Japan nuclear plant stops highly radioactive leak

Almaty. April 6. Kazakhstan Today - Engineers have stopped highly radioactive water leaking into the sea from a crippled Japanese nuclear power plant, its operator reports on Wednesday, Kazakhstan Today reports.

Workers at Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant on Wednesday finally halted a leak that was sending a tide of radioactive water into the Pacific and exacerbating concerns over the safety of seafood, the operator said, The Associated Press reported.

It was a rare bit of good news for the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex and the coastal areas surrounding it, where high levels of seawater contamination have angered fishermen and prompted the government to set limits for the first time on the amount of radiation permitted in fish.

But in a sign that workers still face several challenges before the overheating reactors are stabilized, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it plans to inject nitrogen gas into one of the reactors. Nitrogen can prevent highly combustible hydrogen from exploding - as it did three times at the compound in the early days of the crisis.

There is no immediate possibility of an explosion, but the "nitrogen injection is being considered as a cautionary measure," said spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

TEPCO said the process could begin as early as Wednesday evening in Unit 1 - where pressure and temperatures are the highest - according to spokesman Junichi Matsumoto. The same measures will eventually be taken at the other two troubled reactors.

Engineers have been struggling to stop leaks since the plant was damaged by the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March, BBC News informs.

Japan has asked Russia for the use of a floating radiation treatment plant.

In another development, government sources said that a plan to cover the damaged reactor buildings with special metal sheets could not be carried out until September at the earliest due to high-level radioactivity hampering work at the site.

The official death toll from the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami stands at more than 12,000 with some 15,000 people still unaccounted for, and more than 161,000 people still living in evacuation centres.

Samples of water used to cool one of the plant's six reactors, No 2, showed 5m times the legal limit of radioactivity, officials said on Tuesday.

The company still needs to pump some 11,500 tonnes of low-level radioactive seawater into the sea because of a lack of storage space at the plant.

But officials said this water would not pose a significant threat to human health.

Photo: www.bbcnews.com

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