Japanese Choppers Dump Water on Stricken Reactor

Japanese choppers dump water on stricken reactor

ZAO, Japan - Japan deployed military helicopters, high-pressure water cannons and fire trucks in an increasingly desperate attempt to cool an overheated nuclear complex as U.S. officials warned the situation was deteriorating.

Although the choppers flew combat-style missions to dump batch soon after batch of seawater onto a stricken reactor, plant operators said they were close to finishing a brand new power line that could restore cooling systems and ease the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex on the country's northeast coast.

The leading U.S. nuclear regulatory official gave a far bleaker assessment of the crisis than the Japanese, and also the U.S. ambassador warned U.S. citizens within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the complex to leave the area or at least remain indoors.

The Japanese government said it had no plans to expand its mandatory, 12-mile (20-kilometer) exclusion zone around the plant, even though also urging folks inside 20 miles (30 kilometers) to remain inside.

The troubles at the nuclear complex were set in motion last week's 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and destroyed backup generators needed for the reactors' cooling systems. That added a nuclear crisis on leading of twin natural disasters that likely killed well more than 10,000 individuals and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

Four of the plant's six reactors have faced serious crises involving fires, explosions, damage to the structures housing reactor cores, partial meltdowns or rising temperatures inside the pools used to store spent nuclear fuel. Officials also recently announced that temperatures are rising inside the spent fuel pools of the last two reactors.

Two Japanese military CH-47 Chinook helicopters began dumping seawater on the complex's damaged Unit 3 at 9:48 a.m. (0048 GMT, 8:48 p.m. EDT), defense ministry spokeswoman Kazumi Toyama said. The choppers dumped at least four loads on the reactor in just the first 10 minutes, although tv footage showed significantly of it appearing to disperse in the wind.

Chopper crews had been flying missions of about 40 minutes each and every to limit their radiation exposure, passing over the reactor with loads of about 7,500 liters (about 2,000 gallons) of water.

The dousing is aimed at cooling the Unit three reactor, as well as replenishing water in that unit's cooling pool, where utilized fuel rods are stored, Toyama said. The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said earlier that pool was practically empty, which would trigger the rods to overheat and emit even much more radiation.

Defense Minister Toshifumi Kitazawa told reporters that emergency workers had no selection but to try the water dumps just before it was too late.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, said Unit 4 also was seriously at risk.

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko said at a congressional hearing in Washington that all of the water was gone from that unit's spent fuel pool. Jaczko said anyone who gets close to the plant could face potentially lethal doses of radiation.

"We think radiation levels are extremely high," he said.

Tokyo Electric executives said Thursday that they believed the rods in that pool were covered with water, but an official with Japan's nuclear safety agency later expressed skepticism about that and moved closer to the U.S. position.

"Considering the amount of radiation released inside the region, the fuel rods are a lot more likely to be exposed than to be covered," Yuichi Sato said.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said that together with the helicopter water drops, special police units would use water cannons - normally utilized to quell rioters - to spray water onto the Unit 3 storage pool. The high-pressure water cannons will allow emergency workers to stay farther away.

Military vehicles created to extinguish fires at plane crashes will also be employed, said Gen. Ryoichi Oriki.

Emergency workers had been forced to temporarily retreat from the plant Wednesday when radiation levels soared, losing precious time. Although the levels later dropped, they were still too high to let workers get close.

The storage pools will need a constant source of cooling water. Even when removed from reactors, uranium rods are still incredibly hot and ought to be cooled for months, possibly longer, to prevent them from heating up again and emitting radioactivity.

A core team of 180 emergency workers has been at the forefront of the struggle at the plant, rotating in and out of the complex to try to reduce their radiation exposure.

But specialists said that anybody working close to the reactors was nearly certainly being exposed to radiation levels that could, a minimum of, give them much greater cancer risks.

"I don't know any other way to say it, but this is like suicide fighters in a war," said Keiichi Nakagawa, associate professor of the Department of Radiology at University of Tokyo Hospital.

Professionals note, though, that radiation levels drop quickly with distance from the complex. While elevated radiation has been detected well outside the evacuation zone, specialists say those levels are not hazardous.

U.S. officials were taking no chances, and Prime Minister Naoto Kan and U.S. President Barack Obama spoke about the crisis early Thursday.

In a statement, U.S. Ambassador John V. Roos made his evacuation recommendation "in response to the deteriorating situation" at the Fukushima complex. In Washington, the State Department warned U.S. citizens to take into account leaving the country, and offered voluntary evacuation to family members and dependents of U.S. personnel inside the cities of Tokyo, Yokohama and Nagoya.

Chartered planes also would be brought in to support private American citizens who wished to leave, the State Department said.

While American officials have been careful not to criticize Japan's response, they've made clear it's tough to ascertain what exactly is going on.

"It's a extremely fluid and indeed it is a very confused situation," U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman told reporters Wednesday.

Japanese officials raised hopes of easing the crisis early Thursday, saying they may well be close to bringing power back to the plant. The new power line would revive electric-powered pumps, generating it easier for workers to control the high temperatures.

Tokyo Electric officials said they hoped to have the new power line working later Thursday, and had electricians standing by to connect the power plant.

Almost a week following the disaster, police said much more than 452,000 men and women had been staying in schools and other shelters, as supplies of fuel, medicine along with other necessities ran short. Both victims and aid workers appealed for more assist.

"There is sufficient food, but no fuel or gasoline," said Yuko Niuma, 46, as she stood looking out over Ofunato harbor, where trawlers were flipped on their sides.

Along the tsunami-savaged coast, people should stand in line for food, gasoline and kerosene to heat their homes. Within the town of Kesennuma, they lined up to get into a supermarket right after a delivery of key supplies, for example instant rice packets and diapers.

Each person was only allowed to buy 10 items, NHK television reported.

With diapers hard to discover in a lot of areas, an NHK program broadcast a how-to session on fashioning a diaper from a plastic shopping bag and a towel.

Much more than 5,300 people are officially listed as dead, but officials believe the toll will climb to well over 10,000.

Other countries have complained that Japan has been too slow and vague in releasing details about its rapidly evolving crisis at the complex of six reactors along Japan's northeastern coast.