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1、ContentJapan Says 2nd Reactor May Have Ruptured With Radioactive Release1Last Defense at Troubled Reactors: 50 Japanese Workers6In Remote Towns, Survivors Tell of a Waves Power10Japanese Stocks Rebound After Big Sell-Off13Certainties of Modern Life Upended in Japan15Precautions Should Limit Health P
2、roblems From Nuclear Plants Radiation19Japan Says 2nd Reactor May Have Ruptured With Radioactive ReleaseTokyo Electric Power, via Kyodo News, via Associated PressAt the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, reactors No. 3, left, and No. 4, center, have been damaged.ByHIROKO TABUCHIandKEITH BRADSHERPublis
3、hed: March 15, 2011TOKYO Japans nuclear crisis intensified again Wednesday, with Japanese authorities announcing that a containment vessel in a second reactor unit at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan may have ruptured and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam. That wou
4、ld be the second vessel to be compromised in two days.The vessel had appeared to be the last fully intact line of defense against large-scale releases of radioactive materials, but it was not clear how serious the possible breach might be.The announcement came after Japanese broadcasters showed live
5、 footage of thick plumes of steam rising above the plant.Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said the government believed the steam was coming from the No. 3 reactor, where an explosion on Monday blew out part of the building surrounding the containment vessel.The reactor has three layers of p
6、rotection: that building; the containment vessel, and the metal cladding around fuel rods, which are inside the reactor. The government has said that those rods at the No. 3 reactor were likely already damaged.Earlier in the morning, the company that runs the plant reported that a fire was burning a
7、t a different reactor, just hours after officials said flames that erupted Tuesday had been doused.A government official at Japans nuclear regulatory agency said that flames and smoke were no longer visible, but he cautioned that it was unclear if the fire, at the Reactor No. 4 building, had died ou
8、t. He also was not clear if it was a new fire or if the fire Tuesday had never gone out.There are a total of six reactors at the plant.The developments are troubling reminders of the difficulties the company is having in bringing the plant, which has suffered multiple explosions since Saturday, unde
9、r control. And the confusion is emblematic of days of often contradictory reports about what is happening at the plant.The company, Tokyo Electric Power, says it cannot know for sure what is happening in many cases because it is too dangerous for workers to get close to some reactors.The situation b
10、ecame especially dire on Tuesday, when releases of radiation led the company to pull most of its workers from the plant.One of the authorities main concerns are over pools for spent fuel rods at several reactors at the plant, including Reactor No. 4, where the pool has lost some of the water needed
11、to keep the fuel rods stable. The rods are still radioactive and potentially as hot and dangerous as the fuel rods inside the reactors.Minoru Ogoda, the official with Japans nuclear regulatory agency, said a proposed plan to use helicopters to put more cold water into the pool was looking unlikely.H
12、e said Tokyo Electric would probably try to spray water into the reactor building through a gaping hole in the wall blasted open by an earlier explosion.The hole or holes in the roof caused by that blast did not appear big enough to allow sufficient amounts of water in, he said.That explosion on Tue
13、sday was caused by hydrogen gas bubbling up from chemical reactions set off by the fuel rods in the pool, Japanese officials said. Inspectors from the United StatesNuclear Regulatory Commissionsaid they had been told by Japanese authorities that what was burning was lubricatingoilfrom machinery near
14、 the pool.Concern remained high about the storage pools at two other reactors, Nos. 5 and 6. None of those three reactors at the plant, 140 miles northeast of Tokyo, were operating on Friday afternoon when an offshore earthquake with a magnitude now estimated at 9.0 shook the site. A tsunami rolled
15、into the northeast Japanese coastline minutes later, swamping the plant.At least 750 workers were evacuated on Tuesday morning after a separate explosion ruptured the inner containment building at Reactor No. 2 at the Daiichi plant, which was crippled by Fridays earthquake and tsunami. The closely s
16、paced but apparently coincidental explosions at Reactors Nos. 2 and 4 together released a surge of radiation 800 times as intense as the recommended hourly exposure limit in Japan.But 50 workers stayed behind, a crew no larger than would be stationed at the plant on a quiet spring day. Taking shelte
