TOKYO (MNI) – Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Monday that the
government will announce a revised plan aimed at resolving the nation’s
worst nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex
after the operator confirmed the situation at the plant was worse than
had earlier been believed.

“We may need to make some changes to our existing solution plan to
deal with the nuclear power accident, but I also believe we can still
proceed with our orignal schedule,” Kan told a parliamentary committee.

Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the quake-hit power
station in Fukushima located about 200 kilometers northeast of Tokyo,
has said it will present a revised radiation containment plan on
Tuesday.

On the weekend the plant operator confirmed that there had been a
partial meltdown of fuel in Reactor No. 1 after the quake, and that it
was likely that there was substantial damage to the fuel cores of
Reactors 2 and 3.

Under the plan announced on April 17, TEPCO said it aims to restore
the cooling systems for the six reactors within three months as the
first phase of a roadmap to settle the worst radiation crisis since the
1986 Chernobyl meltdown.

TEPCO also aims to complete a cold shutdown over the following
three to six months after the first phase is completed.

The No. 1 Reactor at the facility was halted shortly after the 1446
JST (0546 GMT) earthquake while its water level dropped to the upper
part of the fuel rods and the temperature began to rise around 1800 JST
(0900 GMT).

The damage to the fuel had begun by 1930 JST with most of it having
melted by 0650 JST the following day (2150 GMT March 11), according to
TEPCO.

The plant operator also said that it has discovered some 3,000
tonnes of highly radioactive water in the basement of the No. 1 reactor
building as the melted fuel is believed to have created holes to the
bottom of the reactor.

TEPCO also said that a survey conducted by an unmanned robot found
radiation levels of 1,000-2,000 millisieverts per hour in some parts of
the ground level of the No. 1 reactor, way above the annual allowable
dosage limit of 250 millisieverts for workers.

In a related revelation, Junichi Matsumoto, an official in charge
of TEPCO’s nuclear-power development, said on Sunday that the pressure
vessels at the No. 2 and 3 reactors were likely to be damaged and
leaking water.

Meanwhile, the government on May 6 urged Chubu Electric Power Co to
suspend all operations at its Hamaoka nuclear power station in Shizuoka
Prefecture, about 180 kilometers west of Tokyo, until safety measures
against earthquakes and tsunami are fully in place. The process is
estimated to take a few years and is thus causing jitters about power
supply in central Japan.

The request came as hundreds of aftershocks had jolted wide areas
of central, eastern and northern Japan since the 9.0-magnitude
earthquake wrecked the northeastern Pacific coast on March 11, the
largest ever for Japan.

Kan said he singled out Hamaoka out of many other nuclear power
plants in Japan because the government predicts an 87% chance of a
massive earthquake in the Tokai region in the next 30 years.

In the region served by Chubu Electric, leading automakers such as
Toyota Motor and Suzuki Motor operate their key assembly plants.

The Hamaoka plant accounted for 15% of Chubu Electric’s total
output in fiscal 2010.

Among its 10 conventional power plants in Aichi and Mie prefectures
in central Japan, Chubu Electric has 35 generating units with a combined
output of roughly 24 million kilowatts.

The offline capacity totals about 1.84 million kilowatts,
equivalent to half the output from the three Hamaoka reactors, according
to the Nikkei.

The economy has already been hit by power shortages in the first
weeks of the disaster as Tokyo and its neighbouring cities rely heavily
on electricity generated in Fukushima.

Tokyo Electric is trying to meet the peak time demand in the summer
by increasing thermal power generation while asking businesses and
households to slash energy consumption.

As the March 11 earthquake disaster wrecked supply chains for
automobile production and dampened consumer sentiment, new vehicle sales
tumbled at a record pace in April, according to data released by the
Japan Automobile Dealers Association.

New vehicle sales plunged 51.0% from a year earlier to 108,824 last
month, the eighth straight month of a year-on-year decline, following a
37.0% drop in March.

The previous record decline was marked in May 1974, when sales
plunged 45.1% following the outbreak of the first oil crisis.

On the bright side, Japan’s core private-sector machinery orders
unexpectedly rebounded in March and are forecast to jump by 10% in the
second quarter, escaping unscathed from the March 11 earthquake
disaster, data from the Cabinet Office showed on Monday.

Core machinery orders rose a seasonally adjusted 2.9% in March
following a revised fall of 1.9% (initially -2.3%), a rise of 3.9%
(revised from +4.2%) in January and a decline of 0.2% (revised from
+1.7%) in December.

The March core figure came in much stronger than the 10.0% m/m fall
expected in the median forecast in a MNI survey of economists. The
Cabinet Office made annual revisions to seasonal adjustments on previous
figures.

Meantime, the official death toll from the March 11 disaster is now
15,057 people, with 9,121 still missing, as of Sunday, according to the
National Policy Agency.

tokyo@marketnews.com
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