Thaindian News

Tokyo, March 15 (IANS) Fears of a nuclear meltdown escalated sharply Tuesday with an explosion in a third reactor in Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant and a fire at a fourth leading to an increase in radiation levels that the government admitted were high enough to impact human health.

The official toll from the 9 magnitude earthquake and the tsunami that struck last Friday was 2,722, but estimates were that the number of dead would exceed 10,000.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan called on citizens residing within a 20 km radius around the Fukushima reactor to immediately leave the place and those living beyond that distance to stay in their houses, but to shut windows and doors.

“I sincerely ask all citizens within the 20 km distance from the reactor to leave this zone,” he said in a televised address Tuesday.

The prime minister also warned that further leaks are possible, Xinhua reported.

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano added that radioactivity around the damaged nuclear reactors, located 250 km north of Tokyo, had reached dangerous levels.

“We are talking now about radiation levels that can endanger human health,” he said grimly.

A nuclear meltdown seemed closer Tuesday following an explosion in reactor number 2 in the Fukushima plant, which houses six nuclear reactors. Blasts had already taken place at reactors 1 and 3 on Saturday and Monday, respectively. A fire broke out in reactor 4, which was somehow put out.

The plant’s operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said a meltdown, a critical nuclear accident in which fuel rods melt and are destroyed, was possible.

It said it feared the reactor containment vessel had been damaged in the explosion in reactor number 2.

TEPCO officials told the broadcaster NHK that an explosion was heard before the fire broke out in reactor number 4. One official was quoted as saying by DPA that it was believed to be a hydrogen blast.

A little more than two hours after the explosion in reactor number 2, radiation was more than eight times the allowed annual exposure level.

TEPCO said workers had been evacuated from the plant, leaving only about 50 necessary to continue work to try to cool the reactors and prevent meltdowns.

A flight ban was imposed within a 30-km radius of the plant.

Friday’s magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami caused the cooling systems of reactors at Fukushima to fail, leading to the explosions and fears of reactor meltdowns.

Many of the 35 million people living in Tokyo have left the city for southern Japan for fear of a nuclear accident.

Britain’s Telegraph said in a report Tuesday that falsified safety data has been used at Fukushima. Five years ago, it reported, the plant operator was asked to check its data after it admitted that temperature readings for coolant materials had been falsified way back in 1985.

The country is yet to come to terms with the devastation and the trail of destruction left behind by the giant tsunami that hit its coast.

In Sendai city in Miyagi Prefecture, one of the worst hit areas, a crumpled dark blue truck hanging out of the window of a local convenience store was a powerful symbol of the devastated lives of millions in the north east of Japan’s coast.

Many of Sendai’s million residents tossed and turned through a sleepless and fretful night as the earth rumbled intermittently, peaking at around 4 a.m. with a stronger but still comparatively milder earthquake than Friday’s, which triggered a sequence of destruction that is dubbed Japan’s worst catastrophe since World War II, reported RIA Novosti.

With sparse mobile coverage and virtually no Internet, information was scarce although the authorities tried to instil calm among the locals.