Explosion at Japanese Nuke Plant

The problems seem to be mounting for the Japanese nuke plants that were damaged by the earthquake and tsunami:

Television pictures showed a massive blast at one of the buildings of the Fukushima-Daiichi plant, about 250km (160 miles) north-east of Tokyo.

A huge cloud of smoke billowed out and large bits of debris were flung far from the building.

The Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the plant's operator, said four workers had been injured.

The Japanese government's chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, said the concrete building housing the plant's number one reactor had collapsed but the metal reactor container inside was not damaged.

He said radiation levels around the plant had fallen after the explosion.

Officials ordered the evacuation zone around the plant expanded from a 10km radius to 20km. BBC correspondent Nick Ravenscroft said police stopped him 60km from the Fukushima-Daiichi plant.

Plans are being made to distribute iodine, which can be used to combat radiation sickness, to residents of the evacuation zone.

Japan's nuclear agency said earlier on Saturday that radioactive caesium and iodine had been detected near the number one reactor of the power station.

The agency said this could indicate that containers of uranium fuel inside the reactor may have begun melting.

Air and steam, with some level of radioactivity, was earlier released from several of the reactors at both plants in an effort to relieve the huge amount of pressure building up inside.

Mr Kan said the amount of radiation released was "tiny".

I would have thought that after this many hours had gone by the Japanese would have been able to get resources to the plant to get them under control, even if the local power is still out. Apparently the problem is bigger than anything they'd ever planned for.