Authorities in Japan today shut down a nuclear power plant after a radiation seep out and other smash up from a lethal earthquake on the country’s northwestern coast giving birth to new worries about the protection of Japan’s accident-plagued nuclear industry.
An electric company that operates the nuclear plant near the city of Kashiwazaki, said it had established more than 50 troubles at the plant raised by Monday’s tremor. While the majority of the troubles were negligible, the chief integrated 100 drums of radioactive ravage that had fallen over, causing the lids on some of the drums to open, the company said. On Monday, the company said that the trembling also raised a little fire at the plant, the world’s biggest by amount of electricity formed, and the leakage of 317 gallons of water containing trace levels of radioactive supplies into the nearby Sea of Japan.
Group announced today that it had detected minute quantity of radioactive material in an air filter in one of the plant’s seven reactors; nevertheless the company said it was improbable that the material had entered the atmosphere outside the reactor. The company said it was still probing how the dirtied water had leaked out, but it said the level of radioactivity was too low to imperil humans or the environment.
Premier Shinzo Abe criticized Tokyo Electric for being “too slow” in reporting the harms to the government and the public. “Nuclear power can only function with the people’s faith,” Mr. Abe told reporters. Power companies “must precisely and quickly report what is occurrence,” he said.Television footage showed rescuers digging through buildings in Kashiwazaki that were toppled by the earthquake, which local police said killed at least nine people and injured another 1,000.
Meteorological agency in Japan said the tremor had a magnitude of 6.8; the USA Geological Survey put the magnitude at 6.6. Japan’s military used warships and trucks to bring rice balls, bread, and water to the remote region in Niigata prefecture, about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo, where the shaking struck on Monday morning.
However assistance efforts were slowed by landslides and gaping cracks in the earth that severed rail lines and roads, local media reports said.