'Extremely High' Radiation Levels Detected
ISHA SESAY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we have received a new iReport showing the power of the initial 9.0 earthquake last Friday. This was shot on the seventh floor of a department store in Tokyo.</s>JESSICA YELLIN, GUEST HOST: You're in THE SITUATION ROOM. Happening now, breaking news. A very grim new assessment of Japan's crisis by the top U.S. nuclear official. He says it's likely that spent fuel of a damaged facility in Japan is now uncovered, leading to very high radiation levels. With uncertainty and fierce spreading, there's now a mass exodus from one of the world's most populated cities. We'll take you to Tokyo's airports. And for the very latest updates on the ground, we'll go live to CNN's Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Wolf Blitzer is in the air flying now from Cairo to Tunisia. He will join us as soon as he lands from Tunis. Isha Sesay from CNN International joins me for this hour of special hour coverage. I'm Jessica Yellin. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM. America's top nuclear official is warning of extremely high radiation at the damaged Japanese nuclear plant, saying spent fuel may have become exposed. A white cloud of smoke or steam rose over the plant today, forcing a brief evacuation of workers and the scrubbing of a helicopter mission to drop water over one of the reactor. The white house called it a deteriorating situation. The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this on Capitol Hill today.</s>GREGORY JACZKO, NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION: What we believe at this time is that there has been a hydrogen explosion in this unit due to an uncovering of the fuel and the fuel pool. We believe that secondary containment has been destroyed. And there's no water in the spent fuel pool. And we believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.</s>YELLIN: And the U.S. embassy is advising Americans within 50 kilometers of the stricken plant to evacuate or take shelter. Wolf Blitzer is traveling with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and asked her about the crisis.</s>WOLF BLITZER, HOST: Is the United States urging its citizens to get out of Japan as some other countries are beginning to do like France, and maybe, even Germany?</s>HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, first, Wolf, the safety of American citizens is always our highest priority, and we are literally monitoring this minute-by-minute. We have Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Department of Energy experts on the ground in Japan working with the Japanese, and we are doing everything we can to help them try to get this triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, nuclear reactors under control. So, if there is a necessity in our view to encourage that, we will do so.</s>SESAY: And as you've been hearing, Japanese workers are struggling to find ways to cool those overheated reactors. Grim words coming from a top U.S. nuclear official who's now saying that a spent fuel pool has apparently run dry resulting in, quote, "extremely high" radiation levels. You've heard the comment. Let's get the latest on the crisis now from CNN's Tom Foreman. Tom, break this down further for us.</s>TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Isha. Let's look at the pictures here just to give us an idea. Here's the plant, numbers one, two, three, and four. This is the way they were before all of this started. I want you to take a look at what they look like now, though. As we slide this across, you can see the tremendous amount of damage being done to every one of these units. This is why the U.S. is now putting the exclusions on for Americans at 50 miles instead of the roughly 18 miles that the Japanese are calling, because they're saying the real dangerous levels here, reactor number one over here. We know there was a hydrogen explosion on Saturday. We know that reactor number over here. They had an explosion on Monday. The containment vessel believes to be cracked with some fuel rods exposed. Reactor number three, which is the only one that contains plutonium, which in of itself presents a whole different level of danger here. Hydrogen explosion there suspected damage to the containment vessel, failure to cool the rods there, evaporation of the pool water, all sorts of issues and then number four. This is the one we've been talking about so much and with very good reason. Number four over here is where we've had the issue of the pool that contains the spent rods. The spent rods in this case are the ones that would actually be involved. I think it's one that light up right now. We'll explain this to you. Up near the top of this unit, they take the old fuel rods, and they put them into essentially a storage area that's full of water. When that U.S. official was speaking a minute ago, what he was saying is that they believe the water has now drained out of there. If it has, in fact, drained out of there, what you're talking about is a level of radiation coming off those roads that can make within 50 to 100 yards in all directions, depending on what shielding might be between you and the source, fatal doses of this coming out. Dose is so high it will cause hair loss, the beginnings of organ failure, and certainly, raise the possibility of leukemia and lymphoma as life goes on. This is an unbelievably dangerous situation, and what the U.S. officials are saying is if that's happening here with the spent fuel rods, which are in an uncontained area, with simply just a metal roof on it, and if it's happening to the other ones, which they also fear that what you might be doing is creating such a hazardous area in here, the workers can't even get in there to try to get more water in without essentially accepting that they're taking a fatal mission. We understand now that -- when they talk about canceling the helicopters earlier on, part of the concern there is that there's so much radiation going up. You can't even fly over in a helicopter without endangering people's lives. So, there's talk now the police may be using water cannons to try to fire from a distance and put water onto this, but I must say, Jessica, when they say a deteriorating situation, that's what we're talking about. Here's the scale, the international scale of nuclear events, and this is where many people believe we are right now. At number six here. We're up here very close to where Chernobyl was, a major accident. I know this. There's almost no doubt at this point, no matter what else happens, we'll be talking about Fukushima well into the future in the same breath as Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl. The question is just how far will it go -- Jessica.</s>YELLIN: Thank you, Tom. To stay on this topic, the U.S. is keeping its military personnel 50 miles now from the damaged reactors and wants American citizens to do the same. Now, keep in mind, that is a much greater radius than the Japanese government has suggested for its own people. So, to dig deeper into how great the radiation danger is now and potentially in the future, let's bring in CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who is now on the line with us from Tokyo. Sanjay, you've been doing some amazing reporting. If you could tell us, first of all, the U.S. State Department has expanded its evacuation zone. Why do they think the Tokyo or the Japanese government isn't strong enough? And what are the dangers those residents are facing who are closer in?</s>DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Well, you're seeing some of the inconsistencies in trying to figure out exactly what the nature of this radiation is and trying to correlate that with just how at risk people in the surrounding areas are. You know, we've been saying almost through the start, Jessica, there's been sort of an arbitrary nature to these evacuation zones. I think this is a little bit more evidence of it. To be fair, there's not a lot of data on this sort of thing. This isn't something you go out and just study because you wouldn't ever willingly or knowingly expose people to this type of ionizing radiation. So, some of these are just going to be theoretical in terms of how they expand these evacuation zone. It's also based in part on weather conditions. We've been talking a lot about that, how the winds might change. We hear in Tokyo, for example, which is some distant south to Fukushima that radiation levels are 20 times what they normally are. To just hear that, it sounds frightening But, you know, to put them in context (ph) and say, you know, that's still well below the levels that which human health effects are expected to happen. That gives it a little bit more context. So, you know, it's just a lot of changing information. A lot of it is theoretical information, and some of it is conflicting information, and that's some of the challenges that everyone is having.</s>YELLIN: Sanjay, some of the most surprising news the top in this afternoon here in the states is the top U.S. nuclear official has said that the radiation levels at one of the reactors at the most damaged plant is so high that it could, quote, "impact" the ability to take corrective measures. Translation, it sounds like it's too dangerous possibly for the people, the workers, who are in that plant to continue being at that reactor. Could you describe what they would go through if they were to stay in that environment?</s>GUPTA: Well, it's really heartbreaking to think about. I mean, you know, first of all, if you just imagine the situation, it's likely dark, all this explosion to put out whatever electrical supply they may have in terms of their own lighting, sort of moving around with flashlights. They have hazmat suits, probably, or some sort of protective shielding suit, but at radiation levels that high, I think most people agree that those suits aren't going to provide adequate protection. They're probably breathing through tanks, respirator tanks. And you know, just trying to, you know, continue to cool these reactors, but in terms of their own personal health, that they start to develop what is known as acute radiation sickness. You think about the impact in the short term, the acute term and also the long term. Everyone is focused on what's happening right now, the acute term. People, you know, they become nauseated. They start vomiting. They might have bleeding from their intestines. I mean, it's so difficult to talk about, Jessica, but the way to think about it is that any cells in your body that sort of rapidly divide the cells in your gut, the cells in your skin, the cells that are on your scalp to make your hair, all of those are going to be affected first. And so, a lot of the symptoms that are associated with those parts of the body will, you know, most immediately have some sort of symptoms. And after that, there are obviously concerns about the impact on bone marrow, the impact on a thyroid gland, cancers later on down the road if someone were to survive the acute part of this.