AFP, Reuters, Yahoo!7 March 18, 2011, 2:35 pm
"Please dad, come back alive"
The families of anonymous workers at the embattled Fukushima nuclear plant speak out about their sacrifice.
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• Snapshot - Japan's nuclear crisis
As Japan races to contain a spiralling nuclear crisis, it's the engineers and technicians at the embattled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station who are really making the sacrifices.
According to the New York Times, they either volunteered or were assigned to help pump seawater on dangerously exposed nuclear rods in an attempt to prevent a full scale meltdown.
Their sacrifice is huge. Today heartbreaking details of their plight emerged. Some experts say it might be a suicide mission, others say they might suffer health problem for the rest of their lives.
Japanese television has spoken to some of the families of the men involved. One woman said her father had accepted his fate "like a death sentence."
"My father is still working at the plant ... they are running out of food...we think conditions are really tough. He says he has accepted his fate much like a death sentence," she said.
Another woman said her husband sent her an email saying: "Please continue to live well, I cannot be home for a while."
Another girl tweeted, "My dad went to the nuclear plant, I've never seen my mother cry so hard. People at the plant are struggling, sacrificing themselves to protect you. Please dad come back alive."
On Tuesday, the Japanese health ministry raised the legal limit of the amount of radiation each worker could be exposed to.
They're now being exposed to 250 millisieverts five times the maximum exposure permitted for American nuclear plant workers.
The ministry says this change means the workers can now remain on site for longer.
“It would be unthinkable to raise it further than that, considering the health of the workers,” the health minister, Yoko Komiyama, said at a news conference.
Radiation levels at the plant are said to be 40 milisieverts per hour, although plant officials claim workers are being taken off emergency duties after being exposed to the maximum 250 milisieverts.
At this stage, their efforts could be working. The situation at the nuclear plant has not worsened "significantly" over the past 24 hours, but it would be premature to talk about a ray of hope, an IAEA expert says.
"At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the situation remains very serious. But there has been no significant worsening since yesterday," Graham Andrew, scientific and technical adviser to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told a regular daily press briefing in vienna on Thursday.
The current situation at units 1, 2 and 3 of the plant, whose cores had suffered damage from a number of explosions and fires since the devastating earthquake and tsunami nearly a week ago, "appears to be relatively stable", Andrew said.
Rescue workers were frantically working to cool down the reactors by injecting sea water to prevent the worst-case scenario of a meltdown.
Asked whether his assessment represented a small ray of hope in the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, Andrew replied: "I think it's too early to say that. It hasn't got worse, which is positive. But it's still possible that it could get worse.
"So I'd rather not speculate. I think we'd say it's reasonably stable compared to yesterday."
Australians told to leave Tokyo
Australians have been told to leave Tokyo due to the radiation risk from the earthquake-damaged nuclear reactors.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has upgraded its travel advice, which also sets an 80-kilometre exclusion zone around the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
The travel advice cites the nuclear threat, as well as ongoing aftershocks and the damage to roads, buildings and communications, as reasons to leave the capital.
"Australians in Tokyo and northern Honshuareas should, unless their presence is essential, leave to Southern Japan or elsewhere," the DFAT travel advice says.
Sixteen Australians remain unaccounted for in the worst-hit areas of Japan.
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Japan disaster dead and missing hit 16,600
The official number of dead and missing after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that flattened Japan's northeast coast a week ago has topped 16,600, with 6,405 confirmed dead, police say.
The number of people unaccounted for following the March 11 twin disasters increased to 10,259, the National Police Agency said in its latest update on Friday.
A total of 2,409 people were injured.
The toll has increased steadily in recent days, and reports suggest it could eventually be much higher.
The mayor of the coastal town of Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture said late Wednesday that the number of missing there was likely to hit 10,000, Kyodo News reported.
On Saturday, public broadcaster NHK reported that around 10,000 people were unaccounted for in the port town of Minamisanriku in the same prefecture.
Amid a mass rescue effort there were grim updates indicating severe loss of life along the battered east coast of Honshu island, where the monster waves destroyed or damaged more than 55,380 homes and other buildings.
Japan hopes to restore power at two crippled reactors Friday
Japanese engineers raced to restore a power cable to a quake-ravaged nuclear power plant on Friday in the hope of restarting pumps needed to pour cold water on overheating fuel rods and avert a catastrophic release of radiation.
Officials said they hoped to fix a cable from the grid to at least two of the six reactors on Friday, but that work would stop in the morning to allow helicopters and fire trucks to resume pouring water on the Fukushima Daiichi plant, about 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.
Even if the engineers manage to connect the power, it is not clear the pumps will work as they may have been damaged in the earthquake or subsequent explosions and there are real fears of the electricity shorting and causing another explosion.
"Preparatory work has so far not progressed as fast as we had hoped," an official of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) told a news briefing, adding that engineers had to be constantly checked for radiation levels.
Washington and other foreign capitals have expressed growing alarm about radiation leaking from the plant, severely damaged by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami a week ago that triggered a series of destructive explosions and compromised the nuclear reactors and spent fuel storage tanks.
