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By Taiga Uranaka and Ki Joon Kwon | Reuters FUKUSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - A cooling system explosion rocked the
earthquake-stricken nuclear plant in Japan where authorities have been
working desperately to avert a meltdown, compounding a nuclear
catastrophe caused by Friday's massive quake and tsunami.
The core container was intact, Jiji news agency said, quoting the plant
operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), but the local government
warned those still in the 20-km (13-mile) evacuation zone to stay
indoors . Seven people, six of them soldiers, were missing in the blast,
Jiji said. A TV station also reported a new tsunami on Monday but it turned out to be a false alarm. Japan battled through the weekend to prevent a nuclear catastrophe and
to care for the millions without power or water in its worst crisis
since World War Two, after the huge earthquake and tsunami that likely
killed more than 10,000 people. Kyodo news agency said 2,000 bodies had been found on Monday on the
shores of Miyagi prefecture, which took the brunt of the tsunami. The government had warned of a possible explosion at the No. 3 reactor
because of the buildup of hydrogen in the building housing the reactor.
TV images showed smoke rising from the Fukushima facility, 240 km (150
miles) north of Tokyo. TEPCO had earlier halted injection of sea water into the reactor,
resulting in a rise in radiation levels and pressure. The government had
warned that an explosion was possible because of the buildup of hydrogen
in the building housing the reactor. A badly wounded nation has seen whole villages and towns wiped off the
map by a wall of water, leaving in its wake an international
humanitarian effort of epic proportions. As the country returned to work on Monday, markets began estimating the
huge economic cost, with Japanese stocks plunging around 5 percent and
the yen falling against the dollar. Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the situation at the crippled Fukushima
nuclear plant remained worrisome and that the authorities were doing
their utmost to stop damage from spreading. "The earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear incident have been the biggest
crisis Japan has encountered in the 65 years since the end of World War
Two," a grim-faced Kan had told a news conference on Sunday. "We're under scrutiny on whether we, the Japanese people, can overcome
this crisis." Officials confirmed on Sunday that three nuclear reactors north of Tokyo
were at risk of overheating, raising fears of an uncontrolled radiation
leak. Engineers worked desperately to cool the fuel rods in the damaged
reactors. If they fail, the containers that house the core could melt,
or even explode, releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere. The world's third-biggest economy also faced rolling power blackouts to
conserve energy, and Tokyo commuters reported long delays as train
companies cut back services. DEATH TOLL "ABOVE 10,000" Broadcaster NHK, quoting a police official, said more than 10,000 people
may have been killed as the wall of water triggered by Friday's
8.9-magnitude quake surged across the coastline, reducing whole towns to
rubble. It was the biggest to have hit the quake-prone country since it
started keeping records 140 years ago. "I would like to believe that there still are survivors," said Masaru
Kudo, a soldier dispatched to Rikuzentakata, a nearly flattened town of
24,500 people in far-northern Iwate prefecture. Kyodo said 80,000 people had been evacuated from a 20-km (12-mile)
radius around the stricken nuclear plant, joining more than 450,000
other evacuees from quake and tsunami-hit areas in the northeast of the
main island Honshu. Almost 2 million households were without power in the freezing north,
the government said. There were about 1.4 million without running water. "I am looking for my parents and my older brother," Yuko Abe, 54, said
in tears at an emergency center in Rikuzentakata. "Seeing the way the area is, I thought that perhaps they did not make
it. I also cannot tell my siblings that live away that I am safe, as
mobile phones and telephones are not working." NUCLEAR CRISIS The most urgent crisis centers on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex,
where authorities said they had been forced to vent radioactive steam
into the air to relieve reactor pressure. The complex was rocked by a first explosion on Saturday, which blew the
roof off a reactor building. The government had said further blasts
would not necessarily damage the reactor vessels. TEPCO said on Monday it had reported a rise in radiation levels at the
complex to the government. On Sunday the level had risen slightly above
what one is exposed to for a stomach X-ray, the company said. Authorities had been pouring sea water in two of the reactors at the
complex to cool them down. Nuclear experts said it was probably the first time in the industry's
57-year history that sea water has been used in this way, a sign of how
close Japan may be to a major accident. "Injection of sea water into a core is an extreme measure," Mark Hibbs
of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "this is not
according to the book." A Japanese official said 22 people have been confirmed to have suffered
radiation contamination and up to 190 may have been exposed. Workers in
protective clothing used hand-held scanners to check people arriving at
evacuation centers. "NOT ANOTHER CHERNOBYL" The nuclear accident, the worst since Chernobyl in Soviet Ukraine in
1986, sparked criticism that authorities were ill-prepared for such a
massive quake and the threat that could pose to the country's nuclear
power industry. Prime Minister Kan on Sunday sought to allay radiation fears: "Radiation
has been released in the air, but there are no reports that a large
amount was released," Jiji news agency quoted him as saying. "This is
fundamentally different from the Chernobyl accident." Kan said food, water and other necessities such as blankets were being
delivered by vehicles but because of damage to roads, authorities were
considering air and sea transport. Thousands spent another freezing night huddled in blankets over heaters
in emergency shelters along the northeastern coast, a scene of
devastation after the quake sent a 10-meter (33-foot) wave surging
through towns and cities in the Miyagi region, including its main
coastal city of Sendai. ECONOMIC IMPACT The earthquake has forced many firms to suspend production and shares in
some of Japan's biggest companies tumbled on Monday, with Toyota Corp
dropping around 7 percent. Shares in Australian-listed uranium miners
also dived. Already saddled with debts twice the size of its $5 trillion economy and
threatened with credit downgrades, the government is discussing a
temporary tax rise to fund relief work. Analysts expect the economy to suffer a hit in the short term, then get
a boost from reconstruction activity. "When we talk about natural disasters, we tend to see an initial sharp
drop in production ... then you tend to have a V-shaped rebound. But
initially everyone underestimates the damage," said Michala Marcussen,
head of global economics at Societe Generale. Ratings agency Moody's said on Sunday the fiscal impact of the
earthquake would be temporary and have a limited play on whether it
would downgrade Japan's sovereign debt. Risk modeling company AIR Worldwide said insured losses from the
earthquake could reach nearly $35 billion. The Bank of Japan will debate on Monday whether to ease monetary policy
further, sources said. The central bank earlier offered a combined 15
trillion yen ($183 billion) to the banking system earlier in the day to
soothe market jitters. Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said authorities were closely watching
the yen after the currency initially rallied on expectations of
repatriations by insurers and others. The currency later reversed course
in volatile trading. The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world in the past
century. It surpassed the Great Kanto quake of September 1, 1923, which
had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo
area. The 1995 Kobe quake killed 6,000 and caused $100 billion in damage, the
most expensive natural disaster in history. Economic damage from the
2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was estimated at about $10 billion.
(Additional reporting by Risa Maeda and Leika Kihara in Tokyo, Chris
Meyers and Kim Kyung-hoon in Sendai, Waltre Brandimarte and Scott
DiSavino in New York, Natsuko Waki in London and Fredrik Dahl in Vienna;
Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by John Chalmers)
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