Third Day

By Paul Pennay
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Published: 2011-03-16

It's been a chaotic and unnerving morning. We woke to news that there had been another explosion at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which is located about 240km north of Tokyo.

According to media reports, at 6.10am this morning, there was a blast at the No. 2 reactor of the plant.

At 11am, the Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan held a televised press conference and announced that "substantial amounts of radiation are leaking in the area. We are making utmost efforts to prevent further explosions or the release of radioactive materials." Prime Minister Kan ordered those within 20km of the plant to evacuate immediately and also urged people within 30 kilometers of the plant to stay indoors.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano also revealed that radiation levels near the facility had reached 400 millisieverts per hour, far higher than those observed earlier with greater health risks.

As the press conference screened live on the TV in the foyer of the hotel where we are staying in central Tokyo, worried tourists hurriedly cancelled their bookings and headed to the airport.

A group of four young travelers from Austria told the EO that they arrived in Tokyo on Friday and had just booked into the hotel when the 9.0 magnitude quake struck.

They were originally booked to stay at the hotel until Thursday, but this morning's news of radiation leaks and the chance of radioactive clouds heading towards Tokyo, persuaded them to abandon their plans and head to the airport.

They had still not managed to change their flight, but hoped to do so from the airport.

They were not alone, reports of spikes in the radiation levels reported in Tokyo and surrounding areas had also persuaded an American couple staying at the hotel to flee. The young couple had actually experienced Friday's large quake while still on the plane minutes after they touched down at Narita Airport.

They described to the EO how passengers were not allowed to disembark and how they sat on the plane for a total of 8 hours.

It also took them a further 6 hours to make it to the hotel as transport between the airport and the city center was disrupted.

Again, despite this experience, they were willing to remain in Tokyo until news emerged this morning of what they described as "another Chernobyl."

We also spoke to a Finnish tourist who had decided to take a mid-afternoon flight to Beijing rather than wait for his scheduled flight to Helsinki on Wednesday. He also said that the Finnish Embassy had advised families with children to leave the Japanese capital.
The BBC also reported that Air China flights from Beijing and Shanghai to Tokyo had been cancelled today, which could possibly impact on travelers planning to fly back to Beijing with the carrier today (NOT SURE ABOUT THIS NEED TO CONFIRM).

Despite this some foreign embassies have declined to upgrade their travel alerts to citizens and although advising tourists to avoid unessential travel to Japan, did not urge residents of Tokyo to leave the city.

However, the French embassy in Tokyo urged its citizens to stay indoors and close their windows, saying a low-level radioactive wind could reach the city within 10 hours. Though this report was later removed from the site.

Link to advice from various foreign embassies
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/idINIndia-55582920110315
UK:http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/asia-oceania/japan
Concern among foreign travelers was not shared by some longer-term expat residents of the city, who although concerned about reports of a possible radioactive cloud heading towards Tokyo, remained calm.

One Australian teacher who has lived in the city for over 8 years was still at school when contacted by phone this afternoon, and though he expressed frustration with the conflicting reports about the level of radiation being detected in Tokyo, he said that he had no intention to leave the city.

The explosion at the power plant coupled with fears of a radioactive cloud headed towards the capital also had a huge effect on Japan's stock market with the Nikkei index briefly plummeting by over 14% in morning trading, before recovering slightly to end down 1015 points or 10.55% - the third largest daily fall in the history of the exchange.

Graph - http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/freetop.aspx

According to reports by Kyodo, radiation in Maebashi, a prefecture 100 km north of Tokyo, radiation was up to 10 times normal levels. Radiation levels in Tokyo were also reported to have surged to 23 times normal levels on Tuesday, according to local media reports citing the Tokyo metropolitan government.

National broadcaster NHK also reported that radiation levels of .809 micro sieverts were recorded in central Tokyo at 10.00 a.m. local time (9:00am Beijing time), though they also quoted officials as saying this level was not dangerous and that winds were now shifting to the west.

Despite these announcements, people in Tokyo are concerned that not all information is being released in order to maintain calm and rumors circulated online about a radioactive cloud arriving in the city later in the afternoon.

Some sites are purporting to measure the level of radiation in the city – but I’m unable to confirm if they're reliable.

http://park18.wakwak.com/~weather/geiger_index.html
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/geiger-counter-tokyo

Additionally, at the 2pm I also received a text message in Japanese one my mobile phone, we later learned that this was sent by the Japanese PM Naoto Kan to all mobile phones users across the country, asking them to conserve power.