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Japan nuclear crisis and tsunami - live updates
• New explosion at nuclear plant, fears of leak
• Dangerous levels of radiation at Fukushima plant
• Government reveals fire in No 4 reactor
• Pool containing spent fuel at Fukushima "boiling"
• Read the latest summary of today's events
• Read the Guardian's latest news story on the explosion
The point about the Chernobyl thing was, it went up to 30,000ft or so and it continued for months on end. The sort of thing that would happen with an explosion in Fukushima would actually be relative duration, hours at the absolute most. What happened with Chernobyl was that the graphite core caught fire and you got radioactive material being putting out to a very great height over a very long period and pretty much went round the world. That radioactive material then went in to the food chain, sheep ate it and concentrated it. That was the problem. It's totally different here in Japan.
Fukushima No. 1
Reactor No. 1 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core, vapor vented, hydrogen explosion, seawater pumped in.
Reactor No. 2 - Cooling failure, seawater pumped in, fuel rods fully exposed temporarily, damage to containment system, potential meltdown feared.
Reactor No. 3 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core feared, vapor vented, seawater pumped in, hydrogen explosion, high-level radiation measured nearby.
Reactor No. 4 - Under maintenance when quake struck, fire caused possibly by hydrogen explosion at pool holding spent fuel rods, pool water levels feared receding.
Reactor No. 5 - Under maintenance when quake struck.
Reactor No. 6 - Under maintenance when quake struck.
Fukushima No. 2
Reactor No. 1 - Cooling failure, then cold shutdown.
Reactor No. 2 - Cooling failure, then cold shutdown.
Reactor No. 3 - Cold shutdown.
Reactor No. 4 - Cooling failure, then cold shutdown.
General Decontamination Procedure (if water is unavailable)
• Remove your clothes and shoes and place them in a plastic bag.
• Wipe yourself down with cloth or a wet tissue (afterwards place the cloth or wipe in the plastic bag and throw the bag and its contents away).
General Decontamination Procedure (When water is available)
• Remove your shoes and clothes and place them in a plastic bag.
• Wipe yourself down with cloth or a wet tissue (afterwards place the cloth or wipe in the plastic bag and throw the bag and contents away).
Follow the procedure below if shower is available
• Wash your hair with shampoo.
• Wash your face. (with soap or body wash)
• Wash your body. Including the inside of your ears and under your fingernails (with soap or body wash)
• Wash the clothes in the laundry or if you are still concerned, dispose of the clothes.
IAEA has posted the following on Facebook:
The Japanese authorities have informed the IAEA that the following radiation dose rates have been observed on site at the main gate of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
At 00:00 UTC on 15 March a dose rate of 11.9 millisieverts (mSv) per hour was observed. Six hours later, at 06:00 UTC on 15 March a dose rate of 0.6 millisieverts (mSv) per hour was observed.
These observations indicate that the level of radioactivity has been decreasing at the site.
As reported earlier, a 400 millisieverts (mSv) per hour radiation dose observed at Fukushima Daiichi occurred between units 3 and 4. This is a high dose-level value, but it is a local value at a single location and at a certain point in time. The IAEA continues to confirm the evolution and value of this dose rate. It should be noted that because of this detected value, non-indispensible staff was evacuated from the plant, in line with the Emergency Response Plan, and that the population around the plant is already evacuated.
IAEA said 150 people from around the Daiichi site had received monitoring for radiation levels, and "measures to decontaminate 23 of them have been taken".
The INES – International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale – ranks incidents from one to seven, with one described as "anomaly" and seven as "major accident".
Six is described by INES as "serious accident". The 1986 Chernobyl disaster is the only incident to have been ranked at seven, while the explosion at Kyshtym, Russia, in 1957, is the only incident ever to be ranked as a six.
INES describes level number six as: "Significant release of radioactive material likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures."
You can read the full INES guidelines here.
"The levels of radiation are significantly above background but the risk to health of the general population at this stage does not appear to be significant," Skelton said.
"It looks as though some workers have been exposed to radiation doses well in excess of what would normally be permitted but probably not enough at this stage to cause long term health effects."
The workers who have been exposed to high levels of radiation would be withdrawn from the plant and, because radiation levels are measured over time, Skelton said they should eventually return to more normal levels. He also said that a meltdown might not be cataclysmic.
