Crews flee failing nuke plant

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A woman reacts Tuesday to the news of a relative's death in an evacuation shelter for survivors of the earthquake and tsunami. (KYODO NEWS / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS )

FUKUSHIMA, Japan -- Japan suspended operations to keep its stricken nuclear plant from melting down Wednesday after surging radiation made it too dangerous to stay.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the workers dousing the reactors in a frantic effort to cool them needed to withdraw.

"The workers cannot carry out even minimal work at the plant now," Edano said. "Because of the radiation risk we are on standby."

The nuclear crisis has triggered international alarm and partly overshadowed the human tragedy caused by Friday's earthquake and tsunami, which pulverized Japan's northeastern coastline, killing an estimated 10,000 people and severely damaging the nuclear plant.

Since then, authorities have tried frantically to avert an environmental catastrophe at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex in northeastern Japan, 140 miles (220 kilometres) north of Tokyo.

Edano said the government expects to ask the U.S. military for help. He did not elaborate.

The surge in radiation was apparently the result of a Tuesday fire in the complex's Unit 4 reactor, according to officials with Japan's nuclear safety agency. That blast is thought to have damaged the reactor's suppression chamber, a water-filled pipe outside the nuclear core that is part of the emergency cooling system.

Officials had originally planned use helicopters and fire trucks to spray water in a desperate effort to prevent further radiation leaks and to cool down the reactors.

"It's not so simple that everything will be resolved by pouring in water. We are trying to avoid creating other problems," Edano said.

A U.S. nuclear expert said he feared the worst.

"It's more of a surrender," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who now heads the nuclear safety program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an activist group. "It's not like you wait 10 days and the radiation goes away. In that 10 days things are going to get worse."

"It's basically a sign that there's nothing left to do but throw in the towel," Lochbaum said.

The government has ordered some 140,000 people in the vicinity to stay indoors. A little radiation was also detected in Tokyo, 150 miles (240 kilometres) to the south, triggering panic buying of food and water.

There are six reactors at the plant, and the three that were operating at the time have been rocked by explosions. The one still on fire was offline at the time of the magnitude 9.0 quake, Japan's most powerful on record.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency estimated that 70 per cent of the rods have been damaged at the No. 1 reactor.

Japan's national news agency, Kyodo, said that 33 per cent of the fuel rods at the No. 2 reactor were damaged and that the cores of both reactors were believed to have partially melted.

Government spokesman Yukio Edano said the radiation leak potentially affected public health. But authorities and experts said the risks to the public diminished the farther the distance from the plant. At its most intense, the leak released a radioactive dose in one hour at the site 400 times what a person normally receives in a year. Within six hours, that level had dropped dramatically.

A person would have to be exposed to that dose for 10 hours for it to be fatal, said Jae Moo-sung, a nuclear engineering expert at Seoul's Hanyang University.

Radiation elsewhere never reached that level. In Tokyo, 270 kilometres to the southwest, authorities reported radiation levels nine times normal -- too small, officials said, to threaten the 39 million people in and around the capital. Weather patterns helped, shifting Tuesday night to the southeast, blowing any potential radiation from the plant toward the sea.

The IAEA said Tuesday all other Japanese nuclear plants were in a safe and stable condition.

Though Kan and other officials urged calm, the developments fuelled a growing panic in Japan and around the world amid widespread uncertainty over what would happen next. In the worst-case scenario, one or more of the reactor cores would completely melt down, a disaster that could spew large amounts of radioactivity into the atmosphere.

-- The Associated Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 16, 2011 A8