Japan as it happened: March12 2011

1825GMT The official death toll has now been raised to 686. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said that cases reported so far suggested over 1,000 had certainly died.

Atsushi Ito, an official in Miyagi prefecture, among the worst hit states, could not any figures for his area. He said that, with so little access to the region, thousands of people in scores of town could not be contacted or accounted for.

1706 GMT The confirmed death toll now stands at 574 people. There are 10,000 still missing in Minamisanriku and Japanese television is reporting piecemeal on the numbers unaccounted for in other towns in the region with the total running into several thousand.

1630 GMT We have had reports of bodies seen floating in the water off Kansai - south of Tokyo.

1601 GMT The nuclear accident at Fukushima has been rated significantly less serious by Japan’s nuclear safety agency than either the Three Mile Island accident of 1979 or the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.

Fukushima rated 4 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, the agency said, compared with 5 for Three Mile Island and 7 for Chernobyl. The scale is from 1 to 7.

1544 GMT Japan has asked Russia to increase energy supplies following the damage to the country’s nuclear power stations.

The Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Igor Sechin, said Russia could increase liquefied natural gas supplies by 150,000 tonnes. Coal deliveries could increase by up to four million tonnes next week.

1542 GMT Vladimir Putin, Russia’s Prime Minister, has ordered a review of emergency response plans in the country’s far east after today’s explosion at the Fukushima nuclear plant, the news agency RIA Novosti says.

1534 GMT People in the worst-hit areas are hoarding water and those whose homes have been wrecked have erected makeshift shelters, Reuters says. Temperatures are freezing.

Outside a damaged supermarket in Mito city, people were queueing. “All the shops are closed, this is one of the few still open. I came to buy and stock up on diapers, drinking water and food,” said Kunio Iwatsuki, 68.

1521 GMT Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has met senior cabinet ministers this afternoon to discuss the implications of a recent move by the German government to extend the life of the country’s nuclear power stations.

Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrats face elections in three states this month, and the opposition Social Democrats and Greens have seized upon the emergency at the Fukushima plants to call for a change in Germany’s nuclear policy. Several of the country’s nuclear plants would be unable to withstand either a direct hit from an aircraft or an earthquake, they say.

The government decided last year to keep Germany’s 17 nuclear plants running for about 12 years beyond their original shutdown dates. The move prompted large protests and dented the popularity of Mrs Merkel’s coalition.

1514 GMT In Minamisanriku, wreckage is hampering the efforts of the local authorities and the Self-Defence Forces to find the 10,000 people who are missing.

Tomohiko Kato, of the disaster bureau of Miyagi, told AFP that it had contacted at least 7,500 local residents at shelters and houses. “But our monitoring operations have been hampered with debris and mud,” he said. “Even helicopters can’t approach some of the shelters. I’m afraid that it will take more time to finish our confirmation procedures.”

The Japanese Self-Defence Forces are the country’s military forces, established at the end of the Allied occupation following the Second World War. They were long confined to their home shores, but have recently been involved in peacekeeping operations. Technically they are civilians, and are subordinate to the civil servants running Japan’s Ministry of Defence.

1504 GMT At least three people evacuated from a town in the prefecture of Fukushima have been exposed to radiation, NHK has reported local government officers as saying.

They were randomly selected for tests from a group of 90 bedridden hospital patients who were left outside in the grounds of a nearby school as they waited for helicopters to pick them up. They were being moved at about the same time as the explosion at the nuclear plant.

1446 GMT The impoverished Afghan province of Kandahar has offered $50,000 (£31,000) to the relief effort in Japan.

Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, has been one of the main contributors towards reconstruction and development in Afghanistan. In 2009, Tokyo pledged up to $5 billion (£3.1 billion) in aid, to be delivered by 2013.

1441 GMT Russia’s Interfax news agency has spoken to Valeriy Hlyhalo, deputy director of the Chernobyl nuclear safety centre.

“The explosion at No. 1 generating set of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, which took place today, will not be a repetition of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster,” he said, adding that Japanese reactors were better protected than at Chernobyl, where 30 firemen died in the explosion.

“Apart from that, these reactors are designed to work at a high seismicity zone, although what has happened is beyond the impact the plants were designed to withstand. Therefore, the consequences should not be as serious as after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.”

1437 GMT Russia is monitoring radiation levels in the far east of the country following the Fukushima explosion. So far they remain normal, said Sergei Viktorov, of the Emergencies Ministry’s far eastern branch.

Russia’s Sakhalin region is the closet to Japan and includes the Kuril island chain. The islands were put on high alert and the government ordered the evacuation of 11,000 people, and suspended economic activity yesterday. Tsunami waves on the archipelago’s southernmost islands reached three metres (10ft).

But “even in the worst-case scenario, in the most unfavourable situation, a radioactive cloud would not reach the Sakhalin region”, said Taimuraz Kasayev, chief of the Emergencies Ministry’s Sakhalin branch.

“A leak may happen but it would not be comparable with the consequences of the leakage after the Chernobyl accident,” added Vladimir Kuznetsov, head of the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, on a Moscow radio station.

1415 GMT In Minamisanriku, the authorities have confirmed that some 7,500 people were evacuated to 25 shelters after the earthquake yesterday, but they have been unable to contact the remaining 10,000 people in the town, said broadcaster NHK.

1410 GMT The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has warned computer users in Japan that they could be prey to “potential email scams, fake antivirus and phishing attacks regarding the Japan earthquake and the tsunami disasters”.

“Phishing emails and websites requesting donations for bogus charitable organisations commonly appear after these types of natural disasters,” the group said. “Email scams may contain links or attachments which may direct users to phishing or malware-laden websites.

“Fake antivirus attacks may come in the form of pop-ups which flash security warnings and ask the user for credit card information.”

1345 GMT The Japanese authorities are preparing to distribute iodine to people living near nuclear power stations affected by the earthquake, they have told the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The tablets, which can protect the human body from the effects of radiation, may be handed out to people in the vicinity of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, where this morning’s explosion happened, and the Fukushima Daini plant, where the evacuation zone has been extended from three to 10 kilometres.

Japan’s Jiji news agency says three workers have suffered radiation exposure near the Fukushima plants.

1339 GMT The population of the Pacific coast town of Minamisanriku is about 17,000, Japanese news media says. The broadcaster NHK says 10,000 remain unaccounted for, and the Kyodo news agency quotes local government officials who put the figure at 9,500.

1335 GMT A magnitude-6 aftershock has struck northeastern Japan, Kyodo news reports.

1329 GMT “The tsunami was unbelievably fast,” Koichi Takairin, a 34-year-old lorry driver, told the Associated Press. He was sat inside his four-ton truck in the port town of Sendai when the wave struck. “Smaller cars were being swept around me,” he said. “All I could do was sat in my truck.”

On some parts of the Japanese coast, the tsunami swept six miles inland.

1323 GMT Japan’s NHK television, the state broadcaster, is reporting 10,000 people unaccounted for in the port of Minamisanrikucho, in Miyagi province.

1315 GMT Southerly winds mean people living north of the Fukushima Daiichi plant will be most affected by leaking radiation, the Japan Meteorological Agency says. The wind direction may shift later today to north westerly, which would blow any airborne particles out to sea.

1305 GMT The British team of 63 fire service search and rescue specialists leaves for Japan this afternoon. They will be accompanied by two rescue dogs and a medical support team.

“They will fly from Manchester airport later this afternoon and travel directly to the centre of the disaster zone in northern Japan as quickly as possible,” said the Department for International Development, which has organised the British relief effort.

“On arrival tomorrow, they will immediately join the international search for survivors, providing relief for Japan’s own rescue teams. The team will take up to 11 tonnes of specialist rescue equipment, including heavy lifting and cutting equipment to save the lives of people who are trapped in the debris.”

The fire service rescue team is made up of members from the Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Greater Manchester, West Sussex, Kent, West Midlands, Mid West Wales, Hertfordshire and Cheshire brigades.

1254 GMT He goes on to quote Robin Grimes, Professor of Materials Physics at Imperial College London, speaking to the BBC: “At the moment it does seem that they are still contained and it’s a release of significant steam pressure that’s caused this explosion. The key will be the monitoring of those radiation levels.

“Slowly the heat and the pressure built up in this reactor. One of the things that might just have happened is a large release of that pressure. If it’s that then we’re not in such bad circumstances.

“Despite the damage to the outer structure, as long as that steel inner vessel remains intact, then the vast majority of the radiation will be contained.”

