tonight fears of a nuclear meltdown escalate with the threat of a second explosion in japan's fukushima atomic power plant a little margin c alert declared of another facility in the northeast it's believed more than ten thousand people could have been killed in the devastating earthquake and resulting tsunami. libyan state t.v. reports colonel gadhafi gains momentum winning back more territory as international calls grove him to surrender power and get up each minute on five eastern libya making that very soon the town of guys he will for you join me in a few moments formal. i do know news that showed the week pushing the reset button

moscow and washington post ties and pledge to advance traders the u.s. vice president met russia's leaders and opposition in moscow. from moscow it's no ten pm my name is kevin zero in on the top story the situation at the fukushima nuclear plant in japan remains grave with persistent fears that a second blast could follow causing a radiation leak this is the country declares a state of emergency at a second atomic facility affected by friday's massive earthquake police now fear more than ten thousand people could have died in what japan's prime minister says is the worst crisis to hit the country since world war two parties over bennett's in the northeastern city of sendai for us near the epicenter of the quake and just an hour from the fukushima plant. well the worry there is concerning

a second reactor at the fukushima number one but there was an explosion that yes there is a concern now is that this second one has lost its cooling mechanism going seawater around to try and cool reacted down the temperature inside the reactor is growing very hot knows he is that there actually could start to melt which then leads to nuclear meltdown so the main fear is going to explosion but the general wisdom here is concerning these reactors is that there wouldn't be an explosion on the scale of chernobyl twenty five years ago because these are and what is known as light water reactors however there is a serious chance of radiation leakage the authorities are saying they're already treating thirty people who have been exposed to radiation in hundred thousand people already in both reactors and its nuclear power plant have been evacuated further away from. the. prefecture actually which we drove through today on our way to sendai where i am now there were concerns amongst the people of what could be

happening because what we saw was people stocking up on food none of the shops actually had any chap water because people are afraid to drink the tap water here to the out over here is a litany contaminated and the government has. to do so. shops and a lot of people buying in bulk of. that's in short supply as well in the worst hit area especially here and as for fuel as well we passed a petrol station most of them actually have been closed but there's one open and there's a queue of cars about a kilometer long we're stuck thirty minutes and everyone's queuing out because their fear of shortages of fuel and so they're only actually. being rationed the amount of fuel i can get just twenty liters each at the coast which we have going to get that's still about an hour's drive and the roads blocked off and hearing damage there is absolute destruction here a building that still standing but the damage is is otherwise and people. i'm

actually now at a relief center there's plenty of these dotted all around the city and on the floor the floor is covered with people lying on cardboard bedding down with blankets many spending the night here because they aren't able to go home or in sendai when the earthquake happened and so and they live quite far out makes it we can't get there because there aren't any trains there isn't any public transport functioning here and it's very few chack season cars so he will have to stay here also but many people stay year actually leaving sendai their houses that are too unstable to go back to what's more most of sendai is actually without any power there is no electricity. no water no gas and that's why people are making their way and doing their nights at these relief centers furthermore no food in this town very little food and very little water and three hundred thousand it's reckoned that have been left homeless or fled the areas where their homes once stood they've been left with

nothing they'll have another six weeks without anything to go back to and it's looking very bleak for them because all they've got is literally a patch of cardboard around one and a half meters long and a blanket and that's all and there's no real assurance or guarantee of food all drinking water and it's a very bleak outlook for them. artes over bennett they're reporting from sendai the capital of the worst hit area in the tsunami. russia's atomic agency says it needs further information about the situation in japan's fukushima nuclear plant that's despite close contact with the japanese crosses center meanwhile emergency services are on high alert in russia's far eastern region close to northern japan r.t. to katrina which over is in the area. at the shows and say that radiation levels remain normal in russia's war against ever since then you can have hope want in fukushima was hit by an explosion they've been warning torrent levels closely we

can even check the radiation levels for ourselves this is the so-called geiger counter this is used in professional safe legal war trays by the emergences ministry and also by other specialized services it measures radiation levels around and it is showing is jumping between two and three micros for hour these is way less than the average in moscow for example and also as a comparison a passenger flying on a plane from moscow to where the bus stop receives as many as twenty two microns per hour which is ten fold the figure here in usenet so highly in the capital of this region while russian security services are still on high alert as there are confirmed reports from officials in japan that possibility of a nuclear meltdown is very high. and so experts in russia are now monitoring measuring levels of radiation not only in russia but also in the arctic for example

they are also saying that even in the worst case scenario the country should be spared any fallout but what we know from under planet x. experts is that a lot depends on the weather the good news is that the wind is now going in the direction of the pacific ocean and what the weather is changeable and things could also quickly if the worst scenario takes place and if there is an explosion inside a reactor at the fukushima plant that would mean that radiation would be spreading in waves and these region of russia is the closest would be the closest to the epicenter of the nuclear tragedy usual surprise where we are now is only six hundred miles away from fukushima and russia's coral islands are some two hundred miles now people of course have been. morris i've got the latest news and they've been closely monitoring group was on t.v. in the beginning they were afraid of another natural disaster he's seeing that close use the civilians what they are afraid of now is as

