Fukushima seawater radioactivity rises

Almaty. March 30. Kazakhstan Today - Seawater near Japan's crippled nuclear reactors is said to have a much higher level of radioactive iodine than previously reported, BBC News reported.

Water near the Fukushima Daiichi plant's reactor 1 contained radioactive iodine at 3,355 times the legal limit, a government agency said.

Earlier samples had been put at 1,850 times the legal limit.

However, an official said the iodine would have deteriorated considerably by the time it reached people.

"Iodine 131 has a half-life of eight days, and even considering its concentration in marine life, it will have deteriorated considerably by the time it reaches people," Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of Japan's nuclear safety agency told a news conference.

Iodine 131 was blamed for the high incidence of thyroid cancer among children exposed to fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.

Alongside uranium, other elements of greater concern are those with much longer half-lives. These include caesium, which is easily taken up by plants and animals and can be inhaled through dust, ruthenium, strontium and plutonium.

Workers at Japan's quake-hit nuclear plant are trying to prevent radioactive water from seeping into the sea.

Highly radioactive liquid has been found inside and outside several reactor buildings.

Small amounts of plutonium have also been detected in soil at the plant - the latest indication that one of the reactors suffered a partial meltdown.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said his government was on maximum alert, and the situation remained "unpredictable".

Plant operator Tepco and the safety agency say the exact source of the radioactive leak is unknown.

But, like the discovery of plutonium, the high levels of radiation found inside and outside reactor buildings are likely to have come from melted fuel rods.

Theories for the leak centre on two possibilities: steam is flowing from the core into the reactor housing and escaping through cracks, or the contaminated material is leaking from the damaged walls of the water-filled pressure control pool beneath the No 2 reactor.

The plutonium - used in the fuel mix in the No 3 reactor - is not at levels that threaten human health, officials said.

Engineers are battling to restore power and restart the cooling systems at the stricken nuclear plant.

Tepco has been accused of a lack of transparency and failing to provide information more promptly. It was also heavily criticised for issuing erroneous radiation readings at the weekend.

Bloomberg informs Tokyo Electric Power Co. Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata will take charge of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant after President Masataka Shimizu was admitted to hospital for high blood pressure.

Katsumata, a former president of the power utility, will take charge while Shimizu, 66, is hospitalized, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, said at a news conference today.

Katsumata, 71, is to brief press on the situation at the power station with two other executives at 3 p.m. today.

Shimizu hasn't faced reporters since attending a March 13 press conference. He has been taking the lead at the company's head office in central Tokyo in leading Tepco's response to the incident, spokesman Takeo Iwamoto said March 24. Shimizu became ill "through overwork" for a few days after March 16, and later recovered, spokesman Kazufumi Suzuki said March 27.

Katsumata, who joined Tepco in 1963 according to Bloomberg data, became president in October 2002. He was promoted after Hiroshi Araki and Nobuya Minami, chairman and president at that time, stepped down to take responsibility for faked safety reports at three nuclear power plants.

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