FEBRUARY 22, 2015
TOKYO, JAPAN
Sensors at the Fukushima nuclear plant have detected a fresh
leak of highly radioactive water to the sea, the plant’s operator announced
today, highlighting difficulties in decommissioning the crippled plant.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said the sensors, which were
rigged to a gutter that pours rain and ground water at the Fukushima Daiichi
plant to a nearby bay, detected contamination levels up to 70 times greater
than the already-high radioactive status seen at the plant campus.
TEPCO said its emergency inspections of tanks storing
nuclear waste water did not find any additional abnormalities, but the firm
said it shut the gutter to prevent radioactive water from going into the
Pacific Ocean.
The higher-than-normal levels of contamination were detected
at around 10 am (local time), with sensors showing radiation levels 50 to 70
times greater than usual, TEPCO said.
Though contamination levels have steadily fallen throughout
the day, the same sensors were still showing contamination levels about 10 to
20 times more than usual, a company spokesman said.
It was not immediately clear what caused the original spike
of the contamination and its gradual fall, he added.
The latest incident, one of several that have plagued the
plant in recent months, reflects the difficulty in controlling and
decommissioning the plant, which went through meltdowns and explosions after
being battered by a giant tsunami in March 2011, sparking the world’s worst
nuclear disaster in a generation.
TEPCO has not been able to effectively deal with an
increasing amount of contaminated water, used to cool the crippled reactors and
molten fuels inside them and kept in large storage tanks on the plant’s vast
campus.
Adding to TEPCO’s headaches has been the persistent flow of
groundwater from nearby mountains travelling under the contaminated plant
before washing to the Pacific Ocean.
The International Atomic Energy Agency recently said TEPCO
has made “significant progress” in cleaning up the plant, but suggested that
Japan should consider ways to discharge treated waste water into the sea as a
relatively safer way to deal with the radioactive water crisis.