Strong earthquakes and aftershocks continued to unsettle Japan's displaced and desperate on Tuesday, raising fears that a crisis afflicting one nuclear power complex in the northeast could spread to other facilities in the country.
Screening for radiation exposure


The International Atomic Energy Agency said the Hamaoka nuclear plant was operating normally late Tuesday after a magnitude 6.1 earthquake jolted a densely populated area south of Tokyo that had been spared most of the effects of last week's magnitude 9 temblor. The latest sizable earthquake -- there have been dozens over magnitude 6 since Friday's quake, the most powerful in Japan's recorded history -- was centered about 60 miles from the Hamaoka plant.

Later Tuesday, another quake of magnitude 6.2 shook an area about 70 miles southwest of Tokyo, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.



Japanese nuclear experts have been struggling to contain the aftermath of fires, explosions and nuclear fuel-rod exposure at the six-reactor Fukushima power complex, about 150 miles north of Tokyo, that took the brunt of Friday's earthquake and the devastating tsunami that followed. The crisis there has released radiation to the immediate surrounding area, which officials on Tuesday conceded was high enough to damage human health but insisted that it posed little danger to those evacuated from a 12-mile radius of the plants.

Still, authorities on Tuesday warned that people remaining within 20 miles of the damaged reactors should stay indoors to avoid being sickened by radiation.


Dangerous levels of radiation escaped from the Fukushima complex after one reactor's steel containment structure was apparently breached by an explosion, and a different reactor building in the same complex caught fire after another explosion, Japan's leaders told a frightened population Tuesday.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan, in a nationwide address, called for calm even as he acknowledged the radiation peril. Kan offered solemn assurances that authorities were doing "everything we can" to contain the leakage.

"There is a danger of even higher radiation levels," he said. Slightly elevated radiation was detected in Tokyo, but not at health-affecting levels, officials said.

Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, speaking shortly afterward, said radiation levels around the plant's six reactors had climbed to the extent that "without a doubt would affect a person's health." But he insisted that outside the existing 12-mile evacuation zone, there was little or no health danger.

Uncertainty about the risks emanating from the stricken nuclear complex caused nations coming to Japan's aid to pull back and reassess deployment of rescue personnel, relief supplies and transportation services. The U.S. aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, which steamed to the rescue over the weekend, pulled back from Japan's northeast shore on Tuesday after detecting elevated radiation levels in the atmosphere.

Some international airlines that had resumed flying to Tokyo halted or rerouted service again Tuesday to guard against entering areas with heightened radiation. Germany's Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Air France-KLM Group and others -- European carriers still wary of radiation hazards 25 years after the Chernobyl disaster -- cited the risk of nuclear contamination and the persistent aftershocks in canceling or delaying flights to Japan.

In China, officials said safety experts would monitor planes and ships arriving to its ports for radioactivity from the Japanese crisis.

"Owing to the seriousness of and uncertainty surrounding the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant, the administration has already asked local bureaus to strengthen their risk analysis of the entry of radioactive materials," the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine reported on its website.

China also announced it was evacuating its citizens from Japan's northeast, becoming the first nation to organize a massive relocation due to radiation fears.

France also recommended that its citizens leave the Japanese capital, which is 150 miles south of the Fukushima facility, and Austria announced it was moving its embassy to from Tokyo to Osaka to distance its diplomats from any potential worsening of the crisis.

The U.S. government has recommended that Americans cancel any non-essential travel to Japan and that those citizens already in the country heed the advice and direction of Japanese disaster relief officials.



Times staff writers Laura King, Ralph Vartabedian and Thomas H. Maugh II contributed to this report.