Quake in Japan kills 9, damages nuclear plant

KASHIWAZAKI, Japan - A strong earthquake shook Japan's northwest coast yesterday, setting off a fire at the world's most powerful nuclear power plant and causing a reactor to spill slightly radioactive water into the sea.

The 6.8-magnitude temblor killed at least nine people and injured more than 900.

The quake, which occurred at 10:17 a.m. on a day that is a national holiday in Japan, toppled hundreds of wooden houses and tore three-foot-wide fissures in the ground. Highways and bridges buckled, leaving officials struggling to get emergency supplies into the region. It toppled one local train off its rails and caused the shutdown of service on a high-speed intercity "bullet train" line for several hours.

At least 10,000 people fled to evacuation centers as aftershocks rattled the area. Tens of thousands of homes were left without water or power.

Japan's Meteorological Agency also recorded a large disturbance off the west coast that shook wide areas of Japan, but said it was unrelated to the Niigata quake to the north and there were no immediate reports of damage.

The earthquake was centered off the coast of Niigata, a prefecture that was hit by a devastating earthquake in 2004. Skyscrapers in Tokyo, about 130 miles southeast of Niigata, swayed for almost a minute from the tremor.

Nuclear reactors at power plants were shut down automatically, but the quake caused a small fire at an electrical transformer at a nuclear plant in Kashiwazaki, a coastal town close to the quake's epicenter.

The quake triggered a fire in an electrical transformer and also caused a leak of radioactive water at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, the world's largest in terms of electricity output.

The leak was not announced until the evening, many hours after the quake. That fed fresh concerns about the safety of Japan's 55 nuclear reactors, which supply 30 percent of the quake-prone country's electricity and have suffered a long string of accidents and cover-ups.

About 315 gallons of slightly radioactive water apparently spilled from a tank at one of the plant's seven reactors and entered a pipe that flushed it into the sea, said Jun Oshima, an executive at Tokyo Electric Power Co. He said it was not clear whether the tank was damaged or the water simply spilled out.

Officials said there was no "significant change" in the seawater near the plant, which is about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo. "The radioactivity is one-billionth of the legal limit," Oshima said.

In Kashiwazaki city, the quake reduced older buildings to piles of lumber. Nine people in their 70s and 80s - six women and three men - died, most of them crushed by collapsing buildings, the Kyodo news agency said.

"I got so dizzy that I could barely stand up," said Kazuaki Kitagami, a worker at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Kashiwazaki, the hardest-hit city. "The jolt came violently from just below the ground."

First word of trouble at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa power plant was the fire that broke out at an electrical transformer. All the reactors were either already shut down or automatically switched off by the quake. The blaze was reported quelled by early afternoon, and the power company announced there was no damage to the reactor and no release of radioactivity.

But in the evening, the company released a statement revealing the leak of radioactive water, saying it had taken all day to confirm details of the accident. But the delay raised suspicions.

"The leak itself doesn't sound significant as of yet, but the fact that it went unreported is a concern," said Michael Mariotte at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Maryland-based networking center for environmental activists.

The accident comes as the government is discussing improving the earthquake resistance of such plants. Japan sits atop four tectonic plates and is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries.