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Radioactive leakage at nuclear power plant |
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July 25, 2000
TOKYO (AP) - A small mount of radioactive water that leaked at a nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan stayed within the facility and did not escape outside, the plant's operator said Monday. The leakage occurred at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in Okuma, a town with 10,900 residents on the Pacific coast in Fukushima prefecture (state), is 240 kilometers (150 miles), northeast of Tokyo. Yoshimi Hitosugi, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. said plant workers found about 150 liters (39 gallons) of radioactive water that had leaked near the plant's No. 2 reactor at around 10:20 p.m. Sunday (1320 GMT Sunday). The discovery of the leakage came about one hour after the reactor, with a generation capacity of 784,000-kilowatts of electricity, was manually shut down because of an oil leak. "No one was injured and nothing radioactive leaked outside the plant," Hitosugi said. Plant officials later determined the radioactive water leaked from a joint in a pipe linked to the hydraulic pressure system for controlling rods, said TEPCO official Kazuyoshi Takahara. Officials initially noticed an alarm indicating the lowering of oil levels inside the tank in the turbine facility Sunday evening, Hitosugi said. The oil leak was stopped after officials closed the valve supplying oil to control the turbine, he said. Takahara said officials investigating the leakages discovered a minor fissure on the surface of an oil pipe near a turbine valve. About 300 liters (78 gallons) of leaked oil were recovered from the floor, he said. Plant officials were still investigating whether the fissure resulted from a recent strong earthquake in the Pacific, Takahara said. On Friday, the No. 6 reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant was shut down after a leak of waste gas was detected in a tank where steam used to power the turbines was turned back into water. No leak of radioactive material was reported at the No. 6 reactor, which was shut down as a cautionary measure after a 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of eastern Japan. The plant has six reactors. |