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A Japanese Self Defense Force Chinook helicopter fills more than seven tons of seawater into a large container near Natori in Miyagi Prefecture Thursday. Photo: AFP By Qiu Wei in Niigata and Zhu Shanshan in Beijing With nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant reaching a critical point, international skepticism is still mounting over Japan's handling of the crisis. Meanwhile, severe weather is hampering relief efforts, bringing more pain to the masses left homeless or otherwise displaced by last week's earthquake and tsunami. In a desperate attempt to keep reactor cores and fuel rods submerged in water, water-cannon trucks and military helicopters were deployed Thursday at the Fukushima plant, despite persisting threats of radiation. "The highest priority now is to pour adequate water onto the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, especially in their spent fuel pools," the Kyodo News Agency quoted Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, as saying Thursday. However, even after 30 tons of water were dropped by helicopters, emissions rose from 3,700 microsieverts to 4,000 per hour, the Kyodo News Agency reported, citing the Tokyo Electric Power Co, the plant's operator. Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said that more military vehicles would be deployed to help cool the reactors, while pumps supplied by the US armed forces were also being transferred. Wang Kan, director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy Science and Engineering Management at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times that as long as Japan can keep pumping water into the crippled plant, an actual meltdown would not occur. "However, the efficiency of this method is questionable, because even the plant operator itself does not have a full understanding of the exact conditions in every reactor," Wang added. In another effort, Japan's nuclear regulator announced that it was working to connect outside power cables to two of the six reactors, in hopes of restarting their cooling pumps that were paralyzed by the tsunami. However, the courageous efforts of workers at the Fukushima plant have not quelled global skepticism regarding the Japanese government's handling of the crisis. Saying the situation was "deteriorating," the US embassy in Tokyo issued a notice Thursday, warning its citizens who live within 80 kilometers of the plant to evacuate. But the Japanese government insisted that it had no plan to expand its 20-kilometer exclusion zone. |
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