SOMA, Japan – A fire broke out at a nuclear reactor again Wednesday, a day after the power plant emitted a burst of radiation that panicked an already edgy Japan and left the government struggling to contain a spiraling crisis caused by last week's earthquake and tsunami.

The outer housing of the containment vessel at the No. 4 unit at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex erupted in flames early Wednesday, said Hajimi Motujuku, a spokesman for the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co.

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. Tokyo Electric Power said the new blaze erupted early Wednesday because the initial fire had not been fully extinguished. Firefighters were trying to put out the latest blaze.

Radiation levels in areas around the nuclear plant rose early Tuesday afternoon but appeared to subside by evening, officials said. But the unease remained in a country trying to recover from the massive disasters that are believed to have killed more than 10,000 people and battered the world's third-largest economy.

The radiation leak caused the government to order 140,000 people living within 20 miles (30 kilometers) of the plant to seal themselves indoors to avoid exposure, and authorities declared a ban on commercial air traffic through the area. Worries about radiation rippled through Tokyo and other areas far beyond that cordon. The stock market plunged for a second day, dropping 10 percent.

The troubles cascaded Tuesday at the Dai-ichi plant, where there have already been explosions at two reactor buildings since Friday's disasters. An explosion at a third reactor blasted a 26-foot (8-meter) hole in the building and, experts said, damaged a vessel below the reactor, although not the reactor core. Three hours later, a fire broke out at a fourth reactor, which had been offline for maintenance.

In a nationally televised address Tuesday, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said radiation had seeped from four of the plant's six reactors. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Japanese officials informed it that the fire was in a pool where used nuclear fuel rods are stored and that "radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere." Long after the fire was extinguished, a Japanese official said the pool might still be boiling.

Depending on how bad the blast was at Unit 2, experts said more radioactive materials could seep out. If the water in the storage pond in Unit 4 boils away, the fuel rods could be exposed, leaking more virulent radiation.

Experts noted that much of the leaking radiation was apparently in steam from boiling water — and the falling radiation levels suggest the situation could be stabilizing.

Government spokesman Yukio Edano said the radiation leak potentially affected public health. But authorities and experts said the risks to the public diminished the farther the distance from the plant. At its most intense, the leak released a radioactive dose in one hour at the site 400 times the amount a person normally receives in a year. Within six hours, that level had dropped dramatically.

A person would have to be exposed to that dose for 10 hours for it to be fatal, said Jae Moo-sung, a nuclear engineering expert at Seoul's Hanyang University.

Radiation elsewhere never reached that level. In Tokyo, 170 miles (270 kilometers) to the southwest, authorities reported radiation levels nine times normal — too small, officials said, to threaten the 39 million people in and around the capital. Weather patterns helped, shifting Tuesday night to the southeast, blowing any potential radiation from the plant toward the sea.

"It's not good, but I don't think it's a disaster," said Steve Crossley, an Australia-based radiation physicist. "If the radioactive material gets out, it's a major problem. That doesn't appear to be happening in Japan, and that's the big difference. As long as you are not near it, it doesn't pose a health risk."

The IAEA said Tuesday that all other Japanese nuclear plants were in a safe and stable condition.

Though Kan and other officials urged calm, the developments fueled a growing panic in Japan and around the world amid widespread uncertainty over what would happen next. In the worst case scenario, one or more of the reactor cores would completely melt down, a disaster that could spew large amounts of radioactivity into the atmosphere.

Foreigners began leaving in larger numbers. China organized an evacuation of its citizens from Japan's stricken northeast. The U.S. urged Americans to avoid travel to Japan. Austria moved its embassy from Tokyo to Osaka. Lufthansa diverted its two daily flights to Tokyo to other Japanese cities.

The U.S. Navy shifted some ships from Japan's east coast to western waters to avoid hazards from debris dragged into the sea by the tsunami and to be away from any radiation plume. One ship at its base south of Tokyo detected low levels of radiation from the Fukushima plant.

In evacuation centers for people living near the plant, Japanese worried about radiation contamination, calling it an unseen threat, and complained that the government was not forthcoming with information.

"Nuclear power is the most frightening, even more than a tsunami. The government, the ruling party, administrators, nobody tells us, the citizens, what is really happening," Isao Araki, 63, said at an evacuation center.

Kan's government has been more open and transparent than previous administrations in keeping the nation informed of developments in the nuclear crisis. Edano, his top spokesman, appears frequently before the press with updates that have been widely praised for their frankness and clarity.

However, given past governments' notorious record of covering up bad news on nuclear emergencies, many Japanese are skeptical they are getting a complete picture.

The radiation fears added to the catastrophe that has been unfolding in Japan. Four days after the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami, millions of people strung out along the east coast had little food, water or heat, and already chilly temperatures dropped further as a cold front moved in. Up to 450,000 people are in temporary shelters.

