Japan Nuclear Meltdown: Fatal Radiation Detected Outside Damaged Reactor No. 2

March 28 (Bloomberg) — Radiation levels that can prove fatal were detected outside reactor buildings at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant for the first time, complicating efforts to contain the worst disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

Water in an underground trench outside the No. 2 reactor had levels exceeding 1 sievert an hour, a spokesman for plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. told reporters in the capital yesterday. Exposure to that dose for 30 minutes would trigger nausea and four hours might lead to death within two months, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Preventing the most-contaminated water from leaking into the ground or air is key to containing the spread of radiation beyond the plant. A partial meltdown of fuel rods in the No. 2 reactor probably caused a jump in the readings, Japan’s chief government spokesman said.

“There’s not much good news right now,” said Gennady Pshakin, a former IAEA official based in Obninsk, the site of Russia’s first nuclear power plant. “There’re questions arising on how much fuel will leak out, what isotopes will be carried and how quickly they will settle. It’s becoming less predictable.”

A magnitude-9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami on March 11 knocked out power at the plant, disabling its cooling systems and forcing Tokyo Electric to dump thousands of tons of sea water on the complex as a stopgap measure. Damage to reactor buildings, including a possible breach in the No. 2 unit’s containment vessel, has made it harder for workers to get close enough to fix the equipment without risking their health.

Power Outages

The number of dead and missing from the earthquake and tsunami had reached 28,343 as of 9 p.m. yesterday. About 200,000 households in northeast Japan remain without power and more than 350,000 have no gas, the government said. There are 242,882 refugees living in 2,045 shelters, the National Police Agency said. Thousands of temporary pre-fabricated homes are being built in Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures.

Residents evacuated from a 20-kilometer (12-mile) radius of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant shouldn’t return home, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. Some people had gone back to pick up belongings, he said.

Elevated radiation levels have been detected in crops grown near the stricken plant as well as the water supply in Tokyo, 220 kilometers to the south, and other regions. This has triggered bulk-buying of bottled water at supermarkets that have been forced to restrict purchases.

Some Success

Ever-higher radiation emissions at Dai-Ichi and evidence water has leaked out of the No. 2 reactor’s containment vessel are undermining success at restoring lighting to control rooms and injecting fresh water into the reactor pressure vessels to keep temperatures from rising.

“The high radiation levels seem to have come from fuel rods that partially melted down and came into contact with water used to cool the reactor,” Edano said at a briefing in Tokyo, citing a draft report from the nuclear safety commission. “It’s very regrettable, but we’re trying to contain the whole situation while preventing the health impact from spreading.”

Shares of Tepco, as the utility is known, slumped 18 percent to 696 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday, the lowest close since February 1977.

Soil near the Fukushima plant tested positive for plutonium contamination, Tepco said. The radioactive metal was part of the fuel mix in reactor No. 3 and its presence outside the plant would suggest those fuel rods were also exposed. The amount found shouldn’t be enough to affect human health, Tepco Vice President Sakae Muto said at a press conference shown on a webcast yesterday.

Tepco said it needs to drain water lying in four reactor turbine buildings to determine where it came from and assess damage to the fuel rods. Water in the No. 2 turbine building is as high as 1 meter (3.2 feet) deep, a company official told reporters yesterday.

By Michio Nakayama, Tsuyoshi Inajima and Yuriy Humber – Mar 28, 2011 5:50 PM GMT+0200

Source: Bloomberg

See also:

– Unbelievable: TEPCO: Plutonium Found On 5 Locations Around Fukushima Plant A Week Ago (But The Deadliest Substance On The Planet ‘Poses No Human Health Risk’!)

