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Lives upside down. it was a moment this worker will never forget. earthquake. earthquake? translator: it kept going for two or three minutes. i told everyone to get out of here. i was scared. reporter: he doesn t want to be identified. what who he has to say he fears could lose him his job. for 17 years he has worked for the tokyo electric power company at the now-crippled plant. he wor worries especially about the spent fuel rods in the stricken reactor number four, potentially in a pool drained of water. very, very dangerous, he says. he sees the fires and explosions and the damage and asks himself, are his bosses hiding something? translator: if you watch tv, they say they are sharing the facts. but i doubt it. and right now they say they are taking readings within 20 or 30-kilometer radius. ....
Brazil. barack obama is making his first trip to south america. the five-day tour will also take him to chile and el salvador. some analysts say washington cannot afford to ignore its economic ties with latin america, despite the many challenges in other parts of the world. the search continues for more than 12,000 people still missing since the march 11th earthquake and tsunami in japan. the death toll has now reached almost 8,200. meanwhile, japan s nuclear safety agency says the pressure is increasing in the containment vessel of reactor number three at the crippled nuclear power plant. a super pumper is trying to keep that reactor cool. those are the headlines. i m fionnaula sweeney. stay tuned for voices from japan. march 11th, 2011. 2:46 p.m., tokyo time. ....
So, but you notice no one is spraying the building or unit 1 spent fuel pond. there is a lot of trepidation that maybe the u.s. is right, and it could be dangerous to spray the pond without knowing what s there. and so one of the priorities is going to be, i think after they deal with reactor three, is to turn to the spent fuel pond in unity 1 and try to get that under control. that probably will continue into next week. shepard: i know people get bogged down in 1, 2, 3, 4 s we talk about all the time. the truth is if those spent fuel rods in number 1 have heated up to a very high temperature and the core is very hot, and then you add water on to that, you have a new problem. no, that s right. you definitely and in unit 4, if there has been reports that perhaps there is cracks or holes in the spent fuel pond. and so if you just start pouring water in, and you can t really quench the fires that start, for ....
Of fogging up. especially for our driver. out the other side of the road rolls one reminder after another that japan is a nation with twin disasters. convoys of rescue vehicles race the opposite direction into the tsunami zone, unable to stay behind to help those trapped too close to reactors. that s lee cowen in japan. we have videos of helicopters specially equipped to protect from radiation. they were dropping liquid on the daiichi facility. they are saying the liquid was dropped just on reactor three,{ not on reactors three and four as they said earlier. they said there was going to be planned 40-minute long shifts for helicopter water air lifts. from what we can tell, they did not complete a full 40-minute shift today. we don t know why. helicopters have now pulled back. we have word they are bringing in water canons to try to keep ....
That so little is known about what s going on inside the power station. the priority is cooling the reactors. a cloud emerged from this one today, no one s sure why. the aim is to keep water flowing through them to reduce temperatures, but there s a dilemma. doing this creates steam and too much of that could trigger another leak or explosion. now, all the time, increased radiation is a serious threat to the workers. reactor three is reportedly giving off so much that they can t get close to reactor four. and the problem there is with a tank or pool storing rods of nuclear fuel. it s been losing water. this could be the most serious development so far. tonight, u.s. government officials gave a stark assessment. there is no water in the spent fuel pool and we believe radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures. reporter: so, this crisis in reactor four could be the hardest to tackle. ....