World Cup win gives Japan a glimmer of relief

TOKYO -- After months of grief and gloom, Japan found a reason to unite in celebration.

Japanese who have shared in mourning for months boisterously cheered a Women's World Cup victory that briefly put aside the long and uncertain recovery from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

Fans decked out in the national team's dark blue uniforms hugged and sang in Tokyo as they watched their team lift the winner's trophy on live broadcasts from Frankfurt, Germany.

"This is a chance to forget the nuclear disaster and everything else, to just to unite and celebrate," said Toru Komatsu, 22.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan called the victory the "greatest gift" to the nation, especially to the residents of the northeast coast most devastated by the March 11 disaster. The earthquake and tsunami left nearly 23,000 people dead or missing and caused partial meltdowns at a nuclear power plant.

"(The team) gave courage for everyone by showing a diehard match even when they were on the back foot," Kan said in the statement.

Japan became the first Asian nation to win the Women's World Cup, beating the U.S., 3-1, in a shoot-out Sunday after a 2-2 draw. The team, tiny in stature compared with the Americans, fell behind twice but battled back both times, its final tying goal coming with three minutes left in extra time.

Japan's players used the disasters as motivation, looking at pictures of the devastation from their homeland before some matches. The team displayed a banner reading "To our Friends Around the World -- Thank You for Your Support" before the final.

Kan noted the team carried the thoughts of the Japanese people in the banner. "As the prime minister, and as one Japanese citizen, I will express my heartfelt gratitude," he said.

The team returns home today and is scheduled to meet with Kan.

Bars and restaurants that showed the game in Tokyo were packed for the kickoff at 3:45 a.m. local time Monday -- a national holiday. At some venues, dozens of fans stood outside and peered in through the windows.

Afterward, some chanting fans spilled into the streets. Police kept a small group of celebrants from wandering into traffic in Shibuya, a neighborhood known for its youth pop culture.

Japan's national newspapers printed special editions that were handed out Monday morning, while game highlights replayed constantly on TV.

The women's team, long an afterthought to the men's squad, increasingly received attention from as it progressed through the tournament, making up for its size with pinpoint passing and a gritty defense.

The women's team goes by the name "Nadeshiko," after a mountain flower thought to be a symbol of femininity in traditional Japanese culture.

The victory came against a backdrop of concern about the crippled nuclear power plant run by Tokyo Electric Power Co., which has leaked radiation into the sea and surrounding areas.

Several team members played for the former professional team sponsored by TEPCP and at least one worked at the plant before the disaster.

But the football triumph provided at least a brief respite Monday morning.

"It has been so scary with the earthquake and everything," said 22-year-old Miaki Tomiyama. "The team has given us happiness."

Japan shuts down atomic plant in quake danger zone

Japan shut down the final working reactor at a nuclear plant near a tectonic faultline Saturday as Prime Minister Naoto Kan pledged a new law to help compensate victims of the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

Workers suspended the Hamaoka powerstation's number-five reactor at 1:00 pm (0400 GMT) in a bid to avoid a repeat of the atomic emergency sparked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

"The shutdown was confirmed after we inserted all 205 control rods into the reactor," said Hiroaki Oobayashi, a spokesman for the plant's operator Chubu Electric Power Co.

Seismologists have long warned that a major earthquake is overdue in the Tokai region southwest of Tokyo where the Hamaoka plant is located.

The prime minister called for Hamaoka's closure last week, eight weeks after the 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami which knocked out the cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, sparking the world's worst atomic crisis in 25 years.

Kan has insisted the Hamaoka plant should stay shut while a higher sea wall is built and other measures are taken to guard it against natural disasters. The process is expected to last a few years.

The complex, located on the Pacific coast some 200 kilometres (125 miles) northeast of Tokyo, has five reactors but only two have been running recently -- numbers four and five. Reactor number four was suspended on Friday.

Reactors one and two, built in the 1970s, were stopped in 2009, and three is undergoing maintenance.

Hamaoka accounts for almost 12 percent of the output of Chubu Electric, which serves a large part of Japan's industrial heartland, including many Toyota car factories.

Kan told the governor of Fukushima prefecture in a meeting Saturday that he was considering legislation to compensate people forced to flee their homes in the wake of the nuclear crisis.

More than 80,000 people have been forced from homes, farms and businesses in a 20-kilometre (12-mile) zone around the plant which has leaked radiation into the air, ground and sea.