– Japanese Government: High Radiation Due To Partial Meltdown – TEPCO Admits Crisis May Last For ‘Months Or Years’

– US, Europe: Radiation and Jetstream FORECAST UPDATE (March 27, 2011)

– Updating Japan’s Nuclear Disaster

– Japan Nuclear Meltdown: Tests Find Radiation Levels At 100,000 Times Normal In No. 2 Reactor, Reactor May Be Leaking Water

– Japan’s Government Asks Water Treatment Plants Not To Take In Radioactive Rainwater

– Japan Nuclear Crisis: Engineers Toil To Pump Radioactive Nuclear Plant Water Into The Ocean

– Japan Nuclear Meltdown: Workers Try To Pump Out Radioactive Water From Reactors – Radiation Levels Soar To 10,000 Times Above Safety Limit

– Japan Nuclear Crisis: The Four Destroyed Reactors at Fukushima Was About 70 Billion Lethal Doses, finely divided

– Japan Nuclear Crisis: This Is Like Admitting That MOX Reactor No. 3 Has Been Breached And Has Released Plutonium

–Japan Nuclear Crisis: Close-Up Aerial Video of Wrecked Reactors at Fukushima (25.03.2011)

– Japan Nuclear Meltdown: High Levels of Radiation Leaking From Reactor No. 3

– Japan Nuclear Crisis: High-Radiation Leaks In Fukushima Reactors No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3

– Japan Nuclear Crisis: Fukushima Nuclear Plant Emitted A Neutron Beam 13 Separate Times

– Fukushima Engineer Says He Helped In Cover-Up: Fukushima Reactor No. 4 Built With Flawed Steel, Has A Faulty Reactor Inside

– Dr. Chris Busby: Fukushima Now 72,000 Times Hiroshima Radiation

– Japan Government on Fukushima: ‘We Are Not Able To Measure The Amount Of Radiation Coming From The Power Plant’

– The Dying ‘Fukushima Fifty’

– Japan Nuclear Meltdown: Reactor 3 ‘Nightmare’ – Reactor 1 ‘Worry’: Core Now At 380 Degrees Celsius, 80 More Than NORMAL Running Temperature

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– Germany Keeps Radiation Measurements Secret Since Japan Nuclear Disaster

– WHO On Japan Food Radiation: ‘It’s A Lot More Serious Than Anybody Thought’

– Japan Nuclear Crisis: Emergency Evacuation Of Workers Ordered After Reactor No. 3 Emits Black Smoke

– Director General of Finland’s Nuclear Safety Authority Warns Japan About Using Seawater To Cool Fukushima Reactors

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– Japan Nuclear Crisis: Fukushima Workers Cut Off From Their Families To Prevent The Truth From Leaking Out

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– Japan Nuclear Meltdown: Total Information Blackout On Fukushima Unit 4 Reactor

– Japan Nuclear Meltdown: It’s Getting Worse in Tokyo – Why The Dangers Are Stratospherically Higher Than Even US Officials Are Admitting

– Japan Finds Radioactive Food Up To 90 Miles From Fukushima Nuclear Site

– Japan Nuclear Meltdown: Multiple Times Worse than Chernobyl

– TEPCO Director Weeps After Finally Admitting The Truth About Fukushima Disaster: Radiation Leak Is Serious Enough To Kill People

– Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant In Japan: A Dirty Bomb Waiting To Go Off

– Japan Nuclear Meltdown: US Calls Radiation Levels ‘Extremely High’ – Fuel Pool Has Burned Dry At The No. 4 Reactor, Leaving Fuel Rods Stored There Exposed And Bleeding Radiation

– Japan Nuclear Meltdown: French minister: ‘Let’s not beat about the bush, they’ve essentially lost control’ – Radiation Levels Stop Military Helicopters From Dumping Water

– Japan Nuclear Meltdown: Radiation Levels 6,600 Times Normal 20km Away from Fukushima Nuclear Plant

– Japan Nuclear Meltdown: It’s Much, Much Worse Than It Looks (Thanks To The Stupidity of Nuclear Engineers!) (MUST-READ!)

– Israeli Nuclear Expert Accuses Japan Of Downplaying Danger Nuclear Calamity: ‘If there is fallout of plutonium oxide, a most toxic substance that they use in the reactor that exploded, no one will be able to set foot on the site for thousands of years’