A more highly radioactive water leak from the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan's northeast was noticed on Wednesday with some quantity suspected to be reaching the Pacific Ocean 200 meters away, Japanese media reported.
Workers noticed the leak at the upper part of a tank near the No.4 reactor and measurement of the toxic water pooled inside a barrier surrounding the tank showed 200,000 becquerels per liter of beta-ray emitting substances, including strontium, against a safety limit of 30 becquerels per liter.
The water was leaking from a joint between the top and side panels of the tank, and some quantity is thought to have flowed along a walkway that overhangs the barrier before dripping to the ground.
Engineers at the plant, owned by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), say they do not know how much water leaked out of the tank or how much of it seeped out of the barrier. They have blocked drains with sandbags, while the country's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) ordered TEPCO to collect soil from around the tank and analyze the water in the drainage system.
More than 300 tons of radioactive water had leaked from another tank in the plant in August and the company was struggling to prevent the water from reaching the ocean.
Asia's biggest power utility, TEPCO has set apart about $10 billion to decommission the plant which was wrecked in the 2011 quake-triggered tsunami with four of its six reactors suffering meltdown.
Addressing the Fukushima Prefectural Assembly on Monday, TEPCO President Naomi Hirose pledged to dismantle without delay nuclear reactors that suffered meltdown. Apologizing for a series of problems at the plant, he said the company would take speedy measures to decontaminate the swelling radioactive wastewater at the plant.
Hirose said the volume of contaminated water would reach the plant's storage capacity of 800,000 tons within the next three years, but he assured that the company would take measures not to allow a build-up to that level.
More than 160,000 residents in a 30-kilometer radius of the stricken plant were evacuated following massive radiation leak after the tsunami knocked out its cooling system leading to the meltdown of reactors. TEPCO is now seeking public funds to provide compensation to the affected which it says will be more than $50 billion.
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