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Home >Expats Living in ShanghaiRadioactive water leaks at Japan nuclear plant.
Update：2013-12-10 00:56 Views：
Japan's prime minister surveyed the damage in a town gutted by a massive tsunami, as officials said yesterday that highly radioactive water was leaking into the sea from the nuclear plant stricken by the disaster.The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex has been spewing radioactivity since March 11, when a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and ensuing wave knocked out power, disabling cooling systems and allowing radiation to seep out of the overheating reactors.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan went to the plant and flew over the tsunami-damaged coast soon after the wave hit, but yesterday was the first time he set foot in one of the pulverized towns.
Kan stopped in Rikuzentakata, where the town hall is one of the few buildings still standing. All its windows are blown out and a tangle of metal and other debris is piled in front of it.
The prime minister bowed his head for a minute of silence in front of the building. He met with the town's mayor, whose 38-year-old wife was swept away in the wave and is still missing. Officials fear about 25,000 people may have been killed, many of whose bodies have not been found.
"The government fully supports you until the end," Kan later told 250 people at an elementary school that is serving as an evacuation center.
Megumi Shimanuki, whose family is living in a similar shelter 160 kilometers away in Natori, said Kan didn't spend enough time with people on the ground. Kan returned to Tokyo in the afternoon.
"The government has been too focused on the Fukushima power plant rather than the tsunami victims," said Shimanuki, 35. "Both deserve attention."
Yesterday's leak was from a newly discovered crack in a maintenance pit on the edge of the Fukushima complex, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said.
The 20-centimeter-long crack was apparently caused by the quake and may have been leaking since then, said spokesman Osamu Yokokura of Tokyo Electric Power Co, which runs the plant.
Measurements showed the air above the radioactive water in the pit contained more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour of radioactivity.
Even only 60 centimeters away, that figure dropped to 400 millisieverts. Workers have taken samples of the water in the pit and seawater and are analyzing them to determine the level of contamination.
Radiation quickly disperses in both air and water, and experts said it would be quickly diluted by the Pacific Ocean, where even large amounts have little effect. TEPCO is trying to pour concrete to seal the crack, spokesman Takashi Kurita said.
"This could be one of the sources of seawater contamination," Nishiyama said. "There could be other similar cracks in the area."
Radioactive iodine-131 at concentrations higher than the legal limit was first detected in waters off the plant more than a week ago. Readings released yesterday showed radiation in seawater had spread 40 kilometers south of the plant; the concentration of radioactive iodine there was twice the legal limit, but officials stressed it was still well below levels that are dangerous to human health.
It wasn't immediately clear whether workers trying to bring the reactors under control were exposed. People living within 20 kilometers of the plant have been evacuated, and no fishing is taking place in the waters near the plant.
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