Toxic water has leaked from an underground storage pool at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, the plant’s operator said Sunday, two days after it reported a much larger leak from a similar storage pool. three liters, or just over three quarts, of water was believed to have leaked from the No. 3 pool, where highly contaminated water is stored after being used to cool the damaged reactors and spent fuel of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. On Friday, the company said about 32,000 gallons of radioactive water had leaked from the neighboring No. 2 pool. Over the weekend, Tokyo Electric Power Company had tried to cover up the risks from the leak reported Friday and had understated the levels of radioactivity in the water. The company said it appeared that the water had seeped through holes in plastic sheets used to protect the large underground storage pools. Industry regulators were widely faulted after the 2011 meltdowns for having collusive ties with power companies and turning a blind eye to safety lapses. Newspapers quoted an unnamed official at the Nuclear Regulation Authority, a newly created watchdog, as saying officials from the authority’s discredited predecessor had rubber-stamped the underground storage pools last fall without properly inspecting them.
Some experts say the plant will remain vulnerable for years, and the work of dismantling and cleaning up the damaged reactors is expected to take decades. The leaks also raised worries about the apparently fragile state of the plant, where jury-rigged cooling systems connected by hundreds of yards of rubber tubing still pour water on the damaged reactor cores and fuel storage pools. Some experts say those cooling systems could fail in another large earthquake.