17、r when possible in the reactors control room, which is heavily shielded from radiation, they struggled through the morning and afternoon to keep hundreds of gallons of seawater a minute flowing through temporary fire pumps into the three stricken reactors, Nos. 1, 2 and 3, where overheated fuel rods
18、 continued to boil away the water at a brisk pace.By early afternoon radiation levels had plunged, according to theInternational Atomic Energy Agency. Workers have released surges of radiation each time they bleed radioactive steam from the troubled reactors in an attempt to manage the pressure insi
19、de them, but the reactors are not yet releasing high levels of radiation on a sustained basis, Japanese officials said. The United States military revised its plans as radiation from the plant worsened. Some American warships that had been expected to arrive at the tsunami-shattered northeast coast
20、of Honshu Island were diverted to the west coast instead because of concerns about radiation, the Navy said.The Navy also promised to continue relief missions even though several more helicopter crews were testing positive for low-level exposure to radiation, and even as American military personnel
21、and their families at the Yokosuka and Atsugi bases were encouraged to take precautions against radiation exposure. Late Tuesday morning, Prime MinisterNaoto Kanwarned in a nationally televised address of rising radiation.Mr. Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, urged people who live within about 18
22、miles of the plant to take precautions. “Please do not go outside, please stay indoors, please close windows and make your homes airtight,” he said.Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said at the organizations Vienna headquarters that there was a “possibilit
23、y of core damage” at reactor No. 2, but that the damage “is estimated to be less than 5 percent of the fuel.”The sudden turn of events, after an explosion on Monday at one reactor and then an early-morning explosion on Tuesday at yet another the third in four days at the plant had already made the c
24、risis at the plant the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl reactor disaster a quarter-century ago. It had become impossible for workers to remain at many areas within the plant for extended periods, the agency said. In Tokyo, the metropolitan government said Tuesday that it had detected radia
25、tion levels 20 times above normal over the city, though it stressed that such levels posed no immediate health threat and that readings had dropped since then. The explosion in Reactor No. 2, a little after 6 a.m. on Tuesday, particularly alarmed Japanese officials and nuclear power experts around t
26、he world because it was the first detonation at the plant that appeared to occur inside one of the primary containment vessels.Those buildings are fortresslike structures of steel and reinforced concrete, designed to absorb the impact of a plane crash and minimize radiation leaks. After a series of
27、conflicting reports about how much damage the reactor had sustained after that blast, Mr. Edano said, “There is a very high probability that a portion of the containment vessel was damaged.”Japanese officials subsequently said that the explosion had damaged a doughnut-shaped steel container of water
28、, known as a torus, that surrounds the base of the reactor vessel inside the primary containment building.Ruptures in the torus are serious, said Michael Friedlander, a senior nuclear power plant operator for 13 years at three plants in the United States, including three years at aGeneral Electricbo
29、iling water reactor very similar to the ones in trouble in Japan. But the torus is not as important as the reactor vessel itself, which has 6.7-inch-thick steel walls and 8.4-inch-thick steel for its roof and floor. The vessel is designed to hold very high-pressure steam as well as the uranium fuel
30、rods.The reactor vessel has 20 safety valves that during a shutdown of the reactor inject steam into a million-gallon “suppression pool” of water in a steel torus immediately underneath it.“Imagine if you had a big pressure cooker and you had a tube off the pressure cooker into a big tub of water th
31、e suppression pool is the tub of water,” said Mr. Friedlander, a defender of nuclear power who is now a money manager in Hong Kong.Steam vented into the suppression pool from the reactor vessel is not supposed to be radioactive. But it becomes radioactive, and potentially very radioactive, if the fu
32、el rods in the reactor vessel above have begun to melt.The atmosphere in the primary containment building, around the reactor vessel and above the suppression pool, is supposed to consist of inert nitrogen, with no oxygen at all. An inert atmosphere is used in the primary containment building to avo
33、id the risk of oxygen explosions with hydrogen if the reactor starts producing much larger quantities of hydrogen gas than usual. Hydrogen gas is highly combustible with oxygen.Hiroko Tabuchi reported from Tokyo, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong. David E. Sanger and Matthew L. Wald contributed repo