The only information we have got on this is what happened at Three Mile island when they did get a full core meltdown but the reactor pressure vessel contained the material and though it was a tremendous commercial disaster there were not significant releases of radioactivity. Obviously the pressure vessels in Japan are of a different design and we cannot definitely say because there were no problems at Three Mile Island there are not going to be any problems in Japan but based on the evidence of Three Mile Island it seems reasonably certain that the reactor vessel will be able to contain the radioactive material.
The caption to the chart says current the level of radiation at Fukushima is reported as 400mSv (milli sieverts) per hour.
"The levels of radiation being released by the nuclear power station are given in Sieverts. A microSievert is one millionth of a Sievert," Ian writes. "A milliSievert is one thousandth of a Sievert."
Ian offers these comparisons:
• 2 milliSieverts/year: The level of natural background radiation we are all exposed to.
• 9 milliSieverts/year: The typical dose received by an airline crew flying the New York to Tokyo polar route. Flying at altitude increases radiation exposure to cosmic rays.
• 100 milliSieverts/year: The lowest level at which an increase in cancer is evident.
• 1,000 milliSieverts accumulative: Estimated to cause a fatal cancer many years later in 5% of people.
• 1,000 milliSieverts single dose: Temporary radiation sickness, including nausea, lower white blood cell count. Not fatal.
• 5,000 milliSieverts single dose: Fatal within a month to half those who receive it.
• 10,000 milliSieverts single dose: Fatal within weeks.
Radiation reached around 20 times normal levels in Tokyo this morning, the Japan Times has reported. The newspaper quoted the Tokyo Metropolitan Government as saying the levels had increased. The metropolitan government has insisted the higher reading poses no immediate risk to human health, and has asked that the public remain calm.
Justin McCurry, the Guardian's Tokyo correspondent, writes that despite experts being keen to stress that only "minute" levels of radiation had been detected in Tokyo, there has still been some panic buying in the city.
People in the capital, home to 12 million, snapped up radios, torches, candles, fuel containers and sleeping bags, while for the fourth day there was a run on bread, canned goods, instant noodles, bottled water and other foodstuffs at supermarkets.
Retailers said the panic buying was reminiscent of the oil crisis in the 1970s.
The electronics firm Panasonic said it was increasing production of batteries, which were being bought in large quantities as far away as Hiroshima in the south-west.
Fears are rising that if the hoarding frenzy continues it will affect the ability to deliver emergency supplies to the disaster zone. "The situation is hysterical," said Tomonao Matsuo, a spokesman for the instant noodle maker Nissin Foods. "People feel safer just by buying Cup Noodles."
Prime Minister Donald Tusk has declared that the first Polish nuclear plant would open in 2020 as planned. The Japanese disaster was not evidence that nuclear technology was unsafe, said Tusk, adding that Poland did not have to fear either an earthquake or a tsunami.
The fact that the Japanese power stations did not fully collapse after one of the biggest earthquakes in history was a sign for optimism, said Tusk. A spokesman for the Polish government said in a radio interview that he was sure the majority of Poles were for the introduction of nuclear power in their country.
Adam Hofman, an MP from the opposition Law and Order party, backed up Tusk, saying the catastrophe in Japan should not be allowed to affect Poland's nuclear plans.
The government in Warsaw aims to have identified sites for the power stations by the end of 2013 and plans for building to begin in 2016. "In 2020 the first nuclear electricity will flow in Poland," said Tusk, adding that nuclear power was cheap and environmentally friendly. Currently 90% of Poland's electricity comes from coal.
The Japanese prime minister took to the television at around 10.30am Japanese time (1.20am GMT) to reveal the extent of the radiation leak from Fukushima Daiichi. "The level seems very high, and there is still a very high risk of more radiation coming out," Naoto Kan said.
Kan said most of those within a 20km radius of the plant had already been evacuated, but those still in the area should leave immediately. He added that those within 20-30km of the plant should get inside, close windows and turn off air conditioning.
Kan handed over to Yukio Edano, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, who said there was a fire in the no 4 unit at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Unit 4 had been under renovation at the time of the earthquake and tsunami, and as such was not producing power, but still has a pool containing spent fuel rods.
