Two weeks after the massive magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the tsunami afterwards triggered the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, the facility is still out of control, and the government now suspects a breach in a reactor.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said; "The situation today at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant is still very grave and serious. We must remain vigilant, ... We are not in a position where we can be optimistic. We must treat every development with the utmost care."

This escalation in the nuclear crisis comes as the death toll passes 10,000 while hundreds of thousands of people still have no power, no hot meals and, in many cases, no showers for 14 days. With the cleanup and recovery operations continuing and more than 17,400 listed as missing, the final number of dead was expected to surpass 18,000.

The latest nuclear situation has halted work at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex where authorities have been scrambling to stop the overheated facility from leaking radiation. Low levels of radiation have been leaking since the 11 March earthquake and subsiquint tsunami stopped the power plant's cooling system, but an actual breach would mean a much larger, and much more dangerous, release of radiation.

The possible breach in the plant's Unit 3 might be a crack or a hole in the stainless steel chamber of the reactor core or in the spent fuel pool that's lined with several feet of reinforced concrete. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that suspicions of a possible breach were raised when two workers suffered skin burns after wading into water 10,000 times more radioactive than levels normally found in water in or around a reactor. Water with equally high radiation levels was also found in the Unit 1 reactor building, Tokyo Electric officials said. Water was also discovered in Units 2 and 4, and the company said it suspects that, too, is radioactive. It was not clear whether the water in each unit came from the same source, officials said, but acknowledged the discovery would delay work inside the plant.

Several countries have begun to halt some food imports from Japan after elevated levels of radiation were found in raw milk, seawater and other vegetables, including broccoli, cauliflower and turnips. Elevated levels of radiation have turned up elsewhere, including the tap water in several areas of Japan. In Tokyo, the tap water showed radiation levels the government standard for infants, who are particularly vulnerable to cancer-causing radioactive iodine, officials said.

The scare caused a run on bottled water in the capital, and Tokyo municipal officials are distributing it to families with babies.

Meanwhile, damage to factories was taking its toll on the world's third-largest economy and creating a ripple effect felt worldwide.

Nissan Motor Co. said it may move part of its engine production line to the United States because of damage to a plant.

The quake and tsunami are emerging as the world's most expensive natural disasters on record, wreaking up to $310 billion in damages, the government said.

"There is no doubt that we have immense economic and financial damage," Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said. "It will be our task how to recover from the damage."