Fears of catastrophe as nuclear plant explodes

Initially, four workers were injured and three people were exposed to radioactive material but, by early today, 160 people were reported to have been contaminated. About 200,000 residents have been moved from the area around the two nuclear plants in the Fukushima prefecture amid fears of a large-scale release of radiation. By early today 3,000 people had been rescued from the quake area.

As the number known to have died throughout the disaster zone rose to 1,700, it emerged that more than 9,500 people were officially listed as missing from one town alone. The figure, released by officials in Minamisanriku, suggested more than half its population of 17,000 may have been lost. Only a few concrete structures, including the hospital, remain standing.

A powerful series of aftershocks that affected buildings in Tokyo last night rocked the area around the Fukushima 1 plant. Radioactive caesium and iodine were detected around the facility.

The Japanese government was reported to be distributing potassium iodide tablets to prevent radiation sickness — a highly sensitive subject in the only nation ever to have come under nuclear attack. An unprecedented operation began to pump seawater into the reactor container in an attempt to avert a meltdown.

A turbine made by Hitachi will be brought in to speed the process. Boric acid will also be added to stop the atomic chain reaction, according to Yukio Edano, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, who predicted that the shutdown could be completed within a week. He claimed that the explosion had not damaged the reactor itself and said overall radiation leakage would be low.

However, Walt Patterson, a nuclear physicist at the Chatham House think tank in London, warned that the operation was not guaranteed to succeed and the risk of a meltdown remained. Too little was known about the status of the fuel in the reactor core, warned Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“The issue is whether the core is uncovered, whether the fuel is breaking up or being damaged, or whether the fuel is melting,” he said. John Large, a British nuclear consultant, disputed the authorities’ claims that the reactor was undamaged.

“This plant has been devastated by an explosion, it’s lost all its containment and I would expect to see a significant amount of radioactive release,” he said. Japanese officials said last night that levels of radiation had fallen at Fukushima 1 but admitted that they could not control the pressure inside the nearby Fukushima 2 plant, raising the spectre of a multiple meltdown.

A meltdown occurs when uranium fuel rods become so hot during atomic fission that they burn through the floor of the heavy steel reactor shell and spread radiation into the environment. Chris Huhne, the energy and climate change secretary, said Britain was ready to send nuclear physicists and other experts to help the Japanese authorities tackle the worst incident in the history of their nuclear programme.

Hundreds of Britons are unaccounted for and British humanitarian aid teams are due in Japan today. The two plants in Fukushima prefecture were in the path of a gigantic tsunami that tore at the northeast coast of Japan, wrecking towns and drowning its victims in 30ft high waves.

Since the quake, nuclear plants have been shut down and last night parts of Tokyo were plunged into darkness as rationing of electricity began. Naoto Kan, the Japanese prime minister, called it “an unprecedented national disaster”.

But the ominous developments at the two nuclear plants dominated the government’s concerns. The cooling systems of both plants had been knocked out by the quake. Five reactors were declared to be in a state of emergency. Nuclear scientists said the failure of the cooling systems led pressure to build up inside the reactors, forcing technicians to release small amounts of radioactive vapour.

Then, late in the afternoon, came the boom and smoke of an explosion that tore apart the exterior facade of the building. Japan has light water reactors, a modern, safer type than those involved in the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island incidents.

Professor Naoto Sekimura, a Japanese scientist, said: “No Chernobyl is possible at a light water reactor,” referring to the 1986 disaster that spewed radioactivity over Europe.

The scale of the devastation along the northeastern coast did not become clear until yesterday as the first rescuers and television crews arrived. Its towns had been wrecked by the earthquake, then flooded by the tsunami as buildings were set ablaze by broken gas and petrol pipes.

Hundreds of bodies were floating around the ruined city of Sendai, engulfed by a foul torrent of water carrying debris and cars. Ships had been tossed onto the harbour wall, where they lay high and dry. More than 250,000 people were sleeping in shelters, 5m homes were without power and 1m households had no mains water. The earthquake moved Japan’s main island by 7.8 feet, according to the US Geological Survey, and shifted the earth’s axis by 9.8 inches, according to the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology.

Further reading:

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Expert told Japan nuclear plants’ quake protection ‘too lax’
British team joins hunt for quake survivors
History of leaks, blasts and secrecy
Charles Clover: Coastal location leaves power stations exposed
Built to bounce and quiver, skyscrapers that save lives
Focus Japan’s day of devastation
‘Superswarm’ of quakes may have primed Japan for disaster
Leader This disaster must not halt nuclear power
Multimedia Graphic: How the earth moved
The Image Gallery: Japan earthquake
The Image Gallery: Pictures of the week