Although Edano insisted the spent fuel rods could not catch fire, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Japanese officials had told it that "radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere" as a result of the blaze, according to AP.
While the fire has now been extinguished, Kyodo news has since reported at around 6pm (9am GMT) that the pool containing the spent fuel rods was subsequently boiling, with the water level in the pool falling. The New York Times wrote yesterday that the spent fuel lies at the bottom of the pool, normally covered by 30ft of water, however it said if the water does boil off then the fuel could catch fire.
It said the cesium 137 in the spent fuel has a half life of 30 years, "meaning it would take about two centuries to diminish its levels of radioactivity down to 1 percent".
A centre to scan residents who have been within 20 kilometers of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Koriyama, Japan. Photograph: Gregory Bull/AP However Professor David Hinde, head of the department of nuclear physics at the Australian National University, said: "As long as the water level can be maintained, that shouldn't be a serious problem," although did say that if the water were to boil away, there "might be a problem"..
"We should always think about the worst case [scenario] but if the water is simply boiling, and there is access to it, there is no danger to anybody – certainly outside the plant," Hinde said.
As long as the water level can be maintained, that shouldn't be a serious problem. The fact it is unit number 4, which was not operating at the time of the earthquake, means there should be no problems gaining access … I would worry more about the pool of reactor number 2.
If the water did boil away, there might be a problem.
The question is whether the zirconium alloy cladding could react with the steam and lose its containment ability. That, I'm not sure about.
I believe the upper part of the building is still largely intact, but a report suggested it may have been slightly damaged from the explosion in number 4. "The cladding should restrict the egress of radioactive material but if it's slightly compromised it will not be as effective as it would be ideally.
With few details available about the earlier fire at number 4, it is unclear if the problems are in any way related, Tania said. Spent fuel has to be kept in a pool and cooled because it still has radioactive fission fragments that continue to decay.
Hinde said it was possible that heat exchangers at the plant, which use seawater to cool the steam from reactors, had failed due to the tsunami. If that was the case it might also have compromised the facility's cooling system for spent fuel rods.
Quoting Osaka fire department spokesman Yuko Kotani, the agency said the woman was found inside her house that was washed away by the tsunami in north eastern Japan's Iwate prefecture. The rescuers from Osaka, in western Japan, were sent to the area for disaster relief.
Kotani said the woman was conscious but suffering from hypothermia and is being treated at a hospital. She would not give the woman's name.
Her rescue was a rare bit of news for Japanese traumatized by the disaster.
I'm an ex-pat living in Tokyo and reading scare-mongering stories from Reuters about "panic" are not really helping the situation. On the whole, everyone here is staying remarkably calm in a very stressful situation, and this is just irresponsible journalism.
Japan has just had a huge earthquake and tsunami with 10s of thousands missing, presumed dead, plus there is a f**cking nuclear power station on fire ! Isn't that enough drama for Reuters ?
Yes, there is "panic buying", but on the whole people are remaining calm and vigilant. The last thing Japan needs right now is media-induced hysteria.
I'd really appreciate the facts as there is lot of real emotion going on.
I'm also living just outside Tokyo, and having just got back from crossing Tokyo to get to work and back, I'd agree that "panic swept Tokyo" is wildly inaccurate. There weren't even large queues at the railway stations when I was there, despite most services running at about 50-70% normal (remember, in Tokyo, which is famous for packed trains when they're running at 100%), and I was able to pop into the shops and pick up chocolate biscuits on the way home with no trouble.
Some things have gone. For some reason, bread products are thin on the ground, and people seem to have stocked up on instant noodles and rice. There are queues for petrol, but new deliveries are coming in (I saw one being delivered on my way home). There are no batteries available, but then we are promised rolling blackouts (which, incidentally, are generally not materialising), so people want torches and such. Restaurants, however, still seem to be operating fairly normally, and most shops were open. The local supermarket is selling almost the usual range of things in the deli section, and there was a good selection of fresh meat and fish when I was in there half an hour ago.
Of course, people are worried about the nuclear reactors, and it gets a fair bit of attention as the only bit of the disaster that risks getting worse at this point, but there's a lot of coverage of the other aspects of the disaster. On the other hand, the workman has come round to fit our new curtains this afternoon, and the resurfacing of the road outside our flats continues.
