Fourth Japanese Nuclear Reactor Explodes and Catches Fire

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan speaks at a press conference at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo on March 15. Kan advised people living between 12 and 19 miles of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to stay indoors. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Mar 15, 2011
By Helena Zhu
Epoch Times Staff

The tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant’s No. 4 reactor caught fire and exploded on Tuesday morning, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s office tweeted.

The fire and the hydrogen explosion have added to the already high radiation level at the Daiichi plant. The plant’s No. 1 reactor exploded on Saturday afternoon, No. 3 exploded on Monday morning, and No. 2 blasted early Tuesday morning.

An official at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), which runs the nuclear plant, speculated that the explosion probably led to the fire. The explosion itself was most likely caused by hydrogen seeping from a pool storing spent nuclear fuel on the reactor’s fifth floor, Japanese media Nikkei reported.

TEPCO said that the fire, which broke out at 9:38 a.m. local time, appears to have been extinguished, according to Kyoto News.

"The level seems very high, and there is still a very high risk of more radiation coming out," Kan said in a nationally televised address.

Kan warned danger of more radiation leaks, but asked the public to stay calm. He advised residents living between 12 and 19 miles (20 to 30 kilometers) of the plant to stay indoors. Those closer to the plant—some 185,000 people—have already been evacuated.

A heroic team of TEPCO workers is continuously trying to cool the reactors down with seawater to prevent large-scale meltdown.

"They are putting themselves in a very dangerous situation," Kan said.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the pressure of the reactor’s water coolant needs to be around atmospheric level and the temperature below 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius) for the reactor to be considered safely under control.

The National Policy Agency’s tally shows that the number of those confirmed dead or remain unaccounted following Friday’s magnitude 9.0 earthquake is believed to exceed 6,000 people. As of Tuesday, 2,475 were dead and 3,118 were missing, but thousands of unidentified bodies have been detected in quake-hit coastal areas.

TEPCO said that the radiation level at the plant’s gate following the No. 2 reactor’s explosion surged to 8,217 microsieverts per hour. The average background radiation a person absorbs per year is about 1,000 microsieverts, Kyoto News reported.

The prime minister’s office said that at 11:22 a.m., 400 microsieverts of radiation—or 20 times the annual limit for nuclear industry employees and uranium miners—were detected near the No. 3 reactor, 30 microsieverts between No. 2 and No. 3, and 100 microsieverts near No. 4.

"Now we are talking about levels that can damage human health,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. “These are readings taken near the area where we believe the releases are happening. Far away, the levels should be lower.”

Although higher than normal radiation levels were reportedly detected in Tokyo, the government said they were not high enough to affect human health.

"The radioactive substances will likely spread far and wide in minute amounts, but these doses will not be enough to cause any harm to the human body," Edano said.

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck northeast Japan last Friday knocked out power and damaged the plant’s backup generators needed for running the cooling systems.

Facing a limited power supply, TEPCO started unprecedented rolling blackouts on Tuesday. Tokyo and eight prefectures in TEPCO’s service area have been divided into five regions for the rotating outages. The blackouts are expected to last at least until the end of April, affecting most of the 45 million people in its service area.