Japan told to come clean on nuclear crisis

With nearly 200,000 people alread moved from their homes and a further 140,000 ordered to stay indoors yesterday following the first serious radiation leak, observers said the incident is now second only to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in its severity.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, has demanded more detailed information about developments at Fukushima from the Japanese authorities, describing the situation as “worrying”.

He said: “We do not have all the details, so what we can do is limited. It is difficult to foresee whether future developments will be a worsening or improving of the situation. We do not know.”

The scale of the crisis changed markedly yesterday with further explosions at the plant – now numbering four in four days – and a three-hour fire which raged in a fuel storage pond where used nuclear fuel was being kept cool.

Japanese officials revealed that radioactivity was being released directly into the atmosphere following the fire, with levels soaring dangerously high in the local area before dropping again. The government ordered residents within 20 miles to stay indoors, and began testing them for radiation.

Even once the fire was extinguished, concerns remain that water inside the fuel pond may now be boiling away, potentially leaving the fuel rods exposed and leading to further radiation releases. Plans to spray water from helicopters into the pool were abandoned last night after being deemed impracticable.

And late last night a second fire was reported to have broken out at the same reactor. Plant officials said efforts were under way to extinguish the latest blaze.

Experts continue to insist health threats exist only in the local area, and that Fukushima could not become a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl. But Yuta Tadano, a 20-year-old pump technician at the plant in the complex when the quake hit, said: “I worry a lot about fall-out. If we could see it, we could escape – but we can’t.”

Following yesterday’s fire, officials in Ibaraki, a neighbouring prefecture just south of the area, said up to 100 times the normal levels of radiation were detected. Experts said while those figures are worrying if there is prolonged exposure, they are far from fatal.

Tokyo reported slightly elevated radiation levels, but officials said the increase was too small to threaten the 39 million people in and around the capital.

Further south still, air monitoring equipment on the aircraft carrier USS George Washington detected low levels of radioactivity at Yokosuka. Commander Jeff Davis said there was no danger to the public. But military personnel at Yokosuka and Naval Air Facility Atsugi were advised to limit their time outside.

Around 800 non-essential staff at the Fukushima plant have now been evacuated following the latest explosions, leaving a core of 70 workers to struggle with the plant’s myriad of problems. The heroic technicians, all wearing protective gear, are being rotated in and out of the danger zone quickly to reduce their radiation exposure. Two workers were reported missing last night. The various incidents are known to have injured 15 workers and military personnel and exposed up to 190 people to elevated radiation.

Serious concerns are also held about the plant’s Number Two reactor, where officials fear a crucial containment shell which prevents radiation from escaping was fractured in another explosion. The extent of the damage is not known but plant officials admit there is “the risk of potential meltdown”.

Meanwhile the impact of the earthquake and tsunami dragged down stock markets yesterday. The benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average plunged for a second day, nose-diving more than 10 per cent. The broader Topix lost more than eight per cent.

To lessen the damage, Japan’s central bank made two cash injections totalling 8 trillion yen ($98bn) into the money markets, yesterday having pumped in $184bn on Monday.

Initial estimates put repair costs in the tens of billions of pounds – a price Japan’s debt-laden economy can ill afford to bear.