Panic? Not even remotely. Back to normal? Not really, but nothing like as far from it as certain reports would have you think.
The newspaper said experts feared that if a pool containing spent fuel was to run dry the fuel rods could overheat and catch fire, potentially spreading radioactive materials.
It quoted David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the union of concerned scientists, who worked as an instructor on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan, as saying that if rods did catch fire it could be "worse than a meltdown".
In a reactor pool, the time it takes uncooled fuel to begin boiling the surrounding water depends on how much fuel is present and how old it is. Fresh fuel is hotter in terms of radiation than old fuel is.
Lochbaum, who formerly taught reactor operation for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the pools measured about 40 feet long, 40 feet wide and 45 feet deep. The spent fuel, he added, rested at the pool's bottom and rose no higher than 15 feet from the bottom. That means that in normal operations, the spent fuel is covered by about 30 feet of cooling water.
Depending on the freshness of the spent fuel, Lochbaum said, the water in an uncooled pool would start to boil in anywhere from days to a week. The water would boil off to a dangerous level in another week or two. Once most of the fuel is exposed, he said, it can catch fire.
The NYT said if the fuel was months old – as opposed to days – then "most of the iodine 131" would have decayed to a harmless level. However it said that the cesium 137 in the spent fuel "has a half-life of 30 years, meaning it would take about two centuries to diminish its levels of radioactivity down to 1 percent".
The Japanese news agency quoted an official from the reactor's operator – Tokyo Electric Power Co – as saying the pool could be boiling.
Earlier we heard that "radioactivity [was] being released directly into the atmosphere" from a fire at the no 4 reactor. There had been some reports that the blaze had been extinguished.
Full statement:
In the current and rapidly evolving situation with the nuclear power plants in Japan, the actions proposed by the Government of Japan are in line with the existing recommendations based on public health expertise. The Government is asking people living within 20 km of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to evacuate and those between 20 km and 30 km are asked to stay indoors in unventilated rooms. People living farther away are at a lower risk than those who live nearby.
Now the International Atomic Energy Agency says Japanese officials have told it that "radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere" as a result of the blaze, according to AP.
The agency says the fire at unit 4 was at a storage pond for spent nuclear fuel. Japanese officials have said the fire has been extinguished.
The Japanese news website reported that Edano told reporters today that 400 millisieverts of radiation per hour had been detected around the plant's No.3 reactor building at 10:22 AM.
The figure 400 millisieverts, or 400,000 microsieverts, is 4 times higher than the acceptable level of radiation for humans, NHK said.
The London stock exchange is expected to open 155 points lower at 8am.
The Nikkei 225 share average closed 10.6% down, having been as much as 14.4% lower at one stage. Over two days the benchmark index has lost 16% of its value, its biggest two-day decline since the 1987 crash.
The index ended at 8,605, a loss of 1,015 points by its close at 6am London time. The falls came despite the government pumping in a further $61bn of emergency funds into the market.
Economics minister Kaoru Yosano said: "Japan's production and the economic power have not fallen. I think the market confusion will calm down in a short time."
Shares in the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the Fukushima plant, are down 42% from its Friday close. On Tuesday shares in Nippon Steel fell 11%, while Fast Retailing, the owner of the Uniqlo brand, was down 17.5%.
This video shows Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan addressing the nation in Tokyo this morning.
"Radiation has spread from these reactors [at Fukushima 1] and the reading of the level seems very high, and there is still a very high risk of further radiactive material coming out," Kan says.
"From the Fukushima 1 power plant a 20km radius has become an area for evacuation. Most of the people have evacuated from this area, We need now for everybody to move out from the 20km radius from the No1 plant, and in areas from 20-30km from the power plant, depending on what happens at the power plant, we would like to ask you to remain indoors, at home or in your offices. We would like to ask you to remain indoors and avoid going outside."
Kan also said there was a 10km evacuation zone from the Fukushima no 2 plant. He requested that the nation "act very calmly", and said work was continuing to pump water into at-risk reactors.
''I will take back [the remark] and offer a deep apology,'' Ishihara told a news conference, adding he should have thought about the feelings of victims.
We have been unable to verify the story as yet.
