Japanese ordered indoors in radiation leak crisis
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AP – The rubble caused by an earthquake and tsunami fill the landscape in Yamada, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, …
SOMA, Japan – High levels of radiation leaked from a crippled nuclear plant in tsunami-ravaged northeastern Japan after a third reactor was rocked by an explosion Tuesday and a fourth caught fire in a dramatic escalation of the 4-day-old catastrophe. The government warned 140,000 people nearby to stay indoors to avoid exposure.
Tokyo also reported slightly elevated radiation levels, but officials said the increase was too small to threaten the 39 million people in and around the capital, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) away.
In a nationally televised statement, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said radiation has spread from four reactors of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Fukushima state, one of the hardest-hit in Friday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami that has killed more than 10,000 people, plunged millions into misery and pummeled the world's third-largest economy.
Officials just south of Fukushima reported up to 100 times the normal levels of radiation Tuesday morning, Kyodo News agency reported. While those figures are worrying if there is prolonged exposure, they are far from fatal.
Kan and other officials warned there is danger of more leaks and told people living within 19 miles (30 kilometers) of the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex to stay indoors to avoid the possibility of radiation sickness.
"Please do not go outside. Please stay indoors. Please close windows and make your homes airtight," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told residents in the danger zone. "Don't turn on ventilators. Please hang your laundry indoors."
"These are figures that potentially affect health. There is no mistake about that," he said.
Weather forecasts for Fukushima were for snow and wind from the northeast Tuesday evening, blowing southwest toward Tokyo, then shifting and blowing west out to sea. That's important because it shows which direction a possible nuclear cloud might blow.
The nuclear crisis is the worst Japan has faced since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. It is also the first time that such a grave nuclear threat has been raised in the world since a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine exploded in 1986.
Some 70,000 people had already been evacuated from a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius from the Dai-ichi complex and about 140,000 remain in the zone for which the new warning was issued.
The radiation level is now elevated to a point that may damage health, a government spokesman said. The exact amount of radiation being leaked is still unclear, but the country's prime minister said publicly that people within 19 miles of the troubled nuclear power plant should stay indoors.
After a third explosion in four days rocked the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in northeast Japan early Tuesday, the country's nuclear safety agency said the explosion may have damaged a reactor's containment vessel.
Following the fire, explosion and public warning, only 50 of the plant's 800 or so workers will remain at the site to pump seawater into three stricken reactors at the plant, in order to minimize exposure to unhealthy levels of radiation, reports the New York Times.
Making matters worse, the wind over the radiation-leaking nuclear plant in northern Japan will blow inland from the northeast and later from the east on Tuesday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said, according to Reuters. Harmful radiation can spread via wind and rain.
At a shelter in Sendai, workers told CBS News that everyone must avoid Tuesday's rain, as it carries nuclear radiation. Officials in far-off Tokyo have already detected slightly higher-than-normal radiation levels there, but insist there are no health dangers.
Takayuki Fujiki, a Tokyo government official says: "The amount is extremely small, and it does not raise health concerns. It will not affect us." Radiation at up to 9 times the normal level was briefly detected in Kanagawa near Tokyo.
The blast at Dai-ichi Unit 2 followed two hydrogen explosions at the plant - the latest on Monday - as authorities struggle to prevent the catastrophic release of radiation in the area devastated by a tsunami.
The cascading troubles in the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant compounded the immense challenges faced by the Tokyo government, already struggling to send relief to hundreds of thousands of people along the country's quake- and tsunami-ravaged coast where at least 10,000 people are believed to have died.
Japanese nuclear authorities insist they are in control, reports CBS News correspondent Celia Hatton. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the situation will not turn in to another Chernobyl.
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Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the government is setting up a joint response headquarters at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s main office to better manage the crisis.
Later, a top Japanese official said the fuel rods in all three of the most troubled nuclear reactors appeared to be melting.
A one-year-old boy is re-checked for radiation exposure after being decontaminated in Nihonmatsu, Fukushiima, northern Japan Monday, March 14, 2011.
(Credit: Toru Nakata,AP Photo/Asahi Shimbun)Exactly where a hypothetical "radiation cloud", from either Fukushima Daiichi or Onagawa, would go should depend upon the weather pattern at the time of, and following, the release.
Moreover, it should depend upon how high the cloud rose into the atmosphere. This is because the winds normally vary widely between the near-surface and the upper atmosphere, home to the eastward-flowing jet stream.
Generally speaking, any radioactive cloud rising significantly into the atmosphere would travel essentially eastward and northeastward across the Pacific Ocean, eventually reaching North America anywhere between Alaska and California. The precise details as to timing and path taken would depend upon the state of the atmosphere at the time of the hypothetical radiation release.
Although such a cloud would pose virtually no threat while in the upper atmosphere, the fallout at the ground of radioactive particles from it should be a concern for any monitoring authority.
2 comments:
Something about the nations gnashing their teeth, not knowing a way out, mountain strongholds being no respite, earthquakes, food shortages,
war in one place after another,defiled land,lovers of money,yadda yadda.
Read it in some big black book written a really long time ago...yeah, I'm a dork.
Humm, 2011 chernobyl 30yrs later the children are showing DNA mutation changes and have tons of defects even they were not born then. So, what does this mean!!?? Um, if ppl get crazy cancers from this remember lets say you survive chemo treatments you will be sterile or if you never develope issues your kids will have defects in DNA there has been truth set out just google chernobyl kids, sad sad and scarry, I pray for us for the lord to have mercy and grace despite our sillieness.
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