17 March,2011 07:10 AM IST | | Agencies
An elite team of engineers who represent Japan's desperate last line of defence against a nuclear catastrophe was making another bid to bring the Fukushima power plant under control.
The skeleton crew of 50 returned to ground zero after white smoke earlier belched from one reactor and fire was doused in another. The 50 are working amid decreasing but still dangerously high levels of radiation.
"The longer they stay the more dangerous it becomes for them," said expert Margaret Harding. "I think it is a testament to their guts for them to say, 'We'll stay and if that means we go, we go."
Radiation levels at the plant soared to dangerous levels before dropping later in the day.Authorities fear the containment vessel at the plant's No. 3 reactor has ruptured, spewing radioactive steam into the atmosphere.
More than 2,00,000 people have been evacuated from a 30-km radius of the plant, and anyone still in the area has been warned to stay indoors amid growing concerns about radiation levels.
The container of the No. 3 reactor is feared to have been damaged and leaking high-level radiation.
The radiation level briefly topped 6.4 millisieverts per hour at the plant. A second fire at the No. 4 reactor is believed to have been brought under control.
u00a0The surge in radiation was apparently the result of an explosion in the complex's Unit 4 reactor on Tuesday.
That blast is thought to have damaged the reactor's suppression chamber, a water-filled pipe outside the nuclear core that is part of the emergency cooling system.
For love
Zack Branham, a 24 year-old American who was teaching English in Japan, couldn't contact his girlfriend after the Japan tsunami struck their small coastal towns. Enduring by foot, he braved impassable roads to her town -- a mere four miles away -- for 20 hours to make sure she was okay.
