Fukushima plant reactor core may be breached

Japan’s nuclear regulator said one reactor core at the quake-damaged Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant may be cracked and leaking radiation.

“It’s very possible that there has been some kind of leak at the number three reactor,” Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman at the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said in Tokyo today. While radioactive water at the unit most likely escaped from the reactor core, it also could have originated from spent fuel pools stored atop the reactor, he said.

Repair work at the site of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl has been plagued by explosions, fires and leaks of toxic material. Prime Minister Naoto Kan told a press conference that efforts to bring the reactor under control haven’t yet reached a stage where the government can let down its guard.

“Even if there has been encouraging news such as getting some power back to the site, the installation remains in an extremely precarious and very serious situation that has not yet been stabilised,” Thomas Houdre, head of reactors at France’s nuclear safety agency, told reporters in Paris.

Workers using fire engines have streamed 4,000 tonnes of water on the number three reactor, five times more than any of the other five units.

Two plant workers were hospitalised yesterday with radiation burns after stepping in the water, which was found to have radiation levels 10,000 times higher than water used in reactor cooling, Nishiyama said earlier today.

Tokyo Electric Power Co, the plant operator, said it found eight different radioactive materials in the water of the turbine building basement, where the men were attempting to connect a power cable.