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By PHRED DVORAK And ATSUKO FUKASE in TokyoAnd ERIC BELLMAN in Sendai

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Japanese sailors rescue Hiromitsu Shinkawa Sunday, two days after the 60-year-old was washed to sea on the roof of his Minamisoma home by a tsunami caused by a powerful earthquake. Thousands are feared dead.

Rescue workers scrambled to get food and water to Japan’s ravaged northern communities Monday as the impact of Friday’s quake continued to ripple throughout the nation, shaking its financial markets and bringing big chunks of its economy to a halt.

As the death toll rises in Japan in the aftermath of Friday’s earthquake, a nuclear disaster threat looms as fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant became fully exposed. Also, Asian countries with planned or existing plants are on alert.

The official death toll continued to climb, reaching above 1,800 by Monday afternoon, though hundreds if not thousands more were expected to join the total as reports from the most stricken areas trickled in. National broadcaster NHK reported that more than 450,000 people had moved to temporary shelters in the affected areas.

Residents are dealing with a lack of rations in Northern Japan, as transportation equipment is hampered in the aftermath of Friday’s quake. WSJ’s Eric Bellman reports from Sendai.

Officials raced to quell a worsening nuclear situation in northeastern Japan, at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, where problems that threatened to lead to radiation leaks extended to a third reactor.

A Japanese utility said fuel rods at a troubled nuclear reactor were once again fully exposed hours after authorities were able to stabilize a similar emergency, the Associated Press reported.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. says the exposure happened at Unit 2 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant because a steam vent wouldn’t open Monday, causing a sudden drop of water.

That reactor and two others at the plant are dangerously overheating and authorities are racing to prevent meltdown.

Hydrogen that built up in a structure containing another damaged nuclear reactor at the complex exploded Monday, saturating the nation with images of a cloud of smoke and dust rising over a nuclear power plant for the second time in three days. Officials said Monday that major leaks have been avoided so far.

Confusion reigned over planning rolling blackouts that failed to materialize. Commuters struggled to get to work in jammed trains. Japan’s major stock-market index fell 6.2%, its biggest drop since the 2008 global financial crisis, as its central bank injected $269 billion into the economy.

WSJ’s Mark Whitehouse discusses the economic challenges facing Japan as it recovers from last week’s devastating earthquake.

Rescue workers struggled to bring supplies to thousands of residents of towns along the northeastern coast of Japan, which was hit by an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and tsunami on Friday. Survivors told the nation via television that they didn’t have power and were running out of food and water. People atop one building had written a huge Chinese character for “water” on the roof, so it could be seen by rescue helicopters.

Information on the progress of relief efforts was sketchy. A spokesman for Japan’s Self-Defense Forces said they were in charge only of distributing food and water to regional supply points, and that they didn’t know how much had reached needy communities since regional governments were supposed to take the supplies from there.

Miyoko Sugiyama, who lived a few blocks from the beach near the hard-hit city of Sendai, said she was happy to escape with her husband and 14-year-old dog. “There were 2,700 homes” in her neighborhood, she said. “Now there are only a few left.”

In Japan’s northeastern Fukushima prefecture, or state, troubles mounted at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex. On Monday, an explosion rocked the site’s No. 3 nuclear reactor. But attention turned swiftly to reactor No. 2, which hadn’t been under as much scrutiny but on Monday saw its cooling system fail. Engineers started pumping sea water into the reactor to lower its temperature but hit a bump when the pump ran out of fuel, temporarily leaving the fuel rods exposed.

Ruined Homes and Radiation

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Aly Song/Reuters

Emiko Ohta, 52, can’t bear to look at the debris that was her home in Kuji, Iwate prefecture.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., known as Tepco and operator of the Fukushima Daiichi facility, had said it would conduct rolling outages during the day in order to conserve power, then reversed course at the last minute when it saw energy demand was lower than usual.

Tepco’s plans caused Tokyo’s train companies to drastically cut back service, leaving thousands of commuters without a way to get to work. East Japan Railways said it had taken sections of its heavily Chuo and Sobu lines out of service, and run only one-fifth the number of trains it normally does on the rest.

“I was really confused about both the power cuts and the train services,” said Nobuyoshi Takashimaya, a 56 year old employee at an insurance firm in Tokyo. He said he had to walk one hour from home to reach his office because his train wasn’t running.

In the wake of the chaos, Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism asked Tepco to exempt railways from the list for power cuts. “If these continue, we’ll fall into a difficult situation,” scolded a ministry official.

Tepco ended up implementing some of its planned cuts on Monday evening. Broadcasters warned residents of affected areas to be ready for stopped elevators, cut off water in some buildings and traffic lights that go out of service.

