The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), operator of the disabled nuclear power plant in Fukushima Daiichi, said on Monday it has detected 3,200 becquerels per liter of radioactive substances in water collected at a monitoring well near a leaky water storage tank.
The samples, collected on Sunday from a well 20 meters north of the water storage tank in the H4 area, contained beta-ray emitting substances including strontium, Japanese media reports said.
On Thursday, TEPCO detected high levels of radioactive substances in water collected from another well about ten meters from the tank.
The latest finding raises the possibility that radioactive water leaked from the storage tank may have reached groundwater.
Last month, TEPCO discovered that more than 300 tons of contaminated water had leaked from the tank with some quantity reaching the nearby Pacific Ocean.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was knocked out in the 2011 tremor and tsunami sending out massive radiation that contaminated food and water. More than 160,000 residents in a 30-kilometer radius of the stricken plant were evacuated. TEPCO now plans to prevent seepage of highly toxic water by constructing a kilometer-long impenetrable frozen wall beneath the plant with government financial support.
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