a part of possibility of radiation consuming nation and they've been calling emergencies ministry of the line is almost always easy and trying to find out what preventive measures could be taken many told me that as they watch news reports they can't believe their eyes that these disaster because sheen is unfolding so close in such a vicinity to russia's interest in the beginning shortly after the earthquake and tsunami in japan they were mostly afraid a natural disaster which could hit the northeast and close to russia they are afraid of another chernobyl now which could happen close to to their hopes. japan's nuclear threat from. an energy expert at london bridge think tank chatham house where even she's a former nuclear power plant designer earlier on today told a news conference in tokyo the one of the reactors the fukushima plant was as he called it highly unstable tremendous problems of course is might be very likely how

would you assess the state of affairs at that facility tonight. as i looked at it there's certainly no risk of come from a nation and indeed more than that we've already seen some planned releases of radioactive material but this is certainly not of a charitable charitable happened when the plant was actually operating in fact because of a design flaw it was operating at something like five hundred times its normal power output and therefore that accident happened right in the middle of the reactor with enormous force pushing fuel out several hundred meters away blowing the whole farms apart this is very very different the explosion that we saw yesterday was not in the nuclear part of the plant was told it was because of the build up of hydrogen that they were releasing from the center where over two days past the point at which the plants were shut down a great deal of the initial radioactivity will have to either way now and it's

certainly the case that cooling water should be brought into contact with the fuel for the next ten days or so to bring it into a side condition but so far the fuel is still largely in the form that it was during normal operation and it's all complained within the extremely thick steel pressure vessel as it's called. that so far is doing its job so even if a pressure vessel were to be broken into the greek and it's very difficult to imagine about what happens they flooded the first reactor and the third reactor with seawater with most of the heat it would be local emission of radioactive material but i certainly haven't yet worked out how you could get a significant cloud which would be felt very far away from the plants mohammed said that really is just interjected there just what you say that the fact that they thought it with seawater that really was a kind of a worst case scenario because they didn't have any other option as i've been reading it could in these reactors is that not true. that's not quite the way i

interpret it because the question is are you trying to keep these reactors in operation after the emergency process or do you give up on that that's an important question because actually the most serious health effects of this incident of the nuclear plant will be the effect of the lack of electricity as your reporter rightly saying the big threats to people's health over the next couple of weeks will be first from the water supply. that will dwarf everything else but also because of provision of heat and that will be largely because there isn't enough electricity to clean water and to continue pumping it into people's homes and to provide them with heat now the decision what it wants a decision which is clearly being taken with reactor one is that they're not going to try and preserve because it was over forty years old very close to the end of its life then you have more options and seawater is one it's a perfectly sensible way of dealing with the thing but it does stop you from having

there also plug it into the other rio janeiro and they're also pumping it into the other reactors that are not off to you my way of reading that is probably don't take a magazine that plant was commissioned in seventy four so it's thirty seven years old and they reckon roughly speaking the working life of a nuclear reactor is forty years i'm sure they'd have been more reluctant to take that decision both because it's newer and because it has a larger output but at the end of the day it's not a panic measure it's a sensible approach of putting getting the safety of the plants absolutely top of the priorities and recognizing with clients of this agency that it's a reasonable price to pay that you may lose two or three years of power out let's talk and clear. terms a little bit against this is quite a few questions i want to get through for. let's talk about the communication see given what's happening in japan the countries are ready drawn criticism for housing nuclear plants extremely vulnerable to natural disasters so does it really have any

other options at the end of the day because nuclear power consists what a third of what the company uses no facility doesn't it. you know there's very little oil and gas in that region of the world and for a long time they've been very however energy importers of course we're all this concern about climate change and carbon dioxide emissions and since fossil fuel prices are something like ten times today what they were in the late one nine hundred ninety s. all of those are very powerful arguments for nuclear energy when these plants were designed and we should remember we are talking about nine hundred sixty s. technology but even at that stage the earthquake was predicted financially the plants were fine because of the earthquake the emergency cooling systems kicked in and thirdly many earthquakes in japan were nuclear plants even quite close by here continue to operate as they were designed to house with so much oil it's the tsunami which seems to have been the problem because it knocked out those backup. power. now the maybe lessons to learn there in terms of that issue but

