A POWERFUL typhoon slammed into Japan’s east coast yesterday, leaving six people dead or missing in south-central regions and halting trains in Tokyo before grazing a crippled nuclear plant in the tsunami-ravaged north-east.

Hundreds of police in white protective suits are hunting for bodies in the rubble outside Japan’s tsunami-flooded nuclear plant – searching for the first time within a six-mile (10km) radius around the radiation-leaking complex.

Radiation exceeding government safety limits has seeped into groundwater under a tsunami-crippled Japanese nuclear plant, according to the operator, but has not affected drinking supplies.

JAPAN’S government vowed to overhaul nuclear safety standards once its radiation-leaking reactor complex is under control, admitting that its safeguards were insufficient to protect the plant against the March 11 tsunami.