Japan Officials Make Gains as Nuclear Crisis Sparks Rift

Conditions at Plant Are Stabilized but Worst May Not Be Over

Yuka Hayashi
WSJ
MARCH 15, 2011, 6:31 P.M. ET

TOKYO—Japanese officials appeared to regain partial control of an earthquake-damaged nuclear complex Tuesday, even as new worrying signs in previously unaffected parts of the plant indicated the worst may not be over.

The apparent shift in the struggle to tame four of the six reactors at northeastern Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex also exposed a rift Tuesday between the highest levels of Japanese government and the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co.—underscoring the confusion and mixed messages over five days that frightened a nation and cast a shadow over a planned global expansion of nuclear power.

Fueling Japan's fears, the government announced that radiation levels had spiked Tuesday morning around the plant. The government of the city of Iwaki, on the coast of northeastern Japan just outside the danger zone around the Fukushima Daiichi complex, told its 340,000 citizens to stay home with doors and windows closed. Japanese officials said later Tuesday that radiation levels had dropped significantly after that spike.

Tuesday morning's fire occurred, officials said, when hydrogen gas exploded in a storage pond for spent nuclear fuel in the plant's No. 4 reactor, a facility that hadn't been operating at the time of Friday's quake.

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