Japan launches largest search for quake victims

Japan launches largest search for quake victims

Shichigahamamachi residents look for their neighbours' usable belongings at Shobudahama fishery port Monday as Japan Ground Self-Defense Force members search for missing people in their third major recovery operation since the March 11 earthquake. 

Japanese Self-Defense Force members are carrying out the largest search yet for 12,000 people who went missing after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The U.S. military and the Japanese police are also taking part in the search, which will involve 25,000 people, 90 aircraft and 50 ships over the next two days.

The search is covering inland and coastal areas of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, along with the offshore waters. It will also include areas within 30 kilometres of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that were not previously covered.

Official figures show the quake and tsunami, along with the aftershocks on April 7 and 11, have killed about 14,300 people.

An activist wearing an anti-nuclear mask takes part in a rally against nuclear power plants in Tokyo on Sunday. Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

In the town of Shichigahamamachi on Monday, a line of about two dozen Japanese soldiers walked in unison across soggy earth and muddy pools, plunging their poles about 60 centimetres into the muck to ensure they don't miss any bodies buried below.

The search focused on a marsh drained in recent weeks by members of the army's 22nd infantry regiment using special pump trucks.

Several dozen other soldiers cleared mountains of rubble by hand from a waterfront neighbourhood filled with gutted and teetering houses. Four people in the neighbourhood were missing, said 67-year-old Sannojo Watanabe.

"That was my house right there," he said, pointing to a foundation with nothing atop it.

He surveyed the neighbourhood: "There's nothing left here."

In all, 370 troops from the regiment were searching for a dozen people still missing from Shichigahamamachi. The regiment had been searching the area with a far smaller contingent, but tripled the number of troops it was using for the two-day intense search, said Col. Akira Kun itomo, the regimental commander.

The search is far more difficult than that for earthquake victims, who would mostly be buried in the rubble, said Michihiro Ose, a spokesman for the regiment. The tsunami could have left the victims anywhere, or even pulled them out to sea.

"We just don't know where the bodies are," he said.

Bodies likely unrecognizable


Bodies found so many weeks after the disaster are likely to be unrecognizable, black and swollen, Ose said.

"We wouldn't even know if they would be male or female," he said.

The military's first intense sweep for bodies uncovered 339, while its second turned up 99 more, Defence Ministry spokesman Norikazu Muratani said. By Monday evening, searchers had found 38 more.

After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, bodies turned up along the Indonesian coast for several months afterward as people cleared debris in reconstruction efforts. However, 37,000 of the 164,000 people who died in Indonesia simply disappeared, their bodies presumably washed out to sea.

Last week, two undersea robots provided by the non-profit International Rescue Systems Institute conducted five-day searches in waters off Japan's northeastern coast near three tsunami-hit towns.

The robots found cars, homes and other wreckage in the sea, but no bodies, said Mika Murata, an official with the institute.

The Japanese government has come under criticism for its response to the quake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster, with some members of the country's opposition urging Prime Minister Naoto Kan to resign.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan answers a lawmaker's question at a budget committee meeting in the upper house of parliament in Tokyo on Monday. Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

 On Monday, Kan stressed to a sometimes hostile parliament that his government was doing everything it could to gain control of the radiation leaks at the nuclear plant, which has prompted the government to evacuate residents from a 20-kilometre area around the crippled reactors.

"The nuclear accident is still ongoing," he said. "The top priority right now is to stabilize it."

In Fukushima prefecture, the government has launched an operation to euthanize some of the farm animals left in the no-entry zone.

Six officials, including veterinarians, entered the area on Monday, the first day of the mission. There are more than 370 livestock farms in the no-go zone, with 4,000 cattle, 30,000 pigs, 630,000 chickens, and 100 horses. But many of these animals have died or are facing starvation since their owners evacuated the area. Some of them remain outdoors.

The plan is to kill the weakened animals and disinfect carcasses. A veterinarian says animals found alive will get medical examinations. The prefecture says it will not kill any animals unless their owners agree because there is no law stipulating what should be done in such a situation.

People are concerned about pets in the exclusion zone, too.

An animal welfare coalition in Japan is hoping the government will allow it to continue to search for pets that have been abandoned.

Japan PM urges calm as nuclear level raised

Japan PM urges calm as nuclear level raised

Japan's prime minister urges the public not to panic after the government boosts the severity level of the nuclear crisis to the highest rating, on par with the 1986 Chornobyl disaster. 

Japan's prime minister is urging the public not to panic after the government boosted the severity level of the crisis at a tsunami-damaged nuclear plant to the highest rating — on par with the 1986 Chornobyl disaster.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan urged people in a televised address to focus on recovering from the country's disasters.

"Right now, the situation of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant has been stabilizing step by step," he said. "The amount of radiation leaks is on the decline. But we are not at the stage yet where we can let our guards down."

Japanese regulators said they raised the rating from five to seven after new assessments of radiation leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The country's nuclear watchdog said that while the radiation emission rate at the stricken plant is only about 10 per cent of that released at Chornobyl, the crippled Japanese facility has emitted a huge amount of radioactive substances that pose a risk over a large area.

Until now, the Chornobyl disaster in Ukraine was the only event rated Level 7.

The Fukushima crisis was previously rated Level 5, equalling the 1979 Three Mile Island incident in Pennsylvania.

Although the upgrade was dramatic, the two disasters — Fukushima and Chornobyl — are not all that similar, experts say.

In Chornobyl, it was the reactor core itself that exploded, releasing a huge amount of radioactive material in a very short time. Fukushima experienced a less critical hydrogen explosion. And the total amount of radioactive particles released so far is believed to be only a small fraction of that seen in Ukraine.

The upgrade came as at least two new earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 6.0 hit Japan's northeast on Monday night and Tuesday morning. The area has been rocked by numerous aftershocks since then. Until the subducted plate settles back into position, any quake within the rupture zone — in this case an area 300 kilometres long by 150 kilometres wide off the Japanese coast — that has less force than the initial quake is considered an aftershock.

The 9.0 magnitude earthquake on March 11 and the tsunami it generated are believed to have caused as much as $310 billion in damage. Japanese officials have updated the death toll from the disaster to 13,219 people. More than 14,000 others are still missing and more than 145,000 people are living in evacuation centres across the country.

Two Japanese people have a moment of silence on a burial ground, one month after the earthquake and tsunami struck on March 11. 

The Fukushima Daiichi plant has been spewing radiation since, and even a month on, officials say they don't know how long it will take to cool reactors there.

In a move unrelated to Monday's aftershock, the Japanese government is expanding the evacuation zone around the plant to 30 kilometres from 20, citing the risks of cumulative radiation exposure.

The latest calculations from Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission found that an area stretching 60 kilometres north of the nuclear plant and 40 kilometres south have, in the month since the earthquake, already been exposed to radiation equivalent to the annual dosage limit. Within the old 20-kilometre evacuation zone, radiation exposure has reached up to 100 times the annual limit.
 
Work resumes

At the plant itself, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., known as TEPCO, has resumed efforts to contain the plant's radioactive leak, after a one-day delay because of strong aftershocks.

TEPCO will begin pumping contaminated water from the No. 2 reactor Tuesday and transfer it to a condenser, after checking the safety of equipment.

The radioactive water has been hampering work to restore cooling functions in the damaged reactors. TEPCO says it also resumed injecting nitrogen into the containment vessel of the No.1 reactor late on Monday night. That's aimed at preventing further hydrogen explosions.

Japanese leader invokes WWII to urge quake recovery

Japanese leader invokes WWII to urge quake recovery

A Japanese flag stands amid the devastation of the tsunami in the town centre of Onagawa, Miyagi prefecture, on April 6, 2011.

