SDF trucks join choppers in dousing crisis-hit Fukushima reactor
TOKYO, March 17, Kyodo
Fire trucks of the Self-Defense Forces joined Thursday evening in an unprecedented mission of pouring water onto a crisis-hit nuclear reactor in an effort to cool down its apparently overheating spent fuel pool that could emit highly contaminated radioactive materials.
While authorities continued to grapple with the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, efforts to bring electricity to the plant also accelerated in a bid to restore the lost cooling functions in many of its reactors following Friday's earthquake and tsunami that crippled the plant.
But Tokyo the same day had to try to allay growing concerns over the crisis as the United States advised their nationals living within an 80-kilometer radius to evacuate as a precaution while the official evacuation area is a 20-km radius, apparently with little effect as South Korea, Australia and New Zealand followed suit with the advisory.
''The highest priority now is to pour adequate water onto the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, especially in their spent fuel pools,'' said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman of the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
Two Ground Self-Defense Force choppers dropped seawater in a 7,500-liter bag four times each in the morning on the No. 3 reactor, an operation on which Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said in Tokyo, ''We decided to do this because we thought that today is the time limit.''
The 12-minute operation was followed in the evening by the shooting of high-pressure streams of water by six SDF fire trucks. A water cannon truck dispatched by the Metropolitan Police Department also began spraying water, but suspended the work later, the National Police Agency said.
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