a modern plant designed today has fifty years more experience than the designers did in the sixty's they still did an extraordinary job these were right at the front line these reactors probably the closest manmade construction to the actual center of the epicenter of the earthquake when you look at it and yet largely speaking they have survived with the exception of number one which looks like it's bring brought to a safe condition with a relatively minor release of activity north american groups and energy expert a london based think tank chatham house thank you. because pledging to stand shoulder to shoulder with tokyo during the crisis a plane carrying russian rescue workers is heading to japan with another due to take off from the country's far east on monday and as election explains next russia is no stranger to dealing with the nuclear threat facing japan right now having first hand experience of the world's worst atomic disaster during the something. spare no effort in getting the job done this typical motto for construction

projects in the soviet union also applied to the chernobyl nuclear power plant when construction kicked off in the nine hundred seventy s. it was intended to be a dream project for soviet ukraine. and the birth rate in prepared was higher than all of ukraine people were given homes and there was a great demand for a workforce in general so everyone worked and lighted. but this happy existence came to an abrupt end on april the twenty six nine hundred eighty six with the explosion of the reactor at the power station the very same model used for building the plants where no effort was known to be used in the clear up of the world's worst ever manmade nuclear disasters a blazing reactor was bombarded with sand and lead measures which at first seemed very driven but which related deemed highly effective by the international atomic energy agency this action helped to contain the radiation and enable construction

of the sarcophagus a structure built around the reactor to seal it off for several months after the catastrophe the lessons of chernobyl have been learned by experts worldwide since the catastrophe and will have been of assistance to those battling the latest serious nuclear accident in japan threatening contamination with large numbers of people being evacuated because of the radiation threat something which didn't happen twenty five years ago in soviet you grain the chernobyl fallout was caused by a massive human error mistakes made by the authorities in the first hours after the blast also cost many lives but the events of twenty five years ago in what is now sovereign ukraine have proved to be an invaluable lesson for mankind alexy rossetti see reporting from kiev ukraine. will see throughout the day if you can for the latest developments from japan. lot of web site of course as you'd expect at r.t.

dot com. second some other news now and forces loyal to colonel gadhafi gaining momentum in the east to build international calls for him to step down libyan media reports say rebel groups have been driven out of several key oil town and parties paul asli has got the latest from the region for you. looking state television is reporting that forces loyal to the libyan leader moammar gadhafi have mt retaken the oil town of great get in the east of the country according to state television this town has been to quote the maclean's to other armed gangs brigade is the site of a major oil terminal and throughout the day sunday they have been hit in clashes happening there but we haven't as of yet been able to independently verify these state television reports in the past state television has been faulty in its reporting of this very often preempting is sexist as of today he's mean before that actually happened but we can come to that definition in our everyone's eastwards they are encountering increasingly loosely organized rebel groups they do not have enough

equipment and they lack leadership and to mouth what really has been a unifying factor which is enthusiasm is slowly starting to the way people are asking the question well how much longer can that enthusiasm hold out at the same time in the oil rich portion of the rest of the latest reports there is a case of the talent is in the hands of the deaf ears mean we've been hearing from rebel groups that they have the numbers but they do not have the equipment to take on his soldiers rebel groups yet have well come to the call from the arab league for a no fly zone to be implemented over libya this call came saturday when the foreign ministers of the arab league meeting in cairo they have now called on the united nations security council to implement a no fly over the country but they've made the point that this mess is not illegal and must not be confused with foreign military intervention they say they conduct the has lost of illegitimacy to rule as you can well expect gadhafi and his regime have criticized this call from the arab league so be on the ground as good duffy's

forces make advances they are losing the war on the international front very much the feeling that they are being abandoned by the former friends but at the same time to be able beats themselves also feeling increasingly hopeless there is chaos happening here it is not very clear where. front line is it's very often shots from one point to be other the rebel groups fear that any kind of foreign involvement whether in the form of a no fly zone or in any kind of humanitarian assistance or anything else would be motivated by self interest obviously out of states and the european union that they will not really be acting in the interests of the libyan people i'm not concerned about the safety of the rebel groups themselves because he still remains the stronghold of the rebel groups we are hearing from gadhafi is named that they are making their way there and win game bengazi force to quote him any kind of disruptions and all the kinds of fighting that we've witnessed over the past month come to an end here in tripoli the situation remains calm and quiet people here

have accused the international community and the foreign media there feeds it of being alarmist they say that they have exaggerated the situation let's take a look there's a lot more haggling on the international stage of the merits of intervention and a no fly zone and the bargaining taking place in downtown tripoli market shops here close only nowadays people are afraid and many of the africans who used to work here have fled the country but the argument that libya is on the brink of civil war so foreign intervention is needed still seems to ring a little hollow several hundred people killed but that's not a huge level of violence it certainly isn't a global level of violence that would normally merit intervention gadhafi has offered access to foreign media but only if the camera lenses stay well away from any of the opposition but it's a similar picture in the opposition strongholds dr ramadan break he was forced to close the benghazi office of his newspaper because of pressure from rebels you have

to print a version of events he says or nothing the media. is going to the hot places and all these cities are controlled by there are bridges and then given that people go through. they knew was what they think and what they believe and many gadhafi supporters fear that while he may be winning the war with the rebels he's losing information you like here in john's you outside tripoli with schoolgirl mona says she's puzzled and angry and i reports at most one of these was heating people in her town. and like so he seems calm on the streets. of tweets civil war in libya it seems that it's coming from constantly. do you think it will be civil.

