Radiation spikes in sea near plant

March 27, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Combined dispatches

SAN FRANCISCO

A surge in radioactive contamination reportedly was detected Saturday in seawater near Japan’s Fuku- shima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, signaling further signs of distress at the earthquake-crippled facility.

A spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the spike in radioactive iodine didn’t pose an immediate health and environmental threat, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Still, the unsettling news exposes the fact that, despite reassuring words of progress, there remains plenty of uncertainty with regard to if and when Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s reactors will be brought under control.

A day earlier, workers who came into contact with radioactive puddles in one of the plants had to be hospitalized, the Journal reported.

On Saturday, Japan’s government revealed a series of missteps by Tokyo Electric Power, including sending the workers in without protective footwear in its faltering efforts to control the monumental crisis. The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, rushed to deliver fresh water to replace corrosive salt water being used in a desperate bid to cool the plant’s overheated reactors. Government spokesman Yukio Edano urged Tokyo Electric Power to be more transparent, two days after two workers at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi plant suffered skin burns when they stepped in water that was 10,000 times more radioactive than levels normally found near the reactors.

The spokesman said he was unsure about the cause.

“Radioactive substances may have been transmitted through the air, or contaminated water could have drained from the plant somehow,” he told reporters Saturday “I don’t have further ideas.”

In addition to heightened levels of iodine-131, the nuclear agency said the seawater contained 117 times Japan’s legal limit of cesium-134 and 80 times the threshold for cesium-137.

A person drinking half a liter of water with the latest level of contamination would be consuming 1 millisievert, the equivalent of a full year’s acceptable consumption, according to the Journal.

“The situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is still very grave,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan said at a news conference. “We are still not at a stage where we can be optimistic.”

The Fukushima accident rates a 5 out of 7 on an international scale of nuclear accidents, matching the Three Mile Island crisis in 1979 but not yet to the level of Chernobyl in 1986, which topped the scale.

The seawater contamination is the latest in a long list of problems that, beyond regaining control of the reactors and spent-rod pools before they overheat and release massive amounts of potentially deadly radiation, includes reports of increased radiation levels in Japanese crops, milk products and drinking water. Several nations have banned imports of Japanese food.