Suzuki Club UK

Radiation from Japan's quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has reached harmful levels, the government says.

The warning comes after the plant was rocked by a third blast which appears to have damaged one of the reactors' containment vessels for the first time.

Officials have referred to a possible crack in the suppression chamber of reactor 2 - a large doughnut-shaped structure below the reactor housing. That would allow steam, containing radioactive substances, to escape continuously.

This is the most likely source of the high radioactivity readings seen near the site. Another possible source is the fire in reactor 4 building - believed to have started when a pool storing old fuel rods dried up.

The readings at the site rose beyond safe limits - 400 millisieverts per hour (mSv/hr), when the average person's exposure is 3mSv in a year.

A key question is whether this is just a transient spike, which might be expected if number 2 is the source, or whether the high levels are sustained.

In the meantime, the key task for workers at the plant remains to get enough water into the reactors - and, now, into the spent fuel pools - with the poor resources at their disposal.

Germany's Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle says that what we are witnessing in Japan is an "apocalypse".

twiss wrote: