Highly radioactive water leaks from Japanese nuclear plant

 Mon Mar 28, 2011 11:10am EDT

 TOKYO (Reuters) - Highly radioactive water has leaked from a reactor at Japan's crippled nuclear complex, the plant's operator said on Monday, while environmental group Greenpeace said it had detected high levels of radiation outside an exclusion zone.

 Reflecting growing unease about efforts to control the six-reactor Fukushima Daiichi complex, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (9501.T) (TEPCO) had appealed to French companies for help, the Kyodo news agency said.

The plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, was damaged in a March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 28,000 people dead or missing across northeastern Japan.

Fires, explosions and radiation leaks have repeatedly forced engineers to suspend efforts to stabilize the plant, including on Sunday when radiation levels spiked to 100,000 times above normal in water inside reactor No. 2.

A partial meltdown of fuel rods inside the reactor vessel was responsible for the high levels, although Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the radiation had mainly been contained in the reactor building.

But TEPCO later said radiation above 1,000 millisieverts per hour had been found in water in underground concrete tunnels that extend beyond the reactor.

That is the same as the level discovered on Sunday. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says a single dose of 1,000 millisieverts is enough to cause hemorrhaging.

TEPCO officials said the tunnels did not flow into the sea but the possibility of radioactive water seeping into the ground could not be ruled out.

The nuclear crisis has compounded Japan's agony after the magnitude 9.0 quake and huge tsunami devastated its northeast coast, turning whole towns into apocalyptic landscapes of mud and debris.

About a quarter of a million people are living in shelters and damage could top $300 billion, making it the world's costliest natural disaster.

The suffering may not be over.

 Greenpeace said its experts had confirmed radiation levels of up to 10 microsieverts per hour in the village of Iitate, 40 km (25 miles) northwest of the plant. It called for the extension of a 20-km (12-mile) evacuation zone.

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