U.S. Begins Airlift as Japan Battles Nuclear Reactor Leaks

The U.S. began airlifting citizens from Japan along with military and diplomatic families as authorities struggled to contain leaks from the quake-stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant.

The U.S., U.K. and Australia raised their alert levels, telling nationals to keep at least 50 miles (80 kilometers) away from the Dai-Ichi facility. Walt Disney Co. suspended operations in Tokyo, while British Airways became the latest carrier to pull crews out of the city, which lies about 135 miles to the south of the reactors.

Shortages of fuel, water and food assailed Fukushima, a city of 290,000 in the shadow of an unfolding nuclear crisis. Helicopters doused 30 metric tons of water on pools used to cool spent fuel rods yesterday. A bid to spray water onto the No. 3 reactor may have worked, a Tokyo Electric Power Co. official said at a briefing. The company is also trying to connect a power cable to the plant.

“New challenges are crashing down on us one after another,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan said yesterday in Tokyo. “We will overcome these difficulties through extreme effort and meet the expectations of our people, who are remaining calm.”

The magnitude-9 earthquake that hit March 11 sparked a 7- meter (23-foot) tsunami that engulfed Japan’s northeast coast and knocked out cooling systems at the Dai-Ichi plant. There were 6,406 confirmed dead, with 10,259 missing as of 11 a.m. Tokyo time, the National Police Agency said.

Hong Kong Flights

Hong Kong’s government urged its residents living in Tokyo to return home or move to southern Japan “due to the evolving situation.” The city is arranging for additional flights to leave from Tokyo’s Narita airport, its government said in a statement posted on its website yesterday evening.

The U.S. government evacuated 97 citizens, including family members of employees, to Taiwan from Japan, according to Sheila Paskman, a spokeswoman for the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto embassy on the island. Another flight of evacuees will leave later today to Taiwan or Seoul, Paskman said by telephone from Taipei today.

Societe Generale SA, France’s second-largest bank, said it was assisting foreign employees and their families to leave Japan if they wished to do so, while allowing local staff to work from home or relocate. Blackstone Group LP and BNP Paribas SA were among companies that shifted operations from Tokyo.

Aftershocks, Blackouts

“There are still aftershocks, we have the rolling blackouts in our area and concern about the radiation,” Keith Cash, a preschool teacher at the U.S. Atsugi air base, said as he prepared to put his wife and four children on a plane back to the U.S. “All of those things put together have really forced us to decide that we want to have them go back.”

The Group of Seven agreed to jointly intervene in the foreign exchange market for the first time in more than a decade after Japan’s currency soared, according to a joint statement today following a conference call of the nations’ finance ministers and central bank chiefs. The quake triggered a drop in global stocks and drove the yen to a post-World War II high.

Japan’s benchmark Topix index rose 2.1 percent at 2:24 p.m., curtailing its loss since the disaster to 10 percent. In the U.S., investor speculation that Japan will contain the nuclear crisis contributed to a stock rally that broke a three-day losing streak for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. The iShares MSCI Japan Index Fund tracking 323 securities rose 4.6 percent, following a 14 percent slump over the previous five days.

Obama Assures U.S.

President Barack Obama said he’s “confident” that Japan will rebuild and recover. At the White House later in the day, Obama said that the U.S. faces no danger of “harmful levels of radiation” reaching the country or its Pacific territories and that he has ordered a “comprehensive review” of safety at domestic nuclear plants.

Power may be restored to one of the crippled reactors at Japan’s damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant by this afternoon, improving the odds that workers can prevent a meltdown and further radiation leaks.

In Fukushima city, the capital of the prefecture that is home to the plant, long lines formed at gas stations, most restaurants and supermarkets were shut and there was no running water. Radiation levels have declined to safe levels for workers, Japanese government spokesman Yukio Edano said.

May Take Weeks

Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said yesterday there is a possibility of no water at the No. 4 reactor’s spent- fuel cooling pool. If exposed to air, the fuel rods could decay, catch fire and spew radioactive materials into the air. The plant has six reactors, three of which have been damaged by explosions following the quake.

The situation “will take some time, possibly weeks” to resolve, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko told reporters in Washington yesterday. “There clearly appears to be a challenge keeping that spent fuel filled with sufficient water.” Based on the NRC’s advice, the U.S. urged Americans within a 50-mile radius of the plant to leave.

The U.S. chartered 14 buses that are en route to the Sendai area for U.S. residents and tourists who wish to leave, Under Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy said. Those buses will take U.S. citizens to Tokyo for flights out of Japan.

There are an estimated 350,000 U.S. citizens in Japan, including about 90,000 in the Tokyo area, Kennedy said.

Consider Departing

U.S. nationals “in Japan should consider departing,” the State Department said in an e-mailed statement.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said it has intensified efforts to detect radiation on flights arriving from Japan and has found no dangerous levels for passengers or cargo.

The U.K. government is also hiring planes to take its nationals to Hong Kong, the Foreign Office said on its website.

Australia recommended that its citizens stay away from the northern part of Honshu island and Tokyo unless their presence is essential. France, Germany and China were among countries that urged nationals to leave Japan.

In 2009, the latest data available, there were 66,876 U.S. and Canadian citizens registered with Japan’s Justice Ministry, along with 16,597 Britons and 14,179 from Australia and New Zealand. China had 680,518 residents and the Philippines 211,716.

Fear that radiation would spread through the region sparked panic-buying in China. Shoppers cleared shelves of salt, viewed as a defense against radiation exposure.

--With assistance from Takahiko Hyuga, Yukiko Hagiwara, Takashi Hirokawa and Anna Kitanaka in Tokyo, Naoko Fujimura and Makiko Kitamura in Osaka, Michael Forsythe in Beijing, Bomi Lim in Seoul, Nicholas Johnston and Roger Runningen in Washington, and Ben Richardson in Hong Kong. Editors: Chitra Somayaji, Russell Ward