AEA Head: Fukushima Incident Has Taken Turn For Worse

VIENNA -(Dow Jones)- The crisis at Japan's earthquake-struck Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has worsened since Monday as the outer protection shell on one of the plant's reactors, as well as its core, may be damaged, the United Nation's nuclear watchdog said Tuesday.
"The news we have received in the last 24 hours is worrying," General Yukiya Amano, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said at a press conference in Vienna. It is too early to say whether the situation has peaked, or whether worse developments are yet to come, he said.
"What I can say is that this is a serious accident," Amano said.
He declined to compare the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant with the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl plant in what is now Ukraine, but said it is not unlike the accident at the U.S. Three Mile Island power plant in 1979, the worst in U.S. nuclear history.
Yukiya Amano said the suppression chamber at Fukushima Daiichi's unit 2, which is the shell designed to contain melted nuclear fuel in the case of a core meltdown, may have suffered damage from an explosion late Monday.
The core at this unit may also be damaged, but this damage would include no more than 5% of the fuel in the reactor, Amano said.
The Fukushima Daiichi plant, which has a production capacity of 4.7 gigawatts and is among the world's 25 largest nuclear power plants, has been hit by several explosions at some of its six reactors after its automatic cooling system shut down, and its spent-fuel storage pond caught fire and released nuclear radiation directly into the atmosphere.
Amano also urged Japan to step up its communication efforts to help keep the watchdog abreast of the situation.
"I would like to receive both more timely and more detailed information from our Japanese counterparts," Amano said.

Thursday, March 17, 2011