This B-movie fare is widely mocked, often for good reason. But the early "Godzilla" films were earnest and hard-hitting. They were stridently anti-nuclear: the monster emerged after an atomic explosion. They were also anti-war in a country coming to grips with the consequences of World War II. As the great saurian beast emerges from Tokyo Bay to lay waste to the capital in 1954's "Gojira" ("Godzilla"), the resulting explosions, dead bodies and flood of refugees evoked dire scenes from the final days of the war, images still seared in the memories of Japanese viewers.
"I don't think they are telling us the truth. Maybe even they don't know," said Toshiaki Kiuchi, a 63-year-old innkeeper whose business was flooded waist-deep by Friday's tsunami...
"We are really afraid, as if we didn't already have enough to worry about. You can't see fallout so we are totally relying on them for our lives," said Shinako Tachiya, 70.
"I used to believe the nuclear power officials, but not now. I think they are not being open with us. They aren't telling us anything."
He pointed out that we are still waiting for readings for areas away from the plant itself and said added that the maximum radiation level seen so far was "very, very serious" for workers on site, who would only be able to remain there for the briefest periods. But the risk to those outside the exclusion zone was very small, particularly when seen in the context of their situation as a whole.
"Compared to the risk of being on a plain near the sea it's negligible… No one is looking at the black smoke from the fires and wondering where those carcinogens are going."
A businessman is reflected on a share prices board as he watches the sharply dropped figure of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Tokyo on March 15, 2011. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images
• Japan's prime minister says radiation levels are significantly higher around the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The risk of radioactive leaks was rising at the plant, Kan said in a televised statement.
• Nuclear plant operator Tepco reported an explosion at the plant's No 4 reactor, followed by a fire. Tepco called on Japanese and US military to put out the blaze, which may have affected spent nuclear fuel stored in the reactor.
• The Japanese government has imposed a no fly zone over the 30km radius from the Fukushima plant site. Most staff have been told to leave the site as radiation levels soared to dangerously high levels around the plant.
• Residents have been evacuated from a 20km radius of the Fukushima plant, while those within a 30km radius of the plant have been told to stay indoors and seal doors and windows.
• Low-level radioactive wind from the damaged reactors could reach Tokyo later this evening, based on current winds, while scenes of panic in the capital have been reported after minute amount of radiation were detected in Tokyo.
• The death toll is expected to exceed 10,000 from the quake and tsunami, according to public broadcaster NHK. About 2,000 bodies were found on the shores of Miyagi prefecture, Kyodo news agency reported.
• Japan's central bank injected trillions of yen to prop up the country's economy, while the stock market plunged by more than 12% in trading – the worst day since Black Monday 1987 – as fears over the damaged nuclear reactors grew.
• Reactor 1: Earlier Hydrogen explosion has blown off the top of the reactor building
• Reactor 2: Containment vessel possibly damaged in explosion, coolant pumps damaged by earlier explosions and valves closed, fuel rods exposed and may be leaking radioactive water from suppression pool
• Reactor 3: Earlier Hydrogen explosion, cloud of steam still rising, top half of reactor's building blown off
• Reactor 4: Fire broke out late Monday, probably caused by nearby explosions, now put out, spent nuclear fuel may have been exposed, destroying the reactor's housing. The fire may be the cause of the high levels of radiation at the site
Panic swept Tokyo on Tuesday after a rise in radioactive levels around an earthquake-hit nuclear power plant north of the city, causing some residents to leave the capital and others to stock up on food and supplies.
Several embassies advised staff and citizens to leave affected areas, tourists cut short vacations and multinational companies either urged staff to leave or said they were considering plans to move outside the city.
In one sign of the panic, Don Quixote, a multistorey, 24-hour general store in Tokyo's Roppongi district, was sold out of radios, flashlights, candles, fuel cans and sleeping bags on Tuesday as a Reuters reporter visited the shop.
The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the explosion at the No 2 reactor may have damaged the ''suppression chamber,'' a facility connected to the reactor's container which is designed to cool down radiation steam and lower the pressure in the reactor. It said a sharp decline in the pressure level of the chamber suggests damage.