Worst case scenarios would involve millions of people in Japan threatened by exposure to radioactive material, but prevailing winds are likely to carry any contaminated smoke or steam away from the densely populated Tokyo area to dissipate over the Pacific ocean.
Nuclear agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said the priority was to get water into the spent fuel pools. He was unsure how effective the helicopters had been inn cooling the reactors.
"As to what we do beyond that, we have to reduce the heat somehow and may use seawater," he told a news conference. "We need to get the reactors back online as soon as possible and that's why we're trying to restore power to them."
Asked about the "Chernobyl solution" of burying the reactors in sand and concrete, he said: "That solution is in the back of our minds, but we are focussed on cooling the reactors down."
Japan's nuclear disaster is the world's worst since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine.
U.S. President Barack Obama said the crisis posed no risk to any U.S. territory. He nevertheless ordered a comprehensive review of domestic nuclear plants.
"We do not expect harmful levels of radiation to reach the United States, whether it's the West Coast, Hawaii, Alaska, or U.S. territories in the Pacific," Obama said. "That is the judgement of our Nuclear Regulatory Commission and many other experts."
Yukiya Amano, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was due back in his homeland later on Friday with an international team of experts after earlier complaining about a lack of information from Japan.
Human spirit in face of disaster
Graham Andrew, his senior aide, called the situation at the plant "reasonably stable " but the government said white smoke or steam was still rising from three reactors and helicopters used to dump water on the plant had shown exposure to small amounts of radiation.
"The situation remains very serious, but there has been no significant worsening since yesterday," Andrew said.
The nuclear agency said the radiation level at the plant was as high as 20 millisieverts per hour. The limit for the workers was 100 per hour.
U.S. officials took pains not to criticise Japan's government, but Washington's actions indicated a divide with its close ally about the perilousness of the world's worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
Cooling pool may have run dry
The top U.S. nuclear regulator said the cooling pool for spent fuel rods at the complex's reactor No.4 may have run dry and another was leaking.
Gregory Jaczko, head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told a congressional hearing that radiation levels around the cooling pool were extremely high, posing deadly risks for workers still toiling in the wreckage of the power plant.
He said it could take weeks to successfully cool down the reactors.
Japan's nuclear agency said it could not confirm if water was covering the fuel rods. The plant operator said it believed the reactor spent-fuel pool still had water as of Wednesday, and made clear its priority was the spent-fuel pool at the No.3 reactor.
On Thursday, military helicopters dumped about 30 tonnes of water, all aimed at this reactor. One emergency crew temporarily put off spraying the same reactor with a water cannon due to high radiation, broadcaster NHK said, but another crew later began hosing it.
Latest images from the plant showed severe damage, with two of the buildings a twisted mangle of steel and concrete.
Dollar gains as financial leaders intervene
The Group of Seven rich nations on Friday agreed to join in rare concerted intervention to restrain a run-away yen, hoping to calm global markets after a wild week of often panic selling.
The U.S. dollar immediately surged almost two yento 81.15 yen, leaving behind a record low of 76.25 hit on Thursday. Japan's Nikkei share index climbed 2.5 percent, recouping some of the week's stinging losses.
U.S. markets, which tanked on Wednesday on the back of the crisis, rebounded on Thursday but investors were not convinced the advance would last.
The government warned Tokyo's 13 million residents to prepare for a possible large-scale blackout but later said there was no need for one. Still, many firms voluntarily reduced power, submerging parts of the usually neon-lit city in darkness.
On Thursday, the U.S. embassy in Tokyo urged citizens living within 80 km (50 miles) of the Daiichi plant to evacuate or remain indoors "as a precaution", while Britain's foreign office urged citizens "to consider leaving the area".
The latest warnings were not as strong as those issued earlier by France and Australia, which urged nationals in Japan to leave the country. Russia said it planned to evacuate families of diplomats on Friday, and Hong Kong urged its citizens to leave Tokyo as soon as possible or head south.
Japan's government has told everyone living within 20 km (12 miles) of the plant to evacuate, and advised people within 30 km (18 miles) to stay indoors.
At its worst, radiation in Tokyo has reached 0.809 microsieverts per hour this week, 10 times below what a person would receive if exposed to a dental x-ray. On Thursday, radiation levels were barely above average.
Tokyo residents stay indoors
Many Tokyo residents stayed indoors, however, usually busy streets were nearly deserted and many shops were closed. At the second-floor office of the Tokyo Passport Centre in the city's Yurakucho district, queues snaked to the first floor.
The plight of hundreds of thousands left homeless by the earthquake and tsunami worsened following a cold snap that brought heavy snow to worst-affected areas.
Supplies of water and heating oil are low at evacuation centres, where many survivors wait bundled in blankets.
About 30,000 households in the north were still without electricity in near-freezing weather, Tohuku Electric Power Co. said, and the government said at least 1.6 million households lacked running water.
The National Police Agency said on Friday it had confirmed 5,692 deaths from the quake and tsunami disaster, while 9,522 people were unaccounted for in six prefectures.
(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg, Nathan Layne, Elaine Lies, Leika Kihara and Mayumi Negishi; Writing by Nick Macfie, editing by Jonathan Thatcher)
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