Japan's efforts to ease nuke crisis hit setback

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By ERIC TALMADGE and MARI YAMAGUCHI

FUKUSHIMA, Japan (AP) - An unexpected rise in pressure inside a troubled reactor set back efforts to bring Japan's overheating, leaking nuclear complex under control Sunday as concerns grew that as-yet minor contamination of food and water is spreading.

The pressure increase meant plant operators may need to deliberately release radioactive steam, prolonging a nuclear crisis that has consumed government attention even as it responded to the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that savaged northeast Japan on March 11.

In a rare rescue after so many days, a teenage boy's cries for help led police to rescue him and an 80-year-old woman at a wrecked house.

Beyond the disaster area, an already shaken public grew uneasy with official reports that traces of radiation first detected in spinach and milk from farms near the nuclear plant are turning up farther away in tap water, rain and even dust. In all cases, the government said the radiation levels were too small to pose an immediate risk to health. Still, Taiwan seized a batch of fava beans from Japan found with faint - and legal - amounts of iodine and cesium.

Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20110320/D9M2VH600.html

---

People shop for produce at a makeshift store at a devastated area in Kesennuma, northern Japan, Sunday, March 20, 2011, after last week's earthquake and tsunami. (AP Photo/The Yomiuri Shimbun, Kaname Muto) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT