2013-08-21 08:46:20

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.

Listen to Alastair Wanklyn's full report: RealAudioMP3







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