Radiation found in food as workers scramble to curb nuclear crisis
By the CNN Wire Staff

Tokyo (CNN) -- The Japanese government said Saturday that abnormally high levels of radiation were detected in spinach and milk that came from farms near a tsunami-affected nuclear plant as emergency workers moved closer to restoring cooling systems in the reactors.
Crews connected electric cables needed to power up cooling systems in the six stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, inoperable since last Friday's monster earthquake and tsunami.
Authorities also reported progress when an unmanned contraption began spraying seawater continuously Saturday to cool down the Number 3 reactor's overheating spent nuclear fuel pool.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said levels of radiation found in some but not all samples of spinach and milk from the Fukushima and Ibaraki prefectures exceeded the limits stipulated by Japan's food safety law.
Edano, however, insisted they weren't extremely high.

If a person consumed these products continuously for a year, he said, he or she would take in the same amount of radiation as a single CT scan. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration equates that to roughly 7 millisieverts, over double what a person in an industrialized country naturally gets in a year.
Authorities are mulling regulating movement of agricultural products from within the vicinity of the Fukushima plant, some 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Tokyo, as well as getting more data for analysis under Japan's health ministry's watch, Edano said.
The news about food contamination came as emergency workers scrambled Saturday to set up electricity to power cooling systems for the reactors.
Tokyo Electric and Power Company officials told CNN that the connection of electric cabling has been completed, but the company still has to conduct safety and stability checks on the circuit before throwing the switch.
The company said workers hope to fully restore a stable power supply by day's end to the plant's Numbers 1, 2, 5 and 6 reactors. The plan is to get power up and running Sunday for the Numbers 3 and 4 reactors.
The cooling systems are essential to keep temperatures low, curb the further emission of radioactive material and, in a worst case scenario, prevent a full nuclear meltdown. A meltdown could occurs when nuclear fuel rods get so hot that they melt the steel and concrete structure containing them, spilling out into the air and water with potentially deadly results.
Meanwhile, authorities set up a new system to spray seawater continuously on the Number 3 reactor's overheating spent nuclear fuel pool.
A Tokyo fire department official said an unmanned contraption began operating around 2 p.m. Saturday and can spray water for up to seven hours at a time. In previous missions, firefighters, soldiers and plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Company workers had manually done the same in brief intervals to avoid prolonged radiation exposure.
The water, pumped from a nearby port and then funneled to the system, is being directed at the Number 3 reactor's spent fuel pool in order to cool it and prevent the emission of more radioactive material into the atmosphere.
"We believe the situation has been stabilized, though much remains to be seen," said Edano, adding that authorities are also looking into spraying the Number 4 reactor and its spent fuel pool as well.
Also Saturday, a Tokyo Electric official said three holes apiece have been drilled in the ceilings of the Numbers 5 and 6 units in order to alleviate pressure. A hydrogen gas buildup had previously contributed to explosions at the Numbers 1, 2 and 3 reactors.

A water pump, powered by a second diesel generator, began circulating water in the Number 6 units spent fuel pool shortly after 5 a.m. Saturday, according to a news release from Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan's office.
Graham Andrew, a special assistant to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director, noted Friday that efforts to use seawater to cool overheated spent nuclear fuel pools -- both by pumping in seawater, as well as in the case of Unit 3 in which water has come from the ground -- in and around the Numbers 1, 2 and 3 reactors appear to be working.
While each of those reactors have damage to their fuel cores, Andrew said they appear to be relatively stable for now.
Beyond Saturday's food safety announcement, there have been few indications of any immediate fallout from the nuclear crisis.
Airborne radiation levels around Japan have shown no signs of spiking drastically, according to measurements posted online Saturday by the nation's education and science ministry.
Most readings showed detectable but relatively small amounts of radiation. Even the two top readings in Mito (in Ibaraki prefecture) and Utsonomiya (in Toshigi prefecture) are well below what's considered dangerous to humans and had fallen in recent days.
Still, no one has said that authorities are in the clear. In fact, authorities acknowledged Friday that the situation is far more serious than they'd originally estimated.
"We sincerely apologize ... for causing such a great concern and nuisance," said a statement from Masataka Shimizu, the president of Tokyo Electric.
And the company's managing director, Akio Komori, broke down in a tears after leaving a news conference in Fukushima at which exposure levels were discussed.
This came shortly after Japan's nuclear and industrial safety agency raised its rating for the crisis' severity (specifically, at the Numbers 2 and 3 reactors) from a Level 4 to a Level 5 -- putting it on par with the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant, the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.
According to the International Nuclear Events Scale, a level 5 indicates the likelihood of a release of radioactive material, several deaths from radiation and severe damage to a reactor core. Each step on the scale indicates an increase of 10 times the severity of the step below it, the International Atomic Energy Agency says.
The Chernobyl nuclear accident in the former Soviet Union rated a 7, the highest level on the scale, while Japan's other nuclear crisis -- a 1999 accident at Tokaimura in which workers died after being exposed to radiation -- rated a 4.
But the rating change was not due to new problems at the plant, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy head of the nuclear safety agency.
Rather, it came after Japanese authorities got a better assessment of what had happened, partly based on images showing damage to fuel rods and other structures inside certain reactor buildings.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano cautioned against reading too much into the raised assessment, saying it is too early to make a full assessment.
Yet Peter Bradford, a member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission when the Three Mile Island incident occurred, said the Fukushima Daiichi crisis is worse than the partial meltdown of a single reactor at the Pennsylvania plant.
"In terms of severity, this accident left Three Mile Island in the rear-view mirror several days ago," he said.
Tokyo Electric has more than doubled the radiation threshold for those on-site trying to avert a further crisis.
The company said those at the Fukushima Daiichi plant can now be exposed to 250 millisieverts of radiation before they must leave the area, up from its previous standard of 100 millisieverts.
People are naturally exposed to about 3 millisieverts of radiation a year. The International Commission on Radiological Protection recommends no more than 50 millisieverts exposure in a given year for nuclear rescue and recovery workers. It offers no restriction in a crisis when "the benefit to others clearly outweighs the rescuer's risk."
A Tokyo Electric official said Saturday afternoon that the new standard applies to the several hundred people -- power company employees as well as soldiers, firefighters and others -- now on the site.


CNN's Yoko Wakatsuki, Stan Grant and Steven Jiang contributed to this report.