Japan’s ocean radiation hits 7.5 million times legal limit

TOKYO — The operator of Japan’s
stricken Fukushima nuclear plant said Tuesday that it had found
radioactive iodine at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater
sample taken near the facility, and government officials imposed a new
health limit for radioactivity in fish.

The reading of iodine-131 was recorded Saturday, Tokyo Electric Power Co.
said. Another sample taken Monday found the level to be 5 million times
the legal limit. The Monday samples also were found to contain
radioactive cesium at 1.1 million times the legal limit.

The exact source of the radiation was not
immediately clear, though Tepco has said that highly contaminated water
has been leaking from a pit near the No. 2 reactor. The utility
initially believed that the leak was coming from a crack, but several
attempts to seal the crack failed.

On Tuesday the company said the leak instead might
be coming from a faulty joint where the pit meets a duct, allowing
radioactive water to seep into a layer of gravel underneath. The
utility said it would inject “liquid glass” into gravel in an effort to
stop further leakage.

Meanwhile, Tepco continued releasing what it
described as water contaminated with low levels of radiation into the
sea to make room in on-site storage tanks for more highly contaminated
water. In all, the company said it planned to release 11,500 tons of
the water, but by Tuesday morning it had released less than 25 percent
of that amount.

Although the government authorized the release of
the 11,500 tons and has said that any radiation would be quickly
diluted and dispersed in the ocean, fish with high readings of iodine
are being found.

On Monday, officials detected more than 4,000
bequerels of iodine-131 per kilogram in a type of fish called a sand
lance caught less than three miles offshore of the town of
Kita-Ibaraki. The young fish also contained 447 bequerels of
cesium-137, which is considered more problematic than iodine-131
because it has a much longer half-life.

On Tuesday chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano said the government was imposing a standard of 2,000 bequerels of
iodine per kilogram of fish, the same level it allows in vegetables.
Previously, the government did not have a specific level for fish.
Another haul of sand lance with 526 bequerels of cesium was detected
Tuesday, in excess of the standard of 500 bequerels per kilogram.

Fishing of sand lances has been suspended. Local
fishermen called on Tepco to halt the release of radioactive water into
the sea and demanded that the company compensate them for their losses.

Fishing has been banned near the plant, and the vast
majority of fishing activity in the region has been halted because of
damage to boats and ports by the March 11 tsunami and earthquake. Still, some fishermen are out making catches, only to find few buyers because of fears about radiation.

It was unclear what Tepco might offer the fishermen,
but the company did say Tuesday that it had offered “condolence
payments” totaling 180 million yen ($2 million)
to local residents who had to evacuate their homes because of radiation
from the Fukushima plant. One town, however, refused the payment.

The company has yet to decide how it will compensate
residents near the plant for damages, though financial analysts say the
claims could be in the tens of billions of dollars. Tepco’s executive
vice president Takashi Fujimoto said the company’s decision on damages hinges on how much of the burden the government will share.

Edano urged the company to accelerate its decisions on compensation.

For now the company has offered to give 20 million yen ($240,000) to each of 10 villages, towns and cities within 12 miles of the plant, Fujimoto said.

“We hope they will find it of some use for now,” he said.

Namie, a town of 20,600 located about 6 miles north of the plant, refused to take the money. Town official Kosei Negishi said that he and other government officials were working out of a
makeshift office in Nihonmatsu city, elsewhere in Fukushima prefecture,
and that they faced more pressing issues.

“The coastal areas of Namie were hit hard by the
earthquake and the tsunami but because of the radiation and the
evacuation order we haven’t had a chance to conduct a search for the
200 people who are missing,” Negishi said. “Why would we use our
resources to hand out less than 1,000 yen ($12) to every resident?”

Tokyo Electric Power’s Fujimoto acknowledged that there was a “gap” in the views of company and Namie officials.

Tepco’s shares dropped to an all-time low Tuesday, falling by the maximum daily trading limit — about 18 percent — to 362 yen, below the previous record low of 393 yen reached in December 1951. The company’s share price has lost 80 percent of its value — nearly 1.1 trillion yen — since the quake and tsunami, according to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

“We take the stock price decline very seriously,” Fujimoto told reporters.

Fujimoto said the company’s annual earnings report, which was originally scheduled for April 28, would be postponed, but he declined to give any other details.

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