Japan’s nuclear crisis appeared to be spinning out of control today after workers were forced to withdraw briefly from a stricken power plant because of surging radiation levels.
In a sign of desperation, police will try to cool spent nuclear fuel at one of the Fukushima Dai-ichi facility's reactors with water cannons - normally used to quell riots - after a bid to drop water from a helicopter onto the most troubled reactor had to be aborted.
The official toll of the dead and missing following the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan's northeast coast last Friday has topped 11,000, with 3,676 confirmed dead
Early today, another fire broke out at the earthquake-crippled facility, which has sent low levels of radiation wafting into Tokyo in the past 24 hours, triggering fear in the capital and international alarm.
Japan's government said radiation levels outside the plant's gates were stable but, in a sign of being overwhelmed, appealed to private companies to help deliver supplies to tens of thousands of people evacuated from around the complex.
"People would not be in immediate danger if they went outside with these levels. I want people to understand this," chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano told a televised news conference, referring to people living outside a 30km exclusion zone. Some 140,000 people inside the zone have been told to stay indoors.
The governor of Fukushima prefecture has criticised the official handling of the evacuation of the area around the plant. “The anxiety and anger being felt by people in Fukushima have reached boiling point,” said Yuhei Sato. He said preparations for an evacuation if conditions worsen were unsatisfactory and said centres already housing people moved from nearby the plant do not have enough hot meals and basic necessities.
Workers were trying to clear debris to build a road so fire trucks could reach reactor 4 at Fukushima, about 270km north of Tokyo. Flames were no longer visible at the building housing the reactor.
European Union energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger told the European Parliament today the plant was "effectively out of control" after breakdowns in the facility's cooling system.
High radiation levels prevented a helicopter from flying to the site to drop water into reactor 3 - whose roof was damaged by an earlier explosion and where steam was seen rising earlier in the day - to try to cool its fuel rods. The plant operator described reactor 3 as the "priority." The reactor is the only one at Daiichi which uses plutonium in its fuel mix. According to US government research, plutonium is very toxic to humans and once absorbed in the bloodstream can linger for years in bone marrow or liver and can lead to cancer
The situation at reactor 4, where the fire broke out, was "not so good," the plant operator added, while water was being poured into reactors 5 and 6, indicating the entire six-reactor facility was now at risk of overheating.
The US will fly a spy plane over the plant in a bid to get a closer look at the damage, according to Kyodo news. The unmanned Global Hawk high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft will fly over the plant, perhaps as soon as tomorrow, to examine the plant's reactors, Kyodo said. "Photographs taken by the plane equipped with infrared sensors could provide a useful clue to what is occurring inside the reactor buildings, around which high-level radiation has been detected," it added.
Nuclear experts said the solutions being proposed to quell radiation leaks at the complex were last-ditch efforts to stem what could well be remembered as one of the world's worst industrial disasters. "This is a slow-moving nightmare," said Dr Thomas Neff, a physicist and uranium-industry analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Emperor Akihito, delivering a rare video message to his people, said he was deeply worried by the country's nuclear crisis which was "unprecedented” in scale. "I hope from the bottom of my heart that the people will, hand in hand, treat each other with compassion and overcome these difficult times," he said. “With the help of those involved I hope things will not get worse.”
The plight of hundreds of thousands left homeless by the earthquake and tsunami that followed worsened overnight following a cold snap that brought snow to some of the worst-affected areas. More than 7,000 people are listed as missing and the figure is expected to rise.
Officials in Tokyo said radiation in the capital was 10 times normal at one point but not a threat to human health in the sprawling high-tech city of 13 million people.
Many residents stayed indoors. Public transport and the streets were as deserted as they would be on a public holiday, and many shops and offices were closed.
Winds over the plant were forecast to blow from the northwest today, which would take radiation toward the Pacific Ocean.
Scores of flights to Japan have been halted or rerouted. France and Australia today urged their nationals in Japan to leave the country as authorities grappled with the world's most serious nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986.
In a demonstration of the qualms about nuclear power that the crisis has triggered around the globe, China announced that it was suspending approvals for planned plants and would launch a comprehensive safety check of facilities.
China has about two dozen reactors under construction and plans to increase nuclear electricity generation about seven-fold over the next decade.
At the Fukushima plant, authorities have spent days desperately trying to prevent water which is designed to cool the radioactive cores of the reactors from evaporating, which would lead to overheating and possibly a dangerous meltdown.
Until the heightened alarm about reactor 3, concern had centred on damage to a part of building housing reactor 4, where spent rods were being stored in pools of water, and also to part of reactor 2 that helps to cool and trap the majority of caesium, iodine and strontium in its water.
Japanese officials said they were talking to the US military about possible help at the plant.
Concern has mounted that the skeleton crews dealing with the crisis might not be big enough or were exhausted after working for days since the earthquake damaged the facility. Authorities withdrew 750 workers yesterday, leaving only 50. Arnie Gundersen, a 39-year veteran of the nuclear industry who worked on reactor designs similar to Daiichi plant, said 50 or so people could not babysit six nuclear plants. "That evacuation is a sign they may be throwing in the towel," he said.
In the first hint of international frustration at the pace of updates from Japan, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he wanted more timely and detailed information.
"We do not have all the details of the information so what we can do is limited," Amano told a news conference in Vienna. "I am trying to further improve the communication."
Several experts said the Japanese authorities were underplaying the severity of the incident, particularly on a scale called INES used to rank nuclear incidents. The Japanese have so far rated the accident a four on a one-to-seven scale, but that rating was issued on Saturday and since then the situation has worsened dramatically.
Agencies