Former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has said that he feared the Fukushima nuclear crisis in March this year, was many times worse than the Chernobyl disaster and could have threatened the nation's survival.
Kan described a nightmare vision of 'deserted scenes of Tokyo without a single man' and the need to evacuate tens of millions of people.
"It was truly a spine-chilling thought. The power was totally lost and there was no cooling capacity. I knew what that meant. So I thought, 'This is going to be a disaster'," the Daily Mail quoted Kan, as saying.
In an interview with Mainichi newspaper, Kan said he feared Japan was facing the possibility of collapse.
He even thought the nuclear disaster could lead to the streets of Tokyo being deserted, the paper said.
As Kan grew more sceptical of TEPCO's handling of the accident, he established a joint task force with the company at its headquarters four days after the crisis began.
"At about that time, the US government, which had been providing assistance from the start, was becoming frustrated," Kan said.
"We were not told straight out, but it was obvious that they questioned whether we were really taking this seriously," he added.
Kan resigned as the country's PM last month amid criticism over his administration's handling of the disaster.