The disrupted power and services sent ripples in some cases far from the areas most affected by the quake. Japan’s big car companies halted auto production through Wednesday, with Honda Motor Co. saying it would stop making cars domestically until Sunday, as they grappled with damaged plants, broken supply chains and transportation glitches.

Other big manufacturers from electronics giant Hitachi Ltd. to department store Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings Ltd. said they’d closed stores or suspended operations as well.

In some cases, stores just didn’t have enough supplies to keep doors open. The Nakasan department store chain said it opened the grocery section of its Morioka store, in northern Japan, for only a few hours on Sunday because it didn’t have much food left on its shelves.

The Nikkei Stock Average dropped 633.94 points, or 6.2%, to close at 9620.49 — its sharpest single-day percentage loss since December 2008. The Topix index of all the Tokyo Stock Exchange First Section issues slid 68.55 points, or 7.5%, to 846.96, its heaviest loss since October 2008.

To prevent a cash crunch, the Bank of Japan conducted a stream of operations throughout the day, ultimately offering to inject 22 trillion yen, or about $269 billion, into short-term money markets. The central bank also doubled the size of its asset-purchase program.

—Hiroyuki Kachi and Yoshio Takahashi contributed to this article.

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By PHRED DVORAK And ATSUKO FUKASE in TokyoAnd ERIC BELLMAN in Sendai

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Japanese sailors rescue Hiromitsu Shinkawa Sunday, two days after the 60-year-old was washed to sea on the roof of his Minamisoma home by a tsunami caused by a powerful earthquake. Thousands are feared dead.

Japan’s quake-ravaged northern communities continued to be pinched by food and water shortages Monday, while even cities far from the damage experienced “aftershocks” as the effects from Friday’s disaster rippled through the economy and markets.

Rescue workers struggled to bring supplies to thousands of residents of towns along the northeast coast, hardest hit by the 8.9-magnitude quake and tsunami on Friday. Survivors appeared on television, saying they didn’t have power and were running out of food and water. People atop one building had written a huge Chinese character for “water” on the roof, so it could be seen by rescue helicopters.

Residents are dealing with a lack of rations in Northern Japan, as transportation equipment is hampered in the aftermath of Friday’s quake. WSJ’s Eric Bellman reports from Sendai.

The official death toll continued to climb, reaching around 1,800 by Monday afternoon. National broadcaster NHK reported that more than 450,000 people had moved to temporary shelters in the affected areas.

Miyoko Sugiyama, who lived a few blocks from the beach near the hard-hit city of Sendai, said she was happy to escape with her husband and 14-year-old dog. “There were 2,700 homes” in her neighborhood, she said. “Now there are only a few left.”

Troubles continued to mount at the nuclear-power site in Fukushima Prefecture, where there was an explosion over the weekend. On Monday, an explosion occurred in the building housing a second reactor at the site, while the cooling system for a third reactor also failed, authorities said.

And in Tokyo, financial markets and commuters alike were pounded on the first working day after the quake.

Tokyo shares plunged, logging losses not seen since the first months of the global financial crisis. The Nikkei Stock Average closed at 9620.49, down 633.94 points or 6.2%—its sharpest single-day percentage loss since December 2008. The Topix index of all the Tokyo Stock Exchange First Section issues slid 68.55 points, or 7.5%, to 846.96, its heaviest loss since October 2008.

To prevent a cash crunch, the Bank of Japan injected a record 18 trillion yen (about $220 billion) into the short-term money markets and doubled the size of its asset-purchase program.

Ruined Homes and Radiation

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Aly Song/Reuters

Emiko Ohta, 52, can’t bear to look at the debris that was her home in Kuji, Iwate prefecture.

Confusion reigned at Tokyo Electric Power Company, which said it would conduct rolling outages during the day in order to conserve power, then reversed course at the last minute when it saw energy demand was lower than usual. But Tepco’s plans caused Tokyo’s train companies to drastically cut back service, leaving thousands of commuters without a way to get to work.

“I was really confused about both the power cuts and the train services,” said Nobuyoshi Takashimaya, a 56 year old employee at an insurance firm in Tokyo. He said he had to walk one hour from home to reach his office because his train wasn’t running.

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By CHESTER DAWSON in Sendai, Japan,
DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI
in Fukushima Prefecture and JURO OSAWA in Tokyo

WSJ’s Daisuke Wakabayashi reports from Northern Japan, where the extent of the devastation from a 8.9-magnitude earthquake and subsequent Tsunami became even clearer with the arrival of daylight Saturday morning.

Tens of thousands of Self-Defense Forces searched desperately for survivors in earthquake-ravaged northern Japan on Saturday as rescue and relief efforts went into full force, even as concerns rose that a radiation leak may have occurred at a nuclear power facility in the country.

More than 200,000 Japanese were ferried to relief shelters and millions of homes were left without power and water after the country’s most powerful quake ever struck on Friday.

