After the earthquake and tsunami Blast in"Nuclear" plant japan

Fukushima: A hydrogen explosion rocked the earthquake-stricken nuclear plant in Japan where authorities have been working desperately to avert a meltdown, compounding a nuclear catastrophe caused by Friday’s massive quake and tsunami.
The core container was intact, Jiji news agency said, quoting the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), but the local government warned those still in the 20-kilometre evacuation zone to stay indoors. Kyodo news agency quoted Tepco as saying workers were injured in latest explosion.
Edano, citing information from the plant operator TEPCO, said the reactor container was likely undamaged and there was a low possibility of major radiation.
Japan's nuclear safety agency said the blast, at the number 3 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 plant, was believed to be caused by hydrogen.
A hydrogen explosion had hit the number 1 reactor at the same plant on Saturday, a day after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the northeast coast.
Authorities have declared an evacuation zone within a 20 km (12 mile) radius of the plant and evacuated 210,000 people.
"We have strongly advised all the people still within the evacuation area to go inside nearby facilities," said nuclear safety agency spokesman Ryo Miyake.
Some 746 people -- patients, elderly people and care workers at three hospitals and nursing homes -- remained within the 20 km area Monday.

Death toll “above 10,000”

Broadcaster NHK, quoting a police official, said more than 10,000 people may have been killed as the wall of water triggered by Friday’s 8.9-magnitude quake surged across the coastline, reducing whole towns to rubble. It was the biggest to have hit the quake-prone country since it started keeping records 140 years ago
Kyodo said 80,000 people had been evacuated from a 20-kilometre radius around the stricken nuclear plant, joining more than 450,000 other evacuees from quake and tsunami-hit areas in the northeast of the main island Honshu.
Almost two million households were without power in the freezing north, the government said. There were about 1.4 million without running water.
Nuclear crisis

The most urgent crisis centres on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, where authorities said they had been forced to vent radioactive steam into the air to relieve reactor pressure.
The complex was rocked by a first explosion on Saturday, which blew the roof off a reactor building. The government had said further blasts would not necessarily damage the reactor vessels.
Operator Tepco said on Monday it had reported a rise in radiation levels at the complex to the government. On Sunday the level had risen slightly above what one is exposed to for a stomach X-ray, the company said.
Authorities had been pouring sea water in two of the reactors at the complex to cool them down.
Nuclear experts said it was probably the first time in the industry’s 57-year history that sea water has been used in this way, a sign of how close Japan may be to a major accident.
“Injection of sea water into a core is an extreme measure,” Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This is not according to the book.”
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said there might have been a partial meltdown of the fuel rods at the No. 1 reactor, where Saturday’s blast took place, and there was a risk of an explosion at the building housing the No. 3 reactor, but that it was unlikely to affect the reactor core container.
A Japanese official said 22 people have been confirmed to have suffered radiation contamination and up to 190 may have been exposed. Workers in protective clothing used handheld scanners to check people arriving at evacuation centres.

Economic impact
The earthquake has forced many firms to suspend production and shares in some of Japan’s biggest companies tumbled on Monday, with Toyota Corp dropping around seven per cent. Shares in Australian-listed uranium miners also dived.
Already saddled with debts twice the size of its $5 trillion economy and threatened with credit downgrades, the government is discussing a temporary tax rise to fund relief work.
Analysts expect the economy to suffer a hit in the short-term, then get a boost from reconstruction activity.
“When we talk about natural disasters, we tend to see an initial sharp drop in production…then you tend to have a V-shaped rebound. But initially everyone underestimates the damage,” said Michala Marcussen, head of global economics at Societe Generale.
Ratings agency Moody’s said on Sunday the fiscal impact of the earthquake would be temporary and have a limited play on whether it would downgrade Japan’s sovereign debt.
Risk modelling company AIR Worldwide said insured losses from the earthquake could reach nearly $35 billion.
The Bank of Japan has said it would pump cash into the banking system to prevent the disaster from destabilising markets.
It is also expected to signal its readiness to ease monetary policy further if the damage threatens a fragile economic recovery.
Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said authorities were closely watching the yen after the currency initially rallied on expectations of repatriations by insurers and others. The currency later reversed course in volatile trading.
The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world in the past century. It surpassed the Great Kanto quake of September 1, 1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area.
The 1995 Kobe quake killed 6,000 and caused $100 billion in damage, the most expensive natural disaster in history. Economic damage from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was estimated at about $10 billion.