Japan made some progress in its race to avert disaster at a tsunami-damaged power plant

 

Japan made some progress in its
race to avert disaster at a tsunami-damaged power plant, though
minor radiation leaks underlined perils from the world's worst
nuclear crisis since Chernobyl 25 years ago.	

 Three hundred engineers have been battling inside a danger
zone to salvage the six-reactor Fukushima plant since it was hit
by an earthquake and tsunami that also killed 7,653 people and
left 11,746 more missing in northeast Japan.	

 The unprecedented multiple crisis will cost the world's
third largest economy as much as $200 billion and require
Japan's biggest reconstruction push since post-World War Two.  	

 It has also set back nuclear power plans the world over.	

 Encouragingly for Japanese transfixed on work at the
Fukushima complex, the most critical reactor -- No. 3, which
contains highly toxic plutonium -- stabilised after fire trucks
doused it for hours with hundreds of tonnes of water.	

 Work also advanced on bringing power back to water pumps
used to cool overheating nuclear fuel, and Kyodo news agency
reported that temperatures at spent fuel pools in reactors No. 5
and 6 were returning to normal.	

 "We are making progress ... (but) we shouldn't be too
optimistic," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy-general at Japan's
Nuclear Safety Agency.