An explosion at the ageing Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant blew apart the building housing one of its reactors Saturday, a day after the biggest quake ever recorded in Japan unleashed a monster tsunami.

The atomic emergency escalated as crews struggled to prevent overheating at a second reactor where the cooling system has also failed, and the government warned that it too could suffer a blast.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the situation at the stricken power plant remained grave, and that Japan was facing its worst crisis since the end of World War II -- which left the defeated country in ruins.

"The current situation of the earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear plants is in a way the most severe crisis in the 65 years since World War II," Kan said in a televised national address Sunday.

"Whether we Japanese can overcome this crisis depends on each of us," said the premier, who was dressed in an emergency services suit.

Rolling power outages were due to start later Monday as the quake and tsunami crippled nuclear power plants in the northeast. Millions of people were left without electricity after the disaster hit Friday. Japan's nuclear industry provides about a third of its power needs.

Top government spokesman Yukio Edano said it was highly likely that a partial meltdown had occurred at the plant's number one reactor, and a second was possible at the plant 250 kilometres (160 miles) northeast of Tokyo.

"There is the possibility of an explosion in the number three reactor," he said, while voicing confidence that it would withstand the blast as the first reactor had.

A meltdown occurs when a reactor core overheats and causes damage to the facility, potentially unleashing radiation into the environment.

Edano said that some radiation had escaped in the accident, but that the levels released into the air were so far not high enough to affect human health.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power said that despite continuing efforts, it had not managed to ensure that the tops of the fuel rods in the two troubled reactors remained submerged. Exposed rods increase the risk of a meltdown.

France's Institute of Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) said "very large" amounts of radioactivity were "produced simultaneously with the explosion" at Fukushima.

"During the explosion the rate of release at the edge of the site would have attained one millisievert (mSv) per hour," compared with naturally present radioactivity of 0.0001 mSv per hour, it said Sunday.

The government has said the radiation released into the air so far had not reached levels high enough to affect human health.

A cooling pump at another plant 120 kilometres from Tokyo, the Tokai No. 2, had failed, but a back-up was working and cooling the reactor, a plant spokesman said early Monday.

The United Nations said a total of 590,000 people had been evacuated in the quake and tsunami disaster, including 210,000 living near the Fukushima nuclear plants.

The colossal 8.9 magnitude tremor sent waves of churning mud and debris racing over towns and farmland in Japan's northeast, destroying everything in its path and reducing swathes of countryside to a swampy wasteland.

The immense force of the quake had moved Honshu -- the main Japanese island -- 2.4 metres (eight feet), the US Geological Survey said.

In the small port town of Minamisanriku alone some 10,000 people were unaccounted for -- more than half the population of the town, which was practically erased, public broadcaster NHK reported.

The police chief in Miyagi prefecture -- where Minamisanriku is situated -- said the death toll was certain to exceed 10,000 in his region.

The national police agency said the confirmed death toll now stood at 1,597.

But in a rare piece of good news, a man who was swept 15 kilometres out to sea along with his house by the tsunami was plucked to safety Sunday after being spotted clinging to a piece of the roof.

Hiromitsu Shinkawa, 60, was discovered by a Japanese destroyer and transported by helicopter to hospital, where he was found to be in surprisingly good health.

With ports, airports, highways and manufacturing plants shut down, the government predicted "considerable impact on a wide range of our country's economic activities".

The Bank of Japan plans to pump "massive" funds into markets Monday in a bid to help them stabilise following the linked disasters, Dow Jones Newswires said.

Leading risk analysis firm AIR Worldwide said the quake alone would exact an economic toll estimated at between $14.5 billion and $34.6 billion (10 billion to 25 billion euros), without taking into account the effects of the tsunami.

The yen gained ground against major currencies in early Asian trade Monday, briefly touching 80.60 against the dollar, its highest since November 9.

Otomo Miki was with her husband, three children and their 82-year-old grandfather when the quake hit their home in Sendai. They managed to get to their car and speed to safety before the tsunami roared through.

"I had to keep zig-zagging around people and water to get to safety," she said. "We've lost our house and we have no idea what's going to happen next."

Her older sister was in a bus when the wave some 10 metres high crashed through.

