this is our see from moscow all breaking news this hour a massive raid you want to call out is cleared off an explosion at the fukushima nuclear power plant in japan the reactor is ruthless in injuring our own work and people within twenty kilometers of the laws of being evacuated but follows the worst of the quake and the resulting tsunami over seven hundred people are dead but as the rest in t.v. news out on the exits are wrong it's. possible

a radiation leak from the fukushima nuclear plant well that remains the biggest concern i have about it is intake a fourteen. the government spokesman at the fukushima one power plant has in the last hour or two come out and said that the nuclear reactor there is not damage that was the main fear and in fact the radiation levels there are decreasing since the explosion happened there earlier today the main fear earlier was that the reactor itself had exploded in that explosion map it was damaged and if that was the case then radiation would have been leaking and then we would have had nuclear meltdown on our hands and that was actually a major concern until now because radioactive elements cesium and iodine both radioactive fuels that were in the. reactor they were remnants of those and found outside so the fear was that the cooling system of failed the backup generators was also failed and then the reactor itself went into meltdown and

started to leak it appears that's not the case down the radiation levels have also dropped earlier today they were said to be a thousand times the normal level that's normally experienced at the fukushima power plant and it was said only about three hours ago on japanese media that if you stood outside the entrance to the power plants just for one hour you experience the levels of. radiation you would experience in a whole year still at dangerous levels in the atmosphere it's not as much as it was but the health warnings are being issued and vice are being is being issued on the television and through other media outlets to people if they are going outside this search should cover up their face and mouth and nose and to not breathe in any really radiation mission to cover any exposed areas of skin if they go inside that scrub themselves clean up from being outside and avoid drinking tap water at the

moment until they know it's definitely safe so the concern is still that there are is a lot of radiation in the in the air and at people are being in. accurate it's not just from that one plant but also another plant a nearby heard the journalists trying to get to the area to those evacuation areas they can't get close and sixty kilometers the police and emergency vehicles are saying that i was a close second all but emergency vehicles so it seems like they've sealed off the area and from here it seems like that but under control people there their concern is if they get if they're exposed to radiation then they would suffer severe health consequences and. radiation poisoning leading to cancer and so people are staying indoors in the moments. where the evacuation process will get underway again now they seen that the radiation levels are dropping it was five other reactors in the in this key area. where that one explosion has happened that seems to be the main

problem because. as i say the secondary one there's been an evacuation of ten kilometers around there what happened there was that earthquake actually shut out the cooling system so they couldn't do their job and the reactor then started to heat up what normally happens then is that backup generators kick in and work to cool down the reactor again but because the earthquake was so severe the electricity was completely wiped out and things just got hotter and hotter and so all these five. nuclear reactors were actually are put under a state of emergency. and that's still being watched very closely in the. well this is live from moscow our continuing coverage now of the trial to the still unfolding in japan over seven hundred people are now confirmed dead after the worst earthquake in the country's history that powerful eight point nine magnitude shock sent a massive tsunami waves crashing into the islands northeast most of the dead are

believed to have drowned or huge waves pushed of far inland sweeping away entire villages some of the deluge towns are left with barely a trace of any buildings some thirty nine hundred people remain missing in the capital millions of commuters were less stranded overnight while others ruled the train services were suspended police say two hundred and fifty thousand people have fled their homes and headed south to accuse slowly trying to restore services and utilities birds a tsunami warning is still in place for japan. well we're now joined live by dr michael webber from the german research center of the sciences and many hours of being with us here in our sea now apparently japan is the best prepared country for both type of disaster but this hasn't prevented huge

devastation there so what can be done do you think to further reduce the risk of catastrophe. well i think you know as you already said japan has one of the best this would have happened in another country the death toll up to now at least not be a thousand but more like ten understands what i think they are fairly well prepared nobody's frontier is there any truth you want to have. turning it now to the explosion that we've had in the. nuclear power plant in japan's northeast how protective would you said japan's nuclear facilities particularly for situations like this i have to say i'm a. seismologist so i can't answer on their own i think. to the rest of the world they're above standard. the warning as we understand is still in place for japan how likely is it that and not the will strike. the world group to

produce a tsunami you need a magnitude let's say seven point two which i would say is the upper limit of the you have to sharks which can occur it's also host number in the next four weeks are so small it's normally you could still hear but i don't. believe of course of wi-fi it is fire is and has been really so do you think the worst is now over the worst as far as. and tsunamis sponsor. it would be aftershocks of problem would be to have infrastructure is damaged so the potential for further damage to this fire again is if the infrastructure had not been maybe i could you just explain is sort of layman's terms how big a threat they are the shocks would be that all of you to hit japan over the next few days should people be worried is infrastructure at risk of being damaged again

we're playing field. should people be worried about their homes for example. i think or certainly in the area of the event we're people are really very very did not end. up in that case japan is truly well prepared in the sense of emergency procedures and keeping people inside save billions for private homes i think. it's a problem with infrastructure. it's not if you get and how concerned should people be living in the wider pacific basin area we know that other areas where some of those alerts have now been reduced but looking for example to russia's. in the area should people there be concerned it's a difficult question because it's still a field of research if for example after

a large across from the surrounding area is basically under more stress and it's the big man can in over the next years trigger larger events i don't think it will be worried mainly about suddenly you know i would be more worried about tokyo or just of you and of the big rocks and you had no and when you say they should be worried and what sort of scale you talking about. unfortunately are the answer that question. for a talk you i would. certainly expect or we have expected many could. be really big large urban farms just i did twenty three. years ago we have this change antique event which was reporting for right now talking something like that so we can have it can happen for more on more than one hundred years ok dr michael welner from the german research center for jay sizes many. of well earlier

we spoke to an eyewitness he was in tokyo when the massive earthquake started to shake the country. it started off feeling like it's one of the regular breaks we've been here five years and the experience i've picked out of them and they got more and more intense and as it got more intense and looking much more frightened we were right that this was actually the big ticket where which people have been predicting it's a class step for decades we have the great and but we actually were quite lucky all that we experience was a few broken plates and a few frayed nerves but other than that we were quake we were quite ok the transport system was completely shut down after the quake yesterday so thousands tens of thousands of people stranded across the city lots of people walking home from their offices to say we need an ng those whose homes are too fast the thing in their offices and train stations and we're in the center of town today actions you

queue which is take years business train station and there are still queues of people trying to get tickets to get on to the limited number of trains that are running to get back to their loved ones people are able to move around the city on some of the metro lines but the impression i got was that most people are actually staying home saying close to family staying close to the televisions that are here the developments. an update now to our breaking news this hour within the past thirty minutes a magnitude six earthquake has reportedly hits the kachina where the troubled nuclear plant is it located well fields of a radiation leak in japan remain after the massive explosion that took place early out the atomic thirty which is some achieve a hundred and fifty kilometers north of tokyo well it's understood that the blast was caused by a failure in the cooling system and not the reality self which was not damaged

officials say radiation levels half full and since the explosion and there is no immediate danger if palos birthdays eight point nine magnitude earthquake which triggered a massive tsunami that spread destruction dozens of kilometers inland over seven hundred people are now confirmed dead but it's thought that longer could reach more than hours and some thirteen hundred people are still missing rescuers are the scene reports scenes of utter devastation with entire villages washed away towns rather by the tsunami. christopher simmons' the associate professor at duke university explains our design of the book ashima reactor could potentially contain the damage if the worst case scenario occurs. this reactor is cool entirely by water. i'm ill founded simply when the nuclear materials cannot be cooled and the temperature rises in the containment area and the reactor materials

themselves to the point at which they destroy the reactor that surrounds them of course these temperatures have to reach about five hundred degrees celsius for the metal and for the uranium itself probably in the order of eight hundred to one thousand degrees celsius. the good news is that that in the daiichi reactor the coolant is entirely water so a material venting into the atmosphere will likely just stay think a radioactive steam in the case of shear noble the reactor was moderated by graphite and graphite holds the radiation and spritz much further as dust and gas so. that was the significant problem with sharon noble the the neutron moderator in the airplane that reactor was different and the radiation could spread much further at the daiichi site there are i believe six active reactors all of