Tokyo (CNN) -- Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan invoked his country's recovery from World War II on Tuesday as he sought to turn the nation's attention to the arduous task of rebuilding.

Yet the challenges awaiting Japan remained on full display the day he spoke: The country rated the crisis at a nuclear plant stricken after last month's earthquake and tsunami as the most severe on an international system for rating nuclear accidents.

And a fresh round of earthquakes rumbled across an already battered landscape. One with a magnitude of 6.3 was the latest of 52 quakes with a magnitude of 6 or greater since a monster 9.0 quake rocked the country and spawned a tsunami, leaving nearly 28,0000 people dead or missing.

The prime minister noted that he was born in 1946, a year after the end of World War II, and that his family used an unexploded bomb to help stabilize a pickling tub in their home. He said the Japanese people "stood up bravely and achieved a reconstruction that amazed the world" after the war.

"We must renew the determination that we had in the post-World War II reconstruction period, and we must tackle the task of reconstruction after this earthquake," he said.

The devastation left behind by the March 11 earthquake is an opportunity to build "a new, better future than before," said the prime minister. He spoke at a news conference that had been originally scheduled to take place Monday but was delayed because of a series of aftershocks that rattled northern Japan.

In one of the lastest developments following the wave of aftershocks, the Iwaki Fire Department said the death toll from landslides set off by a 6.6-magnitude quake on Monday had risen to six.

Iwaki is located about 100 miles (164 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo and about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southwest of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The landslides in Iwaki buried three houses.

Ai arrest highlights China's crackdown

Ai arrest highlights China's crackdown

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is pictured on April 10, 2009, at his home in an arts district on the outskirts of Beijing.

Beijing, China (CNN) -- Week by week, China is tightening its grip on dissent.

From political activism to the internet, media to the arts, the Chinese government is silencing citizens who dare challenge its rule.

The latest victim: Ai Weiwei, 53, one of China's most prominent avant-garde artists and human rights activists. Ai was detained at the Beijing airport on April 3 on his way to Hong Kong. He has not been heard from since.

"I have no idea where he is, why he was taken away, where he is kept now," said Gao Ying, Ai's mother, in a phone interview with CNN five days after Ai's disappearance. "I am very worried about him. He is very stubborn. He won't change his attitude."

Ai, one of the country's best-known artists, helped design the iconic Bird's Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics. Later, however, he called for a boycott of the 2008 Games because he said China was using the showcase event as propaganda.

Since then, the burly and brash artist has used art and social networking to ridicule government policies. He organized hundreds of volunteers to investigate the deaths of schoolchildren in school buildings that collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Ai later published the names of the dead on his popular Twitter account to demand government accountability.

The maverick artist has also accused the Chinese government of trying to silence dissidents. "They crack down on everybody who has different opinions -- not even different opinions, just different attitudes," he told CNN last year. "Simply to have different opinions can cost (dissidents) their life; they can be put in jail, can be silenced and can disappear."

Observers say Ai's prominence as an artist and as the son of a widely respected poet gave him a measure of protection. That protection is gone. "Mr. Ai Weiwei is under investigation on suspicion of economic crimes," said foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei, answering a reporter's question at a regular press briefing. "It has nothing to do with human rights or freedom of expression."

He added, "China is a country under the rule of law ... other countries have no right to interfere."

Gao Ying, Ai's mother, dismissed the allegations as "ridiculous."

In the past several weeks, China has detained and arrested a number of lawyers, human rights activists and bloggers amid calls for anti-government protests -- a "jasmine revolution" similar to those that have swept the Middle East and toppled authoritarian regimes.

The government has blocked internet links to such phrases as "jasmine revolution" and names like "Ai Weiwei." Police have also stepped up the harassment of journalists who try to report on these disturbances.

Protests, or what the government refers to as "mass incidents," frequently occur across China every year. Many have sprung from the country's rapid industrialization and urbanization, which have triggered disputes over wages, land seizures, income disparity and pollution.

"But the Chinese authorities seem unable to respond to dissent without taking drastic, even brutal, action," noted Richard Burger, a China-watcher and blogger.

"The willingness on the part of the authorities to employ raw power and make individuals simply disappear is a very troubling aspect of this latest effort," said Joshua Rosenzweig of Dui Hua Foundation, a non-profit organization which seeks to promote human rights in China. "It seems aimed at intimidating both those who have already been taken into custody and those who might worry about being next on the list."

Chinese call this tactic "killing the chicken to scare the monkey" -- a traditional practice of persecuting "scapegoats" to nip dissent in the bud.

In some cases, intimidation seems to work. I had tried twice this week to meet up with a well-known dissident in Beijing to ask his views on the ongoing crackdown. Twice, he canceled, saying that police had dissuaded him from making contact with reporters like me.

But harsh repression, observers say, could backfire. "It only makes icons out of otherwise obscure rabble-rousers," said blogger Richard Burger, citing the persecution of AIDS activist Hu Jia, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo and now Ai Weiwei. "The pattern is simple," he said. "Go after an activist who has the eyes and ears of the media with no apparent consideration of the story inevitably becoming big global news." While Beijing may succeed in silencing the troublemaker, he explained, the resulting publicity is far worse than if they'd left him alone." All three of these examples went from being obscure outside of China into poster children of Communist repression, he added.

China's other dilemma is how to contain the spread of information. According to government figures, over 420 million people can access the internet through the use of computers and smart phones. Many of the Web users are young, highly educated, influential and affluent -- just the sort of people who might be inclined to question authority or sympathize with freedom-seeking activists.

That is why Beijing has set up the "Great Firewall," a sophisticated filtering network that blocks various Internet and social networking web sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, which have helped fuel the protests in the Middle East.

Beijing is gambling that, with its relatively tight grip on information, Ai and other activists at home and overseas can do little to get their message heard at home.

So far, most Chinese do not know who Ai Weiwei is.

Japan nuclear plant releases radioactive water into sea

Japan nuclear plant releases radioactive water into sea

Officials say the discharge means highly radioactive water leaking from reactor No 2 can be stored

Workers at Japan's quake-hit nuclear plant have begun dumping water with low levels of contamination into the sea to free up room to store more highly radioactive water leaking at the site.

About 11,500 tonnes of water will be released into the sea at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Water with a higher level of radioactivity leaking from the No 2 reactor can then be stored.

Efforts to tackle that leak are continuing.

The source of the leak was identified at the weekend as a 20cm (8in) crack in a concrete pit at reactor 2.

Workers are now using dye to try to trace the route of the water, after earlier efforts to plug the hole using a highly absorbent polymer failed.

'No choice'

Operator Tepco has been struggling for more than three weeks to regain control at the plant after the huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out the cooling systems.

Workers face a dilemma - they must keep feeding water into the reactors to stop them overheating, but must then deal with the accumulation of waste water.

Top government spokesman Yukio Edano said that there was no choice but to release some water.

"We are already aware that the water at the No 2 unit is highly radiated," he said.

"So as to prioritise to stop the leakage of this water into the sea... we will release the water stored in the exterior building of the unit, which also unfortunately contains radioactivity but far lower than the highly contaminated water."

The water to be released into the sea contains some 100 times the legal limit of radiation - a relatively low level, says the BBC's Roland Buerk in Tokyo.

"As it is not harmful to people's health and as it is necessary to avert an even bigger danger, we decided it was inevitable," said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (Nisa).


Stopping the leak from reactor 2 remains the priority, Mr Edano said earlier.

