Some 120 tons of highly radioactive water may have leaked from a large underground storage pool at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, its operator Tokyo Electric Power Company said.

"We followed correct procedure when we constructed the tanks, but from our current measurements it appears that there may have been a leak," the company's spokesman Masayuki Ono said.

Ono said tests earlier this month at one of the seven underground reservoirs at the plant detected about 6,000 becquerels per cubic centimetre in water around the tank.

Contaminated water in the reservoir has now been pumped into other tanks nearby. The process is expected to last about five days.

Ono added that the tank is 800 metres from the ocean and there is no sign the contaminated water has leaked into the sea.

"At the current time our measurements inside and outside the bay by the plant do not indicate high radiation levels, so going on that basis we do not believe there is a leak into the sea."

The underground tanks store water after it has been used to cool the plant's nuclear reactors. Cesium is removed from the water before storage but other radioactive elements like strontium remain.

So far company officials could not confirm which elements are thought to have leaked, but said it is 'highly likely' levels exceeded government limits.

The leak is the latest in a series of mishaps in recent weeks that have marred the cleanup at the Fukushima Daiichi facility crippled by 2011's massive earthquake and tsunami.

Related

• Japan's nuclear ghost town
• DPRK's Nyongbyon nuclear complex
• Britain gives green light to new nuclear power plant
• Japanese protest against reopen of nuclear plants

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)