Power outages begin in Tokyo
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, Tepco, said on Monday it had begun a power outage in an area covering some parts of Tokyo and eight prefectures, affecting around 333,000 households.► Second explosion at Japan nuclear plant► Japan urges evacuation near nuclear plant► Japanese central bank moves to protect economy
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Authorities have announced plans for scheduled rolling power cuts in areas served by Tepco to make up for the loss of power from crippled nuclear plants, including the Tokyo utility's troubled Fukushima Number One facility.
Christopher Doll, UNU-IAS University, Yokohama
Christopher Doll at the UNU-IAS Unuversity in Yokohama said the government was assessing the planned blackouts on a daily basis.
Most people, he says are returning to work although he notes that transport disruption is forcing many people to stay at home.
"People are staying wherever they are most confortable. But if people can go to work, they will go to work," says Doll.
Earlier today a second blast rocked a building housing a nuclear reactor and the cooling system has failed at a third reactor.
Authorities have so far evacuated 210,000 people from a 20 kilometre radius of the plant, declaring it an exclusion zone.
Correspondent Julian Ryall, Sendai, Japan.
It is not yet clear how authorties will cope with providing the country's energy needs but it is urging people to use electricity sparingly. Japan get around 30 per cent of its electricity from the country's 54 nuclear reactors.
One of the problems, says Doll, is that "the Japanese system runs on two different electrical systems so it can be hard to transfer power from one region to the other because they are on different frequencies."
The UN atomic agency, the IAEA, says it is closely monitoring the situation but has ruled out a Chernobyl-style accident.
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