which have shut down and again i don't have all the information but at the moment it appears as though reactor building number one is the site of the explosion now this is the oldest of the six reactors at daiichi it was built in one nine hundred seventy nine so it suggests that the oldest structure on the site was also the weakest people are being advised to stay in their homes not drink water turn off their air conditioners so it sounds like the government is preparing people for a significant nuclear event. of a campaign a director with greenpeace and rush said police japan has been playing a dangerous game with nuclear power thoughts hine. was totally predictable that first big mess happened and it was a story i'm referring now for trashing joe logical special event he said he did or teasing to pass that nuclear power station on the places where you have first breaks as a normal saying and as it shows

a game that he cannot construct he cannot produce a few their power but specifically dangerous is to do it on this dangerous areas if you want to be self-righteous all soviet union and such. and few pages the crimean nuclear power station was shot she was stalked and one of the reasons was if you were privy to one of those big film was in one thousand the but that was enough before the construction you whitehall from the street by the station was to construct what is happening the station reported recently there's a level of radiation growth five thousand times the revelation of the normal radiation level. so that means that certain areas are red it. unusable for humans and you can be very serious and many sell them from dozens of thousand the fuel i needed made because there was such a high level of radioactive contamination if they knew or would be serious and now

they didn't explode it first of all very startling fact that. doesn't know that that was already offered to people in which case for example it was like ours that is the most affected saying not the phrase they do they just thought it was and not anything which was formed i think it was their day you know i didn't feel good but i hope it will do more good but just in case the potential yaadein will be needed for people using them as a medicine for replays radio field on which isn't needed but must be. but when we consider dukie accidents throughout a history of course the worst that we think of is the trouble disaster of nine hundred eighty six but there have actually been many moving you might think of japan no stranger to atomic emergencies well among the first major nuclear energy incidents was at a testing station in the us state of idaho. a steam explosion in one thousand nine hundred sixty one released

a small amounts of nuclear material that underlines the dangers of the industry with a well known three mile island south in pennsylvania in the ninety's and the nine saw a partial core meltdown inside a pressurized water reactor and japan's first major incident occurred in one nine hundred ninety nine. s. in facility north of tokyo work is there added too much uranium directly into representation sank two people were killed after radiation rose well above the permissible limits were two pounds of the most deadly problem to date was seen explosion at a bahama nuclear power plant in two thousand and four four people died and eighteen seriously injured. well there are fears that the aftermath of the explosion of japan's fukushima nuclear plant may affect russia's far east the region situated

close to japan could be vulnerable if it radiation spreads it could all islands in the pacific port of other strong have also been threatened by high waves following friday's earthquake. in the garage is on the russian i understand a live in just two hours flight from tokyo gauging people's reaction via. well it's not in the immediate proximity of course and it's not yet clear how serious consequences of a possible radioactive contamination for the local residents could be but what we're seeing is that the accident at fukushima and this recent explosion is definitely adding to the local residents' worries will shortly out of your plans natural disaster on friday their main wars were about ten other tsunami which could hear the there are close to the one which could be more furious more strong one but what they're worried now is about a possible irradiates a continuation we saw residents who were go into pharmacists.

searching for their own geiger counters to measure the radiation levels and. which is actually quite hard to do on a weekend unless you work in the hospitals in your eyes or as a doctor you while emergency officials are saying that they will keep the public updated on the latest and say that there will be enough time to vacate if necessary now for a cause reports weather forecast. for those who live on the coral islands which is just several miles away from japan's coast we know that about eleven thousand people have been already vacated to see the areas which could be flooded and rescuers are urging local residents to move deeper inland and to shelter about the sea levels. well we'll soon know from the petion man that despite reports had been saying that waves did not reach high it's evolved a meter around the curial our lands we know that the waves were as high as three

meters on saturday morning. the situation out of focus shima plant is seeing comparisons drawn to the nuclear explosion which was the world's worst atomic plant disaster it happened some twenty five years ago in ukraine the effects of the a common contamination rather are still being felt today and earlier i spoke to our correspondents. here and peter all of the who's here in moscow. well it is really hard to judge what this white smoke was caused by but definitely it reminds us of what happened twenty five years ago quarter of a century in the ukrainian town of chernobyl back then of course it was the u.s.s.r. now it's part of sovereign ukraine the white smoke was indeed coming out of the open a cracked open reactor after the explosion which happened early in the morning on april twenty sixth nine hundred eighty six indeed the other one the accident which

