Japan confirms second blast at nuclear plant

• Hydrogen explosion at Unit 3 of Fukushima Daiichi plant • Reports of 2,000 bodies found in Miyagi prefecture • Tsunami warning appears to have been false alarm • Read the Guardian’s latest news story on the explosion Click here for a summary of events so far 10.37am: Below the line Hoxtoner, who is in Japan, writes : Just went to the local supermarket here in Sendai. NOTHING !! You have to see it to believe it. The only things I saw that were in bulk was alcohol, fags, coffee and tea and there wasn’t much of that. Other nationalities have been instructed to leave the Tohoku area. I have checked the British FCO and I don’t see any such statement. The Electric came on here in the early hours on Sat. We have water,but no gas. It’s also a bad hayfever day to add on to all the tragedies and anxieties. I don’t usually drink during the day yet I’ve decided to pour myself out a beer. Slight aftershocks and helicopters flying around as I type. 10.27am: Water levels have fallen far enough to partly expose fuel rods at the No 2 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi, according to the Jiji news agency. 10.18am: The Australian broadcaster ABC has posted a series of before and after satellite images from around north east Japan which give a clear sense of how much devastation the tsunami caused. The viewer can slide back and forth between the before and after shots, seeing how entire towns have been swept away. See the gallery here . 10.02am: The No 2 reactor at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant has lost all its cooling capacity, according to Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency . NHK World is reporting that Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the plant, has notified the agency of an emergency at the No 2 reactor. This is the second emergency notice for the reactor. The utility firm told the agency shortly after the quake on Friday that the reactor’s emergency cooling power system had failed. Since then, the company tried to cool the reactor by circulating water by steam power, instead of electricity. But an attempt to lower the temperature inside the vessel that houses the reactor did not work well. Fears of a hydrogen explosion at the vessel housing building are growing as the water level of the reactor is falling. A reaction with the steam and exposed fuel rods generates a large amount of hydrogen. 9.36am: A quick note from my colleague James Randerson on the “Richter Scale” – the logarithmic magnitude scale that was defined in 1935 to measure earthquakes in California. It was developed by Charles Richter (who also happened to be a nudist) and Beno Gutenberg of the California Institute of Technology (CIT) and was originally referred to as “Local Magnitude” or ML, James writes: Even though it was superseded in 1979 by the more uniformly applicable moment magnitude (Mw) scale the Richter scale has an amazing staying power in the public, and it has to be said journalistic, mind. In the barrage of information about the Japan earthquake numerous articles have used to the old scale incorrectly (

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Japan confirms second blast at nuclear plant

Posted by on March 14, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.