the most severe crisis since World War II".

He announced that the country would have to endure rolling power cuts from Monday.

But later, the government announced that the planned blackouts had been postponed, saying they may not be needed if householders could conserve energy.

The government advised people not to go to work or school on Monday because the transport network would not be able to cope with demand.

The capital is also still experiencing regular aftershocks, amid warnings that another powerful earthquake is likely to strike very soon.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of relief workers, soldiers and police have been deployed to the disaster area.

Rescue workers have found scenes of total devastation in isolated coastal towns north-east of the main port city of Sendai, which was itself partially destroyed by the waves.

Preliminary estimates put repair costs from the earthquake and tsunami in the tens of billions of dollars, a huge blow for the Japanese economy that - while the world's third largest - has been ailing for two decades.

The government announced it was pumping 15 trillion yen ($182bn; £113bn) into the economy to prop up the markets - which slumped on opening.

Japan earthquake: CCTV video of tsunami wave hitting Sendai airport

Tsunami video: Coast Guard chopper captures waves battering Crescent City harbor

The Coast Guard has released dramatic video shot by a helicopter showing the tsunami destroying parts of Crescent City's harbor.

A Coast Guard Air Station North Bend HH-65C Dolphin helicopter was sent over Crescent City on Friday as the tsunami that started with Japan's 9.0 quake battered the harbor.

Officials said a number boats were lost and docks destroyed by the waves, which topped 8 feet.

"We're facing not only physical but financial disaster," harbormaster Richard Young told residents and elected officials during an early briefing. "Our business activity came to a screeching halt yesterday, and that affects the entire community."

Below is raw footage of the aftermath from CBS News.