Radiation 100,000 times higher than normal at stricken reactor

Workers are struggling to remove radioactive water from the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear compound and restart the regular cooling systems for the dangerously hot fuel.

The day began with company officials mistakenly reporting that radiation in leaking water in the Unit 2 reactor was 10 million times above normal, a spike that forced employees to flee the unit. The day ended with officials saying the huge figure had been miscalculated and offering apologies.

“The number is not credible,” said Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) spokesman Takashi Kurita. “We are very sorry.”

While the water is contaminated with radiation, officials are unsure about the actual levels. A few hours later, a new test had found radiation levels 100,000 times above normal – far better than the first results, though still very high.

Officials acknowledged there was radioactive water in all four of the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex’s most troubled reactors, and that airborne radiation in Unit 2 measured 1,000 millisieverts per hour, four times the limit deemed safe by the government.

Officials say they still do not know where the radioactive water is coming from, though government spokesman Yukio Edano earlier said some is “almost certainly” seeping from a damaged reactor core in one of the units.

The discovery late last week of pools of radioactive water has been a major setback in the mission to get the crucial cooling systems operating more than two weeks after a massive earthquake and tsunami.

The magnitude-9 quake off Japan’s north-east coast on March 11 triggered a tsunami that disabled the Fukushima plant, complicating a humanitarian disaster that is thought to have killed about 18,000 people.

The death toll from the disasters stood at 10,668 on Sunday with 16,574 people missing, police said. Hundreds of thousands of people are homeless.

A top official for the nuclear reactor company acknowledged it could take a long time to clean up the complex.

“We cannot say at this time how many months or years it will take,” Tepco vice president Sakae Muto said, insisting the main goal now is to keep the reactors cool.

Workers have been struggling to find a place to safely store the radioactive water.

Each unit may hold tens of thousands of gallons of radioactive water.

Safety agency officials had been hoping to pump the water into huge, partly empty tanks inside the reactor but they turned out to be completely full.

Meanwhile, plans to use regular power to restart the cooling system hit a roadblock when it turned out that cables had to be laid through turbine buildings flooded with the contaminated water.

“The problem is that right now nobody can reach the turbine houses where key electrical work must be done,” Nishiyama said. “There is a possibility that we may have to give up on that plan.”

Despite Sunday’s troubles, officials continued to insist the situation had partially stabilised.

“We have somewhat prevented the situation from turning worse,” Mr Edano said last night.

The protracted nuclear crisis has spurred concerns about the safety of food and water in Japan, which is a prime source of seafood for some countries.

Radiation has been found in food, seawater and even tap water supplies in Tokyo.

Just outside the coastal Fukushima nuclear plant, radioactivity in seawater tested about 1,850 times normal by the weekend.

However, the area is not a source of seafood and that the contamination posed no immediate threat to human health.

Up to 600 people are working inside the plant in shifts.

Nuclear safety officials say workers’ time inside the crippled units is closely monitored to minimise their exposure to radioactivity, but two workers were taken to hospital on Thursday when they suffered burns after stepping into contaminated water.

They were due to be released today.