Officials say radiation may already have been released from the Fukushim 1 Nuclear Reactor incident. Japan's US envoy on Saturday acknowledged there had been a "partial melt" of a fuel rod at the quake-hit plant.
Japan's top government spokesman Yukio Edano said Sunday that radioactive meltdowns may have occurred in two reactors of the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant and that there was a fresh threat of explosion from a nuclear unit at a power plant in the country's earthquake-ravaged northeast.
A hydrogen explosion could occur at Unit 3 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano. That would follow a blast that took place Saturday at the same power plant as operators attempted to prevent a nuclear meltdown of another unit by injecting sea water into it.
There should be no runway chain reaction at the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant in Japan as a result of the powerful earthquake that hit Japan on Friday, March 11, head of the Moscow Rosatom State Nuclear Corporation Sergei Kiriyenko said on Saturday.
The fear is that a partial or complete meltdown of one or more reactor cores would send radioactive particles into the atmosphere and ocean. Prevailing winds and ocean currents generally move in a northeasterly direction from Japan.
There's currently no threat for radiation exposure in Alaska. Eddie Zingone, a senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in Anchorage, said the jet stream coming from the area around Japan is blowing significantly south of Alaska.