Sunday, March 13, 2011

Japan rules out serious damage to nuclear plant

The Japanese Government said today that the explosion that occurred at the Fukushima nuclear plant 1 (northern Japan) was not in the reactor, and caused a major radiation leak. In a press conference, the minister spokesman Yukio Edan, said the blast, which also damaged the steel shell that protects the reactor, was due to a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen and said it has lowered the level of radioactivity in the area.

However the Government maintains the evacuation order in a radius of twenty miles around the plant, but insisted that Edana is a measure of "prevention" and that there is a specific risk. The accident occurred at 15.36 local time (06.36 GMT), when a team tried to cool a nuclear reactor plant 1, Fukushima, damaged by yesterday's earthquake.

The explosion demolished the roof and walls of the warehouse that houses the reactor tank and caused four injuries, according to the utility TEPCO, which operates the plant, not in critical condition. The event at the Fukushima nuclear plant concerns seriously deteriorated in Japan, where the Nuclear Security Agency had warned of the possibility of a merger occurred in the reactor, with a high risk of releasing radioactivity.

The warning was issued after radioactive cesium was detected near the plant, apparently from the reactor. After the earthquake of 8.8 on the Richter scale the level of radioactivity in the plant 1 of Fukushima reached up to a thousand times its usual level in the control room of a reactor and up to 70 times its level near the main entrance of the plant.

In that place went to first hour of today Koizumi, Naoto Kan, who described the earthquake as a disaster "unprecedented" in Japan and said the subsequent tsunami was much larger than expected. He also thanked the international aid offered to Japan to confront the devastation and said that evaluates the ability to send reinforcement troops for emergency work, in which 50,000 military personnel already involved.

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