OSAKA, April 22 (Xinhua) -- One people was killed and 11 others were injured when an explosion rocked a chemical plant in Yamaguchi Prefecture in southwestern Japan early Sunday, local press reported.

The explosion occurred at around 2:00 a.m. local time at a plant belonging to leading Japanese company Mitsui Chemicals , killing a 22-year-old worker and injuring 11 other workers at the site.

Glasses of windows of some 100 houses near the plant were broken due to the explosion, the report said, adding that firefighters are still trying to extinguish the fire caused by the blast

Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- JFE Holdings Inc., Japan’s second- largest steelmaker, said there was no impact on operations from a fire today at its Chiba mill.

There were no injuries from the fire, which was extinguished at 12:24 p.m. Tokyo time, Toru Iwamoto, a spokesman for the company’s JFE Steel unit, said by phone.

The fire occurred in a three-story storage facility on the mill grounds, damaging an area of 1,000 square meters, said Hidetoshi Miho, a spokesman for the Chiba City fire department. The cause is still being investigated, he said.

This is the second fire at the Chiba facilities within four days. Four workers were injured by an explosion at JFE Chemical Co.’s sulfuric acid tank on Dec. 2.

JFE fell 4.1 percent to 1,464 yen at 1:50 p.m. in Tokyo, the most in two weeks.

JFE Holdings Inc., Japan’s second- largest steelmaker, said its steel mill in Chiba, near Tokyo, is operating normally after four workers were injured by an explosion at JFE Chemical Co.’s sulfuric acid tank.
The explosion, which occurred within the site of JFE’s steel works at 9:55 a.m., Japan time, didn’t cause a fire and hasn’t impacted steel production, spokesman Seiji Iwashita said today by telephone.
JFE is investigating the cause of the accident, he said. JFE Chemical is a wholly owned unit of JFE.

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Tosoh Corp. fell the most in more than two months in Tokyo trading after a chemical plant operated by the company in Yamaguchi prefecture, western Japan, caught fire.

Tosoh slid as much as 7 percent, the biggest intraday loss since Sept. 6, and traded 4.4 percent lower at 219 yen as of 9:30 a.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average rose 1.5 percent.

A worker was found dead this morning at the factory, Tosoh President Kenichi Udagawa said today at a news conference in Tokyo. The fire at the plant is "almost extinguished," Yasuyuki Koie, a managing director at the chemical maker, said.

Four months have passed since the earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated the east coast of Japan. And while rebuilding is now under way, progress at the local level is slow and impeding the recovery of universities in the disaster-stricken area. 

According to estimates by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the total damage to universities could exceed ¥90 billion, although it is highly likely that this figure will rise as reconstruction continues. 

Tohoku University, one of the world's top engineering universities, arguably suffered the most damage. Property damage to the university is estimated at over ¥77 billion (£596 million) in total, according to Japanese news agency Kyodo Tsushin. Around 7000 pieces of lab equipment were destroyed and 28 buildings will need to be rebuilt. 



A severely damaged building on the Aobayama-campus at Tohoku University

© Tohoku University
The Aobayama-campus was among the most seriously damaged. A fire swept through the chemistry department, fuelled by lab chemicals. On top of this, efforts to douse the fire caused serious water damage to the building and electrics. The building was declared off-limits, and the laboratory work was moved to other buildings as research groups were unable to function. However, restoration of the laboratories is proceeding apace and is almost completed, with researchers expected to be able to move back in shortly. 

Tadahiro Komeda, a professor of nanotechnology at Tohoku University, estimates that it will take more than a year for research to get back to the stage it was at before the earthquake struck, even in the Katahira-campus which suffered relatively little damage. 

About 260 people were evacuated from a building in downtown Tokyo after a chemical odor and white smoke engulfed the structure, sickening four men, firefighters have announced.

The Tokyo Fire Department is investigating the cause of the odor, which struck Nihon Building in Tokyo's Otemachi business district on the morning of Jan. 8.

A security guard at the building called an ambulance at around 10:10 a.m., saying, "An alarm sounded and there's a chemical odor in the basement."

Firefighters who rushed to the scene found white smoke coming from the first basement floor and detected hydrogen cyanide and sulfurous acid gas.