Japan officials hopeful despite radiation

TOKYO -- A pair of thin robots on treads sent to explore buildings inside Japan's crippled nuclear reactor came back yesterday with disheartening news: Radiation levels are far too high for repair crews to go inside.

Nevertheless, officials remained hopeful they can stick to their freshly minted "road map" for cleaning up the radiation leak and stabilizing the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant by year's end so they can begin returning tens of thousands of evacuees to their homes.

"Even I had expected high radioactivity in those areas. I'm sure [Tokyo Electric Power Co.] and other experts have factored in those figures when they compiled the road map," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.

Radiation had spiked in a water tank in Unit 2 and contaminated water was discovered in other areas of the plant, officials said yesterday. They also described in detail for the first time the damage to fuel in three troubled reactors, saying pellets had melted.

That damage, sometimes referred to as a partial meltdown, had already been widely assumed, but the confirmation, along with the continued release of radiation from other areas, serves to underscore how difficult and how long the cleanup process will be.

Angry about the slow response to the nuclear crisis and to the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that caused it, lawmakers tore into Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

"You should be bowing your head in apology. You clearly have no leadership at all," Masashi Wakiofthe opposition Liberal Democratic Party, shouted at Kan.

"I am sincerely apologizing for what has happened," Kan said, stressing the government was doing all it could to handle the unprecedented disasters.

Lawmakers also heckled and taunted TEPCO's president, Masataka Shimizu.

Workers have not been able to enter the reactor buildings since the first days after the cooling systems were wrecked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 27,000 people dead or missing.

On Sunday, a plant worker opened an outer door to one of the buildings and two Packbots, which resemble drafting lamps on tank-like treads, entered. The worker closed the door, one robot opened an inner door and both rolled inside to take readings for temperature, pressure and radioactivity. Later they entered a second building.

The robots reported readings of up to 49 millisieverts per hour inside Unit 1 and up to 57 inside Unit 3, levels too high, realistically, for workers to enter.