Fukushima Storage Tank Leaking Highly Radioactive Water

A damaged storage tank at the Fukushima nuclear plant is leaking highly radioactive water. The storage tank breach involved about 300 metric tons of water and is separate from other contaminated water leaks revealed in recent weeks.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has been struggling to contain the plant’s radiation since the 2011 Japan tsunami caused a series of meltdowns to occur.

The leak is bad enough that a person standing about half a meter away would develop radiation sickness after just 10 hours, reports Reuters.

It would take just one hour for the person to be exposed to five times the annual allowed amount of radiation for a nuclear worker. Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority classified the Fukushima storage tank leak as a level 1 incident, the second lowest on the international scale.

But it marks the first time the country has used an INES rating for Fukushima since the meltdowns started. The plant was assigned the INES’ highest rating, a 7, when it was hit by explosions following a loss of power and cooling.

NBC News notes that Tokyo Electric Power Company General Manager Masayuji Ono spoke with reporters on Tuesday, explaining that the storage tank is likely “still leaking at this moment.”

The remaining water is currently being pumped out of the defective tank and workers are also collecting the surrounding soil, which is thought to have absorbed much of the radioactive material.

An official with the power company also stated that they “failed to discover the leak at an early stage.” Because of this, the company will be reviewing their tanks, and also their monitoring system to discover why it did not alert them to the leak in time.

The storage tank leak at the Fukushima plant is just the latest in a series of issues at the crippled nuclear facility. A cooling system failed at the plant for the second time in a month. The next day the company announced that up to 120 tons of radioactive water may have leaked from one of the storage tanks.

Groundwater was found to be contaminated in June and two weeks ago the company as reprimanded by Japan’s nuclear regulator for how it has handled contaminated underground water, which has been leaking into the ocean.

it is unclear how the latest nuclear leak will affect the cleanup operation at Fukushima.

[Image via Wikimedia Commons]