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Japan raises nuclear alert level | Japan raises nuclear alert level |
(40 minutes later) | |
Japan has raised the alert level at a stricken nuclear plant from four to five on a seven-point international scale for atomic accidents. | |
The move places the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi site two levels below Ukraine's 1986 Chernobyl disaster. | |
The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog warned in Tokyo meanwhile that the battle to stabilise the plant was a race against the clock. | The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog warned in Tokyo meanwhile that the battle to stabilise the plant was a race against the clock. |
The crisis was triggered by last week's 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami. | The crisis was triggered by last week's 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami. |
The Japanese nuclear agency's decision to raise the alert level to five grades the Fukushima situation as an "accident with wider consequences". | |
It also places the crisis on a par with Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the US in 1979. | It also places the crisis on a par with Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the US in 1979. |
Japan's atomic crisis was triggered by last week's natural disaster, which has left more than 16,000 people dead or missing. | |
According to the latest figures, 6,405 people are confirmed as dead and about 10,200 are listed as missing. | |
'Race against time' | |
Further heavy snowfall overnight in the quake zone has brought more misery to survivors and all but ended hopes of finding anyone else alive in the rubble. | |
On Friday, people across the nation observed a minute's silence at 1446 local time (0546 GMT), exactly a week after the disaster. | |
Relief workers in the disaster zone bowed their heads and elderly survivors in evacuation centres wept as the country paused to remember. | |
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, arrived in Tokyo and said the Fukushima crisis was a "race against the clock". | |
"This is not something that just Japan should deal with, and people of the entire world should co-operate with Japan and the people in the disaster areas," said Mr Amano, a Japanese citizen. | |
He said he would not visit the Fukushima Daiichi site on his current trip to the country. | |
His four-member team of nuclear experts would start by monitoring radiation in the capital, he said, before moving to the vicinity of the quake-hit facility, reports Kyodo news agency. |