Sikkim quake: 7 casualties, damage reported

New Delhi: One child succumbed to injuries after a 6.8 magnitude earthquake on Sunday in Sikkim, Chief Secretary of Sikkim Karma Gyatso said. One person was reportedly dead in Bhagalpur district of Bihar in a stampede following the tremors. Five people were reported dead in Nepal.

An earthquake measuring 6.8 on the richter scale hit North India on Sunday at 6:10 pm and the epicentre was 64 km from Gangtok in Sikkim, causing major damages in the area. Mild tremors were felt in Delhi and other parts of North India. Tremors were felt in Patna, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal also. 

Aftershocks measuring 6.1 and 5.3 on the richter scale were also felt around Sikkim 20 minutes after the earthquake. 

Speaking to CNN-IBN, the DGP of Sikkim said that many buildings were damaged. He also said that roads were blocked and people were stranded on roads. He said that the Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Chamling has called for an emergency meeting.

Arvind Kumar, Principal Resident Commissioner of Sikkim said that there was excessive damage in the northern parts of Sikkim. He also said that the rescue operations had started in the area. 

There were also reports of landslides following the earthquake in areas around Sikkim and also Darjeeling.

The Prime Minister also spoke to the Sikkim Chief Minister and offered all help. The Prime Minister also directed the Cabinet Secretary to call for an emergency meeting.

There were reports of damages from Bihar. Two buildings collapsed in Katihar in Bihar. The NTPC power plant in Kahalgaon in Bihar has also been shut down because of the earthquake following which North Bihar was under power crisis. 




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Sikkim quake , earthquake 

Japan lays power cable in race to stop radiation

Exhausted engineers attached a power cable to the outside of Japan's tsunami-crippled nuclear station on Saturday in a race to prevent deadly radiation from an accident now rated at least as bad as America's Three Mile Island in 1979.

Further cabling inside was underway before an attempt to restart water pumps needed to cool overheated nuclear fuel rods at the six-reactor Fukushima plant in northeastern Japan, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.

Japan's unprecedented multiple crisis of earthquake, tsunami and radiation leak has unsettled world financial markets, prompted international reassessment of nuclear safety and given the Asian nation its sternest test since World War Two.

It has also stirred unhappy memories of Japan's past nuclear nightmare -- the U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Working inside a 20 km (12 miles) evacuation zone at Fukushima, nearly 300 engineers were focused on trying to restore power at pumps in four of the reactors.

"TEPCO has connected the external transmission line with the receiving point of the plant and confirmed that electricity can be supplied," the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said in a statement.

Another 1,480 meters (5,000 feet) of cable are being laid inside the complex before engineers try to crank up the coolers at reactor No. 2, followed by 1, 3 and 4 this weekend, company officials added.

Should that work, it will be a turning point.

"If they can get those electric pumps on and they can start pushing that water successfully up the core, quite slowly so you don't cause any brittle failure, they should be able to get it under control in the next couple of days," said Laurence Williams, of Britain's University of Central Lancashire.

If not, there is an option of last resort under consideration to bury the sprawling 40-year-old plant in sand and concrete to prevent a catastrophic radiation release.

That method was used to seal huge leakages from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Underlining authorities' desperation, fire engines sprayed water overnight in a crude tactic to cool reactor No. 3, considered the most critical because of its use of mixed oxides, or mox, containing both uranium and highly toxic plutonium.

From R to L) Reactors No. 1 to 4 are seen at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant in Fukushima is seen in this satellite image, taken and released by DigitalGlobe March 18, 2011.

Japan has raised the severity rating of the nuclear crisis from level 4 to level 5 on the seven-level INES international scale, putting it on a par with the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, although some experts say it is more serious.

THOUSANDS DEAD, MISSING AND SUFFERING

The operation to avert large-scale radiation has overshadowed the humanitarian aftermath of the 9.0-magnitude quake and 10-meter (33-foot) tsunami that struck on March 11.

Nearly 7,000 people have been confirmed killed in the double natural disaster, which turned whole towns into waterlogged and debris-shrouded wastelands.

