EXACTLY A week since a massive earthquake plunged Japan into its worst crisis since the second World War, its prime minister has vowed to “rebuild the nation from scratch” as technicians battle to cool radioactive fuel at a nuclear plant 250km away.
“What has happened is a great test of the Japanese people and we must not be discouraged,” Naoto Kan told a live TV audience from Tokyo, where blackouts and fuel shortages continue to affect millions of people.
Earlier, Japan’s nuclear agency raised the alert level at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi complex, citing “serious damage” to reactors two and three and placing it on a par with the 1979 Three Mile Island incident. The fourth reactor, housing spent fuel rods, is also believed to be leaking radiation.
Technicians battling to cool fuel rods and stem the flow of radioactivity from the plant appeared to be making little progress. Fire trucks and water canons have been spraying overheating reactors for two days.
Two military helicopters equipped with 7.5-tonne buckets yesterday again dumped seawater on the third reactor, but radiation of 87.7 millisieverts per hour forced the pilots to withdraw for decontamination. Radiation is also slowing the attempt to get a power cable to the plant and restart pumps to cool the reactors.
Engineers are reportedly considering a plan to entomb the plant in a concrete coffin, a strategy used during the world’s worst-ever nuclear disaster in Chernobyl in 1986.
Mr Kan was forced yesterday to respond to growing unease at his government’s handling of the nuclear crisis by promising more transparency on the status of the Fukushima plant. UN nuclear watchdog chief Yukiya Amano said in Tokyo the world wants “more volume of accurate information more quickly” on what is going on inside its stricken reactors.
Mr Amano, a Japanese national, called the situation in Fukushima “grave” and said a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency will be sent closer to the plant to monitor radiation. “It’s a race against the clock,” he said.
Japan’s government admitted yesterday that it has been overwhelmed by the scale of this week’s disaster, which was sparked by the most powerful earthquake in the country’s history. “The unprecedented scale of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, frankly speaking, were among many things that happened that had not been anticipated under our disaster management contingency plans,” said the government’s top spokesman Yukio Edano.
Thousands of Japanese observed a minute’s silence yesterday at 2.46pm, exactly a week after the magnitude-nine quake struck. Officials said the death toll had reached 6,900, surpassing the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake around Kobe.
Following last week’s quake about 10,300 people are still missing, and hundreds of thousands are in temporary shelters, mainly in the freezing northeast.
With the crisis in Fukushima showing few signs of ending, foreigners are continuing to flee Tokyo. The Irish Embassy in the city is noting a rise in the number of nationals applying for new passports, especially for children. More are believed to have evacuated the capital for the west and south of Japan.
The Embassy advised this week that Irish citizens consider leaving the greater Tokyo area, but has no plans to evacuate them. “We’re carefully monitoring the situation and if we get new information suggesting we have to change our advisory, we will do it immediately,” said the Ambassador.
Britain has put on charter flights for its nationals, which are free for those in the disaster-stricken zone. A spokesman said a “significant number” of British people are still in the affected area. “It’s a challenge to identify them.”
Tokyo’s rolling power cuts are affecting corporate production. Hundreds of foreign companies, including Ikea and HM, have relocated west of Japan, and many are advising employees to leave the capital.
Ticket sales for bullet trains from Shinagawa and other major transport hubs in Tokyo were three times the usual number yesterday. Thousands of Japanese mothers have taken their children out of the city to Osaka, Kyoto and other areas.