</s>SESAY: Sanjay, it's Isha here in Atlanta. Let me ask you about the development today where it was confirmed that traces of radioactive cesium and iodine were found in the water in the Fukushima prefecture and the significance of that. They are saying that it isn't harmful to health. Your thoughts?</s>GUPTA: They take a small sample, and then, they basically extrapolate that small sample to what they think it would be for, you know, the water supply as a hole. We are the same thing, you know, that they measured this in a particular unit radiation, and it was, again, much higher than normal but lower than the levels that would cause impact on human health. They subsequently tested it, as you may have heard, Isha, and they found that the levels had come back down to essentially zero is what we're hearing. So, even within the short time, two samples showing different results. I think they're going to continue to be monitoring this. I don't think there's anything in particular that people are being asked to do about those radiation levels because they're not harmful to human health, but there's two concerns here. One is, might they continue to go up? And two is exactly why did they go up? Because if the containment vessels have been breached, then that would be, you know, that would be evidence of that, but, somehow, this radiation is seeping into the ground water now and causing some sort of problems. I will say this. They did confirm that the radiation levels on that high reading were because of Fukushima. I don't know if they did that because they had some sort of tracer or what, but the radiation levels from Fukushima did cause that spike in the radiation of the water levels.</s>SESAY: Sanjay, standby for us. You make a very important point about seepage and how it got in the water. Standby first because I want to bring in Jim Walsh. He's an expert on international security at MIT. Jim is being with us helping us to understand the situation. Jim, let me ask you this. You heard what Sanjay said about the seepage of radioactive elements potentially into the water and how that may or may not have happened. My question is which is more worrisome to you, the situation regarding the reactors, one two and three that they're struggling to cool down or the situation regarding those cooling ponds? Which poses the biggest threat immediately?</s>JIM WALSH, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, right now, I think you'd have to say it's the spent fuel ponds where they're keeping the nuclear waste. If the head of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission is coming out and saying that that spent fuel pond is dry and generating high levels of radiation, so high that workers may not be able to go in and manage the problems of the other nearby reactors and that the U.S. is deviating from its close and long-time ally Japan, and is telling Americans to move 50 miles away or 50 kilometers away rather than 30, that is big news. I mean, that is -- you know, that's the head of the U.S. nuclear -- that's the top U.S. nuclear official saying that things are worse than Japan has been saying, and that Americans need to do something differently. That's going to put tremendous pressure on the Japanese government, and it points to the fact that this spent fuel problem, to get to your question, is really the overarching issue right now that it is dry, allegedly dry, and therefore, generating a tremendous amount of radiation. I will add, by the way, on the same topic, that the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, reported today that Japan told them that at reactor three, which had previously just been a reactor problem, that now reactor three is having spent fuel issues as well. So, I would say, between the two, neither are good, but I'm a little more worried about the spent fuel ponds right now than I was 24 hours ago.</s>YELLIN: Jim, if you could answer quickly, this is Jessica. The top U.S. nuclear official is saying that the radiation levels are, perhaps, too high to take corrective measures. What do you fear could happen next given that information?</s>WALSH: Well, Jessica, you know, we saw sort of a little bit of this last night when I was talking to Anderson when he said that all the workers had been pulled back, and that was sort of a stunner at the time. You know, I don't think they're going to be pulled back forever. It seemed that that was inconceivable, and they were returned. But if the radiation gets so high and extends to a level that encompasses the other reactor areas, and the Japanese government is reluctant to send people in on what might be a suicide mission, depending on how high that radiation is, then that means there are no workers. There are no workers at the other reactors trying to manage reactor number one, reactor number two, reactor number three. All of whom have to have seawater to stay cool. So, that would have significant implications.</s>SESAY: Jim Walsh, standby. Sanjay Gupta is joining us on the line from Japan, stay with us also. We're going to carry on this very important conversation for our viewers when THE SITUATION ROOM return. Stay with us.