Japan's Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant, knocked out in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, has been found to have increased levels of radiation inside one of its damaged reactor buildings, reports said on Monday.
According to its operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), radiation levels of 600-700 millisieverts were detected on the first floor of reactor one building. Radiation levels though measured 280 millisieverts inside the building's southern entrance. However, radiation exposure limit for workers has been pegged at 250 millisieverts per year.
After being disabled by the catastrophe, the power station has been letting out radiation into the air and sea.
Earlier on Monday, a nine-member team comprising seven TEPCO workers and two officials from the Tokyo's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency entered the building for measuring radiation levels.
Consequently, TEPCO said measures would be undertaken to insulate work areas against radiation contamination even as it was decided to continue task of filling up the reactor's containment vessel.
On Thursday, Workers at the plant entered one of the buildings housing its nuclear reactors for the first time since the March 11 tremor to install ventilation systems in reactor one for filtering out radioactive particles.
Following fears of radiation contamination, the Japanese government had enforced a 20-kilometer evacuation zone around the power station, forcing nearly 80,000 people to leave their homes.
Last month, Japanese authorities kad raised the nuclear disaster level at the plant to the highest. Previously, the highest level for nuclear mishaps had been applied only to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the erstwhile Soviet Union. It was made after radiation of 10,000 terabequerels per hour was estimated at Fukushima.
The severity of the nuclear crisis was reassessed in line with parameters prescribed by the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES).
Prior to this, the nuclear disaster level at Fukushima had been set at five, at par with that of the 1979 nuclear mishap at Three Mile Island in the U.S.
The March 11 earthquake and tsunami had left 27,000 people dead or missing.
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