Strong Quake Strikes Japan

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NTV Japan/APTN/Associated Press

Smoke rose Saturday from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, in an image from broadcaster NTV Japan.

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Kyodo/Reuters

Japan Quake’s Effects

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See a map of post-earthquake events in Japan, Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast.

Rescue efforts accelerated as police, fire department and defense forces deployed to severely affected areas. Low-flying government rescue helicopters, including Japanese Self Defense Force Blackhawks, hovered low over houses with roof tiles ripped asunder, looking for survivors. Further up the coast toward Sendai, entire roads and bridges were washed away. A few cars could be seen carefully navigating twisted and sand-strewn roads in an apparent attempt to flee, or survey the damage to their communities. No more than a handful of pedestrians could be seen for hundreds of miles up the coast.

An estimated 3,400 buildings have been partially or completely destroyed. In Sukagawa, a small town located in Fukushima Prefecture, about 200 people stood in line to receive water supplies through the night at an emergency distribution center, and water was rationed to a maximum of 10 liters per household.

“Power is cut in some parts of town, but what we need is water and food,” said Dai Iwaya, a 37-year old city project and fiscal planning officer. Homes are in various states of disrepair, with fallen roof shingles and concrete blocks strewn about.

Shaky Ground

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Colliding plates under earth’s surface make Asia Pacific one of the most tectonically active region on earth.

Northeast Japan was a wasteland Saturday morning after the country’s earthquake triggered a 30-foot tsunami. The cascade of destruction killed hundreds, forced tens of thousands of people from their homes and raised fears of a radioactive release from damaged nuclear power reactors.

Sendai, a city of one million people, was among the hardest-hit areas of the nation. An aerial tour by helicopter Saturday morning near the local airport here showed a dead zone of small planes, helicopters and cars strewn half-submerged in green-brown water.

Along the coast north of the airport, oil-storage tanks burned brightly, sending a funnel of pitch-black smoke nearly a mile into the sky. Fires also burned in industrial parks ringing the area, nearly 24 hours after Friday’s 8.9-magnitude earthquake, one of the world’s five strongest over the past century, ground life across the country to a halt.

Japan’s northeast appeared to have been subject to the most severe damage, as powerful waves swallowed warehouses and fishing boats and swept across neighborhoods and rice paddies. Damage and disruption was aggravated by more than 100 powerful aftershocks in the hours after the first jolt.

As of 5 p.m. Saturday, Japan’s official toll stood at 605 dead, 654 missing, according to police, with more than 1,000 injured.

A building at a troubled Japanese nuclear power facility collapsed Saturday afternoon with smoke billowing out, and officials responded by expanding the evacuation perimeter to a 20-kilometer radius and saying they were preparing to stockpile iodine supplies “just in case.”

Officials declined, however, to say whether the explosion had occurred specifically at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear reactor, or to confirm media reports that a sharp increase in radiation outside the site had been detected.

Disastrous Japan Earthquakes

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Associated Press

In September 1923, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo.

See some of the most powerful earthquakes to have hit the island nation.

The World’s Biggest Earthquakes

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Associated Press

A photographer looked over wreckage as smoke rose in the background from burning oil storage tanks at Valdez, Alaska, March 29, 1964.

Earlier in the day, Tokyo Electric Power Co. had been taking emergency measures to avert a meltdown of a stricken nuclear power plant hit by Friday’s massive tsunami in northern Japan. Those steps appeared to be bringing down the dangerous pressures that had built up in the container, a Tepco spokesman said Saturday afternoon.

Previously, the utility had said there was a risk of a meltdown in the core after the quake cut off power to pumps providing cooling water. That, in turn, could lead to heating of the core, the risk of a meltdown, and the release of radiation.

The impact of the quake’s first jolt, which hit at 2:46 p.m. on a clear Friday afternoon, was felt around the country, including in Tokyo. There, office buildings swayed. Trains, buses and phone service stopped. Millions of households lost power.

Japanese spent the rest of the day and night watching televised images of fires, collapsed buildings and deadly debris-filled waves, delivered by news anchors in hard hats. Powerful aftershocks emanating from off the eastern coast shook the country and its people.

The quake’s footprint spread at about 3 a.m. local time, as new seismic activity rippled through the center to the country’s western coast, raising the specter of a series of quakes extending throughout the country, which sits atop crisscrossing fault lines on the so-called Pacific Rim of Fire.

“I really thought I was going to die,” Yuhei Sakaibara, a reporter for the local Sendai newspaper, said in a telephone interview Friday night. “Dishes went flying in every direction and huge cracks ripped up the walls. When I got outside, I saw that several houses in the neighborhood had collapsed.”

In a town of about 12,500 residents in neighboring Fukushima prefecture—at the outskirts of the worst-damaged areas—roads were cracked. Goro Okawara, a 68-year-old farmer who said he was in the fields when the first quake hit, said he thought the temblor would last 30 seconds but “it just kept going and kept getting worse and worse.”