Following the incident, the radiation level near the main gate of the Fukushima No. 1 plant exceeded the legal limit to reach 965.5 micro sievert per hour at 7:00 a.m. and jumped to 8,217 micro sievert at 8:31 a.m., the agency said. The latter amount is more than eight times the 1,000 micro sievert level to which people can safely be exposed in one year.
Given that the building housing the reactor has already been damaged by Monday's hydrogen blast at the neighboring No. 3 reactor, a spread of radiation outside the plant has become a serious threat, experts say.
The possibility of a meltdown, in which fuel rods melt and are destroyed, ''cannot be ruled out'' as the fuel rods have been damaged, the utility [Tepco] said.
BBC World Service reporting that fire engines were being used to pump sea water to cool reactors. One ran out of fuel, so reactor boiled dry
Matt Seaton
mattseaton
The Nikkei stock exchange in Tokyo has plunged by more than 12% today, well below the 9,000 level, while trading on the Topix exchange was suspended. The central bank is said to have injected $61bn in liquidity into the financial markets to ensure lending can continue in the worst areas during morning trading, followed by another $35bn later in the day (at least I think that's right).
So far the Nikkei index has lost nearly 20% since the start of the week.
The amounts are still tiny and pose no hazard.
Other monitoring posts in central Tokyo detected no changes in background radiation.
Workers at the disaster response headquarters in Fukushima. Photograph: Yuriko Nakao/Reuters
Japan's nuclear crisis verged toward catastrophe on Tuesday, after an explosion at one crippled reactor damaged its crucial steel containment structure and a fire at another reactor spewed large amounts of radioactive material into the air, according to official statements and industry executives informed about the developments.
It's an excellent piece of reporting and well worth reading:
The cascade of problems at Daiichi was initially difficult to interpret — with confusion compounded by incomplete and inconsistent information provided by government officials and executives of the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power.
But industry executives in close contact with officials in Japan said that the chain of events at Daiichi suggested that the authorities had come close to losing control of the situation, and that it would be difficult to maintain emergency seawater cooling operations at stricken reactors if a fire at a fourth reactor nearby was releasing large amounts of radioactive material — at least without threatening the health of emergency workers onsite.
Tamura-ku, Minami Souma Shi, Hirono Machi, Naraha-cho, Tomioka-cho, Ookuma-cho, Futaba-cho, Namie-cho, Katsurao-cho, Iidate Mura, Iwaki Shi (northeast area)
(AP) Japan warned of an alarming radiation leak from a stricken nuclear power plant and told people nearby to stay indoors to avoid becoming sick in a rapidly escalating national crisis following last week's earthquake and tsunami.
In a nationally televised statement, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said radiation has spread from the three reactors of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in one of the hardest-hit provinces in Friday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami.
"The level seems very high, and there is still a very high risk of more radiation coming out," Kan said.
He warned there are dangers of more leaks and told people living within 19 miles (30 kilometers) of the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex to stay indoors to avoid radiation sickness.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said a fourth reactor at the complex was on fire and more radiation had been released.
"Now we are talking about levels that can damage human health. These are readings taken near the area where we believe the releases are happening. Far away, the levels should be lower," he said.
A Tokyo Electric Power official points at an illustration of a nuclear plant as he answers reporters' questions at the disaster center in Fukushima, northern Japan March 15, 2011. Photograph: Yuriko Nakao/REUTERS There is a lot of variation in the levels around the different reactors but the highest reading is at a level to harm human health. We should stress these are the levels mentioned at the facility itself. The highest reading around one of the reactors is 400 millisieverts an hour - the expert says millisieverts are 1000 times greater than microsieverts.
"A very grave situation is happening," he says.
Even 100 millisieverts would be enough to cause infertility in exposed males; at 500 or more the lymphocytes in the blood would decrease. Clearly the 50 workers who remain will have protective gear. But without it, with that level of exposure, their health could be harmed in a very short time, he said.
The readings taken at 10.20 showed a level of 100 millisieverts around the unit 4 reactor and 400 around unit 3.
A bit more on the fire at unit 4: he says that spent fuel will not catch fire, but that they need to extinguish the fire because rising temperatures could cause the release of radioactive material.
Asked about people living further away, he says a "minimal amount" of radioactive material could spread to far areas.
But he said that would not be at levels that could harm human health.
"We want you to keep calm. We can continue with our daily lives," he said.
