‘‘We monitored a higher than normal amount of radiation in the morning in Tokyo, but we don’t consider it to be at a level where the human body is affected,’’ said Sairi Koga, an official of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Nuclear emergency ... how the reactors work. Another city official said 0.809 of a micro-sievert was measured between 10am and 11am in Tokyo today. Jiji Press said this figure was 20 times higher than on Monday. Kan warned people living up to 10 kilometres beyond a 20km exclusion zone around the nuclear plant to stay indoors or risk radiation sickness. The fire, which was later reported to be out, had burned in the plant’s No 4 reactor, he said, meaning four out of six reactors at the facility were in trouble.

As of 10.22am local time, 400 millisieverts of radiation were detected at the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters. That is 20 times the annual limit for nuclear industry employees and uranium miners, according to the World Nuclear Association. A satellite image shows the destruction at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Credit:DigitalGlobe A radiation dose of 100 millisieverts a year is the lowest level at which any increase in cancer is evident, the London-based WNA said on its website. As well as the atomic emergency, Japan is struggling to cope with the enormity of the damage from Friday’s record-breaking quake and the tsunami, destroying all before it in the northeast. The official toll had risen to 2414, police said, but officials said at least 10,000 were likely to have died.

The crisis at the ageing Fukushima plant had escalated daily since the quake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems. On Saturday, an explosion blew apart the building surrounding the plant’s No 1 reactor. On Monday, a blast hit the No 3 reactor, injuring 11 people and sending plumes of smoke billowing into the sky. Early on Tuesday, a blast hit the No 2 reactor, followed shortly after by a hydrogen explosion which started a fire at the No 4 reactor. Chief government spokesman Yukio Edano said radioactive substances had leaked along with the hydrogen. CHILDREN FALLING ILL

‘‘What we most fear is a radiation leak from the nuclear plant,’’ Kaoru Hashimoto, 36, a housewife living in Fukushima city, 80 kilometres northwest of the stricken plant, said in a phone interview. ‘‘Not much confirmed information is coming to us, so we are in trouble about how to cope with the situation.’’Hashimoto said supermarkets were open but shelves were empty. ‘‘Many children are sick in this cold weather but pharmacies are closed. Emergency relief goods have not reached evacuation centres in the city. ‘‘I’m wondering how long we can manage with the food we have in stock. Everyone is anxious and wants to get out of town. But there is no more petrol. We are afraid of using a car as we may run out of petrol.’’ The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tokyo had asked for expert assistance in the aftermath of the quake, which US seismologists had revised up from 8.9 to 9.0-magnitude.

But the IAEA’s Japanese chief Yukiya Amano moved to calm global fears that the situation could escalate to rival the Chernobyl nuclear crisis in 1986. ‘‘Let me say that the possibility that the development of this accident into one like Chernobyl is very unlikely,’’ he said. Officials have already evacuated 210,000 people in the exclusion zone around the crippled Japanese plant.At one shelter, a young woman holding her baby told public broadcaster NHK: ‘‘I didn’t want this baby to be exposed to radiation. I wanted to avoid that, no matter what.’’ Further north in the region of Miyagi, which took the full brunt of Friday’s terrifying wall of water, rescue teams searching through the shattered debris of towns and villages have found 2000 bodies. And the Miyagi police chief said he was certain more than 10,000 people had perished in his prefecture.

Millions have been left without water, electricity, fuel or enough food, and hundreds of thousands more are homeless and facing harsh conditions, with sub-zero temperatures overnight, and snow and rain forecast. Kaori Ohashi, 39, a mother-of-two working in a nursing home for the elderly near the city of Sendai, spent two nights trapped in the building after its first floor was submerged by the tsunami. ‘‘Snow started to fall and it became dark. We lost power. I thought ’This is a nightmare’,’’ Ohashi said after she was rescued. At least 1.4 million people in Japan were temporarily without running water and more than 500,000 were taking shelter in evacuation centres, said the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. At a hospital in the fishing town of Kesennuma, also hit by the tsunami, an official said basic supplies were desperately needed.

‘‘We are critically short of water,’’ he said. ‘‘Water is very important here. To save it, we need a lot of disposable dishes. We need blankets as well.’’ Aid workers and search teams from across the world joined 100,000 Japanese soldiers in a massive relief push as the country suffered a wave of major aftershocks. The foreign ministry expressed its ‘‘heartfelt appreciation’’ for offers of help pouring in from around the world, and said rescue teams from 11 countries including China - Japan’s traditional rival - were on the ground.With ports, airports, highways and manufacturing plants shut down, the government predicted ‘‘considerable impact on a wide range of our country’s economic activities’’. Leading risk analysis firm AIR Worldwide said the quake alone would exact an economic toll estimated at up to $A34 billion.

FEARS FOR AUSTRALIANS



People should not be alarmed by the gap between the number of Australians - 3342 - registered as in Japan when Friday's devastating earthquake and tsunami struck and the 2630 confirmed as safe, Australia's Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said today. "It's simply a methodical process we go through to reduce this down one by one and it takes time," Mr Rudd told ABC radio today. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) crisis centre had received 7653 calls from members of the public, concerned about family and friends. Loading Australia has sent a search-and-rescue team to Japan, and will provide any requested assistance, including victim identification teams and nuclear experts, Mr Rudd said.







- AGENCIES