<p>"The wind direction for the time being seems to point the (nuclear) pollution towards the Pacific," Andre-Claude Lacoste told journalists after the blast at the Fukushima No. 1 plant in the north of the country.<br /><br />The explosion at the ageing plant raised fears of a possible meltdown a day after the facility's cooling system was damaged in Japan's massive earthquake on Friday.<br /><br />"Apparently the situation is serious," Lacoste said, adding that his team was receiving incomplete information from Japan because of the number of people tied up with managing the crisis.<br /><br />The Japanese government has declared an atomic emergency and said tens of thousands of people living within 20 kilometres of the plant should leave.<br /><br />But the operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said the structure encasing the reactor had collapsed during an aftershock but the steel reactor inside it was not ruptured.</p>
<p>"The wind direction for the time being seems to point the (nuclear) pollution towards the Pacific," Andre-Claude Lacoste told journalists after the blast at the Fukushima No. 1 plant in the north of the country.<br /><br />The explosion at the ageing plant raised fears of a possible meltdown a day after the facility's cooling system was damaged in Japan's massive earthquake on Friday.<br /><br />"Apparently the situation is serious," Lacoste said, adding that his team was receiving incomplete information from Japan because of the number of people tied up with managing the crisis.<br /><br />The Japanese government has declared an atomic emergency and said tens of thousands of people living within 20 kilometres of the plant should leave.<br /><br />But the operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said the structure encasing the reactor had collapsed during an aftershock but the steel reactor inside it was not ruptured.</p>