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Japan’s nuclear crisis escalated on Wednesday as two more blasts and a fire rocked a quake-stricken atomic power plant.

Reports reaching here from Tokyo suggest that a fire broke out again early on Wednesday at the troubled reactor 4 of the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant.

The fire was discovered around 5.45 a.m. in the northeastern corner of the reactor 4 building, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

Workers were ordered to withdraw briefly from the nuclear power plant on Wednesday after radiation levels surged.

Earlier on Tuesday, an apparent hydrogen blast caused a fire in the building, affected by last Friday's 9.0-magnitude quake.

Meanwhile, the Japanese authorities say that the radiation levels at the Fukushima nuclear plant are now high enough to affect human health.

Radiation around the Fukushima No.1 plant on the eastern coast had “risen considerably”, the Prime Minister, Mr Naoto Kan, was quoted as saying and his chief spokesman announced the level was now high enough to endanger human health.

In Tokyo, some 250 kilometres to the southwest, authorities also said that higher than normal radiation levels had been detected in the capital, but not at harmful levels.

Mr Kan warned people living up to 10 kilometres beyond a 20 km exclusion zone around the nuclear plant to stay indoors.

The fire, which was later reportedly extinguished, was burning in the plant’s number-four reactor, he said, meaning that four out of six reactors at the facility are now in trouble.

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Tags: Japan