Huge jump in radiation inside Japan nuclear plant

Four fuel storage pools at Japan’s tsunami-damaged nuclear plant have been without fresh cooling water for nearly 20 hours due to a power outage, the plant’s operator said Tuesday, raising concerns about the fragility of a facility that still runs on makeshift equipment. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said that pool temperatures at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant were well within safe levels, and that pools would remain safe for at least four days without fresh cooling water. The utility said the reactors were unaffected and no other abnormalities were found.

TOKYO — Power was restored Friday to a cooling system at a tsunami-damaged nuclear plant in Japan that failed for the second time in a month after an outage caused by construction work to keep out rats suspected of setting off the earlier blackout. Power for the cooling system for a storage pool for fuel was restored after a two-hour break at reactor No. 3, and there was no immediate danger from the breakdown, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that operates Fukushima Dai-ichi in northeastern Japan.

A new radioactive leak has been found at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, a day after the Tokyo Electric Power Company admitted up to 120 tons of contaminated water may have seeped into the ground out of a holding tank.

The operator of Japan's tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday said it believed fuel had partially melted inside three reactors, as long suspected by experts.Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said new readings on water gauges indicated that the fuel had dropped to the bottom of the containment vessels of units two and three, matching its earlier assessment of unit one.

Levels of radioactive substances have jumped in the Pacific seabed off Japan near the nuclear power plant crippled by a massive tsunami in March, according to the plant operator.Seabed samples collected some 15 kilometres (nine miles) from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant contained 1,400 becquerels of radioactive caesium-137 per kilogramme, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said.The level is more than 600 times higher than a maximum 2.3 becquerels per kilogramme detected in the past off the northeastern prefecture of Fukushima.