New blast at Japan nuclear plant
Baku, March 14 (AZERTAC). A second explosion has hit the nuclear plant in Japan that was damaged in Friday`s earthquake, but officials said the reactor core was still intact.
TV footage showed smoke rising from Fukushima Daiichi`s reactor 3, two days after an explosion hit reactor 1.
The latest blast, said to have been caused by a hydrogen build-up, injured 11 people, one of them seriously.
Soon afterwards, the government announced a third reactor at the plant had lost its cooling system.
Officials said radiation levels were below legal limits, but the US military - which has been helping the relief effort - said it had moved away from the area after one of its aircraft carriers detected low-level radiation about 100 miles (160km) offshore.
Technicians have been battling to cool three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant since Friday, when the quake and tsunami combined to knock out the cooling system.
The government said an operation pumping seawater into the reactors to help lower the temperature was still going on despite the explosion.
In other developments:
Two thousand bodies have been found on the shores of Miyagi prefecture, Japanese media are reporting
The government announced it was pumping 15 trillion yen ($182bn; £113bn) into the economy to prop up the markets - which slumped on opening
Prime Minister Naoto Kan postponed planned rolling powercuts, saying they may not be needed if householders could conserve energy
It looks unlikely that many survivors will be found, she adds.
Japanese police have so far confirmed 1,597 deaths, but the final toll is expected to be much higher.
Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from the area around Fukushima Daiichi plant.
At least 22 people are now said to be undergoing treatment for radiation exposure.
Government spokesman Yukio Edano said there was a low possibility of radioactive contamination from Monday`s explosion. The plant operators, Tokyo Electric Power, said the reactor`s containment vessel had resisted the explosion.
Experts say a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl in the 1980s is highly unlikely because the reactors are built to a much higher standard and have much more rigorous safety measures.
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