Radioactivity levels soar in Japan seawater
Officials say contamination poses little risk to aquatic life; U.S. rushes freshwater to plant
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Smoke rises Saturday from the nuclear reactors of Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Tomioka, Fukushima prefecture, northeastern Japan, in this still image taken from NHK video.
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TOKYO — Radioactivity levels are soaring in seawater near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, Japan's nuclear safety agency said on Saturday, two weeks after the nuclear power plant was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami.
Even as engineers tried to pump puddles of radioactive water from the power plant 150 miles north of Tokyo, the nuclear safety agency said tests on Friday showed radioactive iodine had spiked 1,250 times higher than normal in the seawater just offshore the plant.
A senior official from Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Hidehiko Nishiyama, said the contamination posed little risk to aquatic life.
"Ocean currents will disperse radiation particles and so it will be very diluted by the time it gets consumed by fish and seaweed," he said.
Despite that reassurance, the disclosure may well heighten international concern over Japanese seafood exports. Several countries have already banned milk and produce from areas around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, while others have been monitoring Japanese seafood.
Meanwhile, U.S. naval barges loaded with freshwater sped toward the overheated nuclear plant to help workers remove dangerously contaminated water from the facility.
The switch to cooling reactors with freshwater was necessary because of fears salt and other contaminants in seawater were clogging up pipes and coating the surface of reactor vessels and fuel rods, hampering the cooling process, NISA said.
Defense Minister Yoshimi Kitazawa said late Friday that the U.S. government had made "an extremely urgent" request to switch to freshwater. He said the U.S. military was sending water to nearby Onahama Bay and would begin water injections early next week.
The Pacific Command confirmed Saturday that barges loaded with freshwater were dispatched to Fukushima.
Nuclear power concerns The prolonged efforts to prevent a catastrophic meltdown at the plant has also intensified concerns around the world about nuclear power. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was time to reassess the international atomic safety regime.
Radioactive water was found in buildings housing three of the six reactors at the crippled plant. On Thursday, three workers sustained burns at reactor No. 3 after being exposed to radiation levels 10,000 times higher than usually found in a reactor.
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The crisis at the nuclear plant has overshadowed the massive relief and recovery effort from the magnitude 9.0 quake and the huge tsunami it triggered on March 11 that left more than 27,500 people dead or missing in northeast Japan.
Video: Nuke expert on risks of a breached reactorDespite such a shocking toll, much attention since the disaster has been on the possibility of a catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima.
With elevated radiation levels around the plant triggering fears across the nation, storage of the contaminated water has to be handled carefully.
"We are working out ways of safely bailing out the water so that it does not get out into the environment, and we are making preparations," Nishiyama said.
He initially said the high radiation reading meant there could be damage to the reactor, but he later said it could be from venting operations to release pressure or water leakage from pipes or valves.
"There is no data suggesting a crack," he said.
Nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Friday there had not been much change in the crisis over the previous 24 hours.
"Some positive trends are continuing but there remain areas of uncertainty that are of serious concern," agency official Graham Andrew said in Vienna, adding the high radiation could be coming from steam.
On Friday, Nishiyama chided plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) for not following safety procedures inside the turbine building. Local media also criticized TEPCO, which has a poor safety record.
"The people on the spot have a strong sense of mission and may be trying to rush," the Nikkei business paper said. "But if the work is done hastily, it puts lives at risk and in the end, will delay the repairs. This kind of accident ought to have been avoidable by proceeding with the work cautiously."
Quake risk at nuclear plants
- The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has estimated the risk for each nuclear reactor in the U.S. of an earthquake damaging the reactor's core. Geologists estimate that the risk of earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S. is much higher than previously thought. The 104 nuclear reactors are ranked by the NRC's risk estimates in thisinvestigative report from msnbc.com.
Working in shifts More than 700 engineers have been working in shifts to stabilize the plant and work has been advancing to restart water pumps to cool their fuel rods.
Two of the plant's reactors are now seen as safe but the other four are volatile, occasionally emitting steam and smoke. However, the nuclear safety agency said on Saturday that temperature and pressure in all reactors had stabilized.
When TEPCO restored power to the plant late last week, some thought the crisis would soon be over. But two weeks after the earthquake, lingering high levels of radiation from the damaged reactors has kept hampering workers' progress.
At Three Mile Island, the worst nuclear power accident in the United States, workers took just four days to stabilize the reactor, which suffered a partial meltdown. No one was injured and there was no radiation release above the legal limit.
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