The press conference has ended now.
Japan's Nuclear and Industry Sefety Agency chief Koichiro Nakamura (L) holds a press conference about another explosion at Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO's) Fukushima number 1 Daiichi nuclear plant in Tokyo on March 15, 2011. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images
"The readings were taken near the area where we believe the release of radioactive substances is taking place. The further away you are, the more values should go down."
He says beyond the 20km radius the level should be reduced to one where harm to human health would be minimal or non-existent. But he says that spread will of course depend on wind speeds and direction.
He asks people to remain indoors so they are not exposed to any radiation that may come their way.
He says he has received a report there is a "very high probability" some portion of the container vessel at the number 2 reactor was damaged.
He is now responding to questions.
He's saying there's a fire in the number four unit. There are no fuel rods in there but it still contains spent fuel rods. (The unit was under renovation at the time of the quake and tsunami).
He says there seems to have been a hydrogen explosion (as at units 1 and 3) in that unit too. There were not previously thought to be problems with unit 4.
The translation is slightly confusing, but the gist seems to be they believe there is a leak of radioactive material from unit 4.
More from Edano: The blast from Unit 2 followed the Unit 4 problems. There appears to be a release of steam from number two. This could be hydrogen he says. They are continuing to inject water at units 1 to 3
In this image made from Japan's NHK television, Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan addresses the nation through televised press conference in Tokyo Tuesday, March 15, 2011 after a third explosion in four days rocked a crippled nuclear power plant in tsunami-ravaged northeastern Japan early Tuesday. Photograph: AP According to the translation by broadcaster NHK he warned: "Radiation has spread from these reactors and 'the reading of the level seems high'. There's still a very high risk of further radioactive material coming out."
He has asked anyone remaining in the 20km evacuation zone around the number 1 plant and the 10km zone around the number 2 plant to leave. Hundreds of thousands have already been evacuated.
He a said workers were "putting themselves in a very dangerous situation" to try to contain the problems. He again requested people to remain calm.
(AP) Japanese police say the official death toll from last week's massive earthquake and tsunami has risen to 2,414.Police said Tuesday that a big share of the deaths were in Miyagi prefecture, where 1,254 people are confirmed dead.
Victims watch Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan on TV in a live broadcast at an evacuation center at Kawamata, northeastern Japan, on Tuesday March 15, 2011.
The number of people officially missing is at 3,118. But regional officials said they believe that tens of thousands may have been swept away by the tsunami that devastated a long stretch of Japan's northeastern coast Friday.
You can read the Guardian's latest news piece on the situation here.
The plant's operators said its reading had climbed to 8,217 microsieverts per hour – described by broadcaster NHK as equivalent to eight times the radiation a person would usually experience in a year. It later dropped sharply, the broadcaster said. The peak was still far below the level which would cause immediate damage to health.
• A third explosion in four days rocked a crippled nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan on Tuesday morning as authorities struggled to avert a catastrophic release of radiation.
The latest explosion at the Fukushima Dai-ichi happened in the plant's Unit 2 near a suppression pool, which removes heat under a reactor vessel, according to the plant owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co.
A government minister said it was "highly likely" that the fuel rods inside the reactor might melt. Radiation levels near the site have risen.
• Tens of thousands are still unaccounted for as the official deathtoll reached 2,800, while bodies continue to be washed ashore four days after the tsunami triggered by the earthquake.
Almost two million households remain without power in the north of Japan, where snow is forecast later this week, while around 1.4 million households have no running water. Those with power are being affected by rolling blackouts as electricity shortages force reductions in service in some areas.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency says the Fukushima crisis is unlikely to become another Chernobyl.
Authorities have set up a 20km (12 mile) exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Meanwhile, the US agreed to Japan's formal request for supplies and equipment to tackle the crisis.
• Japanese stocks took a hammering when the Tokyo Stock Exchange opened on Tuesday and saw its benchmark Nikkei 225 decline to its lowest point since early October 2008.
Efforts to limit the financial devastation wreaked by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power crisis continued with Japan's central bank planning to inject $85bn billion into the economy to help the banking system to function as many businesses remain closed.
Economists at Credit Suisse bank are calculating the effects of the disaster on the worst hit areas to cost around $171bn.
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