Japan raises severity level of nuclear crisis to 5

[News_Editor]

Japan raises severity level of nuclear crisis to 5

2011-03-18 22:02:19 GMT+7 (ICT)

TOKYO (BNO NEWS) -- Japan on Friday raised its accident severity level from 4 to 5 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale of 7 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, officials said.

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the plant's No. 1, No. 2, and No.3 reactors' cores are believed to have partially melted, causing ongoing radiation leaks, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported. The plant's No. 4 reactor was set at level 3.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan told International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano who recently arrived in Tokyo that this was the biggest crisis for Japan, adding that every government organization was working to deal with the problem.

Japan's Self-Defense Forces fire trucks and helicopters have been working to cool down nuclear reactors by dumping and shooting tons of water into the reactors since Thursday. The Tokyo Fire Department has also joined and the U.S. military loaned a high-pressure water cannon truck to assist in the efforts.

Even though the radiation level on Friday at 11 a.m. local time dropped to 265 microsievert per hour from 351.4 microsievert per hour at 12:30 a.m. Thursday, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) did not call it a trend.

Meanwhile, TEPCO accelerated efforts to restore lost cooling function by reconnecting electricity to the plant through outside power lines, with workers trying to restore power to the plant's No. 1 and No. 2 reactors possibly during Friday and at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors by Sunday.

The spent fuel pools at the power station lost their cooling function after the massive earthquake last week, and it has been impossible to monitor the water level and temperature of the pools of the No. 1 to 4 units.

According to experts, in the worst case scenario, rising water temperatures causes water to be reduced and the spent nuclear fuel rods become exposed, which would continue to heat up, melt, and discharge highly intense radioactive materials.

Since Thursday, Japan set the evacuation zone for areas within a 20 kilometer (12.4 miles) radius of the plant, and urged people within 20 to 30 kilometers (12.4 to 18.6 miles) to stay indoors. However, the U.S. Embassy in Japan has asked American citizens living within an 80-kilometer (50-mile) radius to evacuate as a precautionary measure.

In 1979, the U.S. set the severity level at 5 during the Three Mile Island accident. The only level 7 incident in history was 1986's Chernobyl catastrophe.

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