Another 10,700 people are missing with many feared dead.

Some 390,000 people, including many among Japan's aging population, are homeless and battling near-freezing temperatures in shelters in northeastern coastal areas.

Food, water, medicine and heating fuel are in short supply.

"Everything is gone, including money," said Tsukasa Sato, a 74-year-old barber with a heart condition, as he warmed his hands in front of a stove at a shelter for the homeless.

Health officials and the U.N. atomic watchdog have said radiation levels in the capital Tokyo were not harmful. But the city has seen an exodus of tourists, expatriates and many Japanese, who fear a blast of radioactive material.

"I'm leaving because my parents are terrified. I personally think this will turn out to be the biggest paper tiger the world has ever seen," said Luke Ridley, 23, from London as he sat at Narita international airport using his laptop.

"I'll probably come back in about a month."

Amid their distress, Japanese were proud of the 279 nuclear plant workers toiling in the wreckage, wearing masks, goggles and protective suits sealed by duct tape.

"My eyes well with tears at the thought of the work they are doing," Kazuya Aoki, a safety official at Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told Reuters.

G7 INTERVENTION FOR YEN

The Group of Seven rich nations succeeded in calming global financial markets in rare concerted intervention to restrain a soaring yen.

The U.S. dollar surged to 81.98 yen on Friday after the G7 moved to pour billions into markets buying dollars, euros and pounds -- the first such joint intervention since the group came to the aid of the newly launched euro in 2000.

The yen later dropped back to under 81, but it was still far from the record low of 76.25 hit on Thursday.

"The only type of intervention that actually works is coordinated intervention and it shows the solidarity of all central banks in terms of the severity of the situation in Japan," said Kathy Lien, director of currency research at GFT in New York.

Japan's Nikkei share index ended up 2.7 percent, recouping some of the week's stinging losses. It has lost 10.2 percent this week, wiping $350 billion off market capitalization.

The plight of the homeless worsened following a cold snap that brought heavy snow to worst-affected areas.

Nearly 290,000 households in the north were still without electricity, officials said, and the government said about 940,000 households lacked running water.

Aid groups say most victims are getting help, but there are pockets of acute suffering.

"We've seen children suffering with the cold, and lacking really basic items like food and clean water," Stephen McDonald of Save the Children said in a statement on Friday.

Sandra Bullock Gives $1 Million to Help Japanese Victims

Hollywood stars can make millions of dollars a year between films and commercials. Some make money tweeting or hosting parties. It’s good to see when they put that money to good use, and so it’s worth noting that Sandra Bullock gave one million dollars to the American Red Cross to help Japanese earthquake and Tsunami victims. So far, Bullock has offered the largest amount of any celebrity.

Knowing Hollywood, there will also be a telethon of some sort in the near future. There is little to say about the 9.0 earthquake and the aftereffects other than it’s such a tragedy that words do little justice to its enormity. For those looking to donate, the Red Cross has a website.
There are numerous organizations looking to help – though in light of some of the schemes that have come out of great tragedies, it’s always best to go with names and places you know and trust. And on the internet, always make sure that it’s an authentic connection to the relief fund, linked from an official website.
But for those who are struggling with their own finances it’s always good to see someone who has more expendable income than the average person doing what they can to help. The cynical may view this as some sort of public relations stunt – regardless, Bullock did the right thing and in situations like this that’s all that matters.

"Chernobyl solution" may be last resort for Japan reactors

A "Chernobyl solution" may be the last resort for dealing with Japan's stricken nuclear plant, but burying it in sand and concrete is a messy fix that might leave part of the country as an off-limits radioactive sore for decades.

Japanese authorities say it is still too early to talk about long-term measures while cooling the plant's six reactors and associated fuel-storage pools, comes first.

"It's just not that easy," Murray Jennex, a professor at San Diego State University in California, said when asked about the so-called Chernobyl option for dealing with damaged reactors, named after the Ukrainian nuclear plant that exploded in 1986.

