Japan plant leaking radioactive water may pose new disaster

TOKYO – Japan’s nuclear watchdog said a leak of highly radioactive water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant could be the beginning of a new disaster – a series of leaks of contaminated water from storage tanks.

The plant operator has built hundreds of steel tanks to store massive amounts of radioactive water coming from three melted reactors, as well as underground water running into reactor and turbine basements.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. says about 80,000 gallons of contaminated water leaked from one of the tanks, possibly through a seam. The leak is the fifth, and the worst, since last year involving tanks of the same design at the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, raising concerns that contaminated water could begin leaking from storage tanks one after another.

“That’s what we fear the most. We must remain alert. We should assume that what has happened once could happen again, and prepare for more,” Nuclear Regulation Authority Chairman Shunichi Tanaka told a news conference.

The watchdog also proposed Wednesday to raise the rating of the seriousness of the leak to level 3, a “serious incident,” from level 1, “an anomaly,” on an International Nuclear and Radiological event scale from 0 to 7.

The watchdog urged TEPCO to step up monitoring for leaks and take precautionary measures.

During the meeting, officials also revealed that plant workers apparently have overlooked several signs of leaks, suggesting that their twice-daily patrols were largely just a walk. They have not monitored water levels inside tanks and obviously missed a puddle forming at the bottom of the tank earlier.

TEPCO said the leaked water is believed to have mostly seeped into the ground after escaping from the barrier around the tank. It initially said the leak did not pose an immediate threat to the sea because of its distance 1,650 feet – from the coastline.

But TEPCO reversed that view late Wednesday and acknowledged a possible leak to the sea after detecting high radioactivity inside a gutter extending to the ocean.