The governor, Yuhei Sato, said Kan told him: "The government will firmly put a special law in place and take the responsibility for compensation."

Sato told reporters that the existing law on nuclear accidents was limited in scope as it does not cover damage such as the cost of misinformation on radioactive contamination of farm, fishery and other products from Fukushima.

"Harmful rumours have caused unimaginable damage," he said.

On Friday, Kan's centre-left government launched a rescue plan to help the Fukushima plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., foot the bill for the disaster.

TEPCO faces compensation payments worth tens of billions of dollars for victims of the accident.

TEPCO and the government have yet to release estimates for the payout bill, but analysts say it could range from four trillion yen ($50 billion) to 10 trillion yen depending on how long the nuclear crisis lasts.

To help TEPCO, Asia's biggest electric power company, meet its obligations, Kan's government decided on a financial aid plan paid for mostly with new government bonds.

The scheme will give the government a stronger hand in supervising TEPCO, save the biggest of Japan's 10 utilities from bankruptcy and prevent turmoil on financial markets in the world's third-largest economy.

Japan nuclear crisis under review at 2-month mark

Japan's government and the owner of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are reviewing efforts to wind down the two-month crisis as thousands of nearby residents await word regarding planned evacuations.

Plant workers are making step-by-step progress toward restoring normal cooling, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

Nearly 80,000 people have spent two months away from their homes in the 20-kilometer (12.5-mile) zone around the plant, while tens of thousands more are awaiting orders to evacuate more distant towns where radiation levels are likely to raise the long-term cancer risk.

In the city of Fukushima, displaced residents berated Tokyo Electric President Masataka Shimizu and other top utility executives, who asked for forgiveness in their hands and knees Tuesday. About 100 residents from the village of Kawauchi were allowed to return home for a short visit.

They were issued protective gear, allowed to pack one small bag and spend two hours in their homes. Some returned to find pets -- left behind in the initial confusion -- dead of starvation, Japan's Environment Ministry reported Wednesday.

Private animal-rescue groups had mounted expeditions into the evacuation zone to rescue pets before the government began enforcing the restricted area in late April. Government officials plan to retrieve other pets Wednesday, the ministry said.

Residents of several cities and towns outside the 20-km zone have been told to be ready to move by mid-May. They were put on notice in April that evacuation orders would be coming in about a month, and about a third have already left, government spokesman Noriyuki Shikata said Wednesday.

"It depends on the circumstances of individuals," Shikata said. "It's a bit difficult to get the most updated figure, but I understand that over half the original residents are still residing in the zone."

Tokyo Electric and Japanese nuclear regulators have been trying to wind down the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi since March 11, when the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan's Tohoku region knocked out the plant's cooling systems. The result was the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, compounding a natural disaster of historic proportions.

Japan will mark two months since the earthquake and tsunami with a moment of silence Wednesday. While no deaths have been attributed to the Fukushima Daiichi accident, the earthquake and tsunami have killed nearly 15,000 and left 10,000 more missing, Japan's National Police Agency reported.

In early April, Tokyo Electric announced a six- to nine-month plan to bring the nuclear crisis to an end by restoring normal cooling systems and fully shutting down the reactors. That plan is being reviewed by the utility and the government, and its results are expected to be announced in mid-May, Tokyo Electric spokesman Hiro Hasegawa said Wednesday.

Tokyo Electric has "a number of balls in the air" as it tries to wind down the crisis, said Margaret Harding, a nuclear engineer and former executive at reactor designer General Electric.

"We want them going in with a well thought-out plan that will succeed, because failure here is really not something any of us want them to have happen," Harding said.

The three operating reactors at Fukushima Daiichi overheated, massive hydrogen explosions blew apart the buildings housing units 1 and 3 and another suspected hydrogen blast is believed to have damaged the No. 2 reactor. Engineers have been pouring hundreds of tons of water a day into the reactors since as an emergency measure, and

have also struggled to keep spent fuel pools in units 1, 3 and 4 from overheating.

Huge quantities of radioactive materials spewed from the plant, prompting Japan to declare the accident a top-scale event on the international rating system for nuclear disasters. Thousands of tons of radioactive water have flooded the basements where the cooling systems were housed, making it impossible for workers get into the facilities.

Workers have been able to install air filters inside the No. 1 reactor building to limit the further release of radioactive particles and have begun filling the primary containment shell around the reactor core with water to cover the now-exposed fuel rods, said Yoshikazu Nagai, another spokesman for Tokyo Electric.

