Japan nuclear crisis far from over, UN agency warns

TOKYO: Japanese engineers struggled on Sunday to pump radioactive water from a crippled nuclear power station while the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said the crisis triggered by this month's earthquake and tsunami was far from over.  

Radiation levels in the sea off the Fukushima Daiichi plant  rose on Sunday to 1,850 times normal just over two weeks after the disaster struck, from 1,250 on Saturday, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.   

The radiation particles will be dispersed and diluted, however, posing no threat to marine life or food safety, a senior agency official said.   
"There is no need to worry about health risks," Hidehiko Nishiyama said.  

The crisis at the plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, has overshadowed a relief and recovery effort from the magnitude 9.0 quake and the huge tsunami it triggered on March 11 that left more than 27,100 people dead or missing in northeast Japan.  

Yukiya Amano, the director general of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), cautioned that Japan's nuclear emergency could go on for weeks, if not months more.    

 "This is a very serious accident by all standards," he told the New York Times. "And it is not yet over."