TOKYO — Authorities discovered highly radioactive water leaking from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the ocean Saturday, the latest sign that the desperate strategies being used to cool the overheating reactors could be creating new problems.
The toxic water had pooled by an almost 8-inch-long crack in the concrete wall of a pit at the Unit 2 reactor where power cables are stored, Japan’s nuclear regulatory office said. The radioactivity level in the air above the water was measured at 1,000 millisieverts per hour, four times the maximum level that workers can be exposed to under Japanese law.
Emergency crews poured cement into the crack Saturday afternoon and again in the evening in a bid to stem the leak, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported.
However, the cement was unable to set because the water washed it away, authorities said, and Tokyo Electric Power Co., known as Tepco, which operates the plant, was considering using a plastic polymer this morning.
Tepco also announced that two workers were killed when the wave swept ashore more than three weeks ago, the first confirmation of deaths at the plant. The workers had been missing since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said the government has instructed Tepco to examine the facility for other potential leaks.
The discovery raised the disconcerting possibility that the power company’s decision to drench the reactors with tens of thousands of tons of water in an attempt to submerge the exposed spent fuel rods is having an unintended side effect.
Workers have scrambled to try to figure out what to do with the irradiated water that has built up in the plant. They have put some in storage tanks and moved some into floating barges offshore. Yet three workers laying power cables at the plant two weeks ago suffered leg burns after stepping in a pool of water; they were released from a radiation hospital last week after doctors concluded they had not suffered long-term damage.
Government officials said they had not determined the source of the radiation in the water that was found leaking Saturday. “We will investigate the route the water is flowing into the pit,” Nishiyama said.
The setback undercut any momentum Prime Minister Naoto Kan had hoped to build when he announced Friday that the government would turn its attention to recovery and reconstruction.
Kan, making his first visit to areas affected by the disasters, traveled in a Japanese military helicopter to Rikuzentakata in northern Iwate prefecture, which was hit hard by the twin disasters. In the city of 23,000, more than 1,000 people are dead and 1,000 others remain missing, with 13,000 living in shelters, said Noriyuki Shikata, a government spokesman.
All told, 11,938 people were killed by the quake and tsunami, and 15,478 are missing, according to the National Police Agency. The Japan Self-Defense Forces, with the help of the U.S. military, will finish a three-day intensive search for bodies today. So far, they have found 66 bodies over two days, according to Kyodo News.
Meanwhile, Japan continued to receive aid from other countries, including a German-designed robot that can be used to remove debris and help repair the power plant; British radiation counters and gas masks, and 10,000 tons of gas and diesel fuel from China.