The plan will be to recirculate that water through a heat exchanger to cool it, then send it back into the reactor, Nagai said -- essentially building a new cooling system. Similar plans are being considered for unit 2, which is believed to be leaking radioactive water, and 3, where engineers noted a disturbing rise in the reactor's temperature readings last week.

"First we have to tackle unit No. 1, and we need to see if we can succeed," Nagai told CNN.

Equipment that will be used to decontaminate the stagnant, radioactive water pooling in the plant's basements is expected to arrive by mid-May, he said.

The spent but still-energetic fuel assemblies housed in pools of water at the reactor sites remain a concern, however. Water samples taken Sunday from the No. 3 spent fuel pool showed a sharp spike in levels of radioactivity after finding negligible concentrations of reactor byproducts such as radioactive iodine and cesium the previous week, the company reported.

A previous increase in radiation levels in the unit 4 spent fuel pool was blamed on radioactive debris falling into that pool, which was exposed by damage to the reactor building. But the cause of Sunday's reading was unknown, Nagai said.

Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan says his government will rethink its plans for nuclear energy "from scratch" as a result of the disaster.

"Under the basic plan for energy in 2030, the proportion of nuclear energy and total electricity supply would be 50% for nuclear energy and 20% renewable energy," Kan told reporters Tuesday. "But with the occurrence of a major nuclear disaster, the basic plan for energy is going to have to be reviewed thoroughly, from scratch."

Alternative sources of energy like biomass, wind and solar "should be regarded as one of the major pillars" in a new plan, Kan said, and conservation efforts will be ramped up.

In addition, after years of complaints from anti-nuclear activists, his government called on Japanese utility Chubu Electric to shut down the Hamaoka nuclear power plant southwest of Tokyo. The facility sits on a fault line that Japan's science ministry says has an 87% chance of producing a massive earthquake within the next three decades.

Chubu Electric said it would suspend operations at Hamaoka "until further measures" are completed to protect the plant from a tsunami like the one that crippled Fukushima Daiichi .

Nikkei falls, Chubu Elec sinks on call for plant closure

Japan's Nikkei average fell 0.7 percent on Monday, dragged down by the plunge in Chubu Electric Power shares after Prime Minister Naoto Kan called for the closure of its nuclear plant due worries that a large earthquake could trigger another nuclear crisis.

The benchmark Nikkei closed the day down 64.82 points at 9,794.38.

The broader Topix lost 0.4 percent or 3.29 points to 853.21.

Evacuees slam Japan nuclear plant operator(Video)

Angry residents forced from their homes near Japan's tsunami-stricken nuclear power plant gathered in protest at the Tokyo headquarters of the plant's operator Wednesday demanding compensation as the company's president pledged to do more to help those affected by the crisis.

"I can't work and that means I have no money," said Shigeaki Konno, 73, an auto repair mechanic, who lived seven miles (11 kilometers) from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant before he was evacuated along with tens of thousands of others due to radiation fears. "The talk about compensation is not concrete. We need it quickly."

The protest by about 20 small business owners from communities near the plant reflects growing public frustration with Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s handling of the nuclear crisis that erupted when a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake on March 11 wrecked its cooling systems and backup generators.

TEPCO's president, Masataka Shimizu, and other company executives bowed in apology, once again, on Wednesday, after Shimizu pledged to do more to help compensate residents unable to return home or work due to the accident.

Cash payments are being "readied as soon as possible," Shimizu said.

He said the company "will do our utmost" to get the plant's reactors under control and curb radiation leaks that prompted the government to revise its rating of the incident to the worst possible, on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

TEPCO manager Kensuke Takeuchi told Konno and the other protesters the company was not yet prepared to give any money, but he promised to convey their demands to higher level management.

"You are eating a warm meal every day," said Konno, complaining that the two pieces of bread provided at the evacuation center where he is staying were not fit to be fed to dogs.

"I am not asking for anything more than I am entitled to. I just want my due," said Ichijiro Ishikawa, 69, a construction worker who lived eight miles (13 kilometers) from the plant.

Japan's leaders are urging a return to normality, with Prime Minister Naoto Kan exhorting the public Tuesday in a televised address to build an "even more marvelous country."

Work on repairing damage at the plant and ending radiation leaks has been impeded by aftershocks, fires, explosions and other glitches in the improvised efforts to restore its cooling systems.

