Tokyo, March 27: The operator of Japan’s quake-hit Fukushima power plant says radioactivity in the water inside one of the reactors has reached 10 million times the usual level.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said the unusual radiation level was detected in the water that had accumulated at the No.2 reactor’s turbine housing unit.
“We are examining the cause of this, but no work is being done there because of the high level of radiation,” a spokesman for TEPCO said on Sunday.
“High levels of caesium and other substances are being detected, which usually should not be found in reactor water. There is a high possibility that fuel rods are being damaged,” Reuters quoted the TEPCO spokesman as saying.
Workers who were trying to cool the reactor core to avoid a meltdown have been evacuated following the sharp increase in radioactivity levels.
On Saturday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it could offer no timeline on when Japanese engineers could stop radioactive leakage from the stricken nuclear facility, even though the likely source of the emissions has been identified.
“We don’t know how long there will be releases,” senior IAEA technical advisor Graham Andrew told reporters at the agency’s seat in the Austrian capital, Vienna.
In addition to suspected leaks of the vessel’s shielding reactor cores at the plant’s units 1 and 2, data also indicated a leak at reactor 3, IAEA officials said.
A massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11 in Japan’s northern coast set off the nuclear problems by knocking out power to cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi plant and causing radiation leaks.
The government has ordered the evacuation of about 200,000 people living in a 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) area around the plant, and told people living between 20 kilometers and 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the plant to remain indoors.
Japan has announced that nearly 28,000 people have died or are feared dead as a result of the disastrous quake and tsunami.
The quake is now considered Japan’s deadliest natural disaster since the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which claimed the lives of more than 142,000 people.
—Presstv