Japanese Water Supply Turning Unsafe

Millions of people in Tokyo received a new sobering alert on Wednesday. The metropolitan government announced radioactive iodine, exceeding the legal limit, has been detected at one of the city's primary water purification plants.

City officials say the affected downtown facility supplies much of the tap water for Japan's capital and five suburban districts. They say the level recorded  in the water, drawn from local rivers, is nearly double that considered safe for infants to drink, but still within limits acceptable for adults to ingest.

Hyo Yoshida is with the Tokyo Waterworks Bureau. Yoshida says it can be assumed that the source of the contamination is the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, which was damaged by the March 11 magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami.

The announcement about Tokyo's water came hours after shipments of more types of vegetables from Fukushima prefecture were halted.  People living in the prefecture, which has a population of two million, were also instructed to stop eating leaf vegetables harvested there.

Officials and scientists insist the levels of radioactive iodine and cesium detected in food, the air, soil and sea water, are not harmful to people.

The spreading radiation emanates from the crippled Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant.  Its cooling system was knocked out by the tsunami. Efforts are progressing as crews continue to restore the system and cool overheated reactors and fuel rods, which are emitting the higher than normal levels of radiation which are spreading over Japan.

Onagawa Nuclear Plant Now Declares Emergency

A state of emergency has been declared at a Japanese nuclear facility at Onagawa after excessive radiation levels were recorded there following a major earthquake, an UN atomic expert watching the situation said on Sunday. 

A fire broe out at this plant on Friday following the earthquake, but news and information has been slow to come out of this plant over the weekend.  Now the situation appears to be getting worse.

Meltdown Possibly Occurring at Japanese Plant

A meltdown may be occurring at one of the reactors at an earthquake-damaged nuclear power plant in northeast Japan a government official told cable netwok CNN Sunday morning Japan time.

"There is a possibility, we see the possibility of a meltdown," said Toshihiro Bannai, director of the international affairs office of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety, in a telephone interview with CNN from the agency's Tokyo headquarters. "At this point, we have still not confirmed that there is an actual meltdown, but there is a possibility."

Bannai said engineers have been unable to get close enough to the reactor's core to know what's going on, and that he based his conclusion on radioactive cesium and iodine measured in the air near the plant Saturday night.

Plant officials have since injected seawater and boron into the plant in an effort to cool its nuclear fuel.

The Fire and Disaster Management Agency announced Sunday that 15 patients and an ambulance were exposed to radiation at a hospital within seven miles of the plant, Kyodo News Agency reported.

A state of emergency has been declared for the reactor and two of the other five reactors at the same complex, he said, and three are in a safe, shut-down state.

"The other two still have some cooling systems, but not enough capacity," he said.

News of the possible meltdown came as rescue efforts resumed Sunday morning in areas devastated by the magnitude 8.9 quake and subsequent tsunami.