Professor Grimes said the initial release of steam from the cooling system to reduce pressure would have taken place inside the outer building but outside the containment vessel. “It may have exploded due to the steam alone.”

1253 GMT “Details about the cause of the explosion remain unclear, but the most probable explanation is that it resulted from the release of steam from the overheating cooling system,” Mark Henderson continues. “Another possibility is the ignition of hydrogen released as part of attempts to cool the reactor and maintain safe pressure within its containment chamber.”

1250 GMT Fukishama No 1 is extremely unlikely to become another Chernobyl, writes Mark Henderson, The Times’s science editor.

“The explosion came amid fears that the Fukushima Daiichi 1 reactor – one of six reactors on the site – could melt down after its cooling system failed in the aftermath of yesterday’s earthquake. If the core holding nuclear fuel overheats, it could in theory burn through the containment chamber and release radiation into the atmosphere.

“Experts consider a Chernobyl-style meltdown and explosion to be extremely unlikely because the design of Fukushima is different from the Soviet reactor, and because of the circumstances of the failure. Importantly, the reactor had been shut down before the cooling system failed, which should minimise the chances of a meltdown. Chernobyl was operating at full capacity when the explosion occurred.”

1243 GMT Japanese citizens are trying to clear up as much as they can as they return to wrecked or damaged homes. “I thought I was going to die,” Wataru Fujimura, a 38-year-old sales representative in Koriyama, Fukushima, has told Reuters.

“Our furniture and shelves had all fallen over and there were cracks in the apartment building, so we spent the whole night in the car. Now we’re back home trying to clean.”

1239 GMT And more from Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, who has said that there had been no major change in radiation levels after the Fukishima explosion, because it did not occur within the reactor container.

“The nuclear reaction facility is surrounded by a steel storage machine, which is then surrounded by a concrete building. This concrete building collapsed. We learnt that the storage machine inside did not explode,” he told a news conference.

1235 GMT More from Naoto Kan’s television address: “I want the people to overcome this quake, which must be called an unprecedented national disaster, by utilising the strengths of each of you, together with the utmost efforts of the government and the related agencies that it supports.”

1234 GMT Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology has said that the earth’s axis shifted 25 cm as a result of the earthquake. The US Geological Survey, which has detected more than 100 aftershocks in the area, said that the main island of Japan had shifted 2.4 metres.

Yesterday’s earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world in the past century, surpassing the Great Kant quake of 1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area. The 1995 Kobe quake caused $100 billion (£62 billion) in damage and was the most expensive natural disaster in history.

1223 GMT The government spokesman, Yukio Edano, says that the metal container around the nuclear reactor was not affected by the explosion which destroyed the building housing it.

Radiation levels around the plant did not increase following the blast, and are now falling, he says. Pressure inside the reactor is also decreasing.

1221 GMT A top government spokesman says that the explosion at the Fukushima nuclear plant did not occur in the reactor itself and that, critically, there is no damage to the container that holds the reactor.

The government plays down suggestions that the blast would lead to a major leak of radioactive material.

1220 GMT Naoto Kan, Japan’s Prime Minister, has been giving a brief press conference. He is wearing his “down to business” boiler suit, and calls upon the public to overcome the “unprecedented” disaster.

“By taking firm measures, we will do our best not to have even a single person suffer from health problems. From the bottom of my heart, I would like everybody to listen to the government and to media reports and to act calmly,” he said.

1217 GMT The American singer Lady Gaga has launched her own campaign to raise money for disaster relief in Japan, asking her fans to go to her website and buy a $5 (£3.10) bracelet bearing the message “we pray for Japan”. All proceeds would be donated to the relief effort, she said.

1205 GMT Prime Minister Naoto Kan vows that “not a single person will suffer health problems” as a result of the nuclear plant explosion.

1156 GMT Google has launched a “person finder” message service for people trying to contact friends or relatives in Japan. Facebook’s Japan Tsunami 2011 page also contains information, plus terrifying film footage of the devastation caused as the waves struck the shore.

1151 GMT Japan’s Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, has called the earthquake and tsunami an “unprecedented national disaster”. He has urged people in the area around the Fukushima nuclear plant to remain calm and vowed to protect the population’s health.

