TOKYO—Highly toxic plutonium found in soil at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station heightened alarm on Tuesday over Japan’s ability to contain the world’s worst atomic crisis in 25 years, as pressure mounted on the country’s leader to widen an evacuation zone around the damaged plant.
A by-product of atomic reactions and used in nuclear bombs, plutonium is highly carcinogenic and one of the most dangerous substances on the planet.
Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the traces of plutonium 238, 239 and 240 found in the soil samples did not pose a risk to humans, but they stressed the finding provided new evidence that at least one of the reactors had experienced a partial meltdown.
Experts believe some of the plutonium may have come from spent fuel rods at the damaged Reactor No. 3, the only one to use plutonium in its fuel mix.
Some opposition lawmakers blasted Prime Minister Naoto Kan in parliament for his handling of the disaster and for not widening the exclusion zone. Kan said he was seeking advice on such a step, which would force 130,000 people to evacuate in addition to the 70,000 already displaced.
Wan but resolute, Kan told parliament that Japan was grappling with its worst problems since World War II.
“This quake, tsunami and the nuclear accident are the biggest crises for Japan” in decades, said Kan who was dressed in one of the blue work jackets that have become ubiquitous among bureaucrats since the tsunami.
He said the crises remained unpredictable, but added: “From now on, we will continue to handle it in a state of maximum alert.”
28,000 dead/missing
A 9.0-magnitude offshore earthquake on March 11 triggered a monster tsunami that slammed minutes later into Japan’s northeast, wiping out towns and knocking out power and backup systems at the coastal Fukushima nuclear complex.
More than 28,000 people are officially listed as dead or missing. With towns on the northeast coast reduced to apocalyptic landscapes of mud and debris, more than a quarter of a million people have been rendered homeless and left with no livelihood.
Damage has been estimated to reach $310 billion—the most expensive natural disaster on record, the government said.
Against this backdrop of the humanitarian disaster, the drama at the six-reactor power plant has continued to develop, with workers fighting fires, explosions, radiation scares and miscalculations in the frantic bid to prevent a complete meltdown.
Latest blow
In the latest blow to hopes that authorities were gradually getting the nuclear plant under control, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said plutonium was found in two out of five soil samples at the Fukushima facility that the utility operated.
A full meltdown of the fuel rods would release lethal amounts of radiation into the environment.
“The situation is very grave,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters on Tuesday. “We are doing our utmost to contain the damage.”
“Plutonium is a substance that’s emitted when the temperature is high, and it’s also heavy and so does not leak out easily,” the nuclear safety agency’s deputy director, Hidehiko Nishiyama, explained at a news conference.
“So if plutonium has emerged from the reactor, that tells us something about the damage to the fuel. And if it has breached the original containment system, it underlines the gravity and seriousness of this accident,” Nishiyama added.
Experts say emergency workers at Fukushima may have to struggle for weeks or months under extremely dangerous conditions to restart cooling systems that are vital in controlling the damaged reactors and averting a full meltdown.
Delicate work
On Monday, highly contaminated water was found in concrete tunnels extending beyond one reactor. During the weekend, radiation reached 100,000 times over normal in water inside another reactor.
That poses a major dilemma for Tokyo Electric, which wants to douse the reactors to cool them but not to worsen the spread of radiation, according to Edano, who serves as the top government spokesperson.
“On the issue of pumping in water, we must avoid a situation in which the temperature (of fuel rods) rises and the water boils off. So this cooling is a priority. On the other hand, on the standing water, under the circumstances work must proceed to remove it as quickly as possible,” he said.
Nishiyama called it “delicate work,” acknowledging that cooling the nuclear reactors had taken precedence over concerns about radiation leaks.
“The removal of the contaminated water is the most urgent task now, and hopefully we can adjust the amount of cooling water going in,” he said, adding that workers were building sandbag dikes to keep contaminated water from seeping into the soil outside.
High radiation levels
Officials say a partial meltdown of fuel rods inside Reactor No. 2 also has contributed to the radiation levels.
The crisis, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986, has contaminated vegetables and milk in a wide area from the stricken plant.
US experts said groundwater, reservoirs and the sea all faced “significant contamination.”
A Tokyo Electric official told a Tuesday briefing that he could not rule out the possibility that radioactive water could still be entering the sea, though there was no continuous flow.
Gesture of support
In a gesture of support, France—which relies heavily on nuclear power generation—sent two nuclear experts to Japan to help contain the accident.
Japan’s foreign ministry said French President Nicolas Sarkozy would visit on Thursday for a meeting with Kan. Sarkozy will be the first foreign leader to visit Japan since the earthquake.
Tokyo Electric has sought help from French companies including Electricité de France SA and Areva SA. French Ecology Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet on Tuesday said that experts from Areva and nuclear research body CEA had been sent to Japan “to share their experience on pumping and the treatment of radioactive water.”
‘It stays forever’
Japan is also consulting the United States. The head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, met with Japanese officials in Tokyo on Monday. Jaczko later said the “unprecedented challenge” remained serious.
The discovery of plutonium confirms the severity of the situation, Nishima said.
When plutonium decays, it emits what is known as an alpha particle, a relatively big particle that carries a lot of energy. When an alpha particle hits body tissue, it can damage the DNA of a cell and lead to a cancer-causing mutation.
Plutonium also breaks down very slowly, so it remains dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
“If you inhale it, it’s there and it stays there forever,” said Alan Lockwood, a professor of Neurology and Nuclear Medicine at the University at Buffalo and a member of the board of directors of Physicians for Social Responsibility, an advocacy group.
Evacuation dilemma
Another pressing concern has been the well-being of people living near the plant. More than 70,000 people have been evacuated from within 20 kilometers of the facility.
But opposition MP Yosuke Isozaki blasted Kan for not ordering people living between 20 and 30 km from the plant to also evacuate.
“Is there anything as irresponsible as this?” Isozaki asked. The 130,000 people living inside the wider zone have been encouraged—but not ordered—to leave.
Environmental group Greenpeace has urged an extension of the 20-km evacuation zone, while the United States has recommended its citizens who live within 80 km of the plant to leave.
“We cannot let you handle the crisis,” Isozaki told Kan. “We cannot let you be in charge of Japan’s crisis management.” Reports from Reuters and Associated Press