"The bus driver told everybody to get out of the bus and run," Miki said. "My sister got out but some people just couldn't run fast enough," she said, adding that they were swept away in the waves.

While the world's third-largest economy struggled to assess the full extent of the disaster, groups of hundreds of bodies were being found along the shattered coastline.

Many survivors were left without water, electricity, fuel or enough food, as authorities appeared overwhelmed by the monumental scale of the disaster.

Japan committed 100,000 troops -- about 40 percent of the armed forces -- to spearhead a mammoth rescue and recovery effort with hundreds of ships, aircraft and vehicles headed to the Pacific coast area.

"There are so many people who are still isolated and waiting for assistance. This reality is very stark," said Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa.

The world rallied behind the disaster-stricken nation, with offers of help even from Japan's traditional rival China.

The US aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan reached waters off the northeast coast Sunday, part of a flotilla sent by Japan's close ally which has nearly 50,000 military personnel in the country. US Navy helicopters were transporting relief supplies for quake and tsunami survivors.

Pope Benedict XVI hailed the "courageous" Japanese people and called for prayers for the victims.

Japan sits on the "Pacific Ring of Fire", and Tokyo is in one of its most dangerous areas, where three continental plates are slowly grinding against each other, building up enormous seismic pressure.

earlier related report
Japan battled a feared meltdown of two reactors at a quake-hit nuclear plant Sunday, as the full horror of the disaster emerged on the ravaged northeast coast where more than 10,000 were feared dead.

An explosion at the ageing Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant blew apart the building housing one of its reactors Saturday, a day after the biggest quake ever recorded in Japan unleashed a monster 10-metre (33-foot) tsunami.

The atomic emergency widened Sunday as the cooling systems vital for preventing overheating failed at a second reactor, and the government warned there was a risk it too could be hit with a blast.

"There is the possibility of an explosion in the number-three reactor," said Yukio Edano, the top government spokesman, while voicing confidence it would withstand the blast as the number-one reactor had the day before.

Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said earlier it was highly likely a meltdown had occurred in the first reactor, at the plant situated on the coast 250 kilometres (160 miles) northeast of Tokyo.

"As for the number-three reactor, we are acting on the assumption that it is possible," he said.

Edano said some radiation had escaped, but that the levels released into the air had so far not reached levels high enough to affect human health.

The colossal 8.9-magnitude tremor sent waves of mud and debris racing over towns and farming land in Japan's northeast, destroying all before it and leaving the coast a swampy wasteland.

In the small port town of Minamisanriku alone some 10,000 people were unaccounted for -- more than half the population of the town, which was practically erased, public broadcaster NHK reported.

The police chief in Miyagi prefecture -- where Minamisanriku is situated -- said the death toll was certain to exceed 10,000 in his district alone.

As the world's third-largest economy struggled to assess the full extent of what Prime Minister Naoto Kan called an "unprecedented national disaster", groups of hundreds of bodies were being found along the shattered coastline.

"We have received a preliminary report that more than 200 bodies were found in the city of Higashimatsushima," a National Police Agency spokesman said in the latest find on Sunday.

Edano said at least 1,000 people were believed to have lost their lives, and police said more than 215,000 people were huddled in emergency shelters.

In the city of Fukushima, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of the stricken plant, AFP reporters saw panic buying at supermarkets and said petrol stations had run dry.

In Minamisoma town, which was virtually obliterated by the tsunami's black tide of mud and debris, an AFP reporter saw fire volunteers collecting bodies found in the twisted wreckage of what had once been a residential area.

An elderly woman wrapped in a blanket tearfully recalled how she and her husband were evacuated from Kesennuma town, another fishing port which the tsunami swept through.

"I was trying to escape with my husband, but water quickly emerged against us and forced us to run up to the second story of a house of people we don't even know at all," she told NHK.

"Water still came up to the second floor, and before our eyes, the house's owner and his daughter were flushed away. We couldn't do anything. Nothing."

The sheer power of the water tossed cars like small toys, upturned lorries that now litter the roads and left shipping containers piled up along the shore.

In Sendai city, where the haunting drone of tsunami sirens had echoed into the night, a hospital used generators to keep its lights blazing, drawing in wearied survivors, but supplies of food and fuel were fast running out.

