tv [untitled] March 15, 2011 2:00am-2:30am EDT
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nuclear meltdown fears are growing in japan. the fukushima power plant under not just reactors at risk of fire and explosion were used to fuel rods are held its . forces say radiation levels near one of the reactors are now dangerous to human health with reports of one of the key containment levels protecting one of the reactors has been damaged around two hundred thousand people have now been evacuated from the surrounding area. four g.'s have been for nearly two thousand five hundred people dead so far more than a three thousand that are missing from the quake and devastating tsunami that hit
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northeast japan on. countries around the world all to help egypt hit by natural and manmade catastrophes some experts say this is another example of how the mankind's on able to handle the progress of science and the oil in the gulf of mexico action i'll call. a very warm welcome to you this is also a life from with me alice said that japan's prime minister has addressed the nation is fears intensify about a possible nuclear disaster as a power plant struck by last since friday's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami the company running the focus of facility has admitted a meltdown is a possible. following the explosion back the complex
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a thirty kilometer no fly zone has been imposed over the site there also fears are radioactive leaked reports of damage to one of the tame levels protecting the reactor increasing radiation levels are now being detected throughout the country including in the capital take you readings at the front gauge the power stations the morning show doing well naturally occurring radiation is being emitted within a single hour explosions scientifically hayes's friday's earthquake and tsunami damage the cooling systems that several people have been injured in the last one was a hundred and fifty people have been exposed to radiation engineers using seawater to cool the reactors of the complex to avert going out without asking is either that it is one hundred kilometers from the question with a short. like are replaced well the situation in egypt has got
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a lot more serious. and not just to focus on a power plant but the whole country actually heading straight for the for all the foreign journalists journalists crews we can cross this morning looking for a can get and try to get to the field because i did a very real now an equal amount of focus on. the whole country already going. into measured small amount of radioactive substance french embassies warned. the radiation. hours. of three. one hundred one so you know we've come across that into the action now we're doing very unwise to stick around because through. morning plan. to previously increase troops relate this sort of softens the reaction number four to be. used. what's significant is. normally
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a reaction seventy fuel rods which contain radioactive substances this one hundred seven hundred eighty three. which creates a potential of serious radiation leak they've managed to put the fire out there and now parts of the. very serious because of the explosion early this morning again are a previously in fact nuclear reactor that actually prime minister container and that's prompted radiation levels around fukushima to rise to four hundred times the maximum level that one normally it's almost a year. it's actually prompted the prime minister and the electric power company for the first time to come out and address the nation and of course about it and so nuclear meltdown they've warned residents and the radius to stay indoors for not sorry because they do they risk. sensual.
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exposure to radiation levels that could be catastrophic so it seems like we could be on the verge of a major nuclear disaster here in japan that could affect the whole country and potentially spread to rush through. higher than normal levels of radiation how big attacks in the japanese capital say there was no imminent risk to health correspondent. we're to get reports from various sources saying that levels of radiation in tokyo would suffer if you were to certain times the norm you know it was mentioned earlier it's always easier to say that that is normal enough to be feared of however there are also reports from a different perception or seventy and or slightly different picture for mission. thirty three times higher north of tokyo. as we said earlier it will take around ten hours after the virus or in the real true radioactive fallout to reach the
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japanese capital so we're looking to possible. rise levels on tuesday afternoon know who are probably first are waiting for the authorities to come out and maybe make first statements. has already said that everything is the one in order to prevent further review a few weeks and explosions of what is in the circumstances since that was prior to the closings of this morning's of course a need for taking those circumstances it is obvious that the problem is waiting for the authorities to come out and say something this is obviously the situation is dire the relief efforts are are continuing all across japan you're actually seeing . there more rescuers coming from sunshine is here is what i was driving here i personally saw a couple of scenes from korea which are two thousand members or. twenty five hundred have been confirmed so far. on monday afternoon alone in one
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town in the north korean's two thousand two thousand bodies were recovered we can expect the numbers to rise significantly and he'd check number of the people who drive cars to teach is anything but again game at this point we will force we'll continue to watch and see how many trowsers numbers change. across the system is associate professor with the international christian university taking these people are now in grave danger of exposure. there is a serious risk of contamination at this point the contamination is probably limited kind of fukushima area. in the event of an im event such as this the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from a steam explosion will be quite large but it will be relatively contained in
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a geographical area around the plant and your stories are having to focus on the reactors which temperatures are the highest and that may require the giver of moment of imminent and cooling materials such as generator power and pumping power away from the other reactors so the situation does seem to be getting worse if the level of coolant in the reactor pressure vessel the r.p.v. and falls below a certain level the tops of those rods will be exposed to the air there is a super heating of the air and any water vapor around that causes oxidize ation essentially very rapid rusting which produces hydrogen and that hydrogen is what as we have seen as caused the explosions in reactors at the moment i can say that the authorities are doing everything they can the most immediate concern which has come to us in tokyo over the past twelve hours last night is that the amount of fuel
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available in the north that is gasoline and diesel fuel and diesel fuel is one of the keys to resolving this situation there are a number of fire trucks that fire emergency vehicles pumping water into these exposed or damaged reactor buildings these pumping trucks have to continue working there are also diesel generators which are pumping it's a mixture of seawater and boron that is more or acid boron or a gas that is a very good neutron absorbers so. good at slowing the reaction down i see water and boric acid is being pumped into these reactors and those pumps must continue working it's very difficult for normal people to imagine the amount of pressure of water pressure that's required in this situation we think of high pressure water as coming out of a garden hose or a police water cannon well the amount of water pressure required in this situation
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is extremely high because those reactor cores are so hot as the water hits them it turns very rapidly into steam and that steam has to be moved away from the reactor rods and more water early into its place so a constant stream of water has to be maintained. well to recap our top story now in the situation at the fukushima nuclear power plant grows ever more dire with another blast of the plant and reports one of the reactors key containment fields has been a breach will japan's also set a thirty kilometer radius no fly zone over from because shimon new plant the country's prime minister has addressed the nation seeing a nuclear meltdown is now possible war throughout the country radiation levels are said to be on the rise with traces even now of the texel in tokyo however the government still insists public health is not to risk the epicenter of the problem
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because she will plant itself reading shows three years worth of naturally occurring radiation is being emitted within a single hour of plants been thrown into crisis since friday's devastating quake and tsunami which knocked out cooling systems and all three of its working reactors have it now been locked explosions several people have been injured in the blast well more than a hundred and fifty people have been exposed to radiation. economy is facing its biggest challenge since world war two after being hit by one of the strongest earthquakes in recorded history or the quickest theory by past japan's industrial heartland the shock waves have been felt throughout the business cycle for more details are joined by our business presenter you live out of a year this is the second business day since the earthquake as the nominative case just how much of an impact is it having on the markets well as analysts say it's too early to make any forecasts as to how long the problems would last power supply
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is critical in the country firms like your turn leeson have to stop production because of the level of japan's fifty four power stations out of action they're running out of energy for their factories and car makers should builders and technology companies worldwide are short of supplies after the disaster. that is for a project that i was in be exporting powerhouse and to throw up to the core benefactor and change to a knowledge of forums particularly hips and accounts for one fifth of the world's semiconductor production transportation is also bare fact of course sustained major damage with most of operation for months and then wish to water foreign areas is causing queues that the petrol pumps and japan's prime minister's statement that a substantial amount of radiation was looking for a nuclear power plant spooked the japanese markets and choose and there's a mess of selloff on the stock exchange at this hour. as investors are trying to
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guess how badly the markets and. japan's major companies could be hit let me quote some figures the nikkei showing more than eleven percent of the sell that's more than a thousand points and this is its second slump in more than two days some coming days are already saying. this is a market crash and. japan has pumped another sixty one point two billion dollars into the financial system to help stabilize the country's economy and the move comes the day after the injected fifteen trillion here and b. to cheer up investor sentiment and we are tracking. this closely and we'll be bringing you more in else tonight ok thanks for telling us how markets are reacting to events unfolding over in japan a world five days since the quake puts japan's nuclear facilities onto a carious path and dr robert dacres from the peace institute says the situation is
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rapidly becoming more dangerous. there is a sense that the radiation is spreading further and further from the site being detected for example out to sea and in very very low levels in tokyo so the implications are that the spread of radiation is increasing rather than being controlled and the implications of that for japan are devastating of course human health and human habitation and communities hopefully this will be contained so that the very worst of this is localized to the side of my hands and there's no true danger to health or property you know far down when it certainly appears that we're not getting the full story in the sense that every day we are told that the situation is under control and that efforts are succeeding in reducing the risk but yet every day we see this situation getting further and further out of control
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each day we we wait here in japan to a much more grim situation then the day before and it's it's hard to imagine i think it's hard to give accurate information i think it's hard for the government to get accurate information but i think that there's a growing distress among people in japan that the information that we're receiving is not informing us to the extent that we would like it to and if that doesn't reduce panic it just makes people all the more uncertain when they believe they can't trust fully the information they're being given this intuition is is very much difficult to control there's no doubt about it you will have a site there you've had four explosions and significant radioactive releases that the site of the reactors so you're having extremely high levels of radiation in that local area making it extremely difficult for people to conduct the kind of work at maybe. well emergency services remain on high alert in russia's far eastern region close to northern japan the danger of
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a radioactive cloud reaching the area is that minimal but that's not stopping song tourists and foreign workers from fleeing vehicle in a gradual that is there for. after the first reports of all he has another explosion at the. hall flaws were released emergences officials for this according region have in turn supplied check spoke radiation levels here in the civilian region russia's closest call it to japan i would talk to representatives of the ministry sometime ago they showed us a car which they quit professional guy donators which would measure radiation levels at different places around the city because it will be raising the city of leeds so imagine says ministry here assures that as a tuesday morning there is no increase in radiation levels and there is no cause for the residents to panic meanwhile we know that russia's defense ministry says it is ready to evacuate its personnel from the coral islands which is the closest
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possible the region to japan and the residents for example are searching for their personal geiger counters to measure radiation levels we also know from pharmacists that say you. have rocket and people all visibly want to make sure that they are well propounds for a possible threat radioactive emissions in case if there is a nuclear catastrophe in japan from what we know from what we know from people we've spoken to is that the believe the emergence is ministry of russian there reports of normal radiation levels is just the bait are not quite sure whether the japanese are playing down the through out of a nuclear catastrophe or not. in a sense that. is there. maybe you can pick up where you're going to be one hundred sixty miles or one of the supply. radioactivity that's going on on the
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island if you can because. it gives me great concern about what's going on all of this. what's happening to the people there who may be there and. so the poles the japanese government could be playing it down so that the. tolls along the . planes leave the international app or so views not because into the shuttle after what we know there are no edition no flights arranged also companies say that there are no extra demands but from what we see for example now a plane for moscow was about to leave with that there are so many passengers with small children around let's ask them why they decided to leave now. is the owner of the reason i am staying that my wife and my child are leaving for mosco it was a planned flight but now that there's a need for it what ifs and away anyway. of course we were always
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afraid living here in soho you were always in her we have our emergency luggage always packed and some extra cash lying around just in case you get. everyone here understands that in the worst case scenario it will take a radioactive cloud less than an hour to reach the coast of russia it did in the direction of r r t from the supply region or russia house pledging help and support in japan sending crews. ever since the earthquake triggered last. words. russia has sent a number of emergency ministry personnel to japan and they're working in a number of locations we know that a lot of them have already arrived in japan and have basically brought every kind of gear with them to be completely honest and to get at least two weeks to get.
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assistance basically yes sorry to tell you that i believe that assistance of. the survivors at least that was something that the two has that passed out yesterday that's why they having that large. ship and those that were sent out to specifically with that radiation have septic areas which is the street is expecting to have at least three people working in japan doing everything necessary everything in their power to give assistance where it may be a good russia knows from firsthand experience how difficult it is and how horrifying him is to deal with the aftermath of the radiation. accident at the chernobyl hour as devastating and many mistakes have already been gleaned
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from that experience was very fearless and that perhaps not everything is under human control as my colleague alex sanchez in theory that it was a frail experiment that led to history's biggest nuclear disaster in april ninety ninety six the chernobyl reactor exploded as a result of the wrong individuals being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the going to walk with they had very poor knowledge of the physics of the reactor they knew the manual on what bonds to push but that's it they knew nothing of the reactor physics the personnel drove the reactor into a state it was out of control while the authority. clearly knew who to blame for the fall out even the soviet union's top scientists were at a loss as to what to do in the days after the unfolded of them is going to. be mission free this was something unseen before a nuclear power station with flames and smoke over it was very order of
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a century on history seems to be repeating in japan despite the or thorough disclaims there of having the situation under control the fukushima nuclear power plant has already seen but explosions and that's despite advanced safety systems which the chernobyl reactor never had me look towards. the reaction was completely false he means. the reactors happened to be happening and this is very excessive. i mean. if you see the decent. that such a situation is unfolding in one of the world's most technologically advanced countries has heightened the sense of alarm internationally but some experts say one should look into how the japanese have been dealing with nuclear physics to get clues as to their continuing difficulties in dealing with a disaster so the technology is decades old. society the government
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regulators believe that the technology can be operated safely but there's a built in psychological complacency if you're operating something that's so inherently dangerous when you go to work every day do you keep thinking about how dangerous that technology is that would be over time rather damaging psychologically so in other words they convince themselves that leaves mustard this technology and unfortunately with nuclear power there's no second chance the japanese nuclear drama is certainly not the first case of man's over reliance on technology and it can be a dangerous friend and when mishandled can strike in disastrous fashion we have always seen this with these what they call technology. you remember last year there was a massive oil spill in the gulf of mexico again you have a very competent famous company that seemed to know what it was doing but they simply hadn't planned for conjuncture conditions it would create disaster so this
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is the human condition we simply are unable it seems to handle these technologies but probably not ready for them the nightmare that the chernobyl reactor became was eventually sealed off within a massive concrete sume called the circle for against the catastrophe provided valuable lessons in how to deal with the reactor disaster but also stern warnings about the dangers of nuclear energy what new lessons will be learned and what implications they will have for nuclear technology the world nervously waits to see alexey russia to ski. and next hour we talked to a former u.s. attorney general who had to deal with a similar nuclear emergency back in nineteen seventy nine he says that one of them a serious setback for the situation is a lot of he said information. what's most scary is that we can't get
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a hold of the facts and i know that very well from my time as governor at the time of three mile island accident it was terribly frustrating you could not get a grip on what precisely the facts were people were tell you more than they knew or less than they knew self-appointed experts kept showing up and the company that ran the plant was a very poor source of information they misrepresented certain facts to us so we had to do was operate really as investigators and constantly go back to people for their version of the facts and then put that together with the with everyone else's . but we're following all the continuing developments in japan since the quake and tsunami struck the country the latest they're getting is that these are increasing of a nuclear meltdown the reactor. power plant was hit by an
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explosion the major concern is a radioactive leak and that comes after reports of damage to one of the tame at levels protecting one reactors increasing radiation levels being detected throughout the country including in the capital tokyo reading from the front gate of the power station on tuesday morning showed three times that radiation is being emitted within a single hour the explosion at a site triggered by findings of. horses. by one hundred people and more than seventeen thousand that number is expected to rise up to about. the situation it was worse and was unfortunately realized the double tragedy also damaged the cooling systems at the focus human nuclear plant engineers have been using scene water to cool the reactors of the complex air an attempt to avert and we clear down it was people will be following this story all
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