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Japan fought on
Sunday to avert a disastrous meltdown at two earthquake-crippled
nuclear reactors as estimates of the death toll from the tsunami that
charged across its northeast rose to more than 10,000.

Officials worked
desperately to stop fuel rods in the damaged reactors from overheating
after some controlled radiation leaks into the air to relieve pressure.

The government said
a building housing a second reactor was at risk of exploding after a
blast blew the roof off the first the day before at the complex, 240 km
(150 miles) north of Tokyo.

The fear is that if
the fuel rods do not cool, they could melt the container that houses
the core, or even explode, releasing radioactive material into the
wind. Broadcaster NHK, quoting a police official, said more than 10,000
people may have been killed as the wall of water triggered by Friday’s
8.9-magnitude quake surged across the coastline, reducing whole towns
to rubble.

Almost two million households were without power in the freezing north,

Japanese media said. There were about 1.4 million without running water.

Kyodo news agency
said about 300,000 people were evacuated nationwide, many seeking
refuge in shelters, wrapped in blankets, some clutching each other
sobbing. Authorities have set up a 20-km (12-mile) exclusion zone
around the Fukushima Daiichi plant and a 10 km (6 miles) zone around
another nuclear facility close by. Around 140,000 people have been
moved from the area, while authorities prepared to distribute iodine to
protect people from radioactive exposure.

The nuclear
accident, the worst since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, sparked
stinging criticism that authorities were ill-prepared for such a
massive quake and the threat that could pose to the country’s nuclear
power industry.

Chief Cabinet
Secretary Yukio Edano said there might have been a partial meltdown of
the fuel rods at the No. 1 reactor at Fukushima. Engineers were pumping
in seawater, trying to prevent the same happening at the No. 3 reactor,
he said in apparent acknowledgement they had moved too slowly on
Saturday.

“Unlike the No.1
reactor, we ventilated and injected water at an early stage,” Edano
told a news briefing. The No. 3 reactor uses a mixed-oxide fuel which
contains plutonium, but plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO)
said it did not present unusual problems. Asked if fuel rods were
partially melting in the No. 1 reactor, Edano said:

“There is that
possibility. We cannot confirm this because it is in the reactor. But
we are dealing with it under that assumption.” He said fuel rods may
have partially deformed at the No. 3 reactor but a meltdown was
unlikely to have occurred.

“The use of
seawater means they have run out of options,” said David Lochbaum,
director of the Union of Concerned Scientists Nuclear Safety Project.

TEPCO said
radiation levels around the Fukushima Daiichi plant had risen above the
safety limit but that it did not mean an “immediate threat” to human
health. Edano said there was a risk of an explosion at the building
housing the No. 3 reactor, but that it was unlikely to affect the
reactor core container.

The wind over the
plant would continue blowing from the south, which could affect
residents north of the facility, an official at Japan’s Meteorological
Agency said. The disaster prompted an angry response from an
anti-nuclear energy NGO in Japan which said it should have been
foreseen. “A nuclear disaster which the promoters of nuclear power in
Japan said wouldn’t happen is in progress,” the Citizens’ Nuclear
Information Centre said. “It is occurring as a result of an earthquake
that they said would not happen.”

Search for the missing

Thousands spent
another freezing night huddled in blankets over heaters in emergency
shelters along the northeastern coast, a scene of devastation after the
quake sent a 10-metre (33-foot) wave surging through towns and cities
in the Miyagi region, including its main coastal city of Sendai.

In one of the
heavily hit areas, Rikuzentakata, a city close to the coast, more than
1,000 people took refuge in a school high on a hill. Some were talking
with friends and family around a stove. The radio was giving updates.
On the walls were posters where names of survivors at the shelter were
listed. Some were standing in front of the lists, weeping.

Kyodo news agency reported there had been no contact with around 10,000 people in one town, more than half its population.

A Japanese official
said there were 190 people within a 10-km radius of the nuclear plant
when radiation levels rose and 22 people have been confirmed to have
suffered contamination. Workers in protective clothing were scanning
people arriving at evacuation centres for radioactive exposure.

Government criticised

The government, in
power less than two years and which had already been struggling to push
policy through a deeply divided parliament, came under criticism for
its handling of the disaster.

“Crisis management
is incoherent,” blared a headline in the Asahi newspaper, charging that
information disclosure and instructions to expand the evacuation area
around the troubled plant were too slow.

There has been a
proposal of an extra budget to help pay for the huge cost of recovery.
Edano said the cabinet would meet later on Sunday to discuss economic
steps. The Bank of Japan is expected to pledge on Monday to supply as
much money as needed to prevent the disaster from destabilising markets
and its banking system.

reuters