Official says a partial meltdown is "highly possible" as police chief says death toll could top 10,000.
Last Modified: 13 Mar 2011 11:57 GMT
A partial meltdown is likely under way at one nuclear reactor, a senior Japanese official has said, as operators frantically tried to keep temperatures down at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant's other units following a devastating earthquake and tsunami that may have killed as many as 10,000 people.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters on Sunday that a partial meltdown in Unit 3 of the Fukushima facility was "highly possible".
"Because it's inside the reactor, we cannot directly check it but we are taking measures on the assumption of the possible partial meltdown," he said.
About 170,000 people have been ordered to evacuate the area covering a radius of 20km around the plant.
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The Japanese prime minister said the current situation is the worst disaster the country has faced since the Second World War.
"As to Friday's earthquake and tsunami and the current situation of the power plants in Fukushima, in the 65 years after the end of World War Two, this is the toughest and the most difficult crisis for Japan in that period," Naoto Kan said in a televised address to the nation.
He also said Japan is at risk of large-scale power outages and must save energy after the earthquake shut down some atomic power plants.
He said that the power supply situation in affected areas was "extremely severe" and appealed for people's understanding of the need for phased, scheduled power cuts to avoid unscheduled power cuts which could cause enormous damage.
Bodies recovered
Japan dealt with the nuclear threat as it struggled to determine the scope of the earthquake, the most powerful in its recorded history, and the tsunami that ravaged its northeast on Friday with breathtaking speed and power.
Hundreds of bodies were recovered on Sunday and Naoto Takeuchi, chief of Miyagi prefecture's policy force, said the death toll could top 10,000. He told state broadcaster NHK he had "no doubt" of that number of fatalities just in his prefecture - the region hardest hit by Friday's disaster.
New footage shows the moment the massive tsunami slammed into Japan's coastline
Strong aftershocks continued to shake Japan's main island as the search pressed on for survivors.
Thousands of people have been taken to emergency shelters along the northeastern coast.
The quake and tsunami damaged three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, which lost their cooling functions necessary to keep the fuel rods working properly.
Dr Ilham al-Qaradawi, a professor of nuclear physics at Qatar University, told Al Jazeera that even if a meltdown occurs, it might not necessarily become dangerous.
"It depends on how this is going to be contained by the containment of the reactor," she said.
"It could be that the reactor core would be completely damaged but there is no releases of radioactivity and that's the important part..
"Chernobyl is a much worse situation than this case. Despite the slight release of radiation I think these reactors have proven to be very good reactors ... so far in terms of radiation, contamination has not been very pronounced."
Operators released slightly radioactive air from Unit 3 on Sunday, while injecting water into it as an effort to reduce pressure and temperature to save the reactor from a possible meltdown, Edano said.
A meltdown refers to a very serious collapse of a power plant's systems and its ability to manage temperatures. A complete meltdown would release uranium and dangerous byproducts into the environment that can pose serious health risks.
Explosion risk
Edano warned of the risk of a second explosion at the Fukushima plant on Sunday, a day after a blast destroyed the building housing another reactor.
However, he said the reactor would withstand it and there would be no adverse affect on the health of nearby residents.
He said radiation levels briefly rose above legal limits, but that it has since declined significantly.
On Saturday, an explosion destroyed the building housing the Unit 1 reactor, but not the reactor itself, which is enveloped by stainless steel 15cm thick.
The cause of the blast was apparently a reaction of hydrogen and oxygen as some hydrogen gas was released to relieve pressure inside the reactor.
Officials have said that radiation levels at Fukushima were elevated before the blast. At one point, the plant was releasing each hour the amount of radiation a person normally absorbs from the environment each year.
Workers in protective clothing were scanning people arriving at evacuation centres for radioactive exposure.
Officials said 22 people were known to have been exposed to radiation.
Virtually any increase in dispersed radiation can raise the risk of cancer, and authorities were planning to distribute iodine, which helps protect against thyroid cancer.
It is the first time Japan had confronted the threat of a significant spread of radiation since the greatest nightmare in its history, a catastrophe exponentially worse: the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States, which resulted in more than 200,000 deaths from the explosions, fallout and radiation sickness.
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