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Nigeria Commiserates With Japan |
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| Posted on 14 March. 2011 | Back to news home | |
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Nigeria Commiserates With Japan
Nigeria's President, Goodluck Jonathan has written to commiserate with the Government and people of Japan over the tragic loss of lives and property caused by Friday's earthquake and tsunami. Nuclear Plant Blasts Meanwhile, technicians are battling to stabilize a third reactor at a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear plant, which has been rocked by a second blast in three days. The BBC reported on Monday that the Fukushima Daiichi plant's operators have resumed pumping seawater into reactor 2 after a cooling system broke. They warned of a possible meltdown when the fuel rods became exposed after the pump stopped as its fuel ran out. A cooling system breakdown preceded explosions at the plant's reactor 3 on Monday and reactor 1 on Saturday. The latest hydrogen blast injured 11 people, one of them seriously. It was felt 40km (25 miles) away and sent a huge column of smoke into the air, leaving the outer building around the reactor largely destroyed. Radiation Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said workers were also battling rising pressure within the reactor. They have opened vents in the containment vessel, which could release small amounts of radiation. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano earlier said the emergency effort to cool reactor 2 would hopefully stabilize the situation, and that radiation around the plant remained at tolerable levels despite the various crises. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the core container at the reactor was still intact Nevertheless, tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from a 20km (12 mile) exclusion zone around the plant. The US said it had moved one of its aircraft carriers from the area after detecting low-level radiation 160km (100 miles) offshore. Safety Measures Experts say a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl in the 1980s is highly unlikely because the reactors are built to a higher standard and have much more rigorous safety measures. Devastation About 2,000 bodies had been found washed ashore on beaches in the north-eastern prefecture of Miyagi, police said. A thousand were found on the Ojika peninsula and another thousand in the town of Minamisanriku, which was flattened by the tsunami. Everything in the tsunami's path was flattened, with only the town's hospital and a government building remaining. Death toll The total number of people killed by the disaster remains unclear. The official death toll stands at 2,800, but officials in Miyagi have estimated that 10,000 people died in the prefecture alone. Tens of thousands are still unaccounted for, while many remote towns and villages remain cut off and have had no help since Friday's earthquake. More than 500,000 people are believed to have been displaced from their homes But Hajime Sato, a government official in Iwate prefecture, one of the three hardest hit, said it had received so far only 10% of the food and other supplies they had requested from the central government. " People are surviving on little food and water. Things are simply not coming ," he told the Associated Press. Communications networks are also down in many areas. The government asked people not to go to work or school on Monday because the transport network would not be able to cope with demand. Another earthquake likely The capital, Tokyo, is still experiencing regular aftershocks, amid warnings that another powerful earthquake is likely to strike very soon. A 6.2-magnitude tremor on Monday triggered a new tsunami scare on the Pacific coast, with the authorities telling people to flee to higher ground. The Foreign Office has updated its travel advice to warn against all non-essential travel to Tokyo and north-eastern Japan.
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