Japanese officials reported a huge jump in radioactivity – levels 10 million times the norm – in water in one reactor unit at a tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Sunday, forcing workers to evacuate and again delaying efforts to control the leaking complex.
Radiation in the air, meanwhile, measured 1,000 millisieverts per hour – four times the limit deemed safe by the government, Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita said.
Word of the startling jump in radioactivity in Unit 2 of the power plant came as TEPCO struggled to pump contaminated water from four troubled reactor units at the overheated Fukushima plant, 220 kilometers northeast of Tokyo. The reading was so high that the worker measuring the levels fled before taking a second reading, officials said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano acknowledged emergency workers still needed to figure out the source of the radioactive water, but insisted the situation had stabilized – at least partially.