Tepco says it will inject the polymer again to try to block the flow of radioactive water as soon as it has identified the path of the leak.

As a temporary measure, Nisa is considering building embankments of silt near reactor No 2 to stem the leak into the ocean.

Search operations

The official death toll from the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami which struck north-east Japan on 11 March stands at 12,157, with nearly 15,500 people still unaccounted for.

More than 80% of the victims have been identified and their bodies returned to their families.

Search operations within the 20km exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant have been suspended because of radiation concerns.

More than 161,000 people from quake-ravaged areas are living in evacuation centres, officials say.

A three-day joint operation by Japan's Self-Defense Forces and the US military to find the missing recovered 78 bodies.


The operation, which ended on Sunday, involved about 25,000 troops, more than 60 ships and 120 aircraft.

It covered Pacific coastal areas of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures.

Workers endure austere conditions in averting nuclear disaster

Workers endure austere conditions in averting nuclear disaster

Austere conditions for Fukushima workers

Tokyo (CNN) -- They sleep anywhere they can find open space -- in conference rooms, corridors, even stairwells. They have one blanket, no pillows and a leaded mat intended to keep radiation at bay.

They eat only two meals each day -- a carefully rationed breakfast of 30 crackers and vegetable juice and for dinner, a ready-to-eat meal or something out of a can.They clean themselves with wet wipes, since the supply of fresh water is short.

These are the grueling living conditions for the workers inside Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. They've been hailed as heroes risking their lives by braving high levels of radiation as they work to avert a nuclear meltdown.

But until now, the outside world has known little about the workers' routine.

Tuesday, safety inspector Kazuma Yokota, who spent five days at the plant last week, spoke with CNN about the plight of the 400 workers staying in a building within 1 kilometer (.6 of a mile) of Reactor No. 1. Japanese officials ordered mandatory evacuations for everyone else within 20 (12.4 miles) kilometers of the plant.

The workers look tired, Yokota said. They are furiously connecting electrical cables, repairing instrument panels and pumping radioactive water out.

They work with the burden of their own personal tragedies always weighing heavily.

"My parents were washed away by the tsunami, and I still don't know where they are," one worker wrote in an e-mail that was verified as authentic by a spokesman for the Tokyo Electric Power Co., which runs the Fukushima plant.

"Crying is useless," said another e-mail. "If we're in hell now, all we can do is crawl up towards heaven."

But they are doing it all with the kind of determination required in a task with such high stakes. There's no room for plummeting morale and the workers are not showing any signs of spirits flagging, Yokota said.

However upbeat the workers are, there's no denying the conditions are beyond difficult.

"On the ground at the nuclear power plant, the workers are working under very dangerous and very hard conditions, and I feel a great deal of respect for them," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters Tuesday.

The workers spend three days on site and go off for one. They start their work day at 8 a.m. and go for 12 long hours.

Gary Was, a nuclear engineering expert at the University of Michigan, told CNN Tuesday that contaminated seawater brings potential danger "and they need to take all precautions."

Particulates that land on the skin or are ingested "can be a constant source of radiation into the future," Was said. "You need to be very careful not to ingest any of that."

Was said officials need to remove and store contaminated water.

Last week, three men who were laying electrical cable in the turbine building of the No. 3 reactor stepped in tainted water, exposing themselves to high levels of radiation. Tokyo Electric apologized and said their exposure might have been avoided with better communication.

Radiation alarms went off while the three men were working, but they continued with their mission for 40 to 50 minutes after assuming it was a false alarm. They were hospitalized after it was determined they had been exposed to 173 to 181 millisieverts of radiation -- two of them with direct exposure on their skin. They were later released.

By comparison, a person in an industrialized country is naturally exposed to 3 millisieverts per year, though Japan's Health Ministry has said that those working directly to avert the nuclear crisis could be exposed to as much as 250 millisieverts before they must leave the site.

The incident also prompted further criticism of Tokyo Electric and how well it is safeguarding the workers.

Yokota said the power company hoped to improve living conditions for the workers by moving them to another facility. Edano said officials also hope to find replacements in order to relieve the workers at the plant.

Until then, they will continue as the faceless heroes in Japan's tragedy, the nation's only hope of thwarting further disaster.

China turns down final plea for stay of execution

China turns down final plea for stay of execution

Manila (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) - China has turned down the Philippine government's final plea for another - perhaps permanent - stay of execution for convicted Filipino drug mules Sally Ordinario-Villanueva, Elizabeth Batain and Ramon Credo.

Ethan Y. Sun, spokesman of the Chinese Embassy in Makati City, on Monday told the Inquirer that Beijing's position on the issue had been "made clear" as early as last February when the Supreme People's Court in the Chinese capital sentenced the three convicts to death.

"The position of the Chinese side has been made clear on its judicial decision," Sun said.

Last Saturday, Chinese Ambassador Liu Jianchao asked for understanding from the Philippine government and from Filipinos about the executions that he said would now have to take place under their laws.

On March 24, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs announced the executions will be carried out on Wednesday.

Villanueva, 32, and Credo, 42, will be executed in Xiamen, and Batain, 38, in Shenzhen, said the DFA.

The three were arrested separately in 2008 for smuggling 4 to 6 kilograms of heroin to China.

China had postponed the executions, originally scheduled for February 20, following an official visit to Beijing by Vice President Jejomar Binay on President Aquino's behalf.

The President on Saturday told reporters they had been "communicating (with Chinese authorities) continuously ... We're still trying to get them to reduce the penalty. But there's a limit to what we can do."

Aquino also said, "At the end of the day, these were crimes committed in a different country. It doesn't help that they admitted they were doing something illegal."

"But it doesn't make us stop trying," he added.

China says Libya fighting risks regional stability

China says Libya fighting risks regional stability

BEIJING (Reuters) - China again pressed on Thursday for an immediate ceasefire in Libya and a resolution through dialogue, warning that the fighting there could undermine regional stability.

"We believe that the objective of enforcing the U.N. Security Council resolution is to protect humanitarian (objectives) and not to create an even bigger humanitarian disaster," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news briefing in Beijing.

"Libya's sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity should be respected. We also urge all sides to immediately cease fire and avoid the conflict escalating, which would worsen the situation regional-wide," she added.

Western warplanes began striking Libya over the weekend, but have so far have failed to stop Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's tanks shelling rebel-held towns or dislodge his armour from a strategic junction in the east.

Britain will host an international conference next Tuesday to discuss progress on the U.N.-mandated military intervention.

Asked about the proposed meeting in London next week, Jiang said: "It's my understanding that the Security Council will continue informal consultations about the situation in Libya."

"As for what actions the Security Council should take next, that should be decided by consultation among the Security Council member states. China is willing to work with other sides to promote a resolution of Libya's current crisis through dialogue and other diplomatic means."

China abstained from the U.N. Security Council vote that authorised the intervention, but has since decried the U.S.-led air strikes on Gaddafi as risky and unwarranted overreaching by the West.

Chinese envoy appeals for understanding of executions of 3 Filipinos

Chinese envoy appeals for understanding of executions of 3 Filipinos

Manila (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) - Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Liu Jianchao on Thursday morning asked the Filipino people to understand the reason for the scheduled execution on March 30 of three Filipinos convicted of drug trafficking in China.

"It's something that has to happen," Liu said of the executions, which will take place a few weeks after Chinese authorities postponed them upon the request for a reprieve by the Philippine government.

Liu said the executions have to happen under Chinese law.

He asked for understanding from the Philippine public and expressed hope that the executions won't affect relations between the two countries.

