Japan quake causes deaths, nuke leak

WORLD / Asia-Pacific

Japan quake causes deaths, nuke leak

(AP)
Updated: 2007-07-17 06:54

KASHIWAZAKI, Japan - A strong earthquake shook Japan's northwest coast
Monday, setting off a fire at the world's most powerful nuclear power
plant and causing a reactor to spill radioactive water into the sea-an
accident not reported to the public for hours.

The 6.8-magnitude temblor killed at least nine people and injured more
than 900 as it toppled hundreds of wooden homes and tore 3-foot-wide
fissures in the ground. Highways and bridges buckled, leaving officials
struggling to get emergency supplies into the region.

Some 10,000 people fled to evacuation centers as aftershocks rattled the
area. Tens of thousands of homes were left without water or power.

The quake triggered a fire in an electrical transformer and also caused a
leak of radioactive water at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant,
the world's largest in terms of electricity output.

National highway is cut off following a powerful quake in Nagaoka,
northwestern Japan, Monday, July 16, 2007. A 6.7-magnitude earthquake
rocked Japan's northwest coast on Monday, and media reports said at least
five people were killed and more than 500 injured. The area was plagued
by a series of aftershocks, the strongest of which was magnitude 5.8.
[AP]More earthquake photos

The leak was not announced until the evening, many hours after the quake.
That fed fresh concerns about the safety of Japan's 55 nuclear reactors,
which supply 30 percent of the quake-prone country's electricity and have
suffered a long string of accidents and cover-ups.

About 315 gallons of slightly radioactive water apparently spilled from a
tank at one of the plant's seven reactors and entered a pipe that flushed
it into the sea, said Jun Oshima, an executive at Tokyo Electric Power
Co. He said it was not clear whether the tank was damaged or the water
simply spilled out.

Officials said there was no "significant change" in the seawater near the
plant, which is about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo. "The radioactivity is
one-billionth of the legal limit," Oshima said of the leaked water.

Eliot Brenner, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in
Washington, said the agency told Japan's government it was ready to
provide assistance if needed but had not received any request for help.

Brenner said he didn't have details about the incident. But a U.S.
nuclear industry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because
the incident was a Japanese affair, said the transformer fire and water
leak occurred in systems linked to different reactors.

In Kashiwazaki city, the quake reduced older buildings to piles of
lumber. Nine people in their 70s and 80s�� six women and three men
��died, most of them crushed by collapsing buildings, the Kyodo news
agency said early Tuesday.

Kyodo reported more than 900 people were hurt, with injuries including
broken bones, cuts and bruises. It said 780 buildings sustained damage,
and more than 300 of them were destroyed.

"I got so dizzy that I could barely stand up," said Kazuaki Kitagami, a
worker at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Kashiwazaki, the hardest-hit
city. "The jolt came violently from just below the ground."

The area was plagued by aftershocks, but there were no immediate reports
of additional damage or casualties. Near midnight, Japan's Meteorological
Agency said a 6.6-magnitude quake hit off the west coast, shaking wide
areas of Japan, but it was unrelated to the Niigata quake to the north
and there were no immediate reports of damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey put the intital quake's magnitude at 6.6 and
the second at 6.8.

First word of trouble at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa power plant was a fire
that broke out at an electrical transformer. All the reactors were either
already shut down or automatically switched off by the quake. The blaze
was reported quelled by early afternoon, and the power company announced
there was no damage to the reactor and no release of radioactivity.

But in the evening, the company released a statement revealing the leak
of radioactive water, saying it had taken all day to confirm details of
the accident. But the delay raised suspicions among environmentalists,
who oppose the government's plan to build more reactors.

"The leak itself doesn't sound significant as of yet, but the fact that
it went unreported is a concern," said Michael Mariotte at the Nuclear
Information and Resource Service, a Maryland-based networking center for
environmental activists. "When a company begins by denying a problem, it
makes you wonder if there's another shoe to drop."

The accident comes as the government is discussing improving the
earthquake resistance of such plants, said Aileen Mioko Smith of the
Japan-based environmentalist group Green Action.

The fire indicated that some facilities at nuclear power plants, such as
electrical transformers, were built to lower quake-resistance levels than
other equipment, like reactor cores, she said.

"That's the Achilles heel of nuclear power plants," said Mioko Smith, who
pointed out that it took plant workers two hours to put out the
transformer fire.

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari told the power company
early Tuesday not to resume plant operations before making a thorough
safety check, Kyodo reported.

The quake, which hit at 10:13 a.m., was centered off the coast of
Niigata. The tremor made buildings sway in the capital 160 miles away and
was also felt in northern and central Japan. Tsunami warnings were
issued, but the resulting waves were too small to cause any damage.

As rescue crews dug through the rubble for survivors or more dead, focus
shifted to getting food and water to evacuation centers. Many roads were
impassable, though bullet train service to nearby Niigata resumed late
Monday.

More than 60,000 homes in the quake zone were without water, 34,000 lost
natural gas and 25,000 had no electricity as of late Monday afternoon,
local official Takashi Takagi said.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose ruling party is trailing in the polls
heading into July 29 parliamentary elections, interrupted a campaign stop
in southern Japan to go to the damaged area.

"Many people told me they want to return to their normal lives as quickly
as possible," Abe told reporters in Kashiwazaki. "The government will
make every effort to help with recovery."

Japan sits atop four tectonic plates and is one of the world's most
earthquake-prone countries.

In October 2004, a magnitude-6.8 earthquake hit Niigata, killing 40
people and damaging more than 6,000 homes. It was the deadliest to hit
Japan since 1995, when a magnitude-7.2 quake killed 6,433 people in the
western city of Kobe.

The last major quake to hit Tokyo killed some 142,000 people in 1923, and
experts say the capital has a 90 percent chance of suffering a major
quake in the next 50 years.

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