TEPCO, meanwhile, has confirmed that there has been no damage to the nuclear reactor’s container, reducing the chance of a radiation leak.

1141 GMT Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the Fukushima plant, says that the four workers injured in this morning’s explosion are conscious and are being treated in hospital for broken bones and bruises.

“Because TEPCO’s facilities have been seriously damaged, power shortages may occur.TEPCO appreciates customers’ cooperation in reducing electricity usage by avoiding using unnessesary lighting and electrical equipment,” the company said in a notice on its English-language website today.

1138 GMT In California, a 25-year-old man from Del Norte County has been confirmed dead after the tsunami swept him into the Pacific. He and two friends had been taking photographs of the incoming waves near the mouth of the Klamath River.

1132 GMT Japan’s Kyodo news agency says that the number of people dead or unaccounted for could exceed 1,700.

The coastal city of Rikuzentakata, where the military has found up to 400 bodies, was virtually destroyed by the tidal wave. The local police say that almost half the city is submerged. The tsunami reached the third floor of the city hall.

1120 GMT The Toyota Motor Co has said it will suspend operations at all 12 of its Japanese factories on Monday. The total insured loss to the country’s motor industry could be up to $15 billion (£9.3 billion), analysts say.

Tokyo Stock Exchange plans to open for trading as normal on Monday.

1116 GMT The Red Cross has set up a special website to allow people to leave messages for friends or relatives they have been unable to contact since the quake struck.

1112 GMT The Japanese nuclear safety agency says its initial assessment of radiation outside the Fukushima nuclear facility is that the container of the overheating No1 Reactor at Fukushima has probably not sustained serious damage despite the earlier explosion which blew the roof off the building.

1106 GMT William Hague said: “They (the Japanese government) have now asked for some help. We’re nailing down the details for that and a further announcement of that will be made later today.

“We are all appalled by the scenes of devastation, by the heavy loss of life, by the destruction we have all witnessed on our television screens. I think all over the world, people’s hearts go out to the people of Japan. I spoke to the Japanese Foreign Minister today to convey our condolences, and also our offer of help.”

The Foreign Secretary continued: “We have no confirmed British casualties as yet, but of course the picture will become clearer as recovery teams do their work, as communications are re-established in the affected area.”

The Government has sent reinforcements to the British embassy in Tokyo, he added.

1100 GMT Japan has requested help from the UK. Rescue and aid teams were put on standby shortly after the earthquake struck, and are now starting out for Japan, the Foreign Office said.

1055 GMT The Japanese military says it has found between 300 and 400 bodies in Iwate’s Rikuzentakata city.

1028 GMT The evacuation zone around the Fukushima plant has been extended from 10 to 20 kilometres as images are broadcast of the exploded building that used to house the No1 reactor now without roof or walls. Government urging people to stay calm.

1021 GMT Japanese coverage of the nuclear crisis now concentrating on the wind direction and the question of whether, should large quantities of radioactive material be released from the Fukushima plant, the cloud would carry to Tokyo.

1010 GMT Toyota and Honda will suspend production at all domestic plants on Monday. Tokyo bay has become a colossal parking lot for some of the world’s largest vessels - containerships, bulk, crude oil and LNG carriers all sitting at anchor in a clear indication of the potentially massive impact Friday’s quake will have on trade.

1003 GMT Katsuhiko Ishibashi, one of Japan’s most respected seismologists and an adviser to successive administrations on nuclear earthquake safety told The Times that Fukushima had developed into a “genpatsu-shinsai” – precisely the quake-triggered nuclear crisis that has evolved over the past 24 hours and which Prof Ishibashi has been warning for years would bring Japan to its knees.

1000 GMT The roof of the reactor core has collapsed. The Japanese government is stockpiling iodine supplies - used as a treatment for radiation poisoning.

0948 GMT The Japanese government has said that the amount of radiation coming from the site every hour is the same as would normally be expected to be emitted over the course of an entire year.

0931 GMT Tokyo has been put on blackout warning. Our reporter in the capital, Leo Lewis, says that shops have already sold out of candles, bread, meat, noodles and tofu as panic buying takes hold.

0900 GMT NHK television and Jiji are reporting that the outer structure of the building that houses the reactor at Fukushima appears to have blown off, which could suggest the containment building had already been breached. The news dramatically raises fears of a disastrous meltdown at the plant.