"They (reactors) are kind of like a coffee maker. If you leave it on the heat, they boil dry and then they crack," he said.

"Putting concrete on that wouldn't help keep your coffee maker safe. But eventually, yes, you could build a concrete shield and be done with it."

Experts say the cores at the six battered reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, are likely to be safely contained, but worry about the cooling pools for spent fuel, one of which contains plutonium.

So far, authorities have failed to cool the pools, where normally water circulates continuously, keeping racks of spent nuclear fuel rods at a benign temperature.

Helicopters and water cannon trucks have dumped tonnes of water on the reactors, but still the water in the pools is evaporating and the rods are heating up. It is also feared that the quake has smashed the rods into each other, which could cause a nuclear reaction.

"It is not impossible to encase the reactors in concrete, but our priority right now is to try and cool them down first," a Tokyo Electric Power official told a briefing on Friday.

OPEN NUCLEAR WOUND FOR MONTHS

At Chernobyl, an army of workers conscripted by the then Soviet government buried the reactor in tonnes of sand, then threw together a concrete container known as the "sarcophagus" within months of the fire and explosion there.

It failed to set properly and it cracked, leaking radiation into the atmosphere and water. Partly supported by the damaged walls of the reactor building, it has had to be reinforced.

Under a new plan for Chernobyl, a massive structure will be assembled away from the reactor at a cost of billions of dollars, then slid into place over the existing sarcophagus.

Chernobyl-style methods would be even more difficult at Fukushima Daiichi, given the number of reactors involved.

As Japanese officials have said, cooling is still the top priority. Pouring sand onto hot fuel could theoretically produce glass, and that same heat would prevent working on a durable concrete shell.

That means the stricken complex is likely to become an open sore, leaking radioactive particles into the atmosphere, for weeks and possibly months before the Chernobyl solution could even be implemented.

Authorities say radiation outside the Japanese plant is not high enough to cause harm. Still, the 20 km (12 mile) exclusion zone around the plant may end up as a permanent no-man's land, a major problem for small, populous country.

A 30 km (19 mile) exclusion zone remains around Chernobyl.

Tokyo, though, is likely to remain largely unscathed no matter what happens because of its distance from the reactors, no matter how nervous its citizens may be.

It is not accidental that the nuclear plant was built so far away from Japan's biggest city, said Yuki Karakawa, international coordinator at the International Association of Emergency Managers, an extension of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency.

An aerial view taken from a helicopter from Japan's Self-Defence Force shows damage sustained to the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex in this handout taken March 16, 2011 and released March 17, 2011. Reactors No. 1 to 4 are seen from R to L.

"Those reactors in Fukushima are there for Tokyo's power and Tokyo's benefit, not for Fukushima's," he added. "After all, Tokyo is more than 200 kilometres away."

Japan's nuclear crisis

Following are main developments after a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated northeast Japan and crippled a nuclear power station, raising the risk of uncontrolled radiation.

* Japan's nuclear safety agency says military will help pump water at the No.3 reactor at the quake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex in northeastern Japan, and into the spent fuel pool in No.4 reactor.

- Agency also says radiation levels outside the plant spiked around noon but fell back.

- A helicopter was unable to drop water to cool the No.3 reactor, probably because of the high radiation, Kyodo news agency said, quoting the defense minister.

- Police will attempt to cool No.4 reactor's spent nuclear fuel pool using a water cannon, NHK TV says.

- Japan's top government spokesman says radiation levels around the complex are not at levels to cause an immediate health risk.

- Tokyo is safe for international travelers, the Japanese Red Cross says.

- There is no evidence of a significant spread of radiation from Japan's crippled nuclear plants, the World Health Organization says.

- Operator says it is unable to resume work cooling the reactors due to radiation risk. Workers ordered to leave the plant were allowed back in after radiation levels fall. Operator says there were 180 workers on site as of 0230 GMT.

- Fire breaks out at reactor No.4 a day after a blast blew a hole in the building housing spent fuel rods. White smoke seen from No.3 reactor most likely to be steam from the water that is being poured to cool the rods.

