MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

All 50 emergency workers who had been fighting to keep overheating reactors cool were this morning pulled back 500 yards from the complex as radiation levels became too dangerous.

And in an extraordinary attack, the French government accused the Japanese of losing control of the situation and hiding the full scale of the disaster.

“FUKUSHIMA, Japan – Japan suspended operations to keep its stricken nuclear plant from melting down Wednesday after surging radiation made it too dangerous to stay.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the workers dousing the reactors in a frantic effort to cool them needed to withdraw.

‘The workers cannot carry out even minimal work at the plant now,’ Edano said. ‘Because of the radiation risk we are on standby,’ he said.

The nuclear crisis has triggered international alarm and partly overshadowed the human tragedy caused by Friday’s earthquake and tsunami, which pulverized Japan’s northeastern coastline, killing an estimated 10,000 people and severely damaging the nuclear plant.

Since then authorities have tried frantically to avert an environmental catastrophe at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex in northeastern Japan, 170 miles (270 kilometers) north Tokyo.

Edano said the government expects to ask the U.S. military for help. He did not elaborate. He said the government is still considering whether and how to take up the various offers of help from other countries.”  Read more.

“(CNN) — The explosion Tuesday at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has elevated the situation there to a ‘serious accident’ on a level just below Chernobyl, a French nuclear official said, referring to an international scale that rates the severity of such incidents.

The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale — or INES — goes from Level 1, which indicates very little danger to the general population, to Level 7, a ‘major accident’ in which there’s been a large release of radioactive material and there will be widespread health and environmental effects.

‘It’s clear we are at Level 6, that’s to say we’re at a level in between what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl,’ Andre-Claude Lacoste, president of France’s nuclear safety authority, told reporters Tuesday.”  Read more.

“The situation at the quake-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in northeastern Japan ‘has worsened considerably,’ the Institute for Science and International Security said in a statement released Tuesday.

Referring to fresh explosions that occurred earlier in the day at the site and problems in a pool storing spent nuclear fuel rods, the Washington-based think tank said, ‘This accident can no longer be viewed as a level 4 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Events scale that ranks events from 1 to 7.’

Noting that a level 4 incident involves ‘only local radiological consequences,’ it said the ongoing crisis is ‘now closer to a level 6, and it may unfortunately reach a level 7’ — a worst case scenario with extensive health and environmental consequences.

‘The international community should increase assistance to Japan to both contain the emergency at the reactors and to address the wider contamination. We need to find a solution together,’ it said.”  Source.

“The operator of Japan’s stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant says a fire has broken out again at its No. 4 reactor unit.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Hajimi Motujuku says the blaze erupted early Wednesday in the outer housing of the reactor’s containment vessel. Fire fighters are trying to put out the flames. Japan’s nuclear safety agency also confirmed the fire, whose cause was not immediately known.

On Tuesday, a fire broke out in the reactor’s fuel storage pond – an area where used nuclear fuel is kept cool – causing radioactivity to be released into the atmosphere.”  Read more.