News

Japan Earthquake: Nuclear Reactor Damaged, Yields High Radiation levels

By KVIA ABC-7

Published March 11, 2011 5:25 AM

Japan was struck by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake off its northeastern coast Friday, unleashing a 13-foot (4-meter) tsunami that washed away cars and tore away buildings along the coast near the epicenter. There were reports of injuries in Tokyo.

In various locations along Japan’s coast, TV footage showed massive damage from the tsunami, with dozens of cars, boats and even buildings being carried along by waters. A large ship swept away by the tsunami rammed directly into a breakwater in Kesennuma city in Miyagi prefecture, according to footage on public broadcaster NHK.

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Officials were trying to assess damage, injuries and deaths from the quake but had no immediate details.

The quake that struck at 2:46 p.m. was followed by a series of powerful aftershocks, including a 7.4-magnitude one about 30 minutes later. The U.S. Geological Survey upgraded the strength of the first quake to a magnitude 8.9, while Japan’s meteorological agency measured it at 7.9.

The meteorological agency issued a tsunami warning for the entire Pacific coast of Japan. NHK was warning those near the coast to get to safer ground.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii said a tsunami warning was in effect for Japan, Russia, Marcus Island and the Northern Marianas. A tsunami watch has been issued for Guam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and the U.S. state of Hawaii.

The quake struck at a depth of six miles (10 kilometers), about 80 miles (125 kilometers) off the eastern coast, the agency said. The area is 240 miles (380 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo.

In downtown Tokyo, large buildings shook violently and workers poured into the street for safety. TV footage showed a large building on fire and bellowing smoke in the Odaiba district of Tokyo.

In central Tokyo, trains were stopped and passengers walked along the tracks to platforms.

The ceiling in Kudan Kaikan, a large hall in Tokyo, collapsed, injuring an unknown number of people, NHK said.

Footage on NHK from their Sendai office showed employees stumbling around and books and papers crashing from desks. It also showed a glass shelter at a bus stop in Tokyo completely smashed by the quake and a weeping woman nearby being comforted by another woman.

Several quakes had hit the same region in recent days, including a 7.3 magnitude one on Wednesday.

Thirty minutes after the quake, tall buildings were still swaying in Tokyo and mobile phone networks were not working. Japan’s Coast Guard has set up task force and officials are standing by for emergency contingencies, Coast Guard official Yosuke Oi said.

“I’m afraid we’ll soon find out about damages, since the quake was so strong,” he said.

Radiation levels inside a Japanese nuclear power plant have surged to 1,000 times their normal levels after today’s 8.9-magnitude earthquake knocked out power to a cooling system, and tsunami floods have hampered efforts to get it restored.

Meanwhile, heat-induced pressure built up inside the crippled reactor, prompting widespread evacuations and stoking fears of a potentially catastrophic radioactive event.

Officials declared a “nuclear emergency” at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, about 200 miles northeast of Tokyo, when its cooling system failed to function properly after the nuclear reactor lost power and automatically shut down.

Scientists said that even though the reactor had stopped producing energy, its fuel continues to generate heat and needs steady levels of coolant to prevent it from overheating and triggering a dangerous cascade of events.

“You have to continue to supply water. If you don’t, the fuel will start to overheat and could melt,” said Edwin Lyman, a senior staff scientist in the Global Security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C.

A meltdown could lead to a breach of the reactor’s steel containment vessel and allow radiation to escape into an outer, concrete containment building, or even into the environment.

“Up to 100 percent of the volatile radioactive Cesium-137 content of the pools could go up in flames and smoke, to blow downwind over large distances,” said Kevin Kamps, a nuclear waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear, which is an advocacy group that opposes nuclear weapons and power.

“Given the large quantity of irradiated nuclear fuel in the pool, the radioactivity release could be worse than the Chernobyl nuclear reactor catastrophe of 25 years ago.”

Japanese officials said radiation has not yet leaked from the plant, but ordered 2,800 people living around the facility to evacuate their homes as a precaution.

The Kyodo News Service has reported, however, that some radioactive material may already have escaped, citing reports from the Japanese Nuclear Safety Agency that radiation levels outside the plan have been eight times the normal level.

“You’ve got to take all potential precautions,” President Obama told reporters today when asked about vulnerability of the Japanese nuclear power facilities. “And I’ve asked Steve Chu, our Energy secretary, to be in close contact with their personnel to provide any assistance that’s necessary, but also to make sure that if in fact there have been breaches in the safety system on these nuclear plants, that they’re dealt with right away.”

Experts say cooling the reactor’s core to minimize pressure inside the containment structure is a top priority. Japanese authorities have been trying to connect diesel-powered generators to restore the water pumps inside the reactor but have been hampered by the floods.

“If you have something that generates heat and you don’t cool it off or release the steam, you’re in trouble,” said nuclear consultant Mycle Schneider, who compared the situation to a pressure cooker.

The risk is a rapid rise in heat that would leave the core uncovered. “If it’s not covered with water, it can start melting very quickly,” Schneider said.

Meanwhile, officials plan to perform a controlled release of some slightly radiocative vapor that has been building up inside the containment structure, the Associated Press reports.

The release would allow harmful material to escape into the environment, but not at levels as great as if there was a massive containment failure, Lyman said.

“It’s good they evacuated ? let’s put it that way,” Lyman said. “All indications are that this is a very serious event.”

U.S. nuclear experts say modern power plants are designed to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis and have several security layers in place in the event of lost power, including diesel fuel generators and battery systems.

“There are multiple redundancies to continue to feed water to the core to take the heat away at most facilities,” said an official with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who asked not to be named because he is not familiar with details of the Fukushima plant.

But those back-up power sources may not have worked in this case, a development many international experts called troublesome.

“The Japanese are considered the best in the world,” said Schneider. “They had several generators in place in case one of them doesn’t work. This is the first time I’ve heard of where none of them worked. To me, that is a very deep concern.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. military transported “coolant” to the Fukushima nuclear plant and will continue to assist as needed. “You know Japan is very reliant on nuclear power and they have very high engineering standards but one of their plants came under a lot of stress with the earthquake and didn’t have enough coolant,” Clinton said.

Nearby, the turbine building at the Onagawa nuclear power plant burst into flames shortly after the earthquake and has since been extinguished. Another plant at the facility was also reported to be experiencing a water leak, according to Japanese officials.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was closely monitoring the situation at the four Japanese nuclear power sites impacted by the earthquake and confirmed that all had been successfully shutdown.

“It’s a positive sign,” Mitch Singer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a U.S. industry trade group, said of initial reports of the power plants’ performance and durability following the quake. “This industry more than all others depends on the safe operation of the plant, and it appears these robust facilities have operated as they were designed to do.”

Japanese nuclear power plants have been tested repeatedly by earthquakes in recent years and operated effectively, according to the World Nuclear Association. Worldwide, 20 percent of nuclear powerplants operate in areas of “significant seismic activity,” according to the association.

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