Nuclear safety officials and TEPCO reported no major changes Wednesday, a day after the government ranked the accident there at the highest possible severity, 7, on an international scale.

The higher rating was open recognition that the nuclear crisis has become the second-worst in history after the catastrophe in Chernobyl, but it did not signal a worsening of the plant's status in recent days or any new health dangers.

Still, Kan warned that the situation remained unpredictable. Radioactive isotopes have been detected in tap water, fish and vegetables far from the facility.

Shipments of produce from 16 cities, towns and villages around Fukushima Dai-ichi have been banned. On Wednesday, the government added wood-grown shiitake mushrooms raised outdoors to a list of vegetables banned for shipping to markets after high levels of radiation were detected in tests over the weekend.

Still, work on recovery and reconstruction is underway, and the region took a step forward with the reopening of a coastal airport that had been swamped by the tsunami.

Staff at the Sendai airport stood on the tarmac waving as passengers emerged from a JAL Express flight emblazoned with the logo "Hang in there, Japan." It was the first flight since the 32-foot (10-meter) wall of water raced across the airport's runways and slammed cars and aircraft into its terminals.

The area around the airport, which sits about half a mile (a kilometer) from the shoreline, remains a twisted wasteland of mud, uprooted trees and the remnants of smashed buildings and cars. Soldiers were sifting through the debris looking for the bodies of some of the more than 15,000 people still missing after the twin disasters. The final death toll is expected to top 25,000.

The airport will handle only a few daytime flights for now and just one terminal is running, but its opening should help with relief efforts in regional communities virtually obliterated by the tsunami.

"We can only operate in a small area, but I think it's a great step toward recovery," said Naohito Nakano, an operations manager for Japan Airlines.

Hiroshi Abe, 41, whose parents are among the missing, was preparing to board a flight back to the western city of Osaka.

"There's not really anything I can do there now, so I'm flying home," Abe said. "Now that flights are open again I know it will be much easier for me to go back."

Japan gov't demands quick action to avoid sea contamination

TOKYO - Japan's government on Monday told the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to move quickly to stop radiation seeping into the ocean as desperate engineers resorted to bath salts to help trace a leak from one reactor.
One official has warned it could take months before the nuclear crisis caused by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami is under control.
"We need to stop the spread of (contaminated water) into the ocean as soon as possible. With that strong determination, we are asking Tokyo Electric Power Co to act quickly," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference.
He warned that accumulating radiation from a leak that has defied desperate efforts to halt it "will have a huge impact on the ocean".
In the face of Japan's biggest crisis since World War Two, one newspaper poll said that nearly two-thirds of voters want the government to form a coalition with the major opposition party and work together to recover from the massive damage from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Underlining the concern over the impact on the world's third largest economy, a central bank survey showed that big manufacturers expect business conditions to worsen significantly in the next three months, though they were not quite as pessimistic as some analysts had expected.
An aide to embattled Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Sunday that the government's priority now was to stop radiation leaks from the Fukushima nuclear plant, 240 km north of Tokyo, and that the situation had "somewhat stabilised".

"How long will it take to achieve (the goal of stopping the radiation leaks)? I think several months would be one target," said Goshi Hosono, a ruling party lawmaker and aide to Kan.

In their desperation, engineers at plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) have used anything to hand to try to stop the leaks.
At the weekend, they mixed sawdust and newspapers with polymers and cement in a so far unsuccessful attempt to seal the crack in a concrete pit at reactor no.2, where radioactive water has been flowing into the sea.
On Monday, they resorted to powdered bath salts to produce a milky color to help trace the source of the leak.
TEPCO is planning to put some sort of curtain into the sea by the nuclear plant to try to prevent radioactive water spreading further into the ocean. It has not decided what material to use.
The government has said three of the six Fukushima reactors were now generally stable. At least four will eventually be scrapped but that could take decades.

Japan Nuclear Workers Struggle With Radioactive Water

Workers at Japan's troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex continued Sunday to struggle to contain highly radioactive water that is hampering work to restore vital systems, as they also tried to prevent further spreading of radioactive materials to surrounding areas.

But it was unclear late Sunday night just how severe the problem really was. Earlier in the day, workers were evacuated from one of the reactors when the company running the plant announced that radiation had been detected at an eye-popping 10 million times normal levels. But later Sunday evening, a spokesman for the plant's operator—Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco—said the utility company was "re-analyzing the figure after it was pointed out internally and also by the Nuclear Safety Commission that it might be calculated incorrectly."

