Tokyo Electric, the owners of the plant, said five workers had been killed at the site, two were missing and 21 had been injured.
I have yet to find this verified elsewhere. The site I have found most reliable for information from Japan is The International Atomic Energy Agency and at the time of this post, they are not confirming the deaths. They report the following-
Japanese Earthquake Update (17 March 01:15 UTC)
Injuries or Contamination at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
Based on a press release from the Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary dated 16 March 2011, the IAEA can confirm the following information about human injuries or contamination at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Please note that this list provides a snapshot of the latest information made available to the IAEA by Japanese authorities. Given the fluid situation at the plant, this information is subject to change.
Injuries
* 2 TEPCO employees have minor injuries
* 2 subcontractor employees are injured, one person suffered broken legs and one person whose condition is unknown was transported to the hospital
* 2 people are missing
* 2 people were ‘suddenly taken ill’
* 2 TEPCO employees were transported to hospital during the time of donning respiratory protection in the control centre
* 4 people (2 TEPCO employees, 2 subcontractor employees) sustained minor injuries due to the explosion at unit 1 on 11 March and were transported to the hospital
* 11 people (4 TEPCO employees, 3 subcontractor employees and 4 Japanese civil defense workers) were injured due to the explosion at unit 3 on 14 MarchRadiological Contamination
* 17 people (9 TEPCO employees, 8 subcontractor employees) suffered from deposition of radioactive material to their faces, but were not taken to the hospital because of low levels of exposure
* One worker suffered from significant exposure during ‘vent work,’ and was transported to an offsite center
* 2 policemen who were exposed to radiation were decontaminated
* Firemen who were exposed to radiation are under investigationThe IAEA continues to seek information from Japanese authorities about all aspects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
TrueblueNZ 
4 responses to “UK Telegraph Claims Five Killed at Fukushima Power Plant”
Dicey stuff. What makes me suspect, and I am starting to get a bit paranoid here, is that in our modern day of information technology, the international agency isn’t capable of providing immediate accurate information (their latest substantive story runs some 12 hrs behind events). This typically means one thing: stories are being spun before they are released, and this means we don’t get the whole picture.
From what I’ve been able to gather, there is some 20 years of spent fuel (about 600,000 rods sitting in that complex, a good part of it on top of the reactors that they are trying to get under control. While the reactor may be well contained, as we have seen in previous stories, the spent fuel pools are not contained at all, apart from the water itself and the critical cooling systems, which have failed. When the water in them starts to evaporate quickly, the tightly packed rod assemblies will overheat and start to burn, dispersing a huge amount of radioactive material. As Red’s link shows, in the pools on unit 4 the temp is already over 80C. There’s no data for the pools on units 1-3, or for the additional storage area.
Although I hate to say it, it appears that the doom sayers have a point (although they probably didn’t realize they had it, as they focused on ‘meltdown’ of the reactors). By the way, the problem with the spent fuel is of course pertinent precisely because the activists have effectively made it impossible to come up with rational solutions for processing and storage of spent fuel. Good old greed and graft will have resulted in the “solution” to keep it on site, in what amounts to large swimming pools, much less protected to disasters than the working parts of the reactors. I wonder in what sort of circles this information must have been freely available, and why specifically this problem had not before received mainstream attention.
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The reason there are no temperatures for the pools on reactors 1-3 may well be that those pools don’t exist any more given the fires and explosions we have seen.
Anybody’s guess where the fuel rods from those pools may have ended up. Note also that reactor 3 was using another fuel type since last year, containing plutonium.
Here’s hoping things are somewhat under control.
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Here’s some pics of what’s left of those pools: http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/201103/r735227_5964756.jpg
Yikes.
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