Post date: Aug 07, 2013 1:49:43 PM
Highly radioactive water from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is pouring out at a rate of 300 tonnes a day as officials say leakage is worse than thought.
FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI, JAPAN (AUGUST 7, 2013) (TV TOKYO) - Highly radioactive water from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is pouring out at a rate of 300 tonnes a day, officials said on Wednesday (August 7), as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the government to step in and help in the clean-up.
The admission indicates that two and a half years after the plant was hit by a huge earthquake and tsunami, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), which only recently admitted water had leaked at all, has yet to come to grips with the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.But Tepco officials said the company was moving with haste.
"We know that we gave a great concern to people due to the contamination of ground water, and we're urgently removing the water from the area that is causing problems," Tepco general manager Noriyuki Imaizumi told a news conference inTokyo.
But the company refused to confirm the extent of the leak.
"I don't have enough information to explain to you the exact volume of the leakedwater, and for the same reason, I cannot confirm the allegation of 300 tonnes for the leakage," said Imaizumi.
A research team led by the Institute of Industrial Sciences of the University of Tokyohas been mapping radioactivity on the bottom of the sea around the nuclear plant.
On Wednesday, they said they had found off shore of Fukushima multiple hotspots that were several times higher in radioactive cesium-137 readings than the surrounding seabed.
The lead scientist called for more research and tests in the seas off the Fukushima nuclear plants.
"We have detected over 20 spots (around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant) with levels of radiation five to ten times higher than the surrounding areas, with diameters ranging from tens to hundreds of meters," said Thornton Blair, professor at the Institute of Industrial Science at the University of Tokyo.
The newly acknowledged leak from the plant 220 km (130 miles) northeast ofTokyo is enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool in barely a week. The water is spilling into the Pacific Ocean, but it was not immediately clear how much of a threat it poses.
In the early weeks of the disaster, the Japanese government allowed Tepco to dump tens of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific in an emergency move.
But the escalation of the long-running crisis raises the risk of an even longer and more expensive clean-up, which is already forecast to take more than 40 years and cost $11 billion.