Japanese crews fighting to cool overheating reactors laid a power line into a stricken nuclear power plant today as the government revealed abnormal levels of radioactivity in milk and spinach.

The troubles of the Fukushima nuclear-power plant - and other reactors - in northeast Japan have dealt a severe blow to the global nuclear industry, a powerful cartel of less than a dozen major state-owned or state-guided firms that have been trumpeting a nuclear-power renaissance.