| Home > North-East Asia >> Japan | |
Tens of thousands dead as Japan scrambles to avert nuclear catastrophe
The Australian - March 14, 2011
Peter Alford, in Tokyo – Local authorities in Japan last night said the death toll from Friday's earthquake and tsunami would be in the "tens of thousands", as engineers battled to stave off a nuclear catastrophe at critically damaged atomic power plants.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan said last night Japan was facing its worst crisis in 65 years, since the end of World War II.
Known and presumed deaths exceeded 2000 last night, but the policeman in charge of the worst-hit prefecture said the final toll would be "in the tens of thousands".
More than half the 17,000 population of one coastal town, Minamisanriku, was unaccounted for, said Miyagi prefecture police chief Naoto Takeuchi. "There's no doubt the number of fatalities will be in the tens of thousands," he said.
Minamisanriku is 50km north of Sendai, one of about a dozen coastal towns that outside emergency services teams were reaching only yesterday.
As a nuclear emergency worsened at Fukushima to the south, the Japan Meteorological Agency upgraded Friday's earthquake to magnitude-9 from the earlier estimate of 8.9, making it the fourth-mightiest ever recorded.
The US Geological Survey reported that the immensely powerful event appeared to have moved the planet marginally on its axis, and that parts of Honshu, Japan's main island, had been shifted 2.4m.
The official death toll last night topped 800, and more than 1200 named people could not be accounted for.
Mr Kan said the situation at the Fukushima atomic power plant remained grave. "The current situation of the earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear plants is in a way the most severe crisis in the past 65 years since World War II," he said.
More than 377,000 evacuees were staying in emergency shelters in four prefectures.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said 191 Australians were registered as living in the worst-affected areas but there were no reports of casualties.
A 72-strong Australian search and rescue team and a canine search team left for Japan, and a DFAT spokesman said Canberra was consulting with the Japanese on providing further assistance.
About 62,000 people have been evacuated from 20km exclusion zones around the Fukushima No 1 and No 2 nuclear power stations.
Authorities said 24 people had been confirmed with radiation exposure and would undergo decontamination treatment. They estimate as many as 130 people might have been exposed to radiation risk at the No 1 station.
The government on Saturday night ordered Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the Fukushima plants, to cripple one overheating reactor at the No 1 plant. Officials foreshadowed the same action could be taken on a second unit.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the government was assuming the No 1 reactor had started melting down and there was a risk the No 3 unit had entered the same critical condition.
Technicians at Fukushima No 1 plant began flooding the No 1 reactor with a mixture of seawater and boric acid on Saturday night to reduce temperature around the out-of-control reactor core.
Robert Alvarez, who works on nuclear disarmament at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, described the flooding as "an act of desperation". The action is expected to irreparably damage the reactor.
Asked whether the No 1 reactor had suffered a core meltdown, Mr Edano said: "There is a good likelihood. Of course, we cannot confirm what's happening inside the reactor but we are coping with the matter assuming that happened."
He said the same assumption applied to the No 3 reactor, which started venting radioactive steam yesterday morning to reduce pressure after the cooling mechanism failed, or was unable to cope with temperature build-up.
Later, however, Mr Edano said the No 3 reactor core might have "deformed" but had not started melting.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said it was possible the government would order TEPCO to also flood the No 3 unit with seawater and boric acid.
"The situation has become desperate enough that they apparently don't have the capability to deliver fresh water or plain water to cool the reactor and stabilise it, and now, in an act of desperation, are having to resort to diverting and using seawater," news agency AFP quoted Mr Alvarez as saying.
The failure in the No 3 unit meant all six reactors in operation at the two Fukushima plants had lost cooling function. The other four are considered safe at this stage.
TEPCo officially notified the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency yesterday that radiation levels at No 1 plant had exceeded legal limits.
Radiation at the plant perimeter measured 1024 micro sievert at 8.33am yesterday, Mr Edano said, compared with an allowable level of 500ms, but the intensity later reduced 70ms.
The building housing the No 1 reactor exploded on Saturday afternoon, blowing away the roof and most walls, and Mr Edano told reporters yesterday a similar blast was possible at No 3 unit.
But a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official told ambassadors in Tokyo yesterday the explosion had not damaged the No 1 containment vessel, and the reactor core was still contained.
The official insisted to reporters the blast was "fundamentally different from anything of the Chernobyl type', and rejected comparisons with the US Three Mile Island partial meltdown.
A state of emergency was declared at a second nuclear facility due to excessive radiation levels there, the UN atomic watchdog said.
"Japanese authorities have informed the IAEA that the first or lowest state of emergency at the Onagawa nuclear power plant has been reported by Tohoku Electric Power Company," the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement last night.
The alert was declared "as a consequence of radioactivity readings exceeding allowed levels in the area surrounding the plant. Japanese authorities are investigating the source of radiation," the watchdog said.
However the IAEA reported this morning that radiation levels at Onagawa had returned to normal.
A cooling pump at another plant 120 kilometres from Tokyo, the Tokai No. 2, had failed, but a back-up was working and cooling the reactor, a plant spokesman said early today.
Chinese, US, Australian, German and Swiss rescue teams arrived in Tokyo yesterday on their way to the disaster zone. The US aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan reached the northeast coast to assist relief and offshore search operations.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan instructed the Self-Defence Forces to increase the numbers of military personnel in quake-hit areas to 100,000.
"I ask for utmost efforts to save the lives of as many people as possible," Mr Kan said at meeting of the government's emergency disaster headquarters. "We will put all-out efforts into rescuing people who have been isolated."
Millions of survivors were left without drinking water, electricity and proper food along the pulverised northeastern coast. Although the government doubled the number of soldiers deployed in the aid effort to 100,000, it seemed overwhelmed by what's turning out to be a triple disaster: Friday's quake and tsunami and the damaged nuclear reactors.
The nuclear crisis posed fresh concerns for those who survived the earthquake and tsunami, which hit with breathtaking force and speed, breaking or sweeping away everything in its path.
"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," Kenji Koshiba, a construction worker, said at an emergency center in Koriyama town near the power plant in Fukushima.
In a rare piece of good news, the Defence Ministry said a military helicopter 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.
Teams searched for the missing along hundreds of kilometres of Japanese coastline, and hundreds of thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers that were cut off from rescuers and aid. At least 1.4 million households had gone without water since the quake struck and some 2.5 million households were without electricity. Temperatures were to dip near freezing overnight.
Trade Minister Banri Kaeda said the region was likely to face further blackouts.
[Additional reporting: AP.]
See also:
 |