"We have asked other hospitals to provide food for us, but transportation itself seems difficult," Sendai Teishin Hospital spokesman Masayoshi Yamamoto told AFP.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said about 200,000 people had so far been evacuated from the area around the two Fukushima plants that house a total of 10 reactors.

Japan's nuclear safety agency rated the incident at four on the international scale of zero to seven. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States was rated five, while the 1986 Chernobyl disaster was a seven.

After Saturday's blast, which sent smoke billowing into the sky, the government moved to calm growing fears, saying the explosion did not rupture the container surrounding the reactor itself.

Workers doused the stricken No.1 reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe, in what US experts warned was an "act of desperation" that, in the worst-case scenario, could foreshadow a much more serious disaster.

The plant's operator said that so much water had evaporated from the number-three reactor that at one stage the top three metres (10 feet) of the fuel rods were exposed to the air, although they were later covered again.

Japan's ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki told CNN: "There was a partial melt of a fuel rod, melting of fuel rod. There was a part of that... but it was nothing like a whole reactor melting down."

A total of 22 people have been hospitalised after being exposed to radioactivity, although it was not immediately clear to what degree they were exposed and what condition they were in.

earlier related report
Japan desperately tried to bring an overheating nuclear reactor under control on Sunday, as the full horror of its quake-tsunami disaster emerged on the ravaged northeast coast with thousands feared dead.

An explosion at the Fukushima atomic plant blew off the roof and walls around one of its reactors Saturday, triggering fears of a meltdown a day after the biggest ever quake recorded in Japan.

The 8.9-magnitude tremor unleashed a monster 10-metre (33-foot) tsunami that raced over towns and farming land, destroying all before it and leaving the coast a swampy wasteland.

In the small port town of Minamisanriku alone some 10,000 people were unaccounted for -- more than half the population -- public broadcaster NHK reported.

Police and military reported finding groups of hundreds of bodies at locations along the shattered coastline, including more than 200 found at a new site on Sunday.

The top government spokesman said at least 1,000 people were believed to have lost their lives, and police said more than 215,000 people were huddled in emergency shelters.

As the world's third-largest economy struggled to assess the full extent of what Prime Minister Naoto Kan called an "unprecedented national disaster", it faced an escalating atomic emergency.

In the city of Fukushima, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of the plant, AFP reporters saw panic buying at supermarkets and said petrol stations had run dry.

At the Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant 250 kilometres (160 miles) northeast of Tokyo, the quake knocked out cooling systems vital for keeping the reactor from overheating, and back-up generators were disabled by tsunami flooding.

Smoke billowed into the sky Saturday as a blast destroyed the building around one of the reactors. The government moved to calm growing fears, saying the explosion did not rupture the container surrounding the reactor itself.

Workers doused the stricken No.1 reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe, but the situation deteriorated and the plant operator said another reactor at the quake-hit facility was also in trouble.

"All the functions to keep cooling water levels in No. 3 reactor have failed at the Fukushima No. 1 plant," operator TEPCO said, adding that pressure was rising slightly.

Kyodo reported that the fuel rods at one reactor were now three metres above the water, and that a radiation leak believed to be from the reactor itself had now reached levels above the legal limit.

Japan's ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki told CNN: "There was a partial melt of a fuel rod, melting of fuel rod. There was a part of that... but it was nothing like a whole reactor melting down."

Japan's nuclear safety agency rated the incident at four on the international scale of zero to seven. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States was rated five, while the 1986 Chernobyl disaster was a seven.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said about 200,000 people had so far been evacuated from the area around the two Fukushima plants. There are a total of 10 reactors at the two plants.

Media reports said three residents -- bedridden patients evacuated from a hospital near the No. 1 plant -- had been found to be exposed to radiation after spending a long time outdoors awaiting rescue.

US nuclear experts warned that pumping sea water to cool the reactor was an "act of desperation" that, in the worst-case scenario, may foreshadow a Chernobyl-like disaster.

Several experts, in a conference call with reporters, also predicted that regardless of the outcome of the atomic plant crisis, the accident will seriously damage the nuclear power renaissance.

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News