Japan raises nuclear alert level

Japan raises nuclear alert level

Japan has raised the alert level at a stricken nuclear plant from four to five on a seven-point international scale for atomic incidents.

The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi site is now two levels below Ukraine's 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog warned in Tokyo the battle to stabilise the plant was a race against time.

The crisis was prompted by last week's huge quake and tsunami, which has left at least 16,000 people dead or missing.

The Japanese nuclear agency's decision to raise the alert level to five grades Fukushima's as an "accident with wider consequences".

It also places the situation there on a par with 1979's Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the US.
Meanwhile, further heavy snowfall overnight all but ended hopes of rescuing anyone else from the rubble after the 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami.
Millions of survivors have been left without water, electricity, fuel or enough food; hundreds of thousands more are homeless.
According to the latest figures, 6,405 people are dead and about 10,200 are missing.
On Friday, people across Japan observed a minute's silence at 1446 (0546 GMT), exactly one week after the disaster.
As the country paused to remember, relief workers toiling in the ruins bowed their heads, while elderly survivors in evacuation centres wept.