The traditional kawara tiles on Mr. Okawara’s roof “came flying off,” he said, crumbling and spraying red clay blocks in all directions. A glass door shattered. A crater appeared in his driveway. Nearby, he said, the crematorium where his family was planning a funeral for a relative Saturday had collapsed. At the local cemetery, many headstones were snapped in half.

Some 100,000 people had left Fukushima province by early Saturday, Kyodo reported.

The damage slammed a nation that has had its prolonged share of miseries. A long economic decline saw Japan recently slip behind China as the world’s second-largest economy. A series of scandals have not only discredited and paralyzed its political leadership, but also tarred institutions from elite universities to the ancient sumo sport.

Japan’s long-deadlocked parliament appeared initially to have set aside political bickering and rallied around calls for unity and new measures to keep the quake from further weakening the economy.

With damage estimates likely to mount quickly, news of the quake—which struck near the close of trading Friday on the Tokyo Stock Exchange—may pummel Japanese shares next week. Should the already debt-burdened government be forced to issues trillions of yen in reconstruction bonds, the move would affect the Japanese fixed-income market and weigh on Japan’s already-weakened credit rating from the world’s major rating agencies.

Yumiko Ono reports from Tokyo that more than 1000 people are dead or missing after a massive 8.9 magnitude earthquake and devastating tsunami struck Northern Japan Friday.

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Some economists have argued that a quake could actually lift the economy in the long run, by requiring a surge in rebuilding spending. But more immediately, the impact disrupted a spectrum of the nation’s industries, from auto and consumer-electronics makers to steel and beverage producers, forcing a number of them to shut factories.

Offers of sympathy were swift from around the world, with Japan’s foreign ministry saying it had received assistance offers from some 50 governments. These included China and Russia, which have recently had testy territorial disputes with Tokyo.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao expressed “deep sympathy and solicitude to the Japanese government and the people” and told Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan that China is willing to offer aid.

“Today’s events remind us of just how fragile life can be,” U.S. President Barack Obama said at a news conference. “Our hearts go out to our friends in Japan and across the region.”

Your Tsunami Photos

Were you there when the earthquake hit Japan, or were you among those evacuated along Pacific coasts? Email us your photos of the damage, at yourphotos@wsj.com.

Mr. Obama said he spoke Friday morning with Mr. Kan and offered assistance. He said the U.S. has an aircraft carrier in Japan now, with another is on the way. A third ship is en route to the Marianas Islands to assist as needed, he said.

Friday’s quake was the strongest ever to hit the earthquake-prone country in terms of strength, but didn’t appear, at least in the early hours, to be as devastating as two great quakes of the 20th century. More than 100,000 people died or went missing in the 7.9-magnitude Great Kanto earthquake in 1923. The 1995 Kobe earthquake, which registered 7.3, killed more than 6,000 people in the region.

One reason for the lower death toll appeared to be a heightened readiness in Japan, raised particularly after the Kobe quake embarrassed the government and builders for weak preparedness.

The central bank quickly announced that it has set up a disaster-management team, headed by Bank of Japan Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa, and said it was standing ready to supply liquidity to ensure stability in financial markets. The government will likely first use roughly 200 billion yen ($2.41 billion) in emergency funding left in the budget for the current fiscal year ending this month, several Finance Ministry officials said.

Across Japan, ports, railways and airports shut down. Car-navigation systems indicated that almost every entry point in Tokyo to the nation’s highway system was closed.

In Tokyo, cellphone reception was down, causing long lines to snake around pay phones. Children walked home from school, some with protective head gear.

“
This is truly a horrible tragedy. I feel very sorry for those affected as well as their family members. I hope they can get back on their feet quickly.
”

—James Mims

At 3:24 p.m., the first large aftershock could be felt by those standing in central Tokyo. Looking up at construction cranes shaking violently atop half-completed buildings, people gasped. As of early Saturday, at least 50 aftershocks had been recorded.

–Mariko Sanchanta, Kana Inagaki, Yoshio Takahashi and Mari Iwata contributed to this article.

Write to Daisuke Wakabayashi at Daisuke.Wakabayashi@wsj.com and Juro Osawa at juro.osawa@dowjones.com

By MARI IWATA And ANDREW MONAHAN

TOKYO—A building at a troubled Japanese nuclear power facility collapsed Saturday afternoon with smoke billowing out, and officials responded by expanding the evacuation perimeter to a 20-kilometer radius and saying they were preparing to stockpile iodine supplies “just in case.”

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NTV Japan/APTN/Associated Press

Smoke rose Saturday from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, in an image from broadcaster NTV Japan.

