Fighting exhaustion and radiation fears, engineers struggled anew Saturday to complete the crucial task of hooking up a damaged nuclear plant to the electricity grid to help cool damaged reactors. The official count of dead and missing in the quake and tsunami soared above 17,000, making this Japan's worst disaster since World War II.
In the earthquake zone, tears trickled down the cheeks of some survivors and rescue workers as a solemn moment of silence was observed at 2:46 p.m. Friday, marking a week since the magnitude 9 temblor slammed Japan's northeastern coast. The quake set off a chain of events culminating in the nuclear emergency now ranked as a 5 on the 7-point international scale.
Still unknown is whether restoring power to the damaged reactors will significantly aid cooling efforts. The full extent of damage to critical cooling pumps from hydrogen explosions and corrosion from seawater that has been pumped in has not been assessed.
Photos: Japan grapples with crisis
In what many considered an inevitable and perhaps tardy move, Japan's nuclear regulatory agency Friday upgraded the severity of the still-unfolding disaster at Fukushima, 150 miles north of Tokyo, from a 4 to a 5 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, meaning it is "an accident with wider consequences."
The 1979 Three Mile Island incident in Pennsylvania, previously considered the second-worst accident in history, was rated a 5 -- and it did not cause injuries or a significant release of radiation. The Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine was a 7 -- "a major accident" as defined by the scale.
The moment of silence was observed in three ravaged prefectures, or states, in the heart of the quake zone: Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima, where hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced. Although the government pledged to accelerate relief efforts, hardship from hunger and cold remained rife.
Establishing a final toll will probably take weeks, but the National Police Agency said the official death count had reached 6,911, exceeding that of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, and the number of those unaccounted for stood at 10,754.
As of Saturday, about 300 workers were operating inside the 12-mile evacuation zone surrounding the battered nuclear plant, government and utility officials said. A nuclear safety official said their main objective was to attach power lines to two of the worst-hit reactors.
