Japan Nuclear Crisis Update
Following are main developments after a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated northeast Japan and crippled a nuclear power station, raising the risk of uncontrolled radiation.
• Estimated cost of damage from the earthquake and tsunami to top $300 million, making it the world's costliest natural disaster. The 1995 Kobe quake cost $100 billion while Hurricane Katrina caused $81 billion in damage.
• United States the first country to block some imports from Japan as concern grows over the risk of radiation contamination from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Hong Kong also banned food and milk imports from five prefectures, citing radioactivity levels in spinach and turnip samples up to 10 times over the safety limit.
• Tokyo authorities said water at a purification plant for the capital of 13 million people contained more than twice the level of radioactive iodine than is safe for infants.
• Japan's health ministry says it has detected above-safety level radiation in 11 types of vegetables from the Fukushima area where the nuclear plants are located.
• Engineers struggling to regain control of nuclear plant, workers forced away from the complex when black smoke began rising from one of the reactors. Power cables have been hooked up to all six reactors.
• The U.N. Atomic agency says the situation at the damaged nuclear plant remains of serious concern though Japan has told it the U.S. top nuclear regulator votes to conduct a safety review of the country's nuclear reactors in response to the crisis in Japan.
• Government says there is no need to extend a 20-km (12-mile) evacuation zone around the tsunami-damaged nuclear plant, despite elevated radiation readings outside the area.
• Official death toll from earthquake and tsunami exceeds 9,000, Kyodo news agency reports national police as saying. More than a quarter of a million people are living in shelters. Dozens of survivors, mostly elderly, have died in hospitals and evacuation centers from a lack of proper treatment, or simply because of the cold, reports say.