The spokesman, Hiro Hasegawa, said a new figure would be issued sometime after midnight Japan time.

"The Tepco numbers were a bit odd or strange," Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior official at Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, or NISA, told reporters earlier in the evening.

The reported rise in radioactivity added to concerns that efforts to keep nuclear fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi facility from overheating and sustaining further damage, which increases the risk of greater radiation leaks, may suffer further delays.

Previous spikes in radiation levels, both airborne and in water collecting at the site, have repeatedly forced stoppage of scheduled work. Three workers were injured several days ago at the No. 3 reactor after coming into contact with a pool of water that had a reading of 750 millisievert per hour, suggesting the health risks to workers are now even more dire.

Highlighting the inability of authorities so far to confidently pinpoint the source of the leaks, a key step to stanching them, the government's chief spokesperson said Sunday morning that he wasn't sure where the water was coming from.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, speaking on national broadcaster NHK Sunday, said only that "we will analyze where the highly radioactive water is coming from."

The lack of unity in the message from authorities, with Mr. Nishiyama speculating that the water is likely from the reactor core while Prime Minister Naoto Kan's spokesman declined to go that far, may also add to concern over the government's response nearly two weeks after Mr. Kan appointed himself chief of a crisis team.

Authorities said they were attempting to pump the radioactive water to the condenser units that allow steam from the reactor to cool down so that workers could continue their efforts to lay power cables and perform checks in order to bring the plant's systems back on line.

In a sign of the broadening scale of contamination in the vicinity of the plant, seawater collected Saturday afternoon near the plant contained concentrations of radioactive iodine-131 at 1,850 times Japan's legal limit, up from concentrations 1,250 times the limit in water collected the day before, the government said Sunday.

Mr. Nishiyama said authorities plan to switch from fire trucks to electric pumps to inject water into the cores of reactors Nos. 1-3. It wasn't immediately clear if this work, which could bring more sustainability to the crucial task of cooling the nuclear fuel, could proceed if radiation levels were highly elevated.

Meanwhile, Mr. Nishiyama said work is continuing to drain a highly radioactive pool of water in the turbine building of the No. 1 reactor. He also said that starting Monday authorities intend to start using fresh water, instead of the seawater used so far, to douse the spent fuel pool in the No. 4 reactor. The same switch is scheduled to be made at the No. 1 reactor starting Tuesday, Mr. Nishiyama said.

Switching to fresh water from seawater, which has been used for many days, in the cooling process is necessary to stem some problems in the rescue effort. Seawater cooling often worsens water circulation of the cooling pump because of accumulation of crystallized salt.

