Radioactive Water Leaked at TEPCO’s Fukushima No. 1 Plant; No Impact on Sea, or Area Outside Plant

The Yomiuri Shimbun

13:02 JST, February 8, 2024

Radioactive water has leaked outside a storage building for contaminated water at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said Wednesday.

TEPCO said it estimates the leak to have totaled 5.5 tons of water, containing 22 billion becquerels of radioactive substances that emit gamma rays. No leakage into the sea has been detected, nor any increase in radiation outside the plant, according to TEPCO.

The building is being used to temporarily store contaminated water from the Nos. 1-3 reactors before it is purified. Around 8:53 a.m. on Wednesday, a worker found water leaking from a ventilation pipe on the wall of the building and flowing onto a steel plate on the ground, TEPCO said. The water may have seeped into the soil through gaps in the steel plate.

Work to clean equipment connected to the pipes had begun around 8:30 a.m. that day, and the leak is believed to have been a mixture of contaminated water and cleaning water. The leak stopped around 9:16 a.m. on Wednesday. TEPCO will collect soil and investigate the cause of the leak.