- No plan yet to extend evacuation zone near the facility, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.

- Australia urges its citizens with non-essential roles to consider leaving Tokyo and the most damaged prefectures, and Turkey warns citizens against traveling to Japan. France urges nationals living in Tokyo to leave country or move south.

- Radiation levels in Tokyo were 10 times normal at one point, but not a threat to human health, officials said.

- Japan's benchmark Nikkei average closes 4.5 percent up on Wednesday after suffering its worst two-day rout since 1987. The index surged over 6 percent at one point.

- Tens of thousands of people are still missing since Friday's quake and tsunami. About 850,000 households in the north without electricity in near-freezing weather. Death toll is expected to exceed 10,000.

Worry over Japanese IAEA safety head in 2009: Wiki

 Eighteen months before Japan's radiation crisis, U.S. diplomats had lambasted the safety chief of the world's atomic watchdog for incompetence, especially when it came to the nuclear power industry in his homeland, Japan.

Cables sent from the U.S. embassy in Vienna to Washington, which were obtained by WikiLeaks and reviewed by Reuters, singled out Tomihiro Taniguchi, until last year head of safety and security at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"For the past 10 years, the Department has suffered tremendously because of (deputy director general) Taniguchi's weak management and leadership skills," one said on Dec 1, 2009.

"Taniguchi has been a weak manager and advocate, particularly with respect to confronting Japan's own safety practices, and he is a particular disappointment to the United States for his unloved-step-child treatment of the Office of Nuclear Security," said another, which was sent on July 7, 2009.

The IAEA does not comment on the contents of leaked cables.

The evidence of concern about the Japanese national surfaced as his country scrambled to avert a lethal spread of radiation from earthquake-damaged nuclear reactors north of Tokyo.

Diplomats accredited to the IAEA said the agency could play only a very limited role in safety and security because it could make recommendations and provide incentives for states to make improvements, but not enforce them.

"It is not a watchdog in this sense. It encourages development and gives incentives. But safety is essentially a sovereign matter," one said, adding some IAEA member states wanted the agency to be given more powers in this regard.

Japan's crisis has brought scrutiny of its nuclear authorities and, in particular, the operator of the stricken reactors which has a history of falsifying data at its plants.

Separate cables quoted a Japanese lawmaker as telling visiting U.S. officials in October 2008 that power companies in Japan were hiding nuclear safety problems and being given an easy ride on commitments to renewable energy by the government.

Taro Kono, a supporter of renewable energy who in 2009 bid unsuccessfully for leadership of his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), also said Japan had no solution for nuclear waste storage and asked if there was anywhere appropriate to store waste given that Japan was the "land of volcanoes."

Kono was not immediately available for comment.

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant at the center of the crisis, the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), has had a rocky past in an industry plagued by scandal.

Five TEPCO executives resigned in 2002 over suspected falsification of nuclear plant safety records and five reactors were forced to stop operations.

In 2006, the government ordered TEPCO to check past data after it reported finding falsification of coolant water temperatures at its Fukushima Daiichi plant in 1985 and 1988, and that the tweaked data were used in mandatory inspections at the plant, which were completed in October 2005.

OLD RULES, OLD REACTORS

The risk of earthquakes and tsunamis was well known before last Friday's massive earthquake, but many of Japan's nuclear power plants, including the now-crippled Fukushima complex, were built before the most modern safety standards.

An unnamed IAEA official told the G8 Nuclear Safety and Security Group in December 2008 that guidelines for seismic safety had been revised only three times in the past 35 years and the IAEA was re-examining them, another cable showed.

"Also, the presenter noted recent earthquakes in some cases have exceeded the design basis for some nuclear plants, and that this a serious problem that is now driving seismic safety work."

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said on Wednesday before leaving for Japan that the agency had been trying continuously to help improve the safety of nuclear plants against earthquakes.

A draft IAEA report on safety standards, published in October 2009, recommended nuclear power plants be located more than 10 km (6 miles) from the sea or ocean shoreline, or more than 1 km from a lake or fjord shoreline; or at an elevation of more than 50 meters (164 feet) from the mean water level.

