Japan’s emperor gave a rare address to a jittery nation yesterday as a nuclear emergency deepened and millions struggled in desperate conditions after last week’s quake and tsunami disaster.
The television appearance by Emperor Akihito emphasised the gravity of the crisis gripping Japan after the 9.0-magnitude quake and the monster waves it unleashed, killing thousands and crippling a nuclear power plant.
Emperor Akihito said he was “deeply concerned” about the “unpredictable” situation at the stricken Fukushima No.1 power plant, which has been hit by a series of explosions after Friday’s quake knocked out reactor cooling systems.
“I sincerely hope that we can keep the situation from getting worse,” Emperor Akihito said in a historic televised address that marked the first time he has intervened in a national crisis.
Japanese crews grappling with the world’s worst nuclear incident since Chernobyl in 1986 were briefly evacuated after a spike in radiation levels at the Fukushima nuclear power plant 250 kilometres northeast of Tokyo.
Earlier they contended with a new fire and feared damage to the vessel containing one of the plant’s six reactor cores.
There are also major fears about pools holding spent fuel rods at the plant, which need water to keep them cool. Unlike the reactors, they have no containment vessels.
Gregory Jaczko, chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, warned there was no water left in the spent fuel pool of reactor 4, resulting in “extremely high” radiation levels.
A police water cannon was deployed to help top up the water in the containment pool and expected to go into action early today, Jiji Press news agency reported.
Workers at the plant, run by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), have struggled to maintain water levels as the rods have heated up the water, threatening to evaporate it and expose the rods to air, which would send out radioactive material.
Helicopters which were to dump water on the plant were forced back by the radiation levels.
The US military will send a spy drone to take a closer look at the reactors in the troubled plant, Kyodo News reported.
Engineers have been desperately battling a feared meltdown at the 40-year-old plant since the earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems and fuel rods began overheating.
The 50 or so workers at the plant, which has been hit by four explosions and two fires, have been hailed as heroes.
“Please don’t forget that there are people who are working to protect everyone’s lives in exchange for their own lives,” said one post on Japanese social networking site Mixi.
The government has warned people living up to 10 kilometres beyond the 20-kilometre exclusion zone around the plant to stay indoors. More than 200,000 people have already been evacuated from the zone.