is now taking place in japan it looks like just like the chernobyl accident with one exception that in japan there's far more of this white smoke coming out of the react as we've seen. the different pictures shown by the japanese television all throughout the day it is hard to say what caused this explosion yet we have heard no official explanation so far we've heard a version that it was caused by some explosion of hydrogen cooling systems inside the nuclear facility but it is really hard to say whether this was so i've been to several nuclear plants myself and i've seen those cooling system it's hard to imagine that they put produce an explosion like that as we've seen on the footage from the japanese television so of course we're all waiting for some viable explanation of what the explosion was caused by from the japanese government has

caused have a pizza now he's a must stay for us. that he has experience dealing with some serious atomic. has any help been offered to japan yes. that's right the experience gained in the lessons learned from dealing with the nine hundred eighty six chernobyl disaster. a key seat if it comes to the request going for any help with dealing with the cleanup if the situation in fukushima. now as of yet russia has said she wanted terri in a to japan and promised more thoughts needed however there has been no request for . no. assistance when it comes to the containing and cleaning up all this kind of nuclear disaster that we're seeing here however that doesn't rule out the possibility of it coming in the future to japan's own systems that they have in place will be stretched to the limit at the moment it's not just fukushima that has problems a state of disaster. many reactors across japan so we just

unease authorities will be stretched to the limit and the possible continues the possibility of outside help being requested especially from countries like russia who have this experience of dealing with and of containing and you. becomes more and more likely it has. been ukraine for us at this stage well the way all the similarities that we know tweeny incident. on that it's an awful. well obviously this white smoke coming from the reactor building is the only o.p.'s resemblance which we can see between the two incidents twenty five years ago which are noble and. car plant now a days that's where the similarities and the situations are basically different simply because what caused the what caused them you know the the fallout internal was caused by a massive human error what is happening now in japan is of course the result of

a natural disaster the earthquake happened which happened on friday and the other big difference and this is a very significant difference between the two events is how the government has been responding to the to the events obviously twenty five years ago the governments of the soviet government kept most of the information secret from the general population in russia as well as from the rest of the world when told a massive secret complaint to just safeguard this information and. this was this is something which we cannot see today because the japanese government even though we have conflicting reports coming from the island of what's happening there and we have no certainty of what caused this last still the japanese government ordered the evacuation of people from the surrounding areas at the fukushima region but this didn't happen twenty five years ago when fifty four thousand residents of the

town of people next to the chernobyl power plants were kept in the south for more than twenty four hours and this of course caused some damage to them but people were subjected to a great deal of radioactive threat coming from the open reactor of course these mistakes were learnt the mistakes by that made by the soviet government and this is what the japanese government is hopefully trying to avoid right now but clearly as the situation is in trouble and of fukushima one are different despite what we can see in the pictures from the japanese television. well i would say there are fears of course of the nuclear meltdown a play on all that innings meltdown itself the nuclear meltdown itself is a very scary thing for all scientists as i've been calling it their worst nightmare ever indeed this down is all about the core of the reactor going into an

uncontrollable state and that's causing and you clear chain reaction first and then a powerful steam explosion like it happened in chernobyl this is like a rubio it's trying to control a crazy horse because nobody knows whether you would be able to get that can react back under control or not this did not happen in short noble this was a result of a failed experiment when the scientists when the personal the power station tried to lower the output of the reactor and then bring it to a temporary halt when the reactor started behaving in an uncontrollable fashion some. of the personal prestige urgency of braided button as we can as we can call it and just forty nine seconds since the start of the experiment the reactor exploded and that's caused the fallout and the contamination of great areas all along the former soviet u.s.s.r. so obviously as we've been hearing from the japanese authorities right now the reactor stacy jack does not be damaged according to the authorities and recalled

fully think that such contamination as it happened twenty five years ago in your novel would be avoided this time but of course we'll have to wait and see what happens next with all this developing story. a recap now of our breaking news at this hour and fears over radiation leaking tapan remain after a massive explosion of one nuclear plant last reported the was caused by a bay near the cooling system and not the reactor itself was not damaged it follows that thursday's eight point nine magnitude earthquake and a massive tsunami that spread destruction thousands of kilometers in the end killing at least seven hundred people he stated are. things unfolding tragedy in japan.