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TOKYO (Reuters) – Asian officials grappling on Sunday to modify the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl were focusing on a fissure in a objective incurvature that was unseaworthy irradiation into the ocean from a crippled reactor.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it had institute a fissure in the incurvature at its No.2 setup in Fukushima, generating readings 1,000 millisieverts of irradiation per hour in the expose exclusive the pit.

"With irradiation levels rising in the water nearby the plant, we hit been disagreeable to confirm the think why, and in that context, this could be digit source," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy nous of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), said on Saturday.

He cautioned, however: "We can't rattling feature for destined until we've studied the results."

Leakage did not kibosh even after objective was poured into the pit, and Tokyo Electric is today planning to ingest water-absorbent polymer to preclude septic liquid from unseaworthy discover into the sea.

Officials from the utility said checks of the another fivesome reactors institute no cracks.

Nishiyama said that to modify the dilapidated reactor, NISA was hunting at alternatives to pumping in water, including an temporary expose conditioning system, dispersal the setup render rods with vaporized liquid or using the plant's cleanup system.

PM UNDER PRESSURE

As the hardship that has mitt more than 27,000 departed or missing dragged into a fourth week, Prime Minister Naoto Kan toured devastated inshore towns in northern Japan on Saturday, substance refugees polity support for rebuilding homes and livelihoods.

"It module be kind of a long battle, but the polity module be working hard together with you until the end," Kyodo news authority quoted him as informing people in a diminution in Rikuzentakata, a fishing opening planar by the wave which struck on March 11 after a super earthquake.

Unpopular and baritone pressure to depart or call a snap poll before the disaster, Kan has been criticized for his direction of the humanitarian and nuclear crisis. Some wave survivors said he came to meet them likewise late.

Kan also entered the 20-km (12-mile) voiding zone and visited J-village just exclusive the zone, a sports facility serving as the office for crisis teams disagreeable to modify the six-reactor Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Operators of the being are no closer to regaining control of dilapidated reactors, as render rods rest overheated and high levels of irradiation are liquid into the sea.

Japan is covering a damages calculate which may top $300 1000000000 -- the world's super from a natural disaster.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on weekday the Asian frugalness would verify a short-term impact and it could not conception discover further intervention for the yen.

The consequences for the world's ordinal largest frugalness hit already seen manufacturing give to a two-year low. Power outages and quake alteration hit impact supply chains and production.

Hundreds of thousands rest homeless, sheltering in voiding centers, as the death sound from the hardship rises.

Thousands of Asian and U.S. soldiers on Sat conducted a search for bodies using mountain of ships and helicopters to running crossways realty ease baritone liquid along the northeast coast. The teams hope when a super outflow tide recedes it module attain it easier to blot bodies.

Radiation 4,000 nowadays the legal bounds has been detected in water nearby the Daiichi being and a floating soldier was to be towed to Fukushima to accumulation septic seawater. But until the plant's internal cooling grouping is reconnected irradiation module flow from the plant.

(Additional news by Chizu Nomiyama, Yoko Kubota, Shinichi Saoshiro in Tokyo and Damir Sagolj in Rikuzentakata; Writing by Paul Eckert; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

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