More than 10,000 feared dead on northeast coast

JAPAN battled a feared meltdown of two reactors at a quake-hit nuclear plant yesterday, as the full horror of the disaster emerged on the ravaged northeast coast where more than 10,000 were feared dead.

An explosion at the ageing Fukushima No 1 atomic plant blew apart the building housing one of its reactors on Saturday, a day after the biggest quake ever recorded in Japan unleashed a monster 10-metre (33-foot) tsunami.

The atomic emergency widened yesterday as the cooling systems vital for preventing overheating failed at a second reactor, and the government warned there was a risk it too could be hit with a blast.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the situation at the stricken power plant remained grave, and that Japan was facing its worst crisis since the end of World War II — which left the beaten country in ruins.

“The current situation of the earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear plants is in a way the most severe crisis in the past 65 years since World War II,” Kan said at a press conference.

“Whether we Japanese can overcome this crisis depends on each of us.”

Kan said that the shutdown of reactors across the quake zone left Japan at risk of large-scale power outages, and urged citizens to conserve energy. Japan’s nuclear industry provides about a third of the nation’s power needs.

Top government spokesman Yukio Edano said it was highly likely a meltdown had occurred at the plant’s number-one reactor, and a second such incident was possible at the plant 250 kilometres northeast of Tokyo.

“There is the possibility of an explosion in the number- three reactor,” he said, while voicing confidence it would withstand the blast as the first reactor had the day before.

Edano said that some radiation had escaped in the accident, but that the levels released into the air had so far not reached levels high enough to affect human health.

The colossal 9.0-magnitude tremor sent waves of mud and debris racing over towns and farming land in Japan’s northeast, destroying all before it and turning swathes of countryside into a swampy wasteland.

In the small port town of Minamisanriku alone some 10,000 people were unaccounted for — more than half the population of the town, which was practically erased, public broadcaster NHK reported.

The police chief in Miyagi prefecture — where Minamisanriku is situated — said the death toll was certain to exceed 10,000 in his district.

But in a rare piece of good news, a man who was swept 15 kilometres out to sea along with his house by the tsunami was plucked to safety yesterday after being spotted clinging to a piece of the roof.

Hiromitsu Shinkawa, 60, was discovered by a Japanese destroyer and transported by helicopter to hospital, where he was in surprisingly good health after his miracle rescue.

But as the world’s third-largest economy struggled to assess the full extent of the disaster, groups of hundreds of bodies were being found along the shattered coastline.

Edano said at least 1,000 people were believed to have lost their lives, and police said more than 215,000 people were huddled in emergency shelters.

The massive earthquake, one of the largest in recorded history, appears to have shifted the main Japanese island by about eight feet (2.4 metres), the US Geological Survey said.

The Japan Meteorological Agency’s director of earthquake prediction said there was a 70% chance of 7-magnitude aftershock within the next three days — a shake that could destroy buildings and trigger more tsunamis.