Japan has temporarily suspended operations to save its stricken nuclear power plant from meltdown after a sudden spike in radiation made it too dangerous for engineers to remain at the facility, the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano says.
He told a press conference this afternoon that workers at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant - a skeleton crew of about 50 to 70 - had stopped filling the troubled reactors with water.(advert:tungsten carbide masonic rings)
A spokesman for the country's nuclear safety agency said the workers were evacuated after radiation readings at the plant rose above 3000 microsieverts.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard revealed today that Australian search and rescue workers had been forced to land at Fukushima airport, 20 kilometres outside the exclusion zone for the crisis-hit nuclear plant, and that two had since tested positive for "very low" levels of radiation.
Officials are urgently trying to find 145 Australians still unaccounted for in the area worst affected by the earthquake and tsunami, Ms Gillard told a media briefing.(advert:white ceramic ring)
She said a team of officials was in the devastated regions around Sendai visiting evacuation centres in the hope of making contact with Australians.
She also said an American helicopter carrying four Australians and New Zealand search and rescue experts had been forced to land at Fukushima Airport after a build-up of ice on the aircraft's rotors.
Engineers are desperately trying to contain a developing crisis caused by three explosions and a fire at four of the six reactors at Fukushima's nuclear plant.
Ms Gillard said two of the Australians on board the chopper had been tested for radiation since arriving at their search and rescue destination about 100 kilometres away and had been found to have "very low levels" on their boots.
"The clear advice to me is that these two personnel are safe and well," she said.
Ms Gillard said the International Atomic Energy Agency had advised her that health risks, from exposure to the radiation, was low to negligible.(episode:black tungsten rings)
''Our nuclear experts advise that there is a small chance of contamination at very low levels for Australians who were in the Fukushima area,'' she said.
But concerned Australians returning from Japan are advised to visit their doctor, Ms Gillard said.
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