08.40 GMT Four workers are reported to have been injured in the Fukushima explosion and levels of radio-activity are said to have increased 20-fold.

08.22 GMT The roof and walls of one of the buildings at the Fukushima plant have collapsed after the explosion although it is not yet clear if the damaged building housed the reactor. Fukushima Prefecture official Masato Abe says the cause is still under investigation while another official says several workers have been injured.

07.50 GMT An explosion has just been heard at the Fukushima plant. Workers are said to be injured and white smoke is billowing above the plant. Police are telling people within the 6 mile exclusion zone urgently to get out

07.10 GMT Sixty international teams from more than 45 countries are on alert to assist Japan as more offers of help and air flood in.

China’s Red Cross pleges 1 million yuan (£95,092) and the Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd says his government is “prepared to throw anything and everything at this”.

Amid the calls of sympathy and support from around the world, the Dalai Lama, who has a huge following among Japanese Buddhists, expresses his “sadness” at the catastrophe.

India, which was badly affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, says it stands in “full solidarity” with the people of Japan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh tells Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan “our resources are at your disposal”.

New Zealand, which had been helped by Japanese rescuers who sifted through Christchurch rubble for survivors, says it will send 48 urban search and rescue staff to the earthquake-zone, one-third of its search and rescue personnel.

“Japan responded to New Zealand’s own tragic earthquake with enormous support, and we are ready to help our friends in Japan at this time of need in whatever way we can,” says Prime Minister John Key

06.29 GMT Some clarification on the dangers of meltdown at Fukushima. Mitsuhiko Tanaka, a former Hitachi nuclear engineer and one of the designers of the reactors in use at the nuclear plant explains to The Times that three of the five reactors with cooling problems were closed for regular maintenance when the quake hit. He also explains that there are two distinct uses of the term “meltdown”: one where the core collapses completely, and the other - used by nuclear experts - where the nuclear fuel heats to a temperature where it melts through the base of the steel vessel that surrounds the core and then seeps through the concrete floor of the plant, the soil beneath and eventually into the water table where it can instantly turn that water to steam and create potentially explosive underground pressure.

Both situations represent severe, if different problems, but he said it is far too soon to assume that Fukushima is close to a worst-case scenario.

Mr Tanaka explains that the situation should at this stage be thought to threaten a disaster more like Three Mile Island than Chernobyl.

06.23 GMT Japanese naval and coastguard helicopters have found a ship that was swept out to sea the tsunami and airlifted all 81 people aboard to safety

06.11 There appears to be some confusion over claims of a meltdown at the Fukushima plant. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) says it does not believe a meltdown is taking place. However NHK, the state broadcaster is quoting Japan’s nuclear and industrial safety agency as saying that metal tubes which contain uranium fuel may have melted.

The broadcaster quoted Tokyo University professor Naoto Sekimura as saying that “only a fraction of the fuel may have melted but the reactor had already been stopped and is being cooled. I urge residents to act calmly.”

05.30 GMT Radioactive caesium is detected near the Fukushima nuclear plant where the cooling system has failed on two reactors and a meltdown may be under way, Japanese media is reporting.

Some radioactive vapour has been at the plant to relieve building reactor pressure but parts of the reactor’s nuclear fuel rods were briefly exposed to the air after cooling water levels dropped through evaporation, and a fire engine was pumping water into the reactor, Jiji Press reported.

Ryohei Shiomi, an official with Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission warns that one of the units “may be experiencing nuclear meltdown,” according to Kyodo and Jiji news agencies. However Mr Shiomi insists that even there is a meltdown it won’t affect people within a ten mile radius.

05.26 GMT Fears of the tsunami causing destruction along South America’s Pacific seaboard have come to nothing. Thousands of coastal residents from Mexico’s Baja California to Ecuador’s Balapagos Islands were evacuated to higher ground but by the time the tsunami travelled across the Pacific Ocean to the southern hemisphere, the waves were so diminished that only slightly higher waters than usual came ashore. Many residents said they could see no difference in sea level as the tsunami came in.

05.03 GMT: The official death toll rises to 613 as police report that over 3,000 homes have been destroyed in Minami Soma, Fukushima and in Sendai, which bore the brunt of the tsunami.

Thousands more homes have been destroyed in a string of coastal towns.

04.17 GMT International search and rescue teams that have spent the last fortnight in Christchurch, NZ, are now heading for Japan. A Japanese team of 66 are returning from Christchurch while the United States said it was sending close to 150 rescue workers, including a team from Los Angeles that had only returned from New Zealand two days ago.

The US Agency for International Development said it was sending two teams of 72 personnel, dogs and around 75 tons of rescue equipment each.

Australia, South Korea and Singapore will also all send dogs and search and rescue teams.

Calls of sympathy and support have poured in from around the world, including from China, India and the European Union.

Queen Elizabeth II said in her message to Japan’s Emperor Akihito: “Our prayers and thoughts are with everyone who has been affected by the dreadful disaster.”

03.58 GMT More than 215,000 people were in emergency shelters in eastern and northern Japan, according to the National Police Agency as entire towns are reduced to rubble.Thousands more remain trapped in buildings surrounded by flood waters. As well as the ship that has disappeared with 100 passengers, four trains have also gone missing.

03.32 GMT The death toll is now expected to reach 1300, with most of the deaths caused by drowning. Manwhile thousands have fled coastal areas in South America for fear of a tsunami on their side of the Pacific, but no serious waves appear to have materialised.

Meanwhile Australia announces that a team of 76 search and rescue experts will fly out of Sydney later today to help with the emergency efforts in Japan.

02.15 GMT A strong aftershock of 6.8 strikes off Japan’s east coast, causing panic. The aftershock, which the US Geological Survey said hit at a depth of just 15 miles, was centred 110 miles east of the city of Sendai, the scene of huge devastation when 33 foot tsunami struck on Friday. Hundreds of miles across the Pacific, a smaller 6.1 quake strikes Tonga but no damage is reported.

01.36 GMT Authorities release radioactive vapour from the second reactor at Fukushima as a state of emergency is declared at the site. However as over 20,000 people are evacuated from the area Naoto Sekimura, a professor at the University of Tokyo, says a major radioactive disaster is not likely.

“No Chernobyl is possible at a light water reactor. Loss of coolant means a temperature rise, but it also will stop the reaction,” he says. “Even in the worst-case scenario, that would mean some radioactive leakage and equipment damage, but not an explosion. If venting is done carefully, there will be little leakage.”

01.16 GMT As workers battle to contain rising pressure at the Fukushima nuclear plant where there are fears of a nuclear leak, Prime Minister Naoto Kan orders the evacuation zone to be expanded from two miles to six miles.

In one of the worst-hit residential areas, people buried under rubble can be heard calling out for rescue, Kyodo news agency reports. Television footage showed staff at one hospital waving banners with the words “FOOD” and “HELP” from a rooftop.

The northeastern Japanese city of Kesennuma, with a population of 74,000, was hit by widespread fires and one-third of the city was under water, Jiji news agency said. Sendia airport is now on fire

00.53 GMT California declares a state of emergency after the tsunami sweeps up the West coast of America in the early hours, washing five people out to sea.

One of the worst hit towns was Crescent City, 350 miles north of San Francisco, where at least 35 boats were crushed and thrown on top of each other in a harbour.

In Santa Cruz, boats were smashed into each other in a marina.Santa Cruz port director Lisa Ekers estimates the damage at more than $10 million, CNN reports.

In Oregon, heavy damage is reported in the port of Brookings-Harbour where operations supervisor Chris Cantwell says 70 percent of the port’s commercial basin has been destroyed.

00.21 GMT People living within a two mile radius of a second nuclear plant in Fukushima have been ordered to evacuate after its cooling system was also damaged by the earthquake. increasing fears of a nuclear disaster.

Tokyo Electric Power said it has now released radioactive steam to reduce pressure from Fukushima’s Number One reactor.While radiation 1,000 times above normal was detected in the control room of one plant, authorities insisted levels outside the facility’s gates were only eight times above normal

00.15 GMT A Japanese nuclear safety panel says that radiation levels are 1,000 times above normal in Number 1 reactor of the Fukushima nuclear power plant after the earthquake damaged the cooling system.

Public broadcaster NHK, quoting the safety officials, said there was “no immediate health hazard” to nearby residents from a possible minute leakage, and people were urged to evacuate the area calmly.