Officials declined, however, to say whether the explosion had occurred specifically at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear reactor, or to confirm media reports that a sharp increase in radiation outside the site had been detected.

Earlier in the day, Tokyo Electric Power Co. had been taking emergency measures to avert a meltdown of a stricken nuclear power plant hit by Friday’s massive tsunami in northern Japan. Those steps appeared to be bringing down the dangerous pressures that had built up in the container, a Tepco spokesman said Saturday afternoon.

Previously, the utility had said there was a risk of a meltdown in the core after the quake cut off power to pumps providing cooling water. That, in turn, could lead to heating of the core, the risk of a meltdown, and the release of radiation.

The plant is located 150 miles, or 240 kilometers, away from Tokyo.

Nuclear Plants in the Zone

Three nuclear plants are close to the quake’s epicenter off the east coast of Honshu.

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A portion of the reactor’s fuel rods, which create heat through a nuclear reaction, had become exposed due to the cooling-system failure. The spokesman for Tepco said 1.5 meters of the 4.5 meter long fuel rods were exposed. It was unclear Saturday afternoon whether the water added by workers had re-covered the rods.

Loss of cooling water resulted in a near meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania in 1979, the worst nuclear incident in U.S. history.

If coolant isn’t restored, the result could be what’s known as a meltdown — extreme heat can melt through the reactor vessel and result in a radioactive release. Reactors have containment domes to catch any release. But there is always the chance that an earthquake could create cracks or other breaches in that containment system.

The Japanese government on Friday declared an emergency at the plant and ordered the evacuation of thousands of residents in the area. Officials steadily increased the evacuation perimeter over the course of the day, extending it late Saturday to 20 kilometers.

By Saturday morning, some 20,000 people had been evacuated from the areas around the two troubled nuclear power plants in the Fukushima prefecture, according to Kyodo News.

Shortly after that, the government nuclear agency confirmed the radiation level at the gate of the plant was eight times as high as normal after some mildly radioactive vapor was released by the plant in an effort to ease pressure. Fukushima Daiichi has six reactors, all built in the 1970s, and three were operating when the quake happened. The No. 1 unit, the oldest and smallest of the reactors, appears to be the main source of the problems.

Asked about the impact of radiation at eight times higher than normal levels, Naoto Sekimura, a professor of quantum engineering at Tokyo University, said on national broadcaster NHK, “This is a minuscule amount. This is not going to have negative impact on the human body.”

Inside the control room at Unit 1, the amount of radiation earlier Saturday reached around 1,000 times normal, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said, according to Kyodo.

Radiation levels aren’t supposed to rise in a control room, which is designed to allow operators to continue working during emergencies and is equipped with filtration systems and other design features to protect workers from radiation exposure. Nevertheless, experts said that a level that is 1,000 times normal probably isn’t immediately harmful.

Later on Saturday, Tokyo Electric said another nuclear-power plant nearby, Fukushima Daini, was experiencing rises of pressure inside its four reactors. A state of emergency was called and precautionary evacuations ordered. The government has ordered the utility to release “potentially radioactive vapor” from the reactors, but hasn’t confirmed any elevated radiation around the plant.

While officials were still scrambling to deal with the Fukushima reactor problem, at least two strong earthquakes hit near Japan’s—and one of the world’s—largest nuclear reactors early Saturday.

The strength of one of the two quakes on the other side of the Japan Sea coast measured 5 on the Japanese scale in Kashiwazaki City in Niigata prefecture, home to another large nuclear power plant. According to NHK, the national broadcaster, the quakes didn’t affect the operations of the plant where four reactors are in operation. In the past, Tokyo Electric’s seven-reactor Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant has operated as much as 8,200-megawatts of generating capacity at the site, about 20% of the total energy supply of the company, which has 28 million customers in the Tokyo.

Meanwhile, the three reactors at Tohoku Electric Power Co.’s Onagawa plant in Miyagi, near the epicenter of the quake, also shut down automatically. A few hours later, the company said that it observed smoke coming from the building housing the No. 1 reactor at the plant. The company said it is still checking the safety of the reactor, but said there has been no leakage of radioactive substances reported. All nuclear plants have containment domes designed to capture any accidental release.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it is ready to provide assistance if requested.

All other Japanese power companies operating nuclear-power plants said their facilities are operating normally.

Nuclear problems are particularly troubling in Japan, which has 56 nuclear reactors, providing about 20% of the nation’s electricity. Eleven reactors shut down as a result of the earthquake, as well as dozens of conventional fossil-fired or hydroelectric plants, leaving millions of people without electricity.

An earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter struck Tokyo Bay, Japan Friday killing and injuring hundreds. The quake touched off tsunami warnings as far away as Hawaii and the U.S. pacific coast.

To cope with a severe power shortage expected to result from reactor shutdowns, Tokyo Electric on Saturday asked industrial customers to close or reduce their operations to save electricity and ensure supplies to households, a spokesman said.

