Tokyo Electric Power Company began dumping over 11,000 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Monday, mostly to make room in storage containers for increasing amounts of far more contaminated runoff. The water, most of it to be released over two days, contains about 100 times the legal limit of radiation, Tokyo Electric said. The more contaminated water has about 10,000 times the legal limit.
The effort would help workers clearing radioactive water from the turbine buildings at the damaged reactors, making it less dangerous to reach some of the most crucial controls for their cooling systems, which were knocked out by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that struck northeast Japan on March 11.
The hopes are that the cooling systems can be revived and bring the plant back under control.
But the pumping effort is not expected to halt, or even alter, the gushing leak from a large crack in a six-foot-deep pit next to the seawater intake pipes near Reactor No. 2.
Tokyo Electric said it would dump 4,800 tons of water a day for two days. An additional 1,500 tons will also be released from the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors, after runoff was found flooding parts of their turbine buildings.
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