Tests detect radiation above limits for infants in Tokyo water

Tests detect radiation above limits for infants in Tokyo water

Tokyo (CNN) -- A top Japanese official urged residents of the nation's capital not to hoard bottled water Wednesday after Tokyo's government found that radioactive material in tap water had exceeded the limit considered safe for infants.

"We have to consider Miyagi and Iwate and other disaster-hit areas," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. "I'd like to again urge consumers not to purchase more bottled water than they need."

Earlier Wednesday, Tokyo government officials advised residents not to give tap water to infants or use it in formula after tests at a purification plant detected higher levels of radioactive iodine.

The city's water agency said the spike was likely caused by problems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, located 240 kilometers (150 miles) away.

Still Tokyo residents made a dash for bottled water.

"I did not know about the news at all. I saw the sudden increase in customers and learned about the contamination," said Seiji Sasaki, a grocery store owner.

He had 40 cases of water in his shop. They quickly sold out. Other stores and supermarkets also reported they had no water. A CNN cameraman visited three stores and found two cases of water remaining in only one, but those cases were snapped up quickly. The supply of bottled water was already limited following the earthquake.

"I cannot find water anywhere. All sold out and I can only place orders," lamented Harue Kamiya, a city resident.

Officials evacuated some workers at the plant Wednesday afternoon as a black plume of smoke billowed above one of the reactors, plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

The company said it was unclear what was causing the smoke.

Workers have been scrambling to cool down fuel rods at the nuclear plant since a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and massive tsunami on March 11 knocked out cooling systems there.

Some radiation has been released, officials said, but it was unclear whether radiation levels spiked after the black smoke was spotted Wednesday. Japan's nuclear agency said radiation levels near the plant had not changed, public broadcaster NHK reported.

But in Tokyo, concerns over radiation surged.

Government samples taken Tuesday night found 210 becquerels of radioactive iodine per kilogram of water -- two times higher than the limit that the government considers safe for infants.

The amount of iodine detected was lower than the level considered safe for adults: 300 becquerels per kilogram.

A becquerel is a measurement of radioactive intensity by weight.

"There's no immediate health threat," Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara told reporters, urging people to "stay calm."

Also Wednesday, Japan's government expanded food shipment restrictions after the health ministry said tests detected radioactive materials at levels exceeding legal limits in 11 types of vegetables grown near the Fukushima plant.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan asked Ibaraki Prefecture to suspend shipments of raw milk and parsley, Edano told reporters Wednesday.


The government of Fukushima Prefecture also told residents not to eat leafy vegetables, he said.

Edano said radiation levels in the food would not cause health problems right away, but if radiation rises, "We are looking at the possibility of levels reaching levels that may harm human health."

The decision to prohibit produce sales is another potentially devastating blow to a part of northeast Japan hit by the earthquake and tsunami.

Fukushima ranks among Japan's top producer of fruits, vegetables and rice. Ibaraki, south of Fukushima, supplies Tokyo with a significant amount of fruits and vegetables and is Japan's third-largest pork producer.

"This is our livelihood," a Fukushima farmer told Japanese television network TV Asahi. "It's a huge problem that we are unable to ship all our produce. We raised (this produce) with our own hands. It's unbearable that we would have to throw it all away."

Hong Kong on Wednesday said it was restricting food and milk imports from certain prefectures over the radiation concerns. The United States previously announced import alerts covering milk, milk products, fresh vegetables and fruit from prefectures near the reactors.

Police say the dual disaster has killed at least 9,487 people and left at least 15,617 missing, many of them killed as a wall of water rushed in following the quake.

Meanwhile, about 387,000 evacuees are staying at 2,200 shelters, Japan's Kyodo News Agency reported. Relief efforts to help them and other victims continued, with U.S. military helicopters delivering food, clothes and supplies to some of the hardest hit areas.

In addition to the stories of people struggling to survive in quake-ravaged towns in northeastern Japan, the plight of workers braving high radiation levels to solve problems at the troubled plant has also drawn attention.

Tokyo Electric said Wednesday that two workers were injured at the plant while working with an electric panel. The workers, whose injuries did not involve exposure to radiation, were treated by a doctor at the nearby Fukushima Daini plant.

"We are constantly switching over all the time, since the work cannot be stopped," one worker told TV Asahi.

"It has settled down quite a lot compared to the beginning, and we could even begin to see a bright hope that maybe it would somehow work out in a little bit," another worker said in what the network touted as the first televised interviews with workers.

But authorities said Wednesday that work was far from over at the plant.

The Tokyo Fire Department planned to start spraying water into the spent-fuel storage pool outside the plant's No. 3 reactor Wednesday, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. Power has been restored in the control room at that reactor -- which officials say could be a key step in bringing cooling systems back online.

"It is an industrial catastrophe," said Lake Barrett, a nuclear engineer who directed the initial cleanup and response of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania following a partial core nuclear meltdown in 1979. "It's a huge plant, and it's been basically destroyed internally and has high contamination levels inside. There are areas in the building where no human's going to go for a long time."

But, Barrett told CNN, "it's also not a health catastrophe -- as long as the people follow the instructions from the government, they're going to be safe in Japan."

The No. 3 reactor has been a priority for authorities trying to contain damage to the plant and stave off a possible meltdown. Its fuel rods contain plutonium mixed with uranium, which experts say could cause more harm than regular uranium fuels in the event of a meltdown.

"We have progress in stabilizing cooling capacity. We most progressed in the No. 3 reactor," Edano said. "On the other hand, we are trying to figure out... the cause of the smoke."

With the nuclear plant's six reactors in various states of disrepair, concerns have mounted over a potentially larger release of radioactive material from the facility.

Efforts over the past several days have focused on restoring power at the facility while fire trucks and cement pumps sprayed water on spent fuel ponds, which contain used fuel rods with radioactive material.

Embassies from more than two dozen countries have either closed down or moved operations to cities south of Tokyo since the earthquake and the resulting nuclear crisis, the country's Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

"There are 25 embassies which either temporary shut down or moved its function outside of Tokyo," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hidenori Sobashima told CNN. Seven of those 25 have moved to cities such as Osaka, Hiroshima and Kobe, Sobashima said.

Japan reactors' power lines connected

Japan reactors' power lines connected

Significant step taken in getting control of overheated reactors and storage pools

The central control room for the No. 3 reactor at the Tokyo Electric Power's Fukushima Daiichi power plant in September 2010. Workers were able to connect power to reactors at the site Tuesday. (Tokyo Electric Power/Reuters)

Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the quake-damaged nuclear plant at Fukushima in northern Japan, says power lines have been hooked up to all six reactor units, though more work is needed before electricity can be turned on to help cooling the units.

Reconnecting the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex to the electrical grid is a significant step in getting control of the overheated reactors and storage pools for spent fuels.

The company announced the hookup Tuesday. Still, it is likely to be days before the cooling systems can be powered up, since damaged equipment needs to be replaced and any volatile gas must be vented to avoid an explosion, reports say.

Earlier Tuesday, a pool for storing spent fuel in the tsunami-damaged plant in northern Japan was found to be heating up, with temperatures rising to the boiling point. Those temeratures now appear to be under control, reports indicate.

Nuclear safety agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama told reporters Tuesday that the high temperatures in the spent fuel pool are believed to have been the cause of steam that has wafted from Fukushima Daiichi's Unit 2 since Monday.

The hot storage pool is another complication in bringing the plant under control and ending a nuclear crisis that followed the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country's northeast coast.

To date, more than 9,000 people are known to have been killed by the earthquake and tsunami, Japanese police said Tuesday.

