Post date: Apr 06, 2013 9:50:12 AM
Tokyo Electric Power Company says up to 120 tons (109 tonnes) of highly radioactive water may have leaked out of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
TOKYO, JAPAN (FILE - MARCH 2013) (REUTERS) - Up to 120 tons (109 tonnes) of highly radioactive water may have leaked from an undergroundwater tank at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said on Saturday (April 6).
Tests earlier this month at one of the seven underground reservoirs at the plant detected about 6,000 becquerels per cubic centimetre in water around the tank, the company said."We followed correct procedure when we constructed the tanks, but from our current measurements it appears that there may have been a leak," Tepco spokesman Masayuki Ono said at an emergency news conference at the company's headquarters broadcast by Japan's TV Tokyo.
The underground tanks store water after it has been used to cool the plant's nuclear reactors. Cesium is removed from the water before storage but other radioactive elements like Strontium remain.
A Tepco official contacted by Reuters could not confirm which elements were thought to have leaked, but said it was 'highly likely' levels exceeded government limits.
On Saturday afternoon the remaining 13,000 cubic metres (459,090 cubic feet) of contaminated waterin the reservoir were being pumped into other tanks nearby. The process is expected to last about five days.
Tepco also said the tank was 800 metres (2,625 feet) from the ocean and there was no sign the contaminated water was leaking into the sea.
"At the current time our measurements inside and outside the bay by the plant do not indicate highradiation levels, so going on that basis we do not believe there is a leak into the sea," Ono said.
The leak is the latest in a series of mishaps in recent weeks that has marred the cleanup at theFukushima Daiichi facility crippled by 2011's massive earthquake and tsunami.
Last month Tepco blamed a small rodent for a power outage that shut down electricity for nearly 30 hours to essential cooling systems at the plant's spent fuel pools.
On Friday (April 5) one pool went briefly offline again - Tepco said that may have been due to a fault during repair work to prevent more wildlife from entering the facility.