Japan says taking steps to prevent Fukushima sea leak

PanARMENIAN.Net - Japan says it is taking steps to prevent contaminated water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant leaking into the sea, BBC News said.

The plant's operator recently admitted for the first time that radioactive water was still going into the sea. A government spokesman said the authorities had taken immediate action.

Workers were asked to act promptly to stop the leak as steam was seen rising from one of the reactor buildings for the second time in a week.

On Tuesday, July 23 Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said steam was seen around the fifth floor of the building housing Reactor No 3 shortly after 09:00 local time (00:00 GMT).

Workers were continuing with the ongoing operation to inject cooling water into the reactor and a pool storing nuclear fuel, it added.

It is not clear what is causing the steam, but levels of radiation around the reactor have not changed.

The sight of steam rising is worrying because it means somewhere inside the reactor building water is boiling, says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Tokyo.

The badly damaged reactors are supposed to be in what is called "cold shutdown"; the temperature of the cooling water inside the reactor should be well below boiling point. It is another sign that Tepco still does not fully know what is going on inside the damaged reactors, the correspondent adds.

Steam was last seen rising from a reactor building at the plant on 18 July. The plant was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011, which knocked out cooling systems to the reactors, three of which melted down.