Japan on 'maximum alert'

Japan was on “maximum alert” to bring its nuclear crisis under control, the prime minister insisted today.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan told parliament that Japan was grappling with its worst problems since the Second World War.

“This quake, tsunami and the nuclear accident are the biggest crises for Japan” in decades, Kan said.

He warned the crises remained unpredictable, but added: “From now on, we will continue to handle it in a state of maximum alert.”

The magnitude-9.0 offshore earthquake on March 11 triggered a tsunami that slammed minutes later into Japan’s north-east coastline, wiping out towns and knocking out power and backup systems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

Police said more than 11,000 bodies have been recovered, but the final death toll is expected to exceed 18,000. Hundreds of thousands remain homeless, their homes and livelihoods destroyed.

Damage could amount to $310bn (€219bn) – the most expensive natural disaster on record, the government said.

Against the backdrop of the humanitarian disaster, the drama at the power plant has continued to develop, with workers fighting fires, explosions, radiation scares and miscalculations in the frantic bid to prevent a complete meltdown.

The plant has been leaking radiation that has made its way into vegetables, raw milk and tap water as far as Tokyo. Residents within 12 miles of the plant were ordered to leave and some nations banned the imports of food products from the Fukushima region.

Highly toxic plutonium was the latest contaminant found seeping into the soil outside the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

Safety officials said the amounts did not pose a risk to humans, but the finding supports suspicions that dangerously radioactive water is leaking from damaged nuclear fuel rods.

“The situation is very grave,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano warned today. “We are doing our utmost to contain the damage.”

The urgent mission to stabilise the Fukushima plant has been fraught with setbacks.

Workers succeeded last week in reconnecting some parts of the plant to the power grid. But as they pumped water into units to cool the reactors down, they discovered pools of contaminated water in numerous spots, including the basements of several buildings and in tunnels outside them.

The contaminated water has been emitting radiation exposures more than four times the amount the government considers safe for workers and must be pumped out before electricity can be restored to the cooling system.

That has left officials struggling with two crucial but sometimes-contradictory efforts: pumping in water to keep the fuel rods cool and pumping out contaminated water and safely storing it.

Nuclear safety official Hidehiko Nishiyama said: “The removal of the contaminated water is the most urgent task now, and hopefully we can adjust the amount of cooling water going in,” he said, adding that workers were building sandbag dykes to keep contaminated water from seeping into the soil outside.