At Fukushima Daiichi, the three reactors that were operating when the earthquake struck shut down as they were designed to do, but pressure built up inside them due to malfunctioning of their cooling system.

When nuclear plants lose grid power, emergency on-site generation is supposed to furnish backup power. But some diesel generators at the Fukushima Daiichi plant reportedly failed a short time later. That forced the plant to resort to batteries to furnish electricity to critical instrumentation and controls for at least one of the reactors, experts said.

Reactors at the plant use a special cooling system, called the Reactor Core Isolation Cooling system, to take waste heat and run some critical systems. But experts said that even that system and batteries wouldn’t be able to furnish as much power as was needed, putting pressure on plant officials to quickly find additional sources of electricity.

Neil Wilmshurst, chief nuclear officer for the Electric Power Research Institute, a U.S.-based electric industry research organization, said Tokyo Electric has rigorous emergency procedures in place.

“The first thing you do is assure safe shutdown of reactors and continued cooling of the reactor cores and the spent-fuel pool,” he said. Next comes the process of assessing damage. He said seismic recorders at the site will be analyzed and the data will be compared against the level of shaking the plant is engineered to withstand. Employees examine every part of the plant searching for visible or hidden damage, a process that can take weeks or months.

Experts said that Tokyo Electric has improved its processes and communications since a July 2007 earthquake heavily damaged the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. The entire plant was shut down for 21 months following that quake, and some reactors still aren’t back in operation.

Tokyo Electric was criticized after the 2007 quake for secrecy concerning how it was responding to problems at the Kashiwazaki plant and for rejecting inspection and assistance offers from the IAEA, which is intended to create confidence in the way an emergency is handled.

The Kashiwazaki plant suffered from seismic activity, in the 2007 quake, that exceeded the level for which it was designed, calling into question seismic assumptions made by regulators and the plant operator. There was a radioactive release when water sloshed out of spent-fuel-cooling pools and spilled into the Sea of Japan.

Experts said the global nuclear industry will try to learn from Japan’s experience this time as well.

“This is, no doubt, a significant event for Japan and the nuclear industry around the world” said EPRI’s Mr.Wilmshurst, especially since a new generation of nuclear plants is being built. He added it’s critical to determine whether plants performed as designed and what improvements should be made, such as to emergency power systems.

Tsunami fears spread to many nations with coastal nuclear reactors including Korea, China, Taiwan and the U.S. In Calfornia, PGE Corp’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant went on alert.

Workers are bringing down dangerous pressures that had built up in the container for the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear reactor, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday afternoon.

“The steps we have taken through relieving the pressure inside the container and adding additional water to cool the rods appear to be succeeding in averting any damage to the reactor core, which was our main priority,” said a Tepco spokesman.

Previously, the utility had said there was a risk of a meltdown in the core after the quake cut off power to pumps providing cooling water. That, in turn, could lead to heating of the core, the risk of a meltdown, and the release of radiation.

The company, known as Tepco, is the owner of the plant, which is located 150 miles, or 240 kilometers, away from Tokyo.

A portion of the reactor’s fuel rods, which create heat through a nuclear reaction, had become exposed due to the cooling-system failure. The spokesman for Tepco said 1.5 meters of the 4.5 meter long fuel rods were exposed. It was unclear Saturday afternoon whether the water added by workers had re-covered the rods.

Loss of cooling water resulted in a near meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania in 1979, the worst nuclear incident in U.S. history.

If coolant isn’t restored, the result could be what’s known as a meltdown — extreme heat can melt through the reactor vessel and result in a radioactive release. Reactors have containment domes to catch any release. But there is always the chance that an earthquake could create cracks or other breaches in that containment system.

The Japanese government on Friday declared an emergency at the plant and ordered the evacuation of thousands of residents in the area. Officials steadily increased the evacuation perimeter and at about 6 a.m. local time, announced that anyone within 10 kilometers should leave the area—up from three kilometers a few hours earlier.

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Zuma Press

An aerial-view of the Japanese nuclear power plant Fukushima Daiichi, Japan

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By Saturday morning, some 20,000 people had been evacuated from the areas around the two troubled nuclear power plants in the Fukushima prefecture, according to Kyodo News.

Shortly after that, the government nuclear agency confirmed the radiation level at the gate of the plant was eight times as high as normal after some mildly radioactive vapor was released by the plant in an effort to ease pressure. Fukushima Daiichi has six reactors, all built in the 1970s, and three were operating when the quake happened. The No. 1 unit, the oldest and smallest of the reactors, appears to be the main source of the problems.

Asked about the impact of radiation at eight times higher than normal levels, Naoto Sekimura, a professor of quantum engineering at Tokyo University, said on national broadcaster NHK, “This is a minuscule amount. This is not going to have negative impact on the human body.”