Officials have only confirmed about 3,300 deaths, but officials have said the toll was likely to top 10,000 in one of the four hardest-hit areas. Experts involved in the 2004 Asian tsunami said there was no question more people died, despite Japan's high state of preparation, and like the earlier disaster, many thousands may never be found.

In a rare bit of good news, rescuers found two survivors Tuesday, one of them a 70-year-old woman whose house was torn off its foundation by the tsunami.

Mostly, though, search teams found few signs of life. More than 200 rescue crews from the U.S. and Britain poured Tuesday into the coastal city of Ofunato, finding little but rubble and people looking for lost possessions. Whole city blocks lay flattened. A yacht came to rest atop the remains of a two-story gas station.

Amid the debris, 32-year-old Ken Suioya used a crowbar to try to force open a safe, which he said had been thrown from his father's destroyed home and into a trench.

"My house has gone, our family's restaurant has gone, our car has gone — this is part of what we have left," he said, gesturing to unyielding gray metal.

As rescue teams and survivors hunted through ruined communities and officials struggled to deliver supplies to the displaced, urgent attention was focused on the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, the most severely damaged of three nuclear plants on the battered coast. Three of the plant's six reactors were out of service for maintenance at the time of Friday's disasters, which compromised cooling systems at all of the reactors. Before Tuesday's fire in Unit 4's storage pool, workers were desperately trying to pump seawater to cool the fuel rods in the three active reactors.

Conditions in Unit 2 are less clear after a blast near a suppression pool, into which fuel rods are plunged to cool them and which also serves as an emergency receptical for excess steam, said plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. The nuclear core was not damaged but the bottom of the surrounding container may have been, said Shigekazu Omukai, a spokesman for Japan's nuclear safety agency.

The IAEA's head, Yukoiya Amano, urged the Japanese government to provide better information to the agency about the situation.

Temperatures in the two other offline reactors, units 5 and 6, were slightly elevated, said Edano, the chief cabinet secretary. Fourteen pumps have been brought in to get seawater into the other reactors, and technicians were trying to figure out how to pump water into Unit 4, where the storage pool fire occurred. Early Wednesday, Tokyo Electric Power officials said they had scrapped a plan to use helicopters, deeming them impractical, and said they were considering other options, including using fire engines.

About 70 workers remained at the complex, struggling with its myriad problems. The workers, all in protective gear, are being rotated in and out of the danger zone quickly to reduce their radiation exposure.

The prime minister and other officials warned there is a danger of more leaks and ordered a wider emergency cordon, telling people within 20 miles (30 kilometers) of the Fukushima plant to stay indoors to avoid exposure that could make people sick.

"Please do not go outside. Please stay indoors. Please close windows and make your homes airtight," Edano told residents in the danger zone.

"These are figures that potentially affect health. There is no mistake about that," he said.

Some 70,000 people had already been evacuated from a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius from the Dai-ichi complex. About 140,000 remain in the wider zone.

The multiple problems at Fukushima appear to be the nuclear industry's most severe accident in 25 years, since the meltdown at the Chernobyl power plant in the former Soviet Union.

Experts said that differing designs in the reactors made it unlikely that Fukushima would degenerate into a widespread contamination problem. The biggest difference is that in Chernobyl's case the reactor core caught fire and there was no containment shell — thick reinforced concrete around the reactor.

"We're a long way from fuel material coming out of the reactor in the way it did in Chernobyl," said Crossley, the physicist. "In this case, the fuel is still contained."

Physicist Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group that pushes for nuclear industry safety, said it was unlikely that a plume from the Fukushima plant would rise as high as the one from Chernobyl, which means that radioactive material would be deposited closer to the site.

"That may spare Tokyo from the worst of it," he said.

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Yuasa reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writer Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo and David Stringer in Ofunato contributed to this report.

See complete article here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110315/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake.

FUKUSHIMA, Japan – Surging radiation levels forced Japan to order emergency workers to temporarily withdraw from its crippled nuclear plant Wednesday, losing time in a desperate operation to cool the overheating reactors — the most urgent crisis from last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami.

The technicians were dousing the nuclear reactors with seawater in a frantic effort to cool them when they had to retreat in the late morning. The plant's operator ordered the technicians back to the site in the evening after radiation levels subsided.

In the hours in between, it was not clear what if any operations continued. Officials gave only sparse information about reactors.

But conditions at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant appeared to be worsening. White steam-like clouds drifted up from one reactor which, the government said, likely emitted the burst of radiation that led to the workers' withdrawal. The plant's operator reported a fire at another reactor for the second time in two days.

