Tokyo: Technicians struggled on Sunday to prevent a meltdown at a nuclear power plant damaged by an earthquake in Japan as officials said the toll might rise as high as 2,000.
The official casualty list from Friday's magnitude-8.9 quake had topped 687, the Kyodo News agency reported. In Fukushima and Myazaki prefectures, more than 600 bodies had been found, and 1,167 people remained unaccounted for in Fukushima.
The World Health Organisation said the toll was 636 with 681 people missing.
In Miyagi prefecture, no contact could be established with about 10,000 residents of the town of Minamisanriku. Several coastal towns in Miyagi also remained submerged.
A municipal official in Futaba town in Fukushima prefecture told Kyodo that about 90 percent of houses in three coastal communities had been washed away by a tsunami generated by Friday's quake.
About 390,000 people have fled their homes, many of them finding a place to stay at the more than 1,400 emergency shelters set up in five prefectures in schools and community centres, public broadcaster NHK said.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan doubled the number of soldiers sent to areas hit by the quake and tsunami to 100,000, Kyodo quoted Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa as saying, as rescue workers were struggling to reach some of the affected areas with many roads blocked by debris.
Drinking water was transported to quake-hit regions by truck, and witnesses said residents were rushing to stock up on supplies at supermarkets and petrol stations, buying food and heating oil.
Radiation levels at a damaged nuclear power plant at Fukushima, 240 km north of Tokyo, were rising well above the legal limits, top government spokesman Yukio Edano said.
Reactors at the Fukushima I and II plants lost their cooling functions after power and backup generators were cut off by the quake, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said.
Engineers were in the process Sunday of releasing another dose of radioactive steam from a reactor into the atmosphere, Edano said. The technicians were working to prevent a meltdown of the reactor.
On Saturday, a water vapour blast damaged the building housing the number 1 reactor, injuring four people.
About 200,000 people have been evacuated from a 20-km safety zone around the two plants.
At least 19 people found to have been exposed to radioactivity, Kyodo said.
Further south, residents remained unconcerned. "Why should I flee?" Taduo Tayama, 60, of Chiba prefecture, asked. "At the moment, the wind direction is favourable, but even if it turns, I'm not worried because outside the 20-km radius, everything is fine."
Railway links to the quake-hit regions are to remain closed, Japan Rail said, but it resumed operations in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
Highways were also closed and more than 670 domestic flights have been cancelled, but international flights operating out of Tokyo's Narita airport have resumed.
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