Japanese military helicopters and fire trucks poured water on an overheated nuclear facility on Thursday and the operator said electricity to a cripple some of the complex could be restored in a desperate attempt to avert catastrophe.
Washington and other foreign capitals expressed growing alarm about radiation leaks from the earthquake-ravaged factory, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo. The United States said the aircraft sent to help the Americans to leave Japan.
“The situation remains very serious,” International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano told reporters at Vienna airport as he left with a group of nuclear experts to Japan.
Employees tried a 1-km (0.6 miles) long power from the grid to pump water to restart reactor No. 2, which does not house spent fuel rods as the greatest risk of spewing radioactivity into the atmosphere will cool.
An official of the operator told a late night briefing of the cable can be connected within a few hours. Other officials said it was unclear or water pumps on Unit No. 2, less damage from a series of explosions continued, would work.
U.S. officials have not hurt Japan’s government to criticize, but Washington indicated a gap measures with his closest ally on the perilousness of the worst in the world nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
The top U.S. nuclear regulator said the cooling pool for spent fuel rods in reactor number 4, a dry run and another leak.
Gregory Jaczko, head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told a Congress hearing that radiation levels around the pool with cold water were extremely high, posing deadly risks to workers still toil in the wreck of the power plant.
“It would be very difficult for rescuers to get close to the reactors. The doses they could potentially be lethal doses of experience in a very short period of time,” he said in Washington.
Japan Atomic Energy Agency said it could not confirm whether the water was the fuel rods cladding. The operator said it believed the reactor spent fuel pool still had water since Wednesday, and made clear that priority was the spent fuel pool at the No.3 reactor.
On Thursday morning alone, about 30 military helicopters dumped tons of water, all focused on this reactor. An emergency crew temporarily off the same reactor with a water cannon spraying by high radiation, broadcaster NHK said, but later another crew began hosing.
Health experts said the panic over radiation leaks from Daiichi factory was the attention of other life-threatening risks to survivors of the earthquake and tsunami of last Friday, as cold, heavy snowfall in parts and access to fresh water diverted.
Within the complex, torn by four explosions since an 9.0 earthquake and tsunami struck last Friday, workers in protective suits and using temporary lighting was trying to follow what was going on inside the six reactors. They have worked in short shifts to the radiation exposure to a minimum.
The last images of the reactor showed serious damage after the explosion. Two of the buildings were a mix of mangled steel and concrete.
“The worst-case scenario in which not provided and the best-case scenario keeps getting worse,” Perpetual Investments said in a statement on the crisis.
source:reuters
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