9,500 unaccounted for in Japanese port city: report

More than 9,500 people are unaccounted for in Minamisanriku, a town of some 17,000 people, Japan's Kyodo News agency reported Saturday.
CTV's Tom Walters said the town is located on Japan's northeast Pacific coast.
"All eyes here are on reports from Miyagi Prefecture and 9,500 people missing there," Walters told CTV News Channel. "This of course is the region that was so devastated by the tsunami wave in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake."
No other details were available.
Elsewhere in Japan thousands remained missing and millions without power on Saturday in the aftermath of Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami.
An estimated 5.5 million households were still without electricity. More than 1 million homes had had their water supply cut off.
The death toll from Friday's combined disasters has reached 686 so far, but it is feared that the number of dead could climb much higher.
Police said they found 200 to 300 bodies washed up on beaches, but authorities are only now getting a look at the extent of the devastation in Sendai and along the coast.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said late Saturday evening, local time, that more than 3,000 people had been rescued.
"We will do our very best to rescue all survivors," Kan said to reporters upon touring the devastated area.
"We'd first like to focus on saving lives and secondly the comfort of the evacuees," Kan said. "There will be many resources that will be needed for this evacuation process."
Rescue workers dug through the rubble Saturday while military helicopters plucked survivors, stranded by floodwaters, from rooftops.
Fires continued to burn in residential areas as further earthquakes and aftershocks, some registering upwards of magnitude six, continued to rattle the area.
Some 3,400 buildings have been damaged or destroyed and 200 fires have been reported in the stricken area. Officials said 181 welfare facilities, including nursing homes, have been damaged.
On Saturday, an estimated 6.4-magnitude quake hit near the east coast of Honshu at about 10:15 p.m. local time, just 82 kilometers from Fukushima, home of the already damaged nuclear reactor that stoked fears of a meltdown. Another quake on Saturday registered 6.1.
"We are still getting a lot of aftershocks," one resident told Associated Press, en route to an evacuation center. "It's very frightening. People are panicking, shivering in the cold."
Phone reception was cut in stricken areas while hundreds of people lined up outside the few still-operating supermarkets for basic necessities. The gas stations on streets not covered with water were packed with people waiting to fill their cars.
As many as 300,000 people have been displaced by the disaster, many from the area surrounding Fukushima.
Friday's 8.9 magnitude quake -- the worst in modern Japanese history -- and the resulting tsunami laid waste to whole sections of northern Japan.
In the immediate wake of the disaster rail operators lost contact with four trains running on coastal lines and still had not found them by Saturday afternoon local time according to Kyodo News agency. The East Japan Railway Co. said it did not know how many people were aboard.
The fate of the trains remains unclear though there are reports of passengers and crew members being rescued.
Bullet train services in the area remained suspended Saturday, nine expressways were closed and as many as 464 flights had been cancelled.
Most buildings out of range of the tsunami appeared to have survived the quake without much damage, though some older wooden structures were toppled. Paved roads had buckled in some places.
Japan has sent some 50,000 soldiers into the area to assist with rescue effort and recalled the search and rescue workers it sent to New Zealand in the wake of that country's recent quake. The U.S. on Saturday said eight warships bearing relief supplies are near or headed to Japan, while additional rescue teams from Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and the U.S. are on their way, part of an effort coordinated by the United Nations.
Sniffer dogs, personnel and other help is also reportedly on its way from Singapore, Switzerland and the U.K.

U.S. readies relief for quake-hit ally Japan

President Barack Obama sent condolences to the people of Japan on Friday and said the United States would provide any help its close ally needed after a massive earthquake and tsunami killed hundreds.
The Defense Department was preparing American forces in the Pacific Ocean to provide relief after the quake, which generated a tsunami that headed across the Pacific past Hawaii and toward the west coast of the U.S. mainland.
The U.S. Air Force transported "some really important coolant" to a Japanese nuclear plant affected by the quake, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.
Authorities said hundreds of people were killed in Japan and the toll was expected to surpass 1,000.
"This is a potentially catastrophic disaster and the images of destruction and flooding coming out of Japan are simply heartbreaking," Obama told reporters.
Obama was awakened by his chief of staff, Bill Daley, at about 4 a.m. EST (0900 GMT) and called Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan later in the morning.
"On behalf of the American people, I conveyed our deepest condolences, especially to the victims and their families, and I offered our Japanese friends whatever assistance is needed," Obama said at a midday news conference.
Obama said Kan told him that so far there were no signs of a radiation leak at the nuclear plant hit by the quake, adding the United States sent the coolant as a precaution.
'HUGE DISASTER'
Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters traveling with him in Bahrain that U.S. troops and military facilities in Japan were in good shape and willing to help.
"It's obviously a very sophisticated country but this is a huge disaster and we will do all, anything we are asked to do to help out," he said.Daley told a meeting of the President's Export Council it appeared Hawaii was spared serious impact from the tsunami.
There is still some risk to the U.S. west coast, "but I think the enormous fears that were there hours ago, for some of us hours ago, have diminished greatly, which is quite a relief for all of us," he said.
The U.S. military effort included at least six Navy ships, Pentagon spokeswoman Navy Commander Leslie Hullryde said.The State Department said U.S. embassy operations in Japan were moved from Tokyo to another location as a precaution.
There have been no reports of Americans killed or injured in the quake. A State Department travel alert strongly urged Americans to avoid nonessential travel to Japan.
"Strong aftershocks are likely for weeks following a strong earthquake such as this one," it said.

