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Radiation readings rise at Fukushima nuclear plant
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Radiation readings around tanks holding contaminated water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have spiked by more than a fifth to their highest levels, Japan’s nuclear regulator said, heightening concerns about the clean-up of the worst atomic disaster in almost three decades.
Radiation hotspots have spread to three holding areas for hundreds of hastily built tanks storing water contaminated by being flushed over three reactors that melted down at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in March 2011.
The rising radiation levels and leaks at the plant have prompted international alarm, and the Japanese government said it would step in with almost US$500 million of funding to fix the growing levels of contaminated water at the plant.
Readings just above the ground near one set of tanks showed radiation as high as 2,200 millisieverts (mSv), the Nuclear Regulation Authority said yesterday. The previous high was 1,800 mSv.
Both levels would be enough to kill an unprotected person in hours. The authority has said the recently discovered hotspots are highly concentrated and easily shielded.
The tanks sit on a hill above the Pacific Ocean at the Fukushima plant, which was devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, triggering the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier.
The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, said last month that water from one of the tanks was leaking. Another small leak was found later and the rising number of areas of concentrated radiation are raising concerns of further leaks.
The NRA has raised the severity of the initial leak to a level 3 “serious incident.”
The disaster created fuel-rod meltdowns at three reactors, radioactive contamination of the air, sea and food and resulted in the evacuation of 160,000 people in the area north of Tokyo.
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