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Japan suspends work at stricken nuclear plant
FUKUSHIMA, Japan (AP) — Japan suspended operations to prevent nuclear meltdown after surging radiation made it too dangerous to stay.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the workers dousing the reactors in a frantic effort to cool them needed to withdraw. “The workers cannot carry out even minimal work at the plant now. Because of the radiation risk we are on standby.”
Radiation detected on U.S. warship near Japan
TOKYO (CBS/AP) – The U.S. Seventh Fleet moved its ships and aircraft away from a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear power plant after discovering low-level radioactive contamination 100 miles off the coast.
- air crews were swabbed upon returning from search and rescue (SAR) missions, 17 of whom were found to have received the equivalent of a month’s radiation and had to be decontaminated.
- carrier’s shipboard alarms went off. Since the USS Reagan is nuclear-powered, it has sensors to detect radioactivity and went off as soon as the radiation levels went above the naturally-occurring background.
Original title:
Japan Nuclear Crisis: Containment Vessel Breached
Nuclear crisis: Japan PM warns of increased radiation threat
JAPAN’S nuclear crisis has escalated with two more blasts and a fire rocking a quake-stricken atomic power plant, sending radiation up to dangerous levels.
(Perth Now) – Officials warned that the threat of radioactive fallout has intensified because explosions at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant may have breached a reactor’s inner containment vessel, the most serious development yet at the crippled facility.
“Radiation levels around the compound have risen to fairly high levels,” said Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan in a morning news conference. “There is a danger of even higher radiation levels.”
RADIATION AT 400 mV EQUALS ANNUAL LIMIT 20x
Kan said 400 millisieverts of radiation were detected at the plant at about 10:30. That is 20 times the amount a radiation worker may be exposed to annually.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said, “Now we are talking about levels that can damage human health. These are readings taken near the area where we believe the releases are happening. Far away, the levels should be lower.” Kan urged anyone within a 30km radius of the facility to remain indoors. Officials have already evacuated about 200,000 people living within 20km from the plant.
PERSONNEL EVACUATED FROM NUCLEAR DISASTER AREA
The Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the Fukushima No. 1 plant 140 miles north of Tokyo, has also evacuated all personnel from the site except for 50 employees who are attempting to keep the reactor cores cool, a chore that has become increasingly problematic.
Fears that a fourth explosion would occur Tuesday morning were heightened when a building housing another reactor caught fire, but the workers were able to extinguish the blaze by noon, the Kyodo News Agency reported.
Nuclear containment vessel breached, spewing radioactivity …
BBC Breaking #Japan tells #nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, of fire at #Fukushima plant and that radioactivity is being released directly into atmosphere.
Radiation Being Released Into Atmosphere French embassy in Tokyo says weak radioactive contamination could reach Tokyo in 10 hrs from stricken nuclear plant.
IAEA: Radiation in Everyday Life The biological effects of ionizing radiation vary with the type and energy. A measure of the risk of biological harm is the dose of radiation that the tissues receive. The unit of absorbed radiation dose is the sievert (Sv). Since one sievert is a large quantity, radiation doses normally encountered are expressed in millisievert (mSv) or microsievert (µSv) which are one-thousandth or one millionth of a sievert. For example, one chest X-ray will give about 0.2 mSv of radiation dose. On average, our radiation exposure due to all natural sources amounts to about 2.4 mSv a year.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."