The overall number of bodies collected so far is 9,079, police said. Another 13,500 people are missing. Officials expect the death toll will eventually top 18,000, with as many as 15,000 people estimated to have died in the hard-hit Miyagi prefecture alone. The disasters have displaced another 452,000, who are in shelters.

The updated figures came as the country grappled with the effects of the damage caused to the Fukushima nuclear plant. Efforts to stabilize the plant continued, while officials banned the sale of food that came from areas around Fukushima.

Fears about radioactivity have already cleared the area of residents and led to bans on the sale of some produce and milk from the region.

Now, seawater near the tsunami-crippled plant is showing elevated levels of radioactive iodine and cesium.

In response, the government is testing seafood.

Japanese officials will test food, seawater to determine health risks

Japanese officials will test food, seawater to determine health risks

People line up for radiation screening at Koryama in Fukushima prefecture on Monday.

Tokyo (CNN) -- Japanese officials' concerns over food contamination expanded beyond the country's borders Tuesday as tests detected radiation in ocean water offshore.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said that high levels of radioactive substances were found in seawater near the plant, but said that the results did not represent a threat to human health.

"There should be no immediate health impact. If this situation continues for a long period of time, some impact can occur," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters.

The impact such radiation could have on marine life was unclear. Japanese authorities were scheduled to measure radioactivity in waters around the plant on Tuesday and Wednesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.

Earlier seawater radiation monitoring detected levels of iodine-131 that were 126.7 times higher than government-set standards, the electric company said on its website. Its monitors detected cesium-134, which has a half-life of about two years, about 24.8 times higher than the government standards. Cesium-137 was found to be 16.5 times higher than the standard.

The electric company detected these levels in seawater 100 meters (328 feet) south of the nuclear power plant Monday afternoon. Radioactive particles disperse in the ocean, and the farther away from the shore a sample is taken, the less concentrated the contamination should be.

Because of the huge amount of dilution that happens in the ocean, there's not much chance of deep-water fish being tainted, said Murray McBride, a professor at Cornell University who studies soil and water contamination.

"I think the ocean can handle that a lot better than the physical environment and population centers," said Jim Walsh, an international security expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a CNN consultant. "We don't want any of this to happen, but better it go out to sea than stay in Japan."

Winds have largely blown radioactive material emitted by the plant offshore since an earthquake and tsunami crippled cooling systems at the plant March 11.

But tests have detected contamination of food grown near the plant.

The Japanese government has banned the sale of raw milk from Fukushima Prefecture, where the plant is located, and prohibited the sale of spinach from neighboring Ibaraki Prefecture after finding levels of radioactive iodine and cesium higher than government standards, the country's health ministry reported.

And officials in Fukushima halted the distribution of locally grown vegetables outside the prefecture.

The government has also banned sales of spinach and milk from parts of Gunma and Tochigi Prefectures, according to the prime minister's office.

On Tuesday Edano said contamination had not been detected in other agricultural products.

"The products which are being grown in these areas are being monitored and the monitoring will continue," he said.

He urged consumers to "try not to panic," noting that the government had stopped shipments of any farm products they believed could be contaminated.

Edano has stressed that officials believe the levels of radiation in food -- while above the legal standards -- do not pose any immediate health risk, saying they were mostly dangerous only if consumed repeatedly over one's lifetime.

On Monday a spokesman for the World Health Organization said short-term exposure to food contaminated by radiation from Japan's damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant poses no immediate health risk.

Tests have also detected radiation in tap water.

On Monday, authorities in the village of Iitake urged residents to avoid drinking tap water that tests showed contained more than three times the maximum standard of radioactive iodine.

Water in other jurisdictions showed lesser signs of contamination, although far below levels of concern under Japanese law, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency website. The U.N. agency said it had received reports from Japan's government that six out of 46 samples tested positive for the iodine-131 radioactive isotope.

Iodine and cesium isotopes are byproducts of nuclear fission in reactors such as the ones damaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northern Honshu, Japan's main island. Although iodine-131 has a radioactive half-life of eight days, cesium-137's half-life is about 30 years.

The decision to prohibit produce sales is another potentially devastating blow to a part of northeast Japan hit by the earthquake, tsunami and other potential fallout from the Fukushima plant.

Edano has said farmers will be compensated for revenue lost by the restrictions.

"Primarily this is due to the nuclear reactor accident, so we assume (Tokyo Electric Power Company) will be held responsible for compensation. The government might take some supplementary action," he said.

Fukushima ranks among Japan's top producer of fruits, vegetables and rice. Ibaraki, south of Fukushima, supplies Tokyo with a significant amount of fruits and vegetables and is Japan's third-largest pork producer.

For radiation to be an issue for rice, the contamination would have to be more severe and prolonged that what has been seen so far, said McBride, the Cornell University professor.

Soil contamination was a huge issue around Chernobyl, but the radiation emitted from the Fukushima Daiichi plant isn't anywhere near that level, he said.

"We're not at that stage; that's the scenario you have to consider if contamination gets severe enough," McBride said.

Japan reconstruction may take 5 years

Japan reconstruction may take 5 years

Residents search for neighbours as they walk past a building damaged by the earthquake and tsunami in Natori City, in northeastern Japan, on Sunday. (Yegor Trubnikov/Reuters)

Japan may need five years to rebuild from the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that has caused up to $235 billion US in damage, the World Bank says.

The March 11 disaster — which killed more than 8,600 people and left thousands more missing, and ravaged northeastern Japan — will likely shave up to 0.5 percentage point from the country's economic growth this year, the bank said in a report Monday. The impact will be concentrated in the first half of the year, it said.

"Damage to housing and infrastructure has been unprecedented," the World Bank said. "Growth should pick up though in subsequent quarters as reconstruction efforts, which could last five years, accelerate."

The bank cited damage estimates between $123 billion and $235 billion, and cost to private insurers of between $14 billion and $33 billion. It said the government will spend $12 billion on reconstruction in the current national budget and "much more" in the next one.

It said a crippled nuclear power station in the northeast that authorities are racing to regain control of is an unfolding situation that poses uncertainties and challenges. Traces of radiation first detected in spinach and milk from farms near the nuclear plant are turning up farther away in tap water, rain and even dust. In all cases, the government said the radiation levels were too small to pose an immediate risk to health.

A short-term drop in Japan's consumer demand and manufacturing production will also hurt trade with regional neighbours, the bank said. South Korean electronics companies have seen the price of some memory chips from Japan rise 20 per cent because of disrupted production, while Thai car exporters may run out of Japanese auto parts next month, it said.

"Disruption to production networks, especially in automotive and electronics industries, could continue to pose problems," the bank said. "Japan is a major producer of parts, components and capital goods which supply East Asia's production chains."

Japan's northeast, the epicentre of the disaster, is home to ports, steel mills, oil refineries, nuclear power plants and manufacturers of auto and electronics components. Many of those facilities have been damaged, while nationwide power shortages have severely crimped auto and electronics production.

The World Bank said in a separate report Monday that economic growth in developing East Asian countries will likely slow this year as central banks raise interest rates to battle inflation pressure from rising food and energy prices.

The bank expects developing East Asia, led by China, to expand 8.2 per cent this year and 7.9 per cent next year from 9.6 per cent in 2010. China's economy, the world's second biggest, will likely grow nine per cent in 2011 from 10.3 per cent in 2010, the bank said. The forecasts were calculated before the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami.

The bank said central bankers in the region have been slow to attack the threat of quickening inflation from higher commodity prices, and urged policymakers to ease emergency government spending programs implemented during 2009's global economic recession.

"Tighter monetary policies, including higher policy rates, are needed across the region in varying degrees to pre-empt the recent rise in food and other prices from exacerbating inflation expectations," the bank said. "At the same time, governments need to allow their discretionary fiscal stimulus packages to lapse."

About 51 million people were lifted out of poverty — those living on less than $2 per day — in developing East Asia last year, lowering the region's poverty rate to 27 per cent, or about 500 million people, the bank said.

Developing East Asia includes China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Fiji, Laos, Mongolia and Papua New Guinea.

Japan tsunami footage to help predict future waves

Japan tsunami footage to help predict future waves

Scientists will study footage like this to learn more about tsunami behaviour

When the powerful earthquake of 11 March triggered a tsunami that struck swathes of Japan's north-east coast, residents, TV crews and fixed cameras captured images of the devastating wave.

Footage of the debris-filled water sweeping across fields and through houses has since been broadcast all over the world.

But as well as providing an idea of how it felt to experience the tragedy first-hand, experts say the images can now be used to better understand the characteristics of tsunamis and help save lives in the future.

"Without exaggeration, it will lead to a quantum leap in the way that we calculate and we estimate how fast the tsunami propagates on land," says Dr Costas Synolakis from the University of California and the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research in Greece.

He has studied more than 20 tsunamis over the past two decades.

He says that while there are multiple methods for predicting the path of a tsunami across the ocean, much less is known about what happens when the giant wave reaches land.

Dr Synolakis told BBC World Service's Science in Action programme that the footage emerging from Japan would help address this lack of knowledge.


"We really did not understand as well how the tsunami floods and inundates inland," he said. "It really depends on what kind of structures you have, whether it's farm land, whether it's an airport, whether it's roads.

"All of this is going to be incredibly useful data to develop even better models to forecast inundation. It'll be wonderful if we were able to do that five, 10, 15 minutes before it actually happens."

As an earthquake strikes, early models of tsunamis are produced by millions of calculations and vast amounts of data-gathering which attempt to accurately predict the size and path of the wave.

Much of this data is collected by tsunamographs, instruments that lie up to 5,000 metres below the water's surface, measuring changes in water pressure and transmitting information to nearby buoys.

The buoys then send this data, via satellite, back to warning centres.

"As the wave keeps on propagating across the Pacific, more and more tsunamograph recordings become available, so the forecast improves," said Dr Synolakis.

However, even with these increasingly sophisticated techniques, there are still surprises.

Often, due to inconsistencies in the sea bed and other natural variations, a tsunami can take a dramatically different course.

"In the business we call them the fingers of God, it's almost like the tsunami energy is channelled in certain specific directions," he said.

Another limitation of this system, known as the Method of Splitting Tsunami (MOST), is that it deals almost exclusively with what tsunamis do in the ocean and to the immediate coastline, whereas the Japan disaster has shown the need for a better understanding of what occurs when a wave heads far inland.

"The application of MOST has been primarily to try to predict inundation and save people along open beaches," said Dr Synolakis. "It hasn't really been used to predict tsunami water heights and depths on powerplants and structures because that had been considered a secondary priority by civil defence.

"The first thing that civil defence around the world wants to know is how many people are at risk along coast lines. They never paid attention to industrial facilities. I think this event is going to change all that."

Dr Synolakis believes lessons learned from Japan will undoubtedly lead to safer, more flood resilient buildings - particularly power plants.

"Back 40 years ago, when [the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant] was designed, we didn't understand tsunamis at all. We were basically in the very early stages of estimating tsunami floods."

Yet, even with better equipped building defences, some natural disasters will always cause devastation.

"I've been in the field in over 20 tsunamis since 1992. This was the worst that I've ever seen - it was unimaginable, even though I consider myself a fairly seasoned tsunamista." 

Radiation in food up to 65 miles from Japan plant

Radiation in food up to 65 miles from Japan plant

Evacuees from Futaba, a town near the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, walk near a welcome sign at an evacuation shelter, at Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, near Tokyo, Saturday, March 19, 2011. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

(AP) FUKUSHIMA, Japan - Japan said radiation levels in spinach and milk from farms near its tsunami-crippled nuclear complex exceeded government safety limits, as emergency teams scrambled Saturday to restore power to the plant so it could cool dangerously overheated fuel.


The food was taken from farms as far as 65 miles from the stricken plants, suggesting a wide area of nuclear contamination.


While the radiation levels exceeded the limits allowed by the government, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano insisted the products "pose no immediate health risk."


Firefighters also pumped tons of water directly from the ocean into one of the most troubled areas of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex — the cooling pool for used fuel rods at the plant's Unit 3. The rods are at risk of burning up and sending radioactive material into the environment.


The first word on contaminated food in the crisis came as Japan continued to grapple with overwhelming consequences of the cascade of disasters unleashed by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake on March 11. The quake spawned a tsunami that ravaged Japan's northeastern coast, killing more than 7,200 people and knocking out backup cooling systems at the nuclear plant, which has been leaking radiation.


The tainted milk was found 20 miles from the plant, while the spinach was collected between 50 miles and 65 miles to the south, Edano told reporters in Tokyo.


More testing was being done on other foods, he said, and if tests show further contamination then food shipments would be halted from the area.


"It's not like if you ate it right away you would be harmed," Edano said. "It would not be good to continue to eat it for some time."


Edano said someone drinking the tainted milk for one year would consume as much radiation as in a CT scan; for the spinach, it would be one-fifth of a CT scan. A CT scan is a compressed series of X-rays used for medical tests.


Just outside the bustling disaster response center in the city of Fukushima, 40 miles northwest of the plant, government nuclear specialist Kazuya Konno was able to take only a three-minute break for his first meeting since the quake with his wife, Junko, and their children.


"It's very nerve-racking. We really don't know what is going to become of our city," said Junko Konno, 35. "Like most other people, we have been staying indoors unless we have to go out."


She brought her husband a small backpack with a change of clothes and snacks. The girls — aged 4 and 6 and wearing pink surgical masks decorated with Mickey Mouse — gave their father hugs.


Low levels of radiation have been detected well beyond Tokyo, which is 140 miles south of the plant, but hazardous levels have been limited to the plant itself.


Nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant began overheating and leaking radiation into the atmosphere in the days after the March 11 quake and the subsequent tsunami overwhelmed its cooling systems. The government admitted it was slow to respond to the nuclear troubles, which added another crisis on top of natural disasters, which officials estimate killed more than 10,000 people and displaced more than 400,000 others.


The complex is deeply troubled, Edano said Saturday, but it's not getting worse.


"The situation at the nuclear complex still remains unpredictable. But at least we are preventing things from deteriorating," he said.

Firefighters also pumped tons of water directly from the ocean into one of the most troubled areas of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex — the cooling pool for used fuel rods at the plant's Unit 3. The rods are at risk of burning up and sending radioactive material into the environment.


The first word on contaminated food in the crisis came as Japan continued to grapple with overwhelming consequences of the cascade of disasters unleashed by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake on March 11. The quake spawned a tsunami that ravaged Japan's northeastern coast, killing more than 7,200 people and knocking out backup cooling systems at the nuclear plant, which has been leaking radiation.


The tainted milk was found 20 miles from the plant, while the spinach was collected between 50 miles and 65 miles to the south, Edano told reporters in Tokyo.


More testing was being done on other foods, he said, and if tests show further contamination then food shipments would be halted from the area.


"It's not like if you ate it right away you would be harmed," Edano said. "It would not be good to continue to eat it for some time."


Edano said someone drinking the tainted milk for one year would consume as much radiation as in a CT scan; for the spinach, it would be one-fifth of a CT scan. A CT scan is a compressed series of X-rays used for medical tests.