The latest IAEA recommendations are far more stringent than the original standards set for Japanese plants. The six reactors at the Daiichi facility were commissioned between 1971 and 1979, while two other Japanese nuclear reactors date back to 1970.

"An anomalous magnitude 9.0 scale is far beyond the assumed safety standard when Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station started up 40 years ago," Yu Shibutani, director of Energy Geopolitics Ltd of Japan, said in an email to Reuters.

"The tsunami walls either should have been built higher, or the generators should have been placed on higher ground to withstand potential flooding, but it has failed.

"The accident exposes shortcomings in risk analysis as well as in engineering, and also the plant didn't meet safety standards in both quake and tsunami wall."

Japan dumps water on overheating reactor;

Japanese military helicopters and fire trucks poured water on an overheating nuclear facility on Thursday and the plant operator said electricity to part of the crippled complex could be restored in a desperate bid to avert catastrophe.

On Thursday, the U.S. embassy in Tokyo urged citizens living within 80 km (50 miles) of the Daiichi plant to evacuate or remain indoors "as a precaution," while Britain's foreign office urged citizens "to consider leaving the area."

The latest warnings were not as strong as those issued earlier by France and Australia, which urged nationals in Japan to leave the country. Russiasaid it planned to evacuate families of diplomats on Friday, and Hong Kong urged its citizens to leave Tokyo as soon as possible or head south.

Japan's government has told people within 30 km (18 miles) of the plant to stay indoors.

At its worst, radiation in Tokyo has reached 0.809 microsieverts per hour this week, 10 times below what a person would receive if exposed to a dental x-ray. On Thursday, radiation levels were barely above average.

But many Tokyo residents stayed indoors, usually busy streets were nearly deserted and many shops were closed. At the second-floor office of the Tokyo Passport Center in the city's Yurakucho district, queues snaked to the first floor.

"Since yesterday we have had one-and-a-half times more people than usual coming to apply for a passport or to enquire about getting one," said Shigeaki Ohashi, a passport official.

SNOW COMPOUNDS MISERY FOR TSUNAMI SURVIVORS

The plight of hundreds of thousands left homeless by the earthquake and tsunami worsened following a cold snap that brought heavy snow to worst-affected areas.

Supplies of water and heating oil are low at evacuation centers, where many survivors wait bundled in blankets.

About 850,000 households in the north were still without electricity in near-freezing weather, Tohuku Electric Power Co. said, and the government said at least 1.5 million households lack running water.

"It's cold today so many people have fallen ill, getting diarrhea and other symptoms," said Takanori Watanabe, a Red Cross doctor in Otsuchi, a low-lying town where more than half the 17,000 residents are still missing.

The National Police Agency said it has confirmed 4,314 deaths in 12 prefectures as of midnight Wednesday, while 8,606 people remained unaccounted for in six prefecturesWashington and other foreign capitals expressed growing alarm about radiation leaking from the earthquake-shattered plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo. The United States said it was sending aircraft to help Americans leave Japan.

"The situation continues to be very serious," International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano told reporters at Vienna airport as he left with a group of nuclear experts for Japan.

Workers were trying to connect a 1-km (0.6-mile) long power cable from the main grid to restart water pumps to cool reactor No. 2, which does not house spent fuel rods considered the biggest risk of spewing radioactivity into the atmosphere.

One official from the plant operator told a late night briefing the cable could be connected within hours. Other officials said it was unclear if water pumps at reactor No. 2, which sustained less damage from a series of explosions, would work.

U.S. officials took pains not to criticize Japan's government, but Washington's actions indicated a divide with its close ally about the perilousness of the world's worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

The top U.S. nuclear regulator said the cooling pool for spent fuel rods at reactor No.4 may have run dry and another was leaking.

Gregory Jaczko, head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told a congressional hearing that radiation levels around the cooling pool were extremely high, posing deadly risks for workers still toiling in the wreckage of the power plant.

"It would be very difficult for emergency workers to get near the reactors. The doses they could experience would potentially be lethal doses in a very short period of time," he said in Washington.

Japan's nuclear agency said it could not confirm if water was covering the fuel rods. The plant operator said it believed the reactor spent-fuel pool still had water as of Wednesday, and made clear its priority was the spent-fuel pool at the No.3 reactor.

On Thursday morning alone, military helicopters dumped around 30 tonnes of water, all aimed at this reactor. One emergency crew temporarily put off spraying the same reactor with a water cannon due to high radiation, broadcaster NHK said, but another crew later began hosing it.

Health experts said panic over radiation leaks from the Daiichi plant was diverting attention from other life-threatening risks facing survivors of last Friday's earthquake and tsunami, such as cold, heavy snow in parts and access to fresh water.

Inside the complex, torn apart by four explosions since a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami hit last Friday, workers in protective suits and using makeshift lighting tried to monitor what was going on inside the six reactors. They have been working in short shifts to minimize radiation exposure.

The latest images from the nuclear plant showed severe damage after the blasts. Two of the buildings were a mangled mix of steel and concrete.

"The worst-case scenario doesn't bear mentioning and the best-case scenario keeps getting worse," Perpetual Investments said in a note on the crisis.

Days after Tsunami...............................

Japan grapples with nuclear crisis; tsunami puts economy at risk

Japan scrambled to avert a meltdown at a stricken nuclear reactor on Monday after a second hydrogen explosion rocked the facility, just days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami that killed at least 10,000 people.

Roads and rail, power and ports have been crippled across much of Japan's northeast and estimates of the cost of the multiple disasters have leapt to as much as $170 billion. Analysts said the economy could even tip back into recession.

Japanese stocks closed down more than 6 percent, the biggest fall since the height of the global financial crisis in 2008.

Rescue workers combed the tsunami-battered region north of Tokyo for survivors and struggled to care for millions of people without power and water in what Prime Minister Naoto Kan has dubbed his country's worst crisis since World War Two.

Officials say at least 10,000 people were likely killed in the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that followed it. Kyodo news agency reported that 2,000 bodies had been found on Monday in two coastal towns alone.

"It's a scene from hell, absolutely nightmarish," said Patrick Fuller of the International Red Cross Federation from the town of Otsuchi.

A girl who has been isolated at a makeshift facility to screen, cleanse and isolate people with high radiation levels, looks at her dog through a window in Nihonmatsu, northern Japan, March 14, 2011.

"The situation here is just beyond belief, almost everything has been flattened. The government is saying that 9,500 people, more than half of the population could have died and I do fear the worst."

How Earthquake Happen?

World's largest earthquakes

Radiation leaks from Japan's quake-hit nuclear plant

Officials in protective gear check for signs of radiation on children who are from the evacuation area near the Fukushima Daini nuclear plant in Koriyama, March 13, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon

Radiation leaked from an earthquake-crippled nuclear plant in Japan on Saturday after a blast blew off the roof, and authorities prepared to distribute iodine to local people to protect them from exposure.

The government insisted radiation levels were low because although the explosion severely damaged the main building of the plant, it had not affected the reactor core container. Japan's nuclear safety agency said the accident rated less serious than either the Three Mile Island or Chernobyl disasters.

Local media said three people suffered radiation exposure near the plant after Friday's massive earthquake, which sent a 10-metre (33-foot) tsunami ripping through towns and cities across Japan's northeastern coast.

Kyodo news agency said more than 1,700 people were killed or missing as a result of the 8.9-magnitude quake, the biggest in Japan since records began in the 19th century.

Later it said 9,500 people in one town were unreachable, but gave no other details.

Huge blast at Japan nuclear power plant

A massive explosion has rocked a Japanese nuclear power plant after Friday's devastating earthquake.

A huge pall of smoke was seen coming from the plant at Fukushima and several workers were injured.

Japanese officials say the container housing the reactor was not damaged and that radiation levels have now fallen.