Inside the control room at Unit 1, the amount of radiation earlier Saturday reached around 1,000 times normal, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said, according to Kyodo. Attempts to fix the problem at the plant—a buildup of heat and pressure inside the reactor—were going more slowly than planned, according to the government’s nuclear agency, quoted by the NHK broadcaster.

Radiation levels aren’t supposed to rise in a control room, which is designed to allow operators to continue working during emergencies and is equipped with filtration systems and other design features to protect workers from radiation exposure. Nevertheless, experts said that a level that is 1,000 times normal probably isn’t immediately harmful.

Later on Saturday, Tokyo Electric said another nuclear-power plant nearby, Fukushima Daini, was experiencing rises of pressure inside its four reactors. A state of emergency was called and precautionary evacuations ordered. The government has ordered the utility to release “potentially radioactive vapor” from the reactors, but hasn’t confirmed any elevated radiation around the plant.

While officials were still scrambling to deal with the Fukushima reactor problem, at least two strong earthquakes hit near Japan’s—and one of the world’s—largest nuclear reactors early Saturday.

The strength of one of the two quakes on the other side of the Japan Sea coast measured 5 on the Japanese scale in Kashiwazaki City in Niigata prefecture, home to another large nuclear power plant. According to NHK, the national broadcaster, the quakes didn’t affect the operations of the plant where four reactors are in operation. In the past, Tokyo Electric’s seven-reactor Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant has operated as much as 8,200-megawatts of generating capacity at the site, about 20% of the total energy supply of the company, which has 28 million customers in the Tokyo.

An earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter struck Tokyo Bay, Japan Friday killing and injuring hundreds. The quake touched off tsunami warnings as far away as Hawaii and the U.S. pacific coast.

 

Asia Today: Japan Damage Mounts; Radioactive Fears

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Japan’s strongest earthquake on record has killed hundreds and raised fears about radioactive leaks from damaged nuclear power reactors. WSJ’s Jake Lee and Mariko Sanchanta, deputy Tokyo bureau chief, discuss.

 

Asia Today: Massive Earthquake Strikes Japan

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A devastating 8.9-magnitude earthquake has struck Northern Japan. What are the implications for a country already coping with slow economic growth and political instability? WSJ’s Jake Lee and Mariko Sanchanta, deputy Tokyo bureau chief, discuss.

Japan Quake’s Effects

View Interactive

See a map of post-earthquake events in Japan, Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast.

Shaky Ground: Regional Big Ones

View Interactive

Colliding plates under earth’s surface make Asia Pacific one of the most tectonically active region on earth.

Disastrous Quakes in Japan’s Past

View Slideshow

Associated Press

See a historical gallery of past earthquakes in Japan.

The World’s Biggest Quakes

View Interactive

Associated Press

A photographer looked over wreckage as smoke rose in the background from burning oil storage tanks at Valdez, Alaska, March 29, 1964.

Meanwhile, the three reactors at Tohoku Electric Power Co.’s Onagawa plant in Miyagi, near the epicenter of the quake, also shut down automatically. A few hours later, the company said that it observed smoke coming from the building housing the No. 1 reactor at the plant. The company said it is still checking the safety of the reactor, but said there has been no leakage of radioactive substances reported. All nuclear plants have containment domes designed to capture any accidental release.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it is ready to provide assistance if requested.

All other Japanese power companies operating nuclear-power plants said their facilities are operating normally.

Nuclear problems are particularly troubling in Japan, which has 56 nuclear reactors, providing about 20% of the nation’s electricity. Eleven reactors shut down as a result of the earthquake, as well as dozens of conventional fossil-fired or hydroelectric plants, leaving millions of people without electricity.

An earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter struck Tokyo Bay, Japan Friday killing and injuring hundreds. The quake touched off tsunami warnings as far away as Hawaii and the U.S. pacific coast.

Japan’s strongest earthquake on record has killed hundreds and raised fears about

To cope with a severe power shortage expected to result from reactor shutdowns, Tokyo Electric on Saturday asked industrial customers to close or reduce their operations to save electricity and ensure supplies to households, a spokesman said.

At Fukushima Daiichi, the three reactors that were operating when the earthquake struck shut down as they were designed to do, but pressure built up inside them due to malfunctioning of their cooling system.

When nuclear plants lose grid power, emergency on-site generation is supposed to furnish backup power. But some diesel generators at the Fukushima Daiichi plant reportedly failed a short time later. That forced the plant to resort to batteries to furnish electricity to critical instrumentation and controls for at least one of the reactors, experts said.

Reactors at the plant use a special cooling system, called the Reactor Core Isolation Cooling system, to take waste heat and run some critical systems. But experts said that even that system and batteries wouldn’t be able to furnish as much power as was needed, putting pressure on plant officials to quickly find additional sources of electricity.

