Fire alarm at Japan nuclear plant
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TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- Firefighters have rushed to an experimental nuclear reactor west of Tokyo following a loud explosion and smoke in an incinerator at the facility.
Government officials said the incident occurred at the Fugen reactor, located about 200 miles (320 kilometers) west of the capital, near the town of Tsuruga in central Japan.
"Officials are checking exactly what happened at the facilities ... but there are no reports of radiation leaks," said an official at Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, the governmental body that monitors the safety of nuclear facilities.
"There is almost no possibility of this leading to a major accident, since the incinerator mainly burns the clothes and gloves used in the facilities."
Immediately after the explosion, officials -- using a monitoring camera at the reactor -- saw smoke fill the building housing the incinerator. There were no immediate reports of radiation leaks or casualties.
Fugen stopped its operations in March as its experimental method of power generation -- using a mixture of uranium and plutonium as the fuel -- proved to be too expensive for commercial development.
The decommissioned reactor, which had an output of 165,000 kilowatts of electricity, began operation in 1979.
Japan's worst nuclear accident occurred in September 1999, when two workers at a uranium-processing plant at Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, died and hundreds of residents, plant workers and emergency personnel were exposed to radiation.