A huge relief operation is under way after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and the tsunami it triggered, which is thought to have killed at least 1,000.

The offshore earthquake triggered a tsunami which wreaked havoc on Japan's north-east coast, sweeping far inland and devastating a number of towns and villages.

Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan declared a state of emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini (also known as Fukushima 1 and 2) power plants as engineers try to confirm whether a reactor at one of the stations has gone into meltdown.

The emergency declaration is an automatic procedure after nuclear reactors shut down in the event of an earthquake, allowing officials to take rapid action.

Evacuation zone expanded

Television pictures showed a massive blast at one of the buildings of the Fukushima-Daiichi plant, about 250km (160 miles) north-east of Tokyo.

A huge cloud of smoke billows out and large bits of debris are flung far from the building.

Japan's NHK TV showed before and after pictures of the plant. They appeared to show that the outer structure of one of four buildings at the plant had collapsed after the explosion.

The Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the plant's operator, said four workers had been injured.

It is not yet clear in exactly what part of the plant the explosion occurred or what caused it.

The Japanese government's chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, said the metal container around the reactor was not damaged in the explosion and that radiation levels in the area had actually decreased after the blast.Officials ordered the evacuation zone around the plant expanded from a 10km radius to 20km. BBC correspondent Nick Ravenscroft said police stopped him 60km from the Fukushima-Daiichi plant.

Japan's nuclear agency said earlier on Saturday that radioactive caesium and iodine had been detected near the number one reactor of the power station.

Japanese broadcaster NHK screened a before and after image showing the damaged Fukushima plant

The agency said this could indicate that containers of uranium fuel inside the reactor may have begun melting.

Air and steam, with some level of radioactivity, was earlier released from several of the reactors at both plants in an effort to relieve the huge amount of pressure building up inside.

Mr Kan said the amount of radiation released was "tiny".

Cooling system failure

Nuclear reactors at four power plants in the earthquake-struck zone automatically shut down on Friday.

In several of the reactors at the two Fukushima plants the cooling systems, which should keep operating on emergency power supplies, failed.

Without cooling, the temperature in the reactor core builds, with the risk that it could melt through its container into the building housing the system.

Pressure also builds in the containers housing the reactor.

Tepco said it was pumping water into the Fukushima-Daiichi's number one reactor in a bid to cool it down.

The reactors the plant are Boiling Water Reactors (BWR), one of the most commonly used designs, and widely used throughout Japan's array of nuclear power stations.

Continue reading the main story

• Japan quake: video reports
• How nuclear reactors work
• Quake: Wave forecast map

Analysts say a meltdown would not necessarily lead to a major disaster because light-water reactors would not explode even if they overheated.

But Walt Patterson, of the London research institute Chatham House, said "this is starting to look a lot like Chernobyl".

He said it was too early to tell if the explosion's aftermath would result in the same extreme level of radioactive contamination that occurred at Chernobyl.

The explosion was most likely caused by melting fuel coming into contact with water, he told the BBC.

The 8.9-magnitude tremor struck in the afternoon local time on Friday off the coast of Honshu island at a depth of about 24km, 400km (250 miles) north-east of Tokyo.

It was nearly 8,000 times stronger than last month's quake in New Zealand that devastated the city of Christchurch, scientists said.

Some of the same search and rescue teams from around the world that helped in that disaster are now on their way to Japan.

As relief workers begin to reach the earthquake zone, the scale of the damage is being revealed.

One of the worst-hit areas was the port city of Sendai, in Miyagi prefecture, where police said between 200 and 300 bodies were found in one ward alone.

The town of Rikuzentakada, in Iwate prefecture, was reported as largely destroyed and almost completely submerged. NHK reported that soldiers had found 300-400 bodies there.

Chief government spokesman Yukio Edano said it was believed that more than 1,000 people had died.

A local official in the town of Futuba, in Fukushima prefecture, said more than 90% of the houses in three coastal communities had been washed away by the tsunami.

Looking from the fourth floor of the town hall, I see no houses standing,'' Kyodo news agency quoted him as saying.