“A Japanese utility said Monday its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is likely leaking contaminated water into sea, acknowledging for the first time a problem long suspected by experts. […] Company spokesman Masayuki Ono told a regular news conference that plant officials have come to believe that radioactive water that leaked from the wrecked reactors is likely to have seeped into the underground water system and escaped into sea. […] TEPCO had persistently denied contaminated water reached the sea, despite spikes in radiation levels in underground and sea water samples taken at the plant. The utility first acknowledged an abnormal increase in radioactive cesium levels in an observation well near the coast in May and has since monitored water samples.”

“Officials from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry estimated today at a briefing in Tokyo that the Fukushima facility is leaking at least 300 tons of radioactive water a day into the ocean. […] The regulator, set up in response to the nuclear disaster, has already indicated growing alarm about the water leaks. Tepco officials apologized last month for failing to publicly acknowledge sooner that the radioactive groundwater was leaking into the ocean. The utility first suspected the water was spilling into the ocean on June 19 when it found strontium and tritium in a monitoring well at a turbine complex within the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, Tepco President Naomi Hirose said on July 26. […] Tepco said two weeks ago that the radiated water had been flowing into the sea at Fukushima, backtracking on previous comments that it couldn’t be confirmed.”

“Contaminated water with dangerously high levels of radiation is leaking from a storage tank at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, the most serious setback to the cleanup of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. The storage tank breach of about 300 metric tons of water is separate from contaminated water leaks reported in recent weeks, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Tuesday. […] Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority has classified the latest leak as a level 1 incident, the second lowest on an international scale for radiological releases, a spokesman told Reuters on Tuesday. […] Massive amounts of radioactive fluids are accumulating at the plant as Tepco floods reactor cores via an improvised system to keep melted uranium fuel rods cool and stable. The water in the cooling system then flows into basements and trenches that have been leaking since the disaster. Highly contaminated excess water is pumped out and stored in steel tanks on elevated ground away from the reactors. About 400 metric tons of radioactive water a day has been stored at Fukushima.”

“Japan’s nuclear agency has upgraded the severity level of a radioactive water leak at the Fukushima plant from one to three on an international scale. […] ‘We should assume that what has happened once could happen again, and prepare for more,’ watchdog chairman Shunichi Tanaka told a news conference.”

“‘We’ve allowed Tokyo Electric to deal with the contaminated water situation on its own and they’ve essentially turned it into a game of ‘Whack-a-Mole,” Trade Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told reporters today at Fukushima. ‘From now on, the government will move to the forefront.’ […] It’s now up to the government to lead management of the contaminated water building up in tanks at the plant at a rate of 400 tons a day, and leaking from underground tunnels into the ocean, Motegi said. […] In addition to the leaky tank, Tepco has admitted that irradiated water is flowing into the Pacific Ocean, which the government estimates at 300 tons a day.”

“A large amount of radioactive water has leaked from a holding tank at Japan’s troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, its operator said Thursday. The leak of an estimated 100 metric tons of highly contaminated water was discovered late Wednesday, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said in a statement. […] The leak reported Thursday is one of the largest since TEPCO reported last summer that about 300 tons of radioactive water had leaked from a tank.”