Smoke drives crews out of Japan nuclear plant

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KITAKAMI, Mar 21 (agencies): A new column of smoke rising from an overheating nuclear plant in Japan drove workers out of the smouldering site Monday, denting hopes for a breakthrough in the post-quake atomic crisis. Heavy rain in the region disrupted rescue efforts and compounded the misery of tsunami survivors now fearing radioactive fallout from the wrecked Fukushima plant, which has suffered a series of explosions and fires. Chief government spokesman Yukio Edano said the government was halting shipments of milk and certain vegetables including spinach from regions around the plant after abnormal radiation levels were found in the products. But "even if you eat and drink them several times it will not be a health hazard. So I would like you to act calmly without reacting," Edano said at a televised news conference. The workers were temporarily evacuated from part of the quake- and tsunami-hit Fukushima plant in northeast Japan after the "light grey plume of smoke" rose from reactor number three, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. "Due to this problem, the operator temporarily pulled out the workers, while checking on the condition of the site," a TEPCO spokesman told reporters, without specifying the cause. The smoke at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, 250 kilometres (155 miles) northeast of Tokyo, was not believed to have been caused by all-important efforts to restore power to the reactor, officials said. "Currently we are not in a bad situation with respect to the nuclear reactor and radiation levels... we are closely monitoring the situation," Edano said. Engineers at the stricken Fukushima facility are racing to fix disabled cooling systems and restore power, as fire trucks spray water to help cool reactor fuel-rod pools. The cooling systems-designed to protect the plant's six reactors from a potentially disastrous meltdown-were knocked out by the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan's northeast Pacific coast on March 11. Minutes before the crews' evacuation, Prime Minister Naoto Kan acclaimed "slow but steady progress" in dealing with the atomic crisis. "Workers' efforts at the risk of their lives have made the situation progress little by little," Kan said, according to a government spokesman. Asked on CNN earlier if the worst was over at the ageing facility, US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said: "We believe so, but I don't want to make a blanket statement." The natural disaster-Japan's deadliest since 1923 -- has left 8,649 people dead and 13,262 missing, after entire communities were swept away by the horrific tsunami or levelled by the record 9.0-magnitude quake. Meanwhile:The World Health Organization said Monday that radiation in food after an earthquake damaged a Japanese nuclear plant was more serious than previously thought, eclipsing signs of progress in a battle to avert a catastrophic meltdown in the reactors. Engineers managed to rig power cables to all six reactors at the Fukushima complex, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, and started a water pump at one of them to reverse the overheating that has triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. "Quite clearly it's a serious situation," Peter Cordingley, Manila-based spokesman for the World Health Organisation's (WHO) regional office for the Western Pacific, told Reuters in a telephone interview. "It's a lot more serious than anybody thought in the early days when we thought that this kind of problem can be limited to 20 to 30 kilometers ... It's safe to suppose that some contaminated produce got out of the contamination zone."