Japan was on Saturday preparing to mark the first anniversary of its tsunami, as government papers revealed ministers were warned of the possibility of meltdowns at Fukushima just after the waves struck.
A summary of a government meeting held about four hours after a giant earthquake sent a wall of water crashing into the atomic power station showed that one unidentified participant had cautioned of the risk of a meltdown.
"If the temperature of the reactor cores rises after eight hours, there is a possibility that a meltdown will occur," the person said, according to the summary released on Friday.
Fukushima Daiichi, 220 kilometres (140 miles) northeast of Tokyo, spewed radiation after its cooling systems were knocked out by the tsunami when it crushed coastal communities and left more than 19,000 people dead or missing.
The government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) maintained for months there had been no meltdown at Fukushima, despite repeated warnings from independent experts.
They finally admitted in May that three of six reactors had suffered meltdowns.
Tens of thousands of people were made homeless by the nuclear crisis and some tracts of land inside a 20-kilometre exclusion zone are expected to be uninhabitable for decades because of radiation levels.
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