Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan called for calm as the government battled to cool three quake- damaged nuclear reactors with seawater and Tokyo shoppers stripped water, food and batteries from supermarket shelves. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano this afternoon said radiation readings outside reactors rocked by explosions were falling below levels that are harmful, while a fire at a separate unit appeared to have been put out. Earlier, Edano had said the steel unit containing the radioactive core of one reactor had been damaged and warned of dangerous contamination.
Stocks slumped after the news that a third explosion and fire struck Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima plant this morning, and supermarkets reported panic buying. Hundreds of thousands of people without power faced freezing temperatures after Japan’s strongest earthquake on record caused a 7-meter (23 foot) tsunami that engulfed the northeast coast.
“The water supply at reactor No. 1 and 3 are stable, and the radiation level at the front gate of the plant has dropped to a level that isn’t harmful to the human body,” Edano said at an afternoon briefing in Tokyo. At the same time, “the temperature is rising slightly” at the pond that stores spent nuclear fuel in the No. 4 reactor.
Water in the pond may be boiling, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, an official at Japan’s nuclear safety agency. The rods need to be kept covered with water or they can overheat and spill radioactive material into the air, according to the National Academy of Sciences.
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