For battered Japan, a new threat: nuclear meltdown

Saturday, March 12, 2011 | 4:21 p.m. CST; updated 3:31 p.m. CDT, Thursday, April 7, 2011

IWAKI, Japan — An explosion at a nuclear power plant on Japan's devastated coast destroyed a building Saturday and made leaking radiation, or even outright meltdown, the central threat menacing a nation just beginning to grasp the scale of a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.

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