Radiation continued to leak from an earthquake-stricken nuclear power station in Japan on Sunday as engineers worked to cool its overheated fuel, while thousands of people along the country’s northeastern coast remained missing after Friday’s quake and tsunami.
Conditions at the Number Three reactor at Tokyo Electric Power’s (Tepco) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility, 240km north of Tokyo, deteriorated overnight as its coolant systems failed, forcing operators to pump seawater into the reactor vessel. The same emergency measure was employed on Saturday at the Number One reactor.
Yukio Edano, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, said there was a “significant possibility” that a meltdown had occurred at both the Number One and Number Three reactors at the facility. “We are acting under the assumption that it has,” he told a televised news conference.