Kashiwazaki, Japan – A strong earthquake shook Japan’s northwest coast Monday, setting off a fire at the world’s most powerful nuclear power plant and causing a reactor to spill radioactive water into the sea – an accident not reported to the public for hours.
On Tuesday, authorities were investigating a new possible radioactive leak at the plant, Kyodo News agency reported. Officials said a series of stacked drums containing low-level nuclear waste fell over during Monday’s quake and some of the lids were found open, Kyodo said, citing officials in the city of Kashiwazaki, near the epicenter.
Kensuke Takeuchi, a spokesman at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, confirmed that barrels of low-level nuclear waste had tipped over. But he could not give further details, such as whether there had been a leak.
The quake had triggered a fire in an electrical transformer and also caused a leak of radioactive water at the plant, the world’s largest in terms of electricity output.
The leak was not announced until late Monday, about 12 hours after the quake.
That fed fresh concerns about the safety of Japan’s 55 nuclear reactors, which supply 30 percent of the country’s electricity and have suffered a long string of accidents and cover-ups.
About 315 gallons of slightly radioactive water apparently spilled from a tank at one of the seven reactors and entered a pipe that flushed it into the sea, said Jun Oshima, an executive at Tokyo Electric Power Co.
Officials said there was no “significant change” in the seawater near the plant about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo.
“The radioactivity is one-billionth of the legal limit,” Oshima said of the leaked water.
Eliot Brenner, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington, said the agency told Japan’s government it was ready to provide assistance if needed but had not received any request for help.
A U.S. nuclear-industry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident was a Japanese affair, said the transformer fire and water leak occurred in systems linked to different reactors.
In Kashiwazaki city, nine people in their 70s and 80s – six women and three men – died, most of them crushed by collapsing buildings, the Kyodo news agency said today.
The U.S. Geological Survey put the initial quake’s magnitude at 6.6 and the second at 6.8. It struck off the coast of Niigata.
First word of trouble at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa power plant was a fire that broke out at an electrical transformer. All the reactors were either already shut down or automatically switched off by the quake.
But in the evening, the company released a statement revealing the leak of radioactive water, saying it had taken all day to confirm details of the accident.
