Workers withdrawn as radiation levels rocket

Workers were withdrawn from a reactor building at Japan's earthquake-wrecked nuclear plant yesterday after potentially lethal levels of radiation were detected in the water there, a major setback to efforts to avert a catastrophic meltdown. The operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant said radiation in the water at the No. 2 reactor was measured at more than 1,000 millisieverts an hour, the highest reading so far in a crisis triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. That compares with a national safety standard of 250 millisieverts over a year. The Environmental Protection Agency in the United States says a single dose of 1,000 millisieverts is enough to cause hemorrhaging. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co later said the extremely high readings might have been wrong, adding the levels were being re-checked. "The situation is serious. They have to pump away this water on the floor, get rid of it to lower the radiation," said Robert Finck, radiation protection specialist at the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, speaking before the doubts over the high reading. "It's virtually impossible to work, you can only be there for a few minutes. It's impossible to say how long it will take before they can gradually take control," said Finck. The Japanese government said the overall situation was unchanged at the plant, 240 kilometers north of Tokyo. Two of the plant's six reactors are now seen as safe but the other four are volatile, occasionally emitting steam and smoke. "We did expect to run into unforeseen difficulties, and this accumulation of high radioactivity water is one such example," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters at a news briefing. Yukiya Amano, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the emergency could go on for weeks, if not months. "This is a very serious accident by all standards," he told the New York Times. "And it is not yet over." At Chernobyl a quarter of a century ago, it took weeks to stabilize what remained of the reactor that expl! oded and months to clean up radioactive materials and cover the site with a concrete and steel sarcophagus. Experts say there is still too much heat in the reactor cores and spent fuel at the Fukushima plant for a similar last-ditch solution to be considered yet. Hundreds of engineers have been working around the clock to stabilize the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant since the earthquake and tsunami knocked out the back-up power system needed to cool the reactors. The operation has been suspended several times due to explosions and spiking radiation levels inside the reactors. Last Thursday, three workers were taken to hospital from reactor No. 3 after stepping in water with radiation levels 10,000 times higher than usually found. The latest scare came as engineers were trying to pump radioactive water out of a turbine unit. Officials at first said the water in No. 2 was found to contain 10 million times the amount of radioactive iodine that is normal in the reactor, but noted the substance had a half-life of under an hour, meaning it would disappear within a day. Later they said the element that gave the reading may have been cobalt 56, which has a half life of 77 days, and if this was the case the level of radioactivity would have been far lower. Radiation levels in the sea off the plant rose yesterday to 1,850 times normal, from 1,250 on Saturday, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said. "Ocean currents will disperse radiation particles and so it will be very diluted by the time it gets consumed by fish and seaweed," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior agency official. Several countries have banned produce and milk from Japan's nuclear crisis zone and are monitoring Japanese seafood because of fears of radioactive contamination. Kyodo news agency said Japan would call on World Trade Organization members at a meeting this week not to overreact to the radiation scare and abide by rules that ban import restrictions not based on scientific grounds. The accident has also triggered concern around the globe about t! he safet y of nuclear power generation. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was time to reassess the international atomic safety regime. The drama at the plant has overshadowed a relief and recovery effort from the magnitude-9.0 quake and the huge tsunami it triggered that left more than 27,100 people dead or missing in northeast Japan. In Otsu, 70 kilometers south of the nuclear plant, the townsfolk are faced with livelihoods derailed by the natural disaster and now the fear of radiation. The government estimated last week the material damage from the catastrophe could top US$300 billion, making it the world's costliest natural disaster.