At one point, national broadcaster NHK showed military helicopters lifting off to survey radiation levels above the complex, preparing to dump water onto the most troubled reactors in a desperate effort to cool them down. The defense ministry later said those flights were a drill, and it had no plans to make an airborne water drop.

"The anxiety and anger being felt by people in Fukushima have reached a boiling point," the governor of Fukushima prefecture, Yuhei Sato, fumed in an interview with NHK. He criticized preparations for an evacuation if conditions worsen and said centers already housing people moved from nearby the plant do not have enough hot meals and basic necessities.

The nuclear crisis has triggered international alarm and partly overshadowed the human tragedy caused by Friday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the subsequent tsunami, a blast of black seawater that pulverized Japan's northeastern coastline. The quake was one of the strongest recorded in history.

Millions of people struggled for a fifth day with little food, water or heat, and already chilly temperatures turned to snow in many areas. Police say more than 452,000 people are staying in temporary shelters, often sleeping on the floor in school gymnasiums.

Nearly 3,700 people are officially listed as dead, but officials believe the toll will climb over 10,000 since several thousand more are listed as missing.

In an extremely rare address to the nation, Emperor Akihito expressed condolences and urged Japan not to give up.

"It is important that each of us shares the difficult days that lie ahead," said Akihito, 77, a figure deeply respected across the country. "I pray that we will all take care of each other and overcome this tragedy."

He also expressed his worries over the nuclear crisis, saying: "With the help of those involved I hope things will not get worse."

Since the quake and wave hit, authorities have been struggling to avert an environmental catastrophe at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex, 140 miles (220 kilometers) north of Tokyo. The tsunami knocked out the backup diesel generators needed to keep nuclear fuel cool at the plant's six reactors, setting off the atomic crisis.

In the city of Fukushima, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) inland from the nuclear complex, hundreds of harried government workers, police officers and others struggled to stay on top of the situation in a makeshift command center.

An entire floor of one of the prefecture's office buildings had been taken over by people tracking evacuations, power needs, death tolls and food supplies.

In one room, uniformed soldiers evaluated radiation readings on maps posted across a wall. In another, senior officials were in meetings throughout the day, while nuclear power industry representatives held impromptu briefings before rows of media cameras.

Wednesday's radiation spike was believed to have come from Unit 3, where workers are struggling with a fuel storage pond believed to be leaking radiation, as well as possible damage to the containment vessel — the thick concrete armor built around the reactor — that would allow radiation to escape.

"The workers cannot carry out even minimal work at the plant now," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Wednesday morning at briefing aired on television, as smoke billowed above the complex. "Because of the radiation risk we are on standby."

With no workers on site, efforts to cool the reactors likely ceased altogether, said Michael Friedlander, a former nuclear power plant operator who worked at a General Electric boiling water reactor in the United States similar to the stricken ones in Japan.

"They're in right now is what's called a feed-and-bleed mode. In order to keep the core covered and keep the reactor cool they have to feed in water," said Friedlander, who is currently based in Hong Kong. "It's something that they physically have to be present to do."

Elevated levels of radiation were detected well outside the 20-mile (30-kilometer) emergency area around the plants. In Ibaraki prefecture, just south of Fukushima, officials said radiation levels were about 300 times normal levels by late morning.

A little radiation was also detected in Tokyo, triggering panic buying of food and water.

Given the reported radiation levels, John Price, an Australian-based nuclear safety expert, said he saw few health risks for the general public so far. He was concerned for the workers, who he said were almost certainly working in full body suits and breathing through respirators. The workers at the forefront of the fight — a core team of about 180 — had been regularly rotated in and out of the danger zone to minimize their radiation exposure.

Price said he was surprised by how little information the Japanese were sharing.

"We don't know even the fundamentals of what's happening, what's wrong, what isn't working. We're all guessing," he said. "I would have thought they would put on a panel of experts every two hours."

Edano said the government expects to ask the U.S. military for help, though he did not elaborate. He said the government is still considering whether to accept offers of help from other countries.

There are six reactors at the plant. Units 1, 2 and 3, which were operating last week, shut down automatically when the quake hit. Since then, all three have been rocked by explosions. Compounding the problems, on Tuesday a fire broke out in Unit 4's fuel storage pond, an area where used nuclear fuel is kept cool, causing radioactivity to be released into the atmosphere.

Units 4, 5 and 6 were shut at the time of the quake, but even offline reactors have nuclear fuel — either inside the reactors or in storage ponds — that need to be kept cool.

Meanwhile, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency estimated that 70 percent of the rods have been damaged at the No. 1 reactor.

Japan's national news agency, Kyodo, said that 33 percent of the fuel rods at the No. 2 reactor were damaged and that the cores of both reactors were believed to have partially melted.

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Yuasa reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writers Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo, David Stringer in Ofunato and Jocelyn Gecker in Bangkok contributed to this report.