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Japan Quake Death Toll Rising, Thousands Missing As Meltdown Fears Ease

Staff Reporters |
March 11, 2011 | 10:15 p.m. PST

A possible meltdown.
A possible meltdown.
UPDATE 10:30 a.m. PST Saturday March 12:  Japanse officials no estimate the death toll from this week's monster quake at at least 1300 but say "thousands" of citizens in certain areas remain unreachable and unaccounted for.The threat of a nuclear meltdown at a damaged nuclear plant about 100 miles from Tokyo seemed to ease Saturday night but had not fully subsided. The New York Times:

 

Officials said late Saturday that leaks of radioactive material from the plant, which began before the explosion, were receding and that a major meltdown was not imminent. But severe problems at two nuclear plants close to the epicenter of the quake forced evacuations of tens of thousands of people from surrounding areas, hampering efforts to search for survivors and forcing Japan’s leadership to grapple with two major crises as the same time.

 

UPATE 12:35 a.m. PST Saturday March 12: Japanese news agencies report that an explosion was heard and smoke was seen coming from the Fukushima Dailichi nuclear power plant where internal heat and pressure have raised fears of a full scale meltdown.  It appears that a concrete wall at appears to have been destroyed. Some injuries are reported.  The AP further reports: "The walls of a building at nuclear power station crumbled Saturday as smoke poured out and Japanese officials said they feared the reactor could melt down following the failure of its cooling system in a powerful earthquake and tsunami.

 

It was not clear if the damaged building housed the reactor. An official said the utility that runs the Fukushima Daiichi plant was reporting that several workers may have been injured.

Fukushima Prefecture official Masato Abe said the cause of the rattling and smoke was unclear, declining to say whether an explosion had occurred.

Footage on Japanese TV showed that the walls of one building had crumbled, leaving only a skeletal metal frame block standing. Puffs of smoke were spewing out of the plant."

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11:30 p.m. PST Friday March 11: In the wake of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that has killed as perhaps thousands of people, a Japanese nuclear safety official said Saturday that a meltdown at one of the country's atomic power plants is now a possibility.  Al Jazeera reports:

"Japanese nuclear authorities said that there was a high possibility that nuclear fuel rods at a reactor at Tokyo Electric Power's Daiichi plant may be melting or have melted, Jiji news agency reported on Saturday."

Japanese officials earlier declared a nuclear emergency and began evacuating the population around at least two nuclear reactors.

Radiation levels outside the nuclear power plants are at eight times the normal level, but it does not pose an immediate threat to nearby residents, a nuclear safety agency said to a Japanese news network earlier in the day, The latest declaration from Shiomi now heightens the level of alarm.

Following the 8.4-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that devasted parts of Japan Friday, some nuclear power plants automatically shut down as a result of powerful shaking; however, the nuclear reactors will continue to produce heat and need to be electrically cooled.

The government extended its evacuation orders to residents within a 6.2-mile radius of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in northeast Japan. The order was originally only for residents within an approximate two-mile radius.

Kyodo News, a Japanese news network, reports that with radiation levels at about 1,000 times the regular level inside the nuclear plant, it is possible that radioactive steam may spread to other areas of the nuclear plant.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan visited the facility early Saturday. “I want to grasp the situation,” Kan told Japanese reporters.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company released a statement saying, “We have decided to implement measures to reduce the pressure of the reactor containment vessel…in order to fully secure safety.”
Reducing pressure inside the reactors means that the Fukushima nuclear plant would release radioactive vapor into the air.

Amid concerns that a meltdown may happen at the Fukushima plant, a spokesperson at the Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Energy Institute said “It’s too soon to know” what risk residents near the nuclear plant face.
There is a possibility of a controlled release of radiation, and that should not be an automatic concern for people, said Steve Kerekes, NEI spokesman.

Kerekes said that this nuclear emergency should be kept in context and not sensationalized because there is no sense in scaring people whose country has already been devastated.
He cited a partial meltdown that happened about 30 years ago in Pennsylvania at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station. The partial meltdown released a maximum of 70 millirems of radiation—5,000 millirems is the maximum amount that employees inside nuclear plants can be exposed to.

Numerous studies after the Three Mile Island incident could not identify adverse health effects in the people that were exposed to the leaked radiation, Kerekes said.

He added that people are regularly exposed to radiation throughout the day from sources ranging from the sun to consumer products.

Kerekes said that a radiation leak is not necessarily cause for alarm, rather, it is unusually high radiation levels that should cause alarm.

Additional reporting from Raquel Estupian.



 

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