A second explosion has hit the nuclear plant in Japan that was damaged in Friday's earthquake, but officials said it had resisted the blast.
TV footage showed smoke rising from Fukushima Daiichi's reactor 3, two days after an explosion hit reactor 1.
The latest blast, said to have been caused by a hydrogen build-up, injured 11 people, one of them seriously.
Officials said the reactor core was still intact, and that radiation levels were below legal limits.
But the US military, which has been helping the relief effort, said it had moved away from the area after one of its aircraft carriers detected low-level radiation about 100 miles (160km) offshore.
Technicians have been battling to cool three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant since Friday, when the quake and tsunami combined to knock out the cooling system.
EvacuationsThe government said an operation pumping seawater into the reactors to help lower the temperature was still going on despite the explosion.
In other developments:
- Two thousand bodies have been found on the shores of Miyagi prefecture, Japanese media are reporting
- The government announced it was pumping 15 trillion yen ($182bn; £113bn) into the economy to prop up the markets - which slumped on opening
- Prime Minister Naoto Kan postponed planned rolling powercuts, saying they may not be needed if householders could conserve energy
The BBC's Rachel Harvey in the port town of Minami Sanriku says everything has been flattened until about 2km inland.
It looks unlikely that many survivors will be found, she adds.
Japanese police have so far confirmed 1,597 deaths, but the final toll is expected to be much higher.
Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from the area around Fukushima Daiichi plant.
At least 22 people are now said to be undergoing treatment for radiation exposure.
Powerful aftershocksGovernment spokesman Yukio Edano said there was a low possibility of radioactive contamination from Monday's explosion. He said the reactor's containment vessel had resisted the explosion.
Click to playesidents of the coastal city of Sendai are continuing the search for survn
Experts say a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl in the 1980s is highly unlikely because the reactors are built to a much higher standard and have much more rigorous safety measures.
Earlier, the prime minister said the situation at the nuclear plant was alarming, and the earthquake had thrown Japan into "the most severe crisis since World War II".
The government advised people not to go to work or school on Monday because the transport network would not be able to cope with demand.
The capital Tokyo is also still experiencing regular aftershocks, amid warnings that another powerful earthquake is likely to strike very soon.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of relief workers, soldiers and police have been deployed to the disaster zone.
Preliminary estimates put repair costs from the earthquake and tsunami in the tens of billions of dollars, a huge blow for the Japanese economy that - while the world's third largest - has been ailing for two decades.
No comments:
Post a Comment