The Japanese government says its committed to dealing with the leakage of contaminated water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. The plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power or TEPCO has announced that radioactive areas have been found near its water tanks. The latest leaks have triggered further concern about the plant's ability to manage the contaminated water.
There's been five major leaks at the Fukushima nuclear plant since Japan was hit by the devastating earthquake and Tsunami in March 2011.
The Japanese government has re-iterated its commitment to take action and deal with the leakage. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said, "Instead of relying solely on TEPCO, the government will come to the forefront and implement necessary measures to deal with the issue. Unlike past times where things were dealt with as issues arose, we must take fundamental measures."
TEPCO detected new highly radioactive areas over the weekend.
Engineers are now searching for the cause of the leaks. "We are not yet at the point where we can explain why high levels of radiation are detected at these spots... We will need to conduct further checks as to whether the material seeping out from these spots contains radioactive material and whether it has become the source of the radiation," said TEPCO spokesman Noriyuki Imaizumi.
Saturday's incident appears minor compared to a massive breach on August 19th, when a total of 300 tons of contaminated water leaked from a steel tank. And the worst may be yet to come. There are 300 similar tanks and the radioactive waste water grows by 400 tons every day.
Investigation into the tanks has revealed TEPCO's sloppy record keeping and tank management. The company acknowledges that it used to assign only two workers to visually inspect all 1,000 tanks in two hours, until the leak. TEPCO also admits that it has overlooked signs of leakage, radioactivity increase and workers' exposure levels for over a month.
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