Japan issues 2nd nuclear plant emergency

Japan has issued a state of emergency at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant after its cooling system failed. (Kyodo News/Associated Press)

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The Japanese government declared has issued a state of emergency at a second nuclear power plant following cooling-systems failures.
The emergency declarations followed Friday's 8.9-magnitude earthquake off the country's northeast coast. The quake, the most powerful in Japan's recorded history, triggered a massive tsunami wave.
At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Onahama city, about 270 kilometres northeast of Tokyo, a power failure triggered a problem in a cooling system, causing radiation levels in a reactor to rise to 1,000 times normal. Japan's nuclear safety agency said some radiation escaped from the plant.
The quake cut off power to the plant, . A backup generator failed and the primary cooling system was not able to supply water to the plant's 460-megawatt No. 1 reactor.
The government ordered 3,000 residents to leave the area.
Japanese nuclear safety official Yuji Kakizaki said plant workers were cooling the reactor with a less-effective secondary cooling system. Kakizaki said an emergency cooling system remains intact and ready to kick in if required to prevent a reactor meltdown.
Japan's nuclear safety agency said pressure inside the Fukushima No. 1 reactor has risen to 1.5 times the level considered normal.

To reduce the pressure, slightly radioactive vapour will be released.
Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said the amount of radioactive element in the vapor would be "very small."
"With evacuation in place and the ocean-bound wind, we can ensure the safety," Edano said early Saturday in a news conference.
Japan's nuclear safety agency said the radioactive vapour would not affect the environment or human health.
Plant workers were scrambling to restore the cooling water supply at the plant but there was no prospect of immediate success, The Associated Press reported. The U.S. offered to rush coolant to Japan, but a U.S. official later said the Japanese handled it themselves.
Meanwhile, NBC reported a similar coolant problem at the Fukushima Daini station, which is in the same Fukushima prefecture as the other power plant. At the Daini station, backup diesel generators are reported to have failed, leaving the unit without power to run its cooling systems

Builders plan for quakes

Kaoru Ishikawa, the Japanese ambassador to Canada, said all the nuclear power plants in Japan were built "bearing in mind the possibility of big earthquakes."
He said all the plants in the affected area were shut down automatically after the quake, but he noted the coolant problem at the Fukushima plant continued.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Japanese authorities also reported a fire at the Onagawa nuclear plant. The fire has been extinguished.
"They say Onagawa, Fukushima-Daini and Tokai nuclear power plants were also shut down automatically, and no radiation release has been detected," the IAEA said in a statement posted online.