34、rting from Washington.A version of this article appeared in print on March 16, 2011, on page A12 of the New York edition.March 15, 2011Last Defense at Troubled Reactors: 50 Japanese WorkersByKEITH BRADSHERandHIROKO TABUCHICorrection AppendedA small crew of technicians, braving radiation and fire, be
35、came the only people remaining at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on Tuesday and perhaps Japans last chance of preventing a broader nuclear catastrophe.They crawl through labyrinths of equipment in utter darkness pierced only by their flashlights, listening for periodic explosions as hyd
36、rogen gas escaping from crippled reactors ignites on contact with air.They breathe through uncomfortable respirators or carry heavy oxygen tanks on their backs. They wear white, full-body jumpsuits with snug-fitting hoods that provide scant protection from the invisible radiation sleeting through th
37、eir bodies.They are the faceless 50, the unnamed operators who stayed behind. They have volunteered, or been assigned, to pump seawater on dangerously exposed nuclear fuel, already thought to be partly melting and spewing radioactive material, to prevent full meltdowns that could throw thousands of
38、tons of radioactive dust high into the air and imperil millions of their compatriots.They struggled on Tuesday and Wednesday to keep hundreds of gallons of seawater a minute flowing through temporary fire pumps into the three stricken reactors, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. Among the many problems that officials
39、 acknowledged on Wednesday was what appeared to be yet another fire at the plant and indications that the containment vessel surrounding a reactor may have ruptured. That reactor, No. 3, appeared to be releasing radioactive steam.The workers are being asked to make escalating and perhaps existential
40、 sacrifices that so far are being only implicitly acknowledged: Japans Health Ministry said Tuesday it was raising the legal limit on the amount of radiation to which each worker could be exposed, to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts, five times the maximum exposure permitted for American nuc
41、lear plant workers.The change means that workers can now remain on site longer, the ministry said. “It would be unthinkable to raise it further than that, considering the health of the workers,” the health minister, Yoko Komiyama, said at a news conference. There was also a suggestion on Wednesday t
42、hat more workers may be brought to help save the power station.Tokyo Electric Power, the plants operator, has said almost nothing at all about the workers, including how long a worker is expected to endure exposure.The few details Tokyo Electric has made available paint a dire picture. Five workers
43、have died since the quake and 22 more have been injured for various reasons, while two are missing. One worker was hospitalized after suddenly grasping his chest and finding himself unable to stand, and another needed treatment after receiving a blast of radiation near a damaged reactor. Eleven work
44、ers were injured in a hydrogen explosion at reactor No. 3.Nuclear reactor operators say that their profession is typified by the same kind of esprit de corps found among firefighters and elite military units. Lunchroom conversations at reactors frequently turn to what operators would do in a severe
45、emergency.The consensus is always that they would warn their families to flee before staying at their posts to the end, said Michael Friedlander, a former senior operator at three American power plants for a total of 13 years.“Youre certainly worried about the health and safety of your family, but y
46、ou have an obligation to stay at the facility,” he said. “There is a sense of loyalty and camaraderie when youve trained with guys, youve done shifts with them for years.”Adding to this natural bonding, jobs in Japan confer identity, command loyalty and inspire a particularly fervent kind of dedicat
47、ion. Economic straits have chipped away at the hallowed idea of lifetime employment for many Japanese, but the workplace remains a potent source of community. Mr. Friedlander said that he had no doubt that in an identical accident in the United States, 50 volunteers could be found to stay behind aft
48、er everyone else evacuated from an extremely hazardous environment. But Japanese are raised to believe that individuals sacrifice for the good of the group.The reactor operators face extraordinary risks. Tokyo Electric evacuated 750 emergency staff members from the stricken plant on Tuesday, leaving
49、 only about 50, when radiation levels soared. By comparison, standard staffing levels at the three active General Electric reactors on the site would be 10 to 12 people apiece including supervisors an indication that the small crew left behind is barely larger than the contingent on duty on a quiet day.Daiichi is not synonymous with Chernobyl in terms of
