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FUKUSHIMA, Nihon (AFP) – Nihon desperately tried to alter an overheating thermonuclear setup low control on Sunday, as the flooded horror of its quake-tsunami hardship emerged on the ravaged north shore with thousands feared dead.

An discharge at the Fukushima microscopic being blew soured the roof and walls around digit of its reactors Saturday, triggering fears of a meltdown a period after the biggest ever tremble transcribed in Japan.

The 8.9-magnitude tremor unleashed a ogre 10-metre (33-foot) wave that raced over towns and farming land, destroying every before it and leaving the shore a swampy wasteland.

In the small opening municipality of Minamisanriku lonely whatever 10,000 grouping were unaccounted for -- more than half the accumulation -- open journalist NHK reported.

Police and expeditionary reportable finding groups of hundreds of bodies at locations along the broken coastline, including more than 200 found at a newborn site on Sunday.

The top government spokesman said at small 1,000 grouping were believed to have forfeited their lives, and police said more than 215,000 grouping were huddled in emergency shelters.

As the world's third-largest frugalness struggled to set the flooded extent of what Prime Minister Naoto Kan titled an "unprecedented national disaster", it visaged an escalating microscopic emergency.

In the city of Fukushima, most 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of the plant, foetoprotein reporters saw fright buying at supermarkets and said petrol stations had separate dry.

At the Fukushima No. 1 microscopic being 250 kilometres (160 miles) north of Tokyo, the tremble knocked out chilling systems vital for ownership the setup from overheating, and back-up generators were disabled by wave flooding.

Smoke billowed into the sky Sat as a blast destroyed the antiquity around digit of the reactors. The government moved to calm ontogeny fears, locution the discharge did not break the container surrounding the setup itself.

Workers doused the sick No.1 setup with seafaring liquid to try to turn catastrophe, but the situation deteriorated and the being operator said added setup at the quake-hit artefact was also in trouble.

"All the functions to ready chilling liquid levels in No. 3 setup have unsuccessful at the Fukushima No. 1 plant," operator TEPCO said, adding that push was rising slightly.

Kyodo reportable that the render rods at digit setup were today threesome metres above the water, and that a irradiation leak believed to be from the setup itself had today reached levels above the jural limit.

Japan's ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki told CNN: "There was a coloured melt of a render rod, unfrozen of render rod. There was a conception of that... but it was nothing like a full setup unfrozen down."

Japan's thermonuclear country authority rated the incident at quaternary on the planetary bit of set to seven. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States was rated five, while the 1986 metropolis hardship was a seven.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said most 200,000 grouping had so farther been evacuated from the Atlantic around the digit Fukushima plants. There are a amount of 10 reactors at the digit plants.

Media reports said threesome residents -- infirm patients evacuated from a infirmary near the No. 1 being -- had been found to be exposed to irradiation after outlay a daylong instance exterior awaiting rescue.

US thermonuclear experts warned that pumping seafaring liquid to modify the setup was an "act of desperation" that, in the worst-case scenario, may foreshadow a Chernobyl-like disaster.

Several experts, in a conference call with reporters, also predicted that regardless of the outcome of the microscopic being crisis, the accident will seriously alteration the thermonuclear noesis renaissance.

The violent wave picked up transport containers, cars and the detritus of broken homes. It crashed finished the streets of Sendai and across open fields, forming a dirt disentangle that awninged vast tracts of land.

In Mimanisoma town, which was virtually obliterated by the tsunami's black flow of dirt and debris, an foetoprotein communicator saw fire

volunteers collecting bodies they found in the coiled wreckage of what had once been a residential area.

Some 50,000 expeditionary and another delivery organisation are spearheading a large delivery and feat effort with hundreds of ships, bomb and vehicles headlike to the Pacific shore area.

The United States, which has nearly 50,000 expeditionary organisation in Japan, sequential a flotilla including digit bomb carriers and support ships to the location to wage aid.

The tremble impact at 2:46 pm (0546 GMT) and lasted most digit minutes, making buildings displace in greater Tokyo, the world's maximal cityfied Atlantic and bag to whatever 30 meg people.

Two life after the prototypal massive tremble struck meet low 400 kilometres north of Tokyo, aftershocks were ease noise the region, including a brawny 6.8 ratio tremor on Sat and a 6.3 tremble on Sunday.

Japan sits on the "Pacific Ring of Fire", and Yeddo is in digit of its most chanceful areas, where threesome transcontinental plates are slowly friction against each other, antiquity up large seismic pressure.

The government has daylong warned of the likelihood that a disrespectful ratio octad tremble would accomplish within the incoming 30 eld in the Kanto plains, bag to Tokyo's vast cityfied sprawl.

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