Plutonium found in soil outside Japan’s damaged nuclear plant

Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said it was discovered yesterday in five spots around the plant, which has been leaking radiation for nearly two weeks.

The company said the amounts were very small and were not a risk to public health.

Experts had expected traces of plutonium to be detected once workers began searching for it this week, since it is present in the nuclear fuel in the complex.

Confusion at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant has intensified fears that the nuclear crisis will last weeks, months or years amid alarm over radiation making its way into produce, raw milk and tap water as far away as Tokyo.

The troubles at the complex have eclipsed the 1979 crisis at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, when a partial meltdown raised fears of widespread radiation release, but is still well short of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which killed at least 31 people with radiation sickness, raised long-term cancer rates, and put out radiation which travelled for hundreds of miles.

While parts of the Japanese plant has been reconnected to the power grid, contaminated water – which has now been found in numerous places around the complex– must be pumped out before electricity can be restored to the cooling system.

That has left officials struggling with two sometimes-contradictory efforts: Pumping in water to keep the fuel rods cool and pumping out – and then safely storing – contaminated water.

The buildup of radioactive water first became a problem last week, when it splashed over the boots of two workers, burning them.

Yesterday Tepco said workers had found more radioactive water in deep trenches used for pipes and electrical wiring outside three units.

The contaminated water has been emitting radiation exposures more than four times the amount that the government considers safe for workers.

Exactly where the water was coming from was not clear, although many believed it was cooling water that leaked from one of the disabled reactors.

Meanwhile, new readings showed ocean contamination had spread about a mile farther north of the nuclear site than before but is still within the 12-mile radius of the evacuation zone.

Radioactive iodine-131 was discovered offshore at a level 1,150 times higher than normal.

Ministers in the UK confirmed emergency shipments of drinking water were being sent from Hong Kong to one of Japan’s worst-hit regions – Ibaraki, south of the stricken power plant.