Japan Central Bank Pledges to Ensure Stability After Quake, Tsunami Strike

Prime Minister Naoto Kan mobilized Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and the central bank pledged to ensure financial stability after a magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck off the coast of Sendai, a city of 1 million, causing damage across the east coast of Japan. “I call on citizens to act calmly,” Kan told reporters in Tokyo after convening his emergency disaster response team. “The Self-Defense Forces are already mobilized in various places. The government is making its utmost effort to minimize the damage,” he said, saying later in a news conference that the impact was widespread.
The Ministry of Finance said it’s too soon to gauge the economic impact of the temblor, the world’s biggest in more than six years. Japan’s central bank set up an emergency task force and said it will do everything it can to provide ample liquidity. The BOJ, which has already cut its benchmark rate to zero in an effort to end deflation, had last month said the economy was poised to recover from a contraction in the fourth quarter.
“It’s early days but the horrific events in Japan bear very close watching from a financial perspective, given the bloated problems in Japan’s public sector,” Stephen Gallo, head of market analysis at Schneider Foreign Exchange in London, said in an e-mailed note. Kan, 64, had been in the midst of a political battle to approve financing for his budget as credit- rating companies warn the nation’s government to rein in the world’s biggest public debt.
Stocks Slide
Japan’s stocks slid 1.7 percent in Tokyo today as the earthquake struck less than half an hour before the market closed. The yen advanced 0.2 percent to 82.77 per dollar as of 5:07 p.m. in Tokyo. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped 1.4 percent as of 5:22 p.m. in Tokyo, with losses accelerating after the quake. Futures on the Euro Stoxx 50 Index fell 1 percent.
The central bank said in a statement that its settlement system was working and that it was able to settle all accounts today without disruption.
Televised footage showed a tsunami striking northeast Japan. Outside of Tokyo, Narita airport, the area’s main international gateway, closed, Kyodo News reported. Haneda, the main domestic airport, was reopened after closing earlier, according to Kyodo.
“Major damage occurred in the Tohoku area,” Kan said in a nationally televised address, referring to the northern region of Honshu, Japan’s biggest island. “We will work with all our might to ensure people’s safety and minimize the damage. I ask everyone to pay attention to TV and radio reports and act calmly. Some nuclear power plants automatically shut down, but so far we haven’t confirmed any leakage of radioactive material.”
The quake struck at 2:46 p.m. local time 130 kilometers (81 miles) off the coast of Sendai, north of Tokyo, at a depth of 24 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Service said. It was followed by a 7.1-magnitude aftershock at 4:25 p.m., the service said. Aftershocks continued to affect office buildings in Tokyo as recently as 5:21 p.m. local time.

Japan's PM hangs on but outlook grim

Japan's unpopular Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Monday refused to step down after the resignation of his foreign minister over a political funding scandal that has added to pressure on him to quit or call a snap election.

But it is far from clear how Kan, if he does manage to cling to office, will be able to resolve the political stalemate that has left the government struggling to implement policies to cut into a huge public debt and win approval from a divided parliament to enact a new budget from April.

"Carrying out the administration's duty for the four-year term and then letting the people decide at the ballot box is best for the people themselves," he told a parliamentary session.

"I intend to firmly fulfill my duty until that time comes."

But some analysts warned that Kan's government may well collapse sooner than later. He is Japan's fifth leader since 2006 and has no clear successor in sight.

The resignation of Seiji Maehara, a security hawk and critic of China's military buildup, removes a strong contender to replace Kan and has deepened the impression of a government in disarray, unable to resolve deep problems facing the world's third largest economy.

The stalemate is blocking passage of budget bills to implement a $1 trillion budget for the year from April and keeping the government from tackling tax reforms to curb massive public debt, already twice the size of the $5 trillion economy.

Kan has made fiscal reforms including a rise in the 5 percent sales tax a priority as a way to fund the social costs of a fast aging society. But he has failed to get opposition parties to join in talks on the topic.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano will serve temporarily as foreign minister while Kan picks a successor, who will have a full plate managing strained ties with China and Russia and keeping relations with ally Washington on an even keel.

"LACK OF GOVERNING ABILITY"

Kan's health minister, Ritsuo Hosokawa, is also under fire for messy handling of measures to help housewives who had mistakenly failed to pay their pension premiums, and media warned more cabinet ministers could quit in a "domino effect."

Kan faces pressure from within his own fractious Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to step down, while opposition parties are pushing him to call a snap election in the powerful lower house.

"This has revealed the Kan administration's lack of governing ability, and the only ways to break through this situation are for the cabinet to resign as soon as possible or for a snap election to be called," Kenji Kosaka, a lawmaker in the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), told reporters.

Jiji news agency quoted an LDP executive as saying the main opposition party could submit a censure motion against the prime minister this month.

A Yomiuri newspaper poll released on Monday showed that 51 percent of voters wanted Kan to resign, with 56 percent saying they'd blame the government and DPJ if bills needed to enact a $1 trillion budget for the year from April are not passed on time.