Radioactive water leaks reported at Fukushima

The operator of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant has reported new radioactive water leaks at the crippled facility.

New video footage showed leaks within the plant’s broken reactors which means that damaged atomic rods could not be taken out as planned.

The nuclear power station’s operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) detected 30 millisieverts per hour of radiation, which is regarded as a high reading.

“It’s very difficult to remove a spent rod because parts of the wall and the bottom of the reactor are all melted. We’ve never had to deal with this before so that adds to the complication,” said Kazuaki Matsui, the executive director of Japan’s Institute of Applied Energy.

The flowing of the contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean has concerned the international community.

On October 3, TEPCO said that Japanese technicians had found a new leak of radioactive water in a storage tank belonging to the damaged power station.

In August, 300 tons of radioactive water was found to have leaked from a separate tank.

TEPCO has long struggled to control waste water at the plant.

On March 11, 2011, a nine-magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami that inflicted heavy damage on the six-reactor Fukushima plant. The cooling systems of the plant’s reactors were knocked out, leading to meltdowns and the release of radioactive material.

A report released by a Japanese parliamentary panel in July said the disaster in Fukushima was not only due to the tsunami, but also a “man-made disaster.”

The report criticized the “government, regulatory authorities and Tokyo Electric Power Company” for being devoid of “a sense of responsibility to protect people’s lives and society.”