the real thing is normal right now and the future. will move normally as for conflicts elsewhere with the account is climbing it's a little media coverage and even less foreign interest to intervene there are events unfolding right now in ivory coast where there is also conflict on the conflict between rebels and the government but nobody seems to be thinking about it's only because fashionable attention is focused on libya the only reason they're interested in. your oil think we'd be in iraq if their major at war there was broccoli so as leaders meet in brussels to discuss the fate of a country hundreds of miles away many libyans are saying it's a mess and they'll clean it out policy r.t.d. john zogby. and three well from your newspaper the daily bell believes that nato member states put huge pressure on libyans who are now at a crossroads between islamic fundamentalism or a western style government. there's quite

a bit of speculation as to act actually who is who is pulling the strings of what's happening in libya i think what you're going to see here is a secular style western government that would be introduced post. but that will that will fail i believe within a very short period of time and i believe that is where we will see a more fundamentalist islamic type of government that will surface and take power it should be a natural democratic shift within the middle east or in any of these countries if there's going to be change it should be change that is and i hate that word but i'll use it anyway because that's the word of the day again but change in the middle east should be driven naturally by the people themselves they're going to get help whether they want to or not and some would say that help is basically what's been driving this revolution to begin with not to say or take anything away from the people in libya who are fighting and putting their lives on the line here to to actually make some form of a change but you know you look at what's happening in the world today and the pressure that's mounting with respect to foreign intervention being demanded especially from the western mainstream media you would have to think that the western media trumpeting such intervention is something that is heard loud and

clear within libya by the libyan people as well and the people on the ground who are leading this movement they're influencing factors but i don't believe that there is necessarily a unified on the ground presence in libya that is being cohesively led by any one group or any one individual and that means also that there are certainly fundamentalists and others within the libyan population who do not wish to have any foreign intervention at all there are others who would probably like to see it happen. the president was in moscow this week subaru straight encourage the reset of relations between the two countries well several issues we're discussing pleading libya joe biden said he was came to correct the previous administration's mistakes if you could only ties with russia to beechwood better job with biden that he hopes the u.s. vice president working on russia's bid for world trade organization membership korea promised his personal support for moscow's inclusion strategist chris says. u.s. and russia of origin common than ever that. i think that the existing

relations are on a track moving forward no matter what the little disruptions are and i think that's very important and i think that's part of what the biden's trip is all about and then the obama's trip will be all about which is that even if we have setbacks along the way the message has to be very clear to the russian people and to the american people that russia in the united states now have more in common than we do as we do that separates us we need that russia to be part of the we need a free trade with russia i think that that message is being sent to anything the united states does it will clearly take into account how the russian government the russian leadership feels about things and i'm sure that vice president biden is making that very clear to. the russian leadership that whatever we do in libya we're going to try to make sure that we cooperate with you and we're not in conflict with you the other thing of course is that we're coming up to the tenth

anniversary of nine eleven i don't think it's lost on the american people that there were people have been victimized by islamic terrorists and we share that in common and i think the metaphor for that is this idea of a missile defense although it's aimed at states like iran and others i think that it's a symbol that we stand united against terrorists and that's another thing so while we might disagree on things like libya i think going forward the relationship moves forward no matter what the little setbacks might be. skipped some other international news headlines bring you up to date with now and first of all at least one person has died and over one hundred have been injured in demonstrations yemen after police opened fire on crowds of the capital dozens suffered from gas inhalation during the violent clashes people demanding the end of president. year rule this follows the deaths of at least six protesters on saturday anti-government uprisings in yemen have been ongoing since mid february. israel says it will fill

several hundred homes for jewish settlers in the occupied west bank he fishel announcement comes a day after five israeli settlers were killed in a sleep to children and the baby were among those stabbed to death at suspected palestinian militants responsible palestinians have refused to negotiate with israel until constructions halted in the disputed territory. tens of thousands of joined a rally in the lebanese capital beirut to protest the weapons arsenal held by hezbollah fundamentalists and crowds of supporters of outgoing prime minister saad hariri who stepped down last month after his unity government collapsed as its allies pulled out of the cabinet of un but tribunal which is likely to implicate its members in the killing of the country from two thousand and five. you watching r.t. from moscow my name is kevin and we will keep you up to date with the latest news coming out of japan throughout the evening and you can also find the latest online and r.t. dot com the next sideline update on this channel is in two and

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