The operator of Japan’s tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant said Tuesday that about 300 tons of highly radioactive water have leaked from one of the hundreds of storage tanks there — its worst leak yet from such a vessel. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/08/20/world/asia/ap-as-japan-nuclear.html?hp&_r=0  Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the contaminated water leaked from a steel storage tank at the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.But Hideka Morimoto, a spokesman for Japan’s nuclear watchdog, the Nuclear Regulation Authority, said water could reach the sea via a drain gutter. “We are extremely concerned,” Morimoto told reporters.
Four other tanks of the same design have had similar leaks since last year. The incidents have shaken confidence in the reliability of hundreds of tanks that are crucial for storing what has been a never-ending flow of contaminated water.
Workers were pumping out the puddle and the remaining water in the tank and will transfer it to other containers, in a desperate effort to prevent it from escaping into the sea ahead of heavy rain predicted later in the day around Fukushima. By Tuesday afternoon they had captured only about 4 tons of the 300.
Aside from the tanks, contaminated water that TEPCO has been unable to contain continues to enter the Pacific Ocean at a rate of hundreds of tons per day. Much of that is ground water that has mixed with untreated radioactive water at the plant.
The massive amount of radioactive water is among the most pressing issues affecting the cleanup process, which is expected to take decades.
To reduce leaks unrelated to the tanks, plant workers are using measures such as building chemical underground walls along the coastline, but they have made little improvement so far.