Japan Struggles to Restore Power at Fukushima to Prevent Nuclear Disaster

Japanese medical personnel check people evacuated from their homes near the Fukushima 1 nuclear plant for radiation exposure in Hitachi city, Ibaraki prefecture, Japan, 17 March 2011. EPA/BGNES

Japan's nuclear safety agency hopes to partly restore power on Friday to the Fukushima nuclear power plant damaged by the recent 9.0-magnitude earthquake in order to prevent a disaster.

Emergency teams are trying to restore power to reactors 1 and 2 at the plant to restart pumps needed to pour cold water on overheating fuel rods. The Japanese nuclear safety agency said it hoped that this can be achieved on Friday, while the electricity for reactors 3 and 4 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant could be restored by Sunday.

Meanwhile, fire trucks are continuing to pour water on reactor 3, Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa announced as cited by international media.

"Preparatory work has so far not progressed as fast as we had hoped," an official of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) told a news briefing, adding that engineers had to be constantly checked for radiation levels.

A spokesperson of the Japanese nuclear agency says the key aim is to get water into spent fuel pools, most importantly, into reactor No. 3, containing plutonium fuel.

It has been mentioned that a "Chernobyl solution" of burying the reactors in sand and concrete is also considered, and could be applied eventually. Steam or smoke has been reported rising from reactors 3 and 4.

Even if the engineers manage to connect the power, it is not clear the pumps will work as they may have been damaged in the earthquake or subsequent explosions and there are real fears of the electricity shorting and causing another explosion, ABC news reported; officials will also continue water-bombing in the hope of bringing radiation emissions under control.

It is believed fuel rods stored in a spent fuel pond have started to heat up after cooling systems broke down.

Radiation readings at the troubled nuclear plant have consistently followed a downward path through Friday morning, according to measurements by Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

The agency said the radiation reading at 5:00am (local time) came to 279.4 microsievert per hour, compared with 292.2 microsievert per hour at 8:40pm Thursday, shortly after the self-defence forces discharged water from fire trucks.

Yukiya Amano, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was due back in his homeland later Friday with an international team of experts after earlier complaining about a lack of information from Japan.

On Friday afternoon local time, the Japanese police said 6,405 people were now confirmed dead and more than 10,000 were missing.

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