Nuclear safety officials say a newly discovered crack in Japan's damaged nuclear plant could be the source of radioactive water that is leaking into the ocean.
Nuclear safety spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama told reporters Saturday that the water could be leaking into the Pacific Ocean from a 20-centimeter crack in a maintenance pit on the edge of the Fukushima nuclear site. He said there could be other similar cracks and “we must find them as quickly as possible.”
Tokyo Electric Power Company is starting to pour concrete into the pit in an attempt to seal the crack.
Earlier in the day, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan set foot in the tsunami-devastated region for the first time, meeting workers in the nuclear exclusion zone and talking to residents made homeless by the March 11 disaster. Mr. Kan stopped in the fishing village of Rikuzentakata, where the town hall is one of the few buildings that was not leveled by the tsunami. He met with the town's mayor, whose wife was swept away in the disaster and is still missing.
At a school-turned-evacuation center, Mr. Kan told evacuees that the government “fully supports you until the end” of the re
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