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to a reactor vessel – casting a new shadow over efforts to control a steady radiation leak.
Two weeks after a giant quake struck and sent a massive tsunami crashing into the Pacific coast, the death toll from Japan’s worst post-war disaster topped 10 000 and there was scant hope for 17 500 others still missing.
The tsunami obliterated entire towns and some 250 000 homeless in almost 2 000 shelters are still braving privations and a winter chill, with a degree of discipline and dignity that has impressed the world.
In a televised news conference a fortnight after the calamity, Prime Minister Naoto Kan urged people living in tsunami-stricken areas to “move with full courage towards reconstruction.’
The focus of Japan’s immediate fears remained the Fukushima nuclear plant, which was still emitting radioactive vapour that at one point this week made the capital’s drinking water unsafe for infants.
Kan said that the situation at the ageing facility, located 250 kilometres northeast of Tokyo, was still “very unpredictable”.
“We’re working to stop the situation from worsening. We need to continue to be extremely vigilant,” he cautioned.
The government asked people still living between 20 and 30 kilometres from the plant to leave voluntarily, effectively widening the exclusion zone.
China, South Korea and the EU joined the United States, Russia and several other nations in restricting food imports from Japan, which itself has ordered a stop to vegetable and dairy shipments from the region near the atomic plant.
Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the plant, said it may take at least another month to achieve a cold shutdown – when reactor temperatures fall below boiling point and cooling systems are back at atmospheric pressure.
A day after two workers at the 1970s-era facility were hospitalised with radiation burns, its operator reported suspected damage at reactor number three.
“It is possible that the pressure vessel containing the fuel rods in the reactor is damaged,” a TEPCO spokesman told AFP.
The new safety scare could hamper urgent efforts to restore power to the all-important cooling systems at the plant.
“Radioactive substances have leaked to places far from the reactor,” said a spokesman for Japan’s nuclear safety agency, Hideyuki Nishiyama. – AFP.