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Japan stops nuclear plant leak; crisis far from over
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Japan stops nuclear plant leak; crisis far from over
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By Mayumi Negishi and Yoko Nishikawa
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan stopped highly radioactive water leaking into the sea on Wednesday from a crippled nuclear plant and acknowledged it could have given more information to neighboring countries about...
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A worker wearing a protective suit points at a cracked concrete pit near its No. 2 reactor of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)'s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima prefecture, April 2, 2011. Operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex said on April 6, 2011, that it had stopped leaks of contaminated water with high levels of radiation into the ocean.
Credit: Reuters/Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO)/Handout
By Mayumi Negishi and Yoko Nishikawa
TOKYO |
Wed Apr 6, 2011 3:28am EDT
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan stopped highly radioactive water leaking into the sea on Wednesday from a crippled nuclear plant and acknowledged it could have given more information to neighboring countries about contamination in the ocean.
Despite the breakthrough in plugging the leak at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, engineers need to pump 11.5 million liters (11,500 tons) of contaminated water back into the ocean because they have run out of storage space at the facility. The water was used to cool over-heated fuel rods.
Nuclear experts said the damaged reactors were far from being under control almost a month after they were hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said it had stemmed the leak using liquid glass at one of the plants six reactors.
"The leaks were slowed yesterday after we injected a mixture of liquid glass and a hardening agent and it has now stopped," a TEPCO spokesman told Reuters.
Engineers had been struggling to stop leaks from reactor No. 2, even using sawdust and newspapers.
Neighbors South Korea and China are getting concerned about the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, and the radioactive water being pumped into the sea, newspapers reported.
"We are instructing the trade and foreign ministries to work better together so that detailed explanations are supplied especially to neighboring countries," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference on Wednesday.
Experts insisted the low-level radioactive water to be pumped into the ocean posed no health hazard to people.
"The original amount of radioactivity is very low, and when you dilute this with a huge body of water, the final levels will be even lower than legal limits," said Pradip Deb, senior lecturer in Medical Radiations at the School of Medical Sciences, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University.
Workers are struggling to restart cooling pumps -- which recycle the water -- in four damaged reactors.
Until those are fixed, they must pump in water to prevent overheating and meltdowns, but have run out of storage capacity for the seawater when it becomes contaminated.
Radioactive iodine detected in the sea has been recorded at 4,800 times the legal limit, but has since fallen to about 600 times the limit. The water remaining in the reactors has radiation five million times legal limits.
"What they are going to have to release is likely to be highly radioactive. The situation could politically be very ugly in a week," said Murray Jennex at San Diego State University, who specializes in nuclear containment.
A floating tanker is being converted to hold contaminated seawater and is due to arrive at the plant site by April 16. TEPCO also plans to build tanks to hold radioactive water.
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