A State Department spokeswoman said late Friday afternoon that, contrary to remarks made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier in the day, the U.S. Air Force didn’t provide assistance to the Japanese nuclear power plant stricken by the quake.

“I’m told that ultimately the Japanese Government handled the situation on its own,” said Julie Reside, a State Department spokeswoman.

Neil Wilmshurst, chief nuclear officer for the Electric Power Research Institute, a U.S.-based electric industry research organization, said Tokyo Electric has rigorous emergency procedures in place.

“The first thing you do is assure safe shutdown of reactors and continued cooling of the reactor cores and the spent-fuel pool,” he said. Next comes the process of assessing damage. He said seismic recorders at the site will be analyzed and the data will be compared against the level of shaking the plant is engineered to withstand. Employees examine every part of the plant searching for visible or hidden damage, a process that can take weeks or months.

Experts said that Tokyo Electric has improved its processes and communications since a July 2007 earthquake heavily damaged the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. The entire plant was shut down for 21 months following that quake, and some reactors still aren’t back in operation.

Tokyo Electric was criticized after the 2007 quake for secrecy concerning how it was responding to problems at the Kashiwazaki plant and for rejecting inspection and assistance offers from the IAEA, which is intended to create confidence in the way an emergency is handled.

The Kashiwazaki plant suffered from seismic activity, in the 2007 quake, that exceeded the level for which it was designed, calling into question seismic assumptions made by regulators and the plant operator. There was a radioactive release when water sloshed out of spent-fuel-cooling pools and spilled into the Sea of Japan.

Experts said the global nuclear industry will try to learn from Japan’s experience this time as well.

“This is, no doubt, a significant event for Japan and the nuclear industry around the world” said EPRI’s Mr.Wilmshurst, especially since a new generation of nuclear plants is being built. He added it’s critical to determine whether plants performed as designed and what improvements should be made, such as to emergency power systems.

Tsunami fears spread to many nations with coastal nuclear reactors including Korea, China, Taiwan and the U.S. In Calfornia, PGE Corp’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant went on alert.

GOING GREEN THE IMPRINTED PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTS WAY

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438

Summary:
Using eco-friendly green promotional products and renewable energy sources reduces greenhouse emissions that have a negative impact on our planet.

Using solar; water and shake powered products such as Solar Flashlights helps keep batteries out of our landfills. Annually, nearly 3 Billion batteries are used and then thrown away by American households. Using biodegradable products reduces landfill build up.

Keywords:
promotional products, green products, eco-friendly products, water bottle, non woven bags

Article Body:
Using eco-friendly green promotional products and renewable energy sources reduces greenhouse emissions that have a negative impact on our planet.

Using solar; water and shake powered products such as Solar Flashlights helps keep batteries out of our landfills. Annually, nearly 3 Billion batteries are used and then thrown away by American households. Using biodegradable products reduces landfill build up.

GREEN FACTS:
According to the Container Recycling Institute, Americans used 4 billion pounds of plastic in the form of bottles in 2002. The main culprit is “use once & toss” water and beverage bottles. It takes a plastic water bottle 700 years before it starts to decompose. Why not “Go Green”?use a reusable Polycarbonate Sport Bottle from MyLogoImprinted.com instead.

The average American family of four tosses out approx. 1,500 plastic bags a year. Each one can take up to 1,000 years to decompose. Most of these bags are not biodegrading; the plastic slowly breaks down into smaller components until it leaches into the soil or water. Paper bags are biodegradable but the energy, chemicals, trees and water consumed to recycle them is a drain on the environment. Why not “Go Green”?use reusable non-woven bags, organic cotton bags, and natural jute bags for everyday use as you grocery shop or go to a business tradeshow.

Since there are lots of ways to be Eco-Responsible and use “Green Products” and it is not always clear what makes one approach better than the next, listed below are qualities and questions to help inform you on what makes a product eco-friendly.

Recycled ? materials destined for disposal are reclaimed and converted into new products such as Polycarbonate Water Bottles, Non-Woven Bags and Reusable Grocery Bags.

Bioplastic ? what percent of a product is made from a renewable resource so you won’t be mislead.

Organic ? what percentage is organic so you will not have to guess

Natural ? knowing when a product is made from materials and exactly what the ingredients are.

Reusable ? what products were created with intent to be used in place of a disposable item.

Creating innovative “Green Products” for the future will be important by finding new ways of utilizing recycled materials that can corporately impact your business as well. Many corporations are taking up the call of being responsible by requesting eco-friendly products and giving them away as marketing tools to let you know they are being responsible when it comes to promoting there company and taking-up the call of making sound environmental choices.

If we combine all of our individual and corporate efforts, together we can make a difference to our World today and more importantly we can make a difference to our future!