Just outside the bustling disaster response center in the city of Fukushima, 40 miles northwest of the plant, government nuclear specialist Kazuya Konno was able to take only a three-minute break for his first meeting since the quake with his wife, Junko, and their children.


"It's very nerve-racking. We really don't know what is going to become of our city," said Junko Konno, 35. "Like most other people, we have been staying indoors unless we have to go out."


She brought her husband a small backpack with a change of clothes and snacks. The girls — aged 4 and 6 and wearing pink surgical masks decorated with Mickey Mouse — gave their father hugs.


Low levels of radiation have been detected well beyond Tokyo, which is 140 miles south of the plant, but hazardous levels have been limited to the plant itself.


Nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant began overheating and leaking radiation into the atmosphere in the days after the March 11 quake and the subsequent tsunami overwhelmed its cooling systems. The government admitted it was slow to respond to the nuclear troubles, which added another crisis on top of natural disasters, which officials estimate killed more than 10,000 people and displaced more than 400,000 others.


The complex is deeply troubled, Edano said Saturday, but it's not getting worse.


"The situation at the nuclear complex still remains unpredictable. But at least we are preventing things from deteriorating," he said.

 A fire truck with a high-pressure cannon was parked outside the plant's Unit 3, about 300 meters from the Pacific coast, and began shooting a stream of water nonstop into the pool for seven straight hours, said Kenji Kawasaki, a spokesman for the nuclear safety agency.


A separate pumping vehicle will keep the fire truck's water tank refilled. Because of high radiation levels, firefighters will only go to the truck every three hours when it needs to be refueled. They expect to pump about 1,400 tons of water, nearly the capacity of the pool.


Emergency workers are also funneling water into the complex's most troubled reactors — Units 1, 2 and 3, officials said.


A power company official said holes had to punched in the roofs of the buildings housing Units 5 and 6, as workers tried to prevent dangerous buildups of hydrogen gas — a sign that temperatures continued to rise in those units' fuel storage pools. Firefighters had started pumping water into Unit 5's pool, and the temperature had gone down, but a pump broke, delaying the refilling, the official said.


Meanwhile, Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said backup power systems at the plant had been improperly protected, leaving them vulnerable to the tsunami that savaged the northeastern coast.


The failure of Fukushima's backup power systems, which were supposed to keep cooling systems going in the aftermath of the massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake, let uranium fuel overheat and were a "main cause" of the crisis, Nishiyama said.


"I cannot say whether it was a human error, but we should examine the case closely," he told reporters.


A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns and runs the plants, said that while the generators themselves were not directly exposed to the waves, some electrical support equipment was outside. The complex was protected against tsunamis of up to 5 meters, he said. Media reports say the tsunami was at least 6 meters high when it struck Fukushima.


Spokesman Motoyasu Tamaki also acknowledged that the complex was old, and might not have been as well-equipped as newer facilities.


Plant operators also said they would reconnect four of the plant's six reactor units to a power grid Saturday. Although a replacement power line reached the complex Friday, workers had to methodically work through badly damaged and deeply complex electrical systems to make the final linkups without setting off a spark and potentially an explosion.


"Most of the motors and switchboards were submerged by the tsunami and they cannot be used," Nishiyama said.


Even once the power is reconnected, it is not clear if the cooling systems will still work.


The storage pools need a constant source of cooling water. When removed from reactors, uranium rods are still very hot and must be cooled for months, possibly longer, to prevent them from heating up again and emitting radioactivity.


People evacuated from around the plant, along with some emergency workers, have also tested positive for radiation exposure. Three firefighters needed to be decontaminated with showers, while among the 18 plant workers who tested positive, one absorbed about one-tenth tenth of the amount that might induce radiation poisoning.


As Japan crossed the one-week mark since the cascade of disasters began, the government conceded Friday it was slow to respond and welcomed ever-growing help from the U.S. in hopes of preventing a complete meltdown.


The United States has loaned military firefighting trucks to the Japanese, and has conducted overflights of the reactor site, strapping sophisticated pods onto aircraft to measure radiation aloft. Two tests conducted Thursday gave readings that U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel B. Poneman said reinforced the U.S. recommendation that people stay 50 miles away from the Fukushima plant. Japan has ordered only a 12-mile evacuation zone around the plant.


Emergency crews at the plant faced two continuing challenges: cooling the nuclear fuel in reactors where energy is generated, and cooling the adjacent pools where thousands of used nuclear fuel rods are stored in water.


The tsunami knocked out power to cooling systems at the nuclear plant and its six reactors. Since then, four have been hit by fires, explosions or partial meltdowns.


The government on Friday raised the accident classification for the nuclear crisis, putting it on a par with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979, and signifying that its consequences went beyond the local area.


This crisis has led to power shortages and factory closures, hurt global manufacturing and triggered a plunge in Japanese stock prices.


Police said more than 452,000 people made homeless by the quake and tsunami were staying in schools and other shelters, as supplies of fuel, medicine and other necessities ran short.


On Saturday evening, Japan was rattled by 6.1-magnitude aftershock, with an epicenter just south of the troubled nuclear plants. The temblor, centered 90 miles northeast of Tokyo, caused buildings in the capital to shake.

Japan nuclear plant power 'close'

Japan nuclear plant power 'close'

PM Naoto Kan said "we must rebuild Japan from scratch"

Workers are close to restoring power to cooling systems at a quake-hit Japanese nuclear power plant, officials say.

Engineers are expected to connect a new power line to four of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, north of Tokyo, by the end of Saturday.

The earthquake and tsunami it triggered crippled the plant's cooling systems, raising concerns over radiation leaks.

Just under 7,200 people are known to have died in the disaster on 11 March. About 11,000 more remain missing.

The authorities have begun building temporary homes for some of the hundreds of thousands of people still sheltering at emergency evacuation centres.

Many survivors have been braving freezing temperatures without water, electricity, fuel or enough food.
Alert level raised

Firefighters have continued to spray water to cool the dangerously overheated fuel rods at the ageing Fukushima plant, in a desperate attempt to avert a meltdown.

The storage pools, which contain used fuel rods, also need a constant supply of water.

Engineers have now connected a power cable to the outside of the plant. Further cabling is under way inside to try to restart water pumps in four of the six reactors.

A nuclear safety agency official said: "We are scheduled to restore electricity at number 1 and 2 [reactors] today.

"Reactors number 5 and 6 also will be powered today. They are scheduled to restore power to number 3 and 4 tomorrow [Sunday]."

Given the scale of the damage, it is not certain the cooling systems will work even if power is restored. Workers are also boring holes in roofs at the plant to prevent a potential gas explosion.

On Friday officials raised the alert level at the plant from four to five on a seven-point international scale of atomic incidents.

The crisis, previously rated as a local problem, is now regarded as having "wider consequences".

However health officials have said radiation levels in the capital Tokyo, 240km (150 miles) to the south, were not harmful.

Meanwhile, reports that a young man had been found in a wrecked house eight days on from the quake have proved false, after it emerged that he had in fact returned to his ruined home from an evacuation centre.

Katsuharu Moriya, a man in his 20s, was found on Saturday by emergency workers in the city of Kesennuma, in Miyagi prefecture - one of the hardest-hit regions.

Millions of people have been affected by the 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami; about 400,000 people are homeless.

A tale of survival in Kesennuma proved to be false

 Prime Minister Naoto Kan said in a television address on Friday: "We will rebuild Japan from scratch. We must all share this resolve."

He said the natural disaster and nuclear crisis were a "great test for the Japanese people", but exhorted them all to persevere.

The government has now conceded it was too slow in dealing with the nuclear crisis.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano accepted that "in hindsight, we could have moved a little quicker in assessing the situation and co-ordinating all that information and provided it faster".

Agency: Japanese nuclear crisis on par with 3 Mile Island

Agency: Japanese nuclear crisis on par with 3 Mile Island

Get up-to-the-minute developments at CNN's live blog on the disaster in Japan.

Tokyo (CNN) -- Japan's nuclear safety agency on Friday worsened its assessment of problems at the Fukushima nuclear power plant as soldiers and utility workers continued a frantic effort to hose down overheating nuclear fuel with water cannons.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency raised the level from a 4 to 5 -- putting it on par with the 1979 incident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island.

According to the International Nuclear Events Scale, a level 5 equates to the likelihood of a release of radioactive material, several deaths from radiation and severe damage to a reactor core.

The Chernobyl nuclear accident in the former Soviet Union rated a 7 on the scale, while Japan's other nuclear crisis -- a 1999 accident at Tokaimura in which workers died after being exposed to radiation -- was a 4. The partial meltdown of a reactor core at Three Mile Island was deemed the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.

Despite the more serious assessment, no expansion of the 12.4-mile (20 kilometer) evacuation zone was necessary, Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy head of the nuclear agency, said at a briefing Friday.

Earlier evacuation orders took the possibility of greater damage to the plant into account, he said.

The agency raised the level not because of any new damage or increasing threat but because engineers now have images showing fuel rod damage and other problems inside the reactor buildings, he said.

Still, the situation at the plant remains "very grave," Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Friday.

"In order to overcome this crisis, the police, the fire department, self defense forces are all working together putting their lives on the line in an attempt to resolve the situation," he said.

Soldiers and utility workers in seven fire engines sprayed the plant's No. 3 reactor building with 50 tons of water on Friday in an effort to replenish the water in that reactor's storage pool, Kyodo News reported.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, cautioned against reading too much into the raised disaster assessment. He said it's too early to compare the plant's situation to Three Mile Island, and he said the disaster unfolding at Fukushima is not like what happened at Chernobyl.

But Peter Bradford, a member for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission when the Three Mile Island incident occurred, said Fukushima is clearly worse.

"In terms of severity, this accident left Three Mile Island in the rear view mirror several days ago," he said.

Amano also appeared to defend Japan's evacuation response, saying that IAEA guidelines call for exactly what Japan has ordered -- an evacuation of 20 kilometers in the event of a reactor meltdown and a 30-kilometer suggestion to stay inside.


At the same time, he said a four-member IAEA team would begin monitoring radiation levels in Tokyo, perhaps as soon as Friday night.

The decision to upgrade the assessment came as Japanese authorities came under fire Friday from within and abroad over the lack of timely information on the unfolding nuclear situation as they have battled since March 11 to contain the crisis.

People near the plant are increasingly frustrated, not just with the prolonged fight to curb radioactive emissions, but also the lack of immediate information from authorities, an official with a city government near the plant said.

"Evacuees, and that can be said of myself as well, are feeling anxious since we are not getting the needed information from the government in a timely manner," said Seiji Sato, a spokesman for the government of Tamura City, about 20 kilometers from the nuclear facility.

Amano pressed the Japanese prime minister to open up lines of communication about the crisis during a meeting in Tokyo.

Kan vowed to do as much, according to Japan's Kyodo News, saying he'd push to make more information available to the international community and release more detailed data about the nuclear situation.

"The Japanese government and IAEA should work doubly hard to pacify the great angst among the international community over this issue," Amano told reporters.

The comments came as the effort to prevent further crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant entered its second week Friday.

While official reports indicated that efforts to pump three of the plant's reactors most troubled reactors full of seawater have been at least somewhat successful. On Thursday, one of the IAEA's top aides, Graham Andrew, said there appeared to be "no significant worsening" at the plant, located about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

However, concern continues regarding storage units for used nuclear fuel.

Used fuel from the plant's reactors is stored in water-filled pools that help keep the rods cool and provide a shield against radiation. But in some of the pools, officials say the water has either leaked or boiled off, exposing fuel rods to the air and allowing them to partially melt or burn and send radiation into the atmosphere.

Friday afternoon's mission to spray water on the pools was the fourth, by air and ground, in two days.

It has not been determined how effective the efforts have been, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano.

But, Edano added, "We observed vapor after the water was (shot in), so we believe that water did reach the pool, for sure."

Still, no one is close to claiming victory. The nuclear plant's six reactors are in various states of disrepair and concerns are mounting over a potentially larger release of radioactive material.

Significant amounts of radiation were released after the 9.0-magnitude earthquake hit on March 11, followed by a tsunami that knocked out the plant's backup power generators and swept away cars and houses along its path.

Relatively high, but officially non-hazardous amounts of radiation have been detected in the air and water of Fukushima city, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the plant.

Wind patterns pushing radiation from the plant out to sea appear to be minimal for now.

Conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi plant itself remained very dangerous.

Radiation levels Thursday hit 20 millisieverts per hour at an annex building where workers have been trying to re-establish electrical power, "the highest registered (at that building) so far," a Tokyo Electric official told reporters.

By comparison, the typical resident of a developed country is naturally exposed to 3 millisieverts per year.

The company said Friday afternoon, though, that radiation levels at the plant's west gate, at .26 to .27 millisieverts, have been fairly stable over a recent 12-hour span.

In part of the effort to prevent greater radiation emissions, Edano has said addressing issues at the nuclear facility's No. 3 reactor -- the sole damaged unit that contains plutonium along with the uranium in its fuel rods -- remains the top priority.

Authorities are assessing whether to also spray in and around the plant's No. 1 unit, where seawater is being injected even after a March 12 hydrogen explosion, Edano said.

But, he said, the situation there was not as serious as in the No. 3 reactor.

Units 1, 2 and 3 are "relatively stable," despite the fact their "cores have suffered damage," said Andrew.

He said the used fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor is a "major safety concern," with the agency noting that no water-temperature data have been collected since Monday.

Still, a Tokyo Electric spokesman said Friday that video of the pool appeared to show it still contained water -- rebutting a claim Wednesday by U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Gregory Jaczko that it had run dry.

On Friday morning, Edano said temperatures in and around the Nos. 5 and 6 reactors have risen, though not enough to pose immediate danger, according to a report by Japan's Kyodo News agency.

Water is being injected in and an emergency diesel generator has been connected to those two units to cool their spent fuel pools, a spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

A Tokyo Electric official said an external power source, using what amounts to 1.5 kilometers of cable, should be set up Friday to power cooling systems for the Nos. 1 and 2 reactors.

Still, the official admitted this effort -- which had been scheduled to be completed Thursday -- "has so far not progressed as fast as we had hoped." Late Friday afternoon, Edano said that process was still ongoing.

Japanese officials have studied a plan to dump tons of sand and concrete on the plant to encase it, putting out any fires and preventing further radiation from escaping, Nishiyama said. But he said they have ruled such a course out as "not a realistic option" and will focus first on cooling fuel on the site and restoring power.

Although officials have described the plant's situation as relatively stable in the last day, Japanese workers don't yet have full control over the plant and its myriad problems and more setbacks are likely, said Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies.

"This accident is likely to unfold over a matter of weeks," he said.

Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear safety advocate with 39 years of nuclear engineering experience, agreed.

"It's a 15-round fight, we're probably in round three," he said. "With this nuclear fire, if you will, when (you) pour water on it one day, you have to go back and do it the same the next and the same the next ... It's a real long slog."