New leak at Fukushima plant released 300 metric tons of radioactive water from storage tanks
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the company still in charge of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, announced Tuesday that at least 300 metric tons of highly radioactive water had leaked from storage tanks around the reactor complex.
The dangers of the Fukushima nuclear plant continue photo of worker in 2011, S. Herman via wikimedia commons
Three hundred tons is roughly equivalent to the amount of water used each day by 200 U.S. families, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Hideka Morimoto, a spokesman for Japan’s nuclear watchdog, the Nuclear Regulation Authority, said water could reach the sea via a drain gutter.
“We are extremely concerned,” Morimoto told reporters. He urged TEPCO to quickly determine the cause of the leak and its possible effect on water management plans.
TEPCO spokesman Masayuki Ono said the leaked water seeped into the ground after largely escaping piles of sandbags added to a concrete barrier around the tank.
Ono told Reuters news agency: “One hundred millisieverts per hour is equivalent to the limit for accumulated exposure over five years for nuclear workers; so it can be said that we found a radiation level strong enough to give someone a five-year dose of radiation within one hour.”
Workers were pumping out the puddle and the remaining water in the tank and will transfer it to other containers, in a desperate effort to prevent it from escaping into the sea ahead of heavy rain predicted later in the day around Fukushima.
Reports later claim that only 4 metric tons were “reclaimed” through this process.
