Prime Minister Naoto Kan urged people living between 20 and 30 kilometers of the plant to stay indoors, after radiation equivalent to 400 times the level to which people can safely be exposed in one year was detected near the No. 3 reactor in the plant.
Residents within a 20-km radius have already been ordered to vacate the area following Saturday’s hydrogen blast at the plant’s No. 1 reactor.
Kan warned people living up to 10 kilometres beyond a 20 km exclusion zone around the nuclear plant to stay indoors. He said the fire, which was later reportedly extinguished, was burning in the plant’s number-four reactor.
The crisis at the ageing Fukushima plant has escalated daily after Friday’s quake and tsunami which knocked out cooling systems. On Saturday an explosion blew apart the building surrounding the plant’s number-one reactor. On Monday, a blast hit the number-three reactor, injuring 11 people and sending plumes of smoke billowing into the sky. Early Tuesday a blast hit the number-two reactor. That was followed shortly after by a hydrogen explosion which started a fire at the number-four reactor.
Meanwhile, police said Tuesday the official death toll has risen to 2,414. However, officials say at least 10,000 are likely to have perished. Supermarkets are open but shelves are completely empty. Many children are sick in this cold weather but pharmacies are closed. Emergency relief goods have not reached evacuation centres in the city.
Officials have already evacuated 210,000 people in the exclusion zone around the crippled plant.
Further north in the region of Miyagi, rescue teams searching through the shattered debris of towns and villages have found 2,000 bodies.
Tokyo stocks, which were punished Monday when the markets reopened, sending indexes around the world sliding, plummeted another 12 per cent by early afternoon Tuesday.