Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) Sizable amounts of dangerously radioactive water have found their way through cracks in the wall of a treatment facility at Japan’s shuttered Fukushima nuclear power plant, rendered damaged beyond repair during the March 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami.
TEPCO has reported that nearly 45 tons of contaminated water may have leaked through the breached concrete wall of a building used to filter water that is used to cool molten fuel in the power plant’s stricken reactors.
Experts speculate that the contaminated water could contaminate seawater with concentrated levels of strontium-90, a radioactive isotope with a half-life of nearly 30 years. ingestion with strontium-90 can cause bone cancer.
Workers temporarily shut down the water filter structure after they sighted water puddles around the site on Sunday. Later testing of the water revealed its radioactive state.
The leak has already been contained, said TEPCO authorities, and purified water has continued cooling the damaged reactors.
Already, Fukushima Dai-Ichi has been recognized as responsible for the largest-ever release of radioactive material into the ocean.
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