Fukushima placed under most serious alert in two years
(Vatican Radio) There has been another spill at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant. Highly
contaminated water leaked from a storage tank. A spokesman for the plant operator
said about 300 tons of water, or 80,000 gallons, spilled from a storage tank, most
of it draining into the ground. The water is highly radioactive coolant from one of
the melted-down reactors, poured in to keep the core from heating up and then stored
in a giant drum until it could be filtered and made safe.
It had been called
a level one incident, but will be upgraded to a level three, which is the most serious
alert declared there since the meltdowns two and a half years ago.
The Fukushima
plant remains fragile. Workers are erecting shelters to cover the shattered reactor
buildings, but radiation hotspots mean work is slow, and managers need to keep recruiting
new labourers to replace those who have reached their maximum annual exposure.
The
operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said it did not know why the latest leak occurred.
It said it would check how water-tight the dozens of other storage tanks are.
But
the alert comes only days after the company acknowledged that radioactive groundwater
is probably leaking into the Pacific Ocean in large quantities every day.
On
Tuesday, South Korea said it had asked Japan to state publicly what it's doing to
curb leaks -- and to prevent pollution of fishing grounds.