Radiation in Japan is as bad as Chernobyl as crisis level is raised to 7

Mangalore Today / Mail

Japan, April 12:

    * Spread of radioactive particles is ’out of control’
    * Further earthquakes could worsen problems at the Fukushima plant
    * Total radiation released ’could exceed Chernobyl’, officials admit

Japanese officials admitted today that the spread of radiation from its crippled nuclear plant was out of control and that the government had raised the crisis level to the worst on the international scale.

With radioactive substances pouring out a ’wide area’ the crisis level had been raised from 5 to 7, posing a threat to human health and the environment.

Level 7 has only been applied to the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986.

 

As bad as Chernobyl: An image taken by a T-Hawk drone aircraft shows an aerial view of the damaged reactor building of Unit 4, left, of the Fukushima power plant on Sunday




Threat: Fire and smoke are seen at a building for sampling from seawater near No. 4 reactor in this image taken today

A fresh 6.3-magnitude aftershock rocked the plant today, forcing Tokyo Electric to pull out their workers as a precaution.

They have been working round the clock since the 9.0-magnitude megaquake on March 11 but have been impeded by the continued aftershocks.

An unnamed official from Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (Nisa) said the amount of radiation leaking from the nuclear plant was around 10 per cent of the Chernobyl accident.

The level 7 signifies a ’major accident’ with ’wider consequences’ than the previous level, according to the standards scale.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yuki Edano said as it was revealed the level was being raised: ’This reconfirms that this is an extremely major disaster.





Raising the alert: NISA Director-General Kenkichi Hirose speaks during a joint news conference with Japan’s Nuclear Safety Agency in Tokyo this morning




Fallout from a tsunami: Evacuees living in partitioned ’rooms’ at a shelter in Kamaishi in Iwate prefecture a month after the disaster on March 11

’We are very sorry to the public, people living near the nuclear complex and the international community for causing such a serious accident.’

But he said there was no ’direct health damage’ so far from the crisis.

’The accident itself is really serious, but we have set our priority so as not to cause health damage,’ he added.

Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear physicist at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, said the revision was not a cause for worry, as it was about the overall release of radiation and not directly linked to health dangers.

He said most of the radiation was released early on in the crisis and that the reactors still have mostly intact containment vessels surrounding their nuclear cores.

Nisa spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said: ’We have refrained from making announcements until we have reliable data.

’The announcement is being made now because it became possible to look at and check the accumulated data assessed in two different ways.’




Landslide: Mud and trees cover part of a road in Iwaki after a landslide caused by a magnitude 7 earthquake yesterday

He added that unlike at Chernobyl there have been no explosions in the reactor cores - although there have been hydrogen blasts.

’In that sense, this situation is totally different from Chernobyl,’ he said.

Tokyo Electric is still estimating the total amount of radioactive material that could be released, company spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said.

He acknowledged that, if leaks continue, the amount of radioactivity released might eventually exceed the amount emitted by Chernobyl.

On March 18, a week after the earthquake and tsunami which destroyed towns and villages on the east coast and severely damaged the Fukushima plant, Nisa estimated the crisis level at the nuclear complex to be at level 5, the same as the accident at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979.

But level 7 has only been applied to Chernobyl in 1986, when hundreds of thousands of terabecquerels of radioactive iodine-131 were released into the atmosphere with dire consequences for the health of people hundreds of miles around.

Officials are gravely concerned that another major earthquake in the region will cause further problems at Fukushima - and might also damage other nuclear plants on the east coast.

A strong earthquake - of magnitude 7 - hit the Fukushima Prefecture at a depth of four miles on Monday, shaking offices and homes, but an initial tsunami warning was lifted.

Several minor quakes followed later but officials have warned of further strong aftershocks in the days and weeks to come.

What the government fears is that another earthquake or tsunami could cripple other nuclear plants, increasing the spread of radiation in the air and in the sea.

Meanwhile, setbacks continued at the tsunami-stricken nuclear power complex.

Workers discovered a small fire near a reactor building today. The fire was extinguished quickly, the plant’s operator said.

Tokyo Electric, which operates the disabled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, said the fire at a box that contains batteries in a building near the No. 4 reactor was discovered at about 6.38am local time and was put out seven minutes later.

It wasn’t clear whether the fire was related to a magnitude-6.3 earthquake that shook the Tokyo area on Tuesday morning. The cause of the fire is being investigated.

’The fire was extinguished immediately. It has no impact on Unit 4’s cooling operations for the spent fuel rods,’ said TEPCO spokesman Naoki Tsunoda.

The plant was damaged in a massive tsunami March 11 that knocked out cooling systems and backup diesel generators, leading to explosions at three reactors and a fire at a fourth that was undergoing regular maintenance and was empty of fuel.

 

Nuclear fears: Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, right, speaks to an employee at the Fukushima plant last week. Today the alert level was raised to seven after a fire broke out yesterday

The earthquake that caused the tsunami immediately stopped the three reactors, but overheated cores and a lack of cooling functions led to further damage.

Engineers have been able to pump water into the damaged reactors to cool them down, but leaks have resulted in the pooling of tons of contaminated, radioactive water that has prevented workers from conducting further repairs.

In Chernobyl, Ukraine, a reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing a cloud of radiation over much of the Northern Hemisphere.

A zone about 19 miles around the plant was declared uninhabitable, although some plant